To listen to it as a 13-min podcast
Inclusive Leadership 0:00 (Ashok Bhattacharya)
Let me tell you a little bit about Joanne Tan. So do you ever buy a barbecue and decide to put all it together yourself, and you get to the end of it and there’s a piece missing, or there’s a tool that you just didn’t have, and you’re thinking, oh my gosh, why did I do that? Well, let me tell you, Joanne has all the tools. She’s a lawyer, a journalist, a backpacker, even a writer, and does so many things that she had, she has bringing all of the tools that you need to help you build your brand. And I’ve spoken to her a number of times. Every time I speak to her, I grow a little more. And I think brand, brand, brand, and she is the expert. So what you guys are in store for is not just a great barbecue, but some amazing food from that barbecue. Joanne, over to you.
Joanne Tan 0:44
Thank you so much. I love your poetic description, and that’s one of the elements about building your personal brand and your business brand. I’ve been doing this for 15 years, day in and day out. The more I do it, the more I love it, and better I get at this. Okay, so first of all, self intro. This is the American way. Okay, I never get used to this – even though I’m in this brand building business – is this self description, but I have to be unabashedly… and you too, because this is how people know your value. You have to share about yourself, okay, but that’s not the purpose – I’ll get to that later. So I do have a law degree, but I never practice law by choice. I have some business school training, and I was a professional journalist. I studied in the liberal arts private college called Brandeis University, which really laid the foundation. And in my journalist career, I learned about page design, which is like architectural floor planning, except that we do this three pages a day. Okay, that trained my architectural design thinking, which is crucial for everything I do for my clients.
Joanne Tan 1:58
So I have been a speaker national and globally on personal branding and business branding on LinkedIn, on website. And I have a newsletter called 10 Plus Newsletter. It has about 25,000 subscribers and counting. And I interviewed notables and influencers, including people like the former California Supreme Court Chief Justice and the California Current Treasurer, and she’s running for lieutenant governor. It’s just been published. And also among my clients, like the former CFO of Nvidia when Nvidia was a little baby. Now she, her stocks are worth a whole lot; and public, private board members, consultants, executive coaches like you and myself.
Joanne Tan 2:44
Okay, so here are two quick questions for you to think. Number one, what do you know about “personal branding“? Quote, unquote.
Joanne Tan 2:54
Number two, what do you know about using AI on LinkedIn?
Joanne Tan 3:01
Personal Branding means different things to different people, like cooking for Julia Child and cooking and food for Anthony Bourdain are two different, almost like two different subject matters. Okay, Anthony Bourdain, his way of approaching cooking and food is encompassing so many aspect of humanity, about culture, about politics, about people, about current affairs, about history, everything. It is poetic. Okay, Julia Child is: how to do this. Here’s a recipe. Let me demonstrate for you. Okay, so personal branding, to some people is like, oh, it’s about a logo, color, font. But I do a whole lot more than that. I, let’s just say Anthony Bourdain’s way, because I don’t do that until, unless, I have decoded your brand DNA. That is the deep dive that is the foundation of a skyscraper or a Leaning Tower of Pisa. And if you build a Leaning Tower of Pisa, you know, after seven stories, you’re stuck, you can go back and fix it.
Joanne Tan 4:14
So how to do it right? – Depends on how much you have done the foundational work. And what is the foundational work? Your WHYs, your purpose, your vision, your past, your present, your vision of your future. Who do you serve? How well do you know their dreams and their pain points, their needs and wants, and what solutions you have for their pain points, and where you stand in the competitive landscape, unless you’re the only one doing the thing in the entire world, I don’t think anybody can claim that, right?
Joanne Tan 5:01
And who you are, what you stand for, what do you want to represent as your brand, to whom, and why, and how your expertise can solve the specific problems, the reason why people need to hire you or buy from you.
Joanne Tan 5:22
So imagine three circles. The Circle One is you. What is your passion? What fires you up? Your WHYs, your stories, your upbringings, your dreams, your vision of your future as a professional, – this is not about dating.
Joanne Tan 5:43
Circle Number Two is your target audience. Target audience. It means who you serve and who feed you. How well do you understand them? You have to be able to tell their stories to resonate your message with them, as if you’re married to them 40 years – you know all their quirks, you know all their weaknesses, you know all their dreams, and you know how to live and how to protect and how to promote them, how to fill their needs.
Joanne Tan 6:15
Number Three is your competitive landscape, because a brand is in relation to where you stand in the marketplace, how you differentiate from your peers and competitors? I hate to use the word competitor, but, well, let’s face it, that’s a fact. How do you differentiate? What’s your unique way that’s different from theirs? What’s your modus operandi? What’s your signature? So people know this is your way. This is your brand’s unique character.
Joanne Tan 6:47
Okay, so keep these three pictures in mind, where the three overlaps, is your brand.
Joanne Tan 6:55
Now, AI. AI landscape, the macro and the “for individuals like you”, the profiles on LinkedIn. I’m zooming in on LinkedIn only, even though that’s not the only thing I do. Okay, so the macro climate AI on LinkedIn: Well, it just happened that April 21 2025, that’s just a few days ago, the Economist Magazine had an article quote, “LinkedIn’s unlikely role in the AI race”. Unquote. Basically, it just says, well, guess who owns LinkedIn?
Joanne Tan 7:33
Microsoft. LinkedIn is their test ground for AI, applications, data, and anything else. So from a recruiters and employers point of view, LinkedIn is really good news because it makes it so much easier and faster to find and match candidates, and LinkedIn purposely has been designed and functioning within its closed universe. What does that mean is whatever you post on LinkedIn, they really make an effort to make sure they stay on LinkedIn. Okay, that’s another strategy for them to get access to this experimenting testing ground owned by Microsoft.
Joanne Tan 8:24
So let’s focus on LinkedIn profiles for individuals like you, like me. Okay. Well, there’s good news, there’s bad news. The good news is that AI has made it easier for you too, if you know the keywords, if you know what is trending among your target audience who search for your expertise, so you have the ability to get yourself noticed and findable by using the same algorithm and keywords.
Joanne Tan 9:00
But the bad news is that AI levels the playing field by equalizing everyone’s chance with this algorithm. So it’s very easy for you to look exactly the same as your competitors.
Joanne Tan 9:17
All right, and that’s not a purpose. Who wants to be drowned in the sea of sameness? And AI offers you, you know, when you write your update your profiles, it offers: “Do you want to write with AI?” You can do that. You’re trapped. I’m sorry. Okay, to stand above the sea of sameness, there’s an easy thing to do, there’s a hard thing to do.
Joanne Tan 9:48
The easy thing is that, okay, I will just use whatever AI wants me to use, the same keywords so the AI will notice you. Well, that’s not the purpose. After you noticed, are you hireable? Do you evoke trust and confidence? For whom? For the target audience, whoever that your target audience is. Do they feel like, when they read your LinkedIn profile, do they feel like this one is authentic, she or he is, is trustworthy. I like him. I like her. That’s the hard part, and that’s the part that AI cannot do for you.
Joanne Tan 10:32
There is an evergreen rule, “garbage in, garbage out“. AI depends on what you feed it with. If you have not thought out a comprehensive strategy and the true, truly objective understanding of your value propositions, whatever you feed AI, it’ll just feedback whatever you feed it with, right? So the most critical part in today’s AI age is to create your personal brand more than a profile, with strategy, with vision, with authenticity.
Joanne Tan 11:12
A LinkedIn profile is not just about you. It’s not an eulogy: “This is what I did, a laundry list of my past, this and this and this.” What does it lead to? How well do you understand your target audience? It’s a two way street, remember? Your value, your accomplishments, your degrees, means anything to your target audience. But if it doesn’t resonate with the target audience, who cares? There are too many people whose LinkedIn profile look exactly the same as yours, except you just substitute their university name, you just substitute their the title, you just substitute the companies they work for.
Joanne Tan 11:54
Unique value propositions – that is leading to the chat room. Okay. Unique value propositions is, is relevant to your goal in the, in the future, and to your target audience. And then you elementize with true stories, your authentic self, your WHYs, and your comprehensively structure. Your LinkedIn as as if it’s a “war” in different battlefields. Current Experience is one of the battlefields. The other is Summary, okay, and then the end is the title, is most important, distilled. It has to be distilled.
Joanne Tan 12:30
So it is going to be a work of art. It is a work of strategizing and also knowing the three circles, okay, to do your LinkedIn profile in a strategic, well planned, well researched, storyline fashion, not only to be searchable, findable by AI with the most relevant keywords, but differentiate your unique value propositions from your competitors and peers.
Joanne Tan 12:58
And then you can shine The best light possible. Remember the Beethoven Number Five? I chose this music for the reason, this is the reason. Ba, ba, ba, BAHHH…you tell the world your unique value proposition in this fashion. Ba, Ba, Ba, BAHHH…
Inclusive Leadership (Matthew Cahill) 13:20
You’ve just been given a taste of the Inclusive Leadership in a virtual world weekly gathering. If you would like to join us for an upcoming ILDW session, look for the registration URL in the comments. Register once and join us whenever your schedule permits you.
©Joanne Z. Tan all rights reserved.
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