Sharon Williams is founder of one of Australia’s longest-running marketing agencies, Taurus Marketing, and a sought-after motivational speaker and branding expert with almost three decades of experience helping businesses nail their marketing, PR and personal branding.
She joined editors Cec Busby and Adam Bub on the First Act podcast to share the highs and lows of her business journey, including some amazing pearls of wisdom on personal branding that all entrepreneurs and business leaders need to know.
It was an old-fashioned boss who sparked Sharon Williams’ desire to start her own business, and she hasn’t looked back in the nearly thirty years since.
“When I fell pregnant, my boss at the time immediately looked at me and said, ‘Well, you’ll be leaving then’,” Sharon recalls. “And this was in 1995, not 1980! He actually saw my career ending when I had my firstborn.
“It was his loss and my gain because his competitor reached out and asked me to work with him; he told me to have the baby and then come back and see him. So I brought Charlotte in two weeks after her birth and started contracting with him, and that was when Taurus Marketing was born. Actually, the business was registered on the day she was born – from the maternity ward with the laptop on my lap.”
Sharon Williams, CEO of Taurus Marketing
No guts, no glory
Since then, Sharon has developed her own brand and business to become a pioneer in the marketing and personal branding space, mentoring CEOs and university graduates alike, and representing more than a thousand brands over four continents.
In this informative and vulnerable interview, Sharon not only shared how coping with personal tragedies and her own cancer diagnosis has shaped her mindset and career, but she also generously imparted a swag of insider tips to build a personal brand that supports your business growth.
Listen to Sharon Williams on the First Act podcast:
Four personal branding rules to live by
Here are four stand-outs – though listen to the full podcast because not only does Sharon share many valuable marketing tips and insights, her recount of her journey through health struggles and personal tragedy is honest and raw.
1. Walk the talk
“I believe in personal branding and I walk the talk, because in business, there’s no time to waste,” says Sharon. “Personal branding is all about supporting your growth and success and making sure that it’s easy for people to know what you stand for, to be able to work out whether they want to buy from you.
“Business is an extension of our lives, and marketing is very much like dating – people buy from people, and therefore we need to be able to show them what we stand for and who we are. Whether you are a big telco or a greengrocer, at the end of the day, when we walk into a shop or get on the phone, it’s how we’re treated that reflects on that brand.
“It cuts down on wasted time to know what your personal brand is. Live it, and walk the talk to get the success you want, whether that be finding the right partner, the right job or the right customer.”
2. Choose your clients and team wisely
“Not everybody out there is a Taurus customer or a Sharon Williams friend; not everyone out there is someone I would like to work with,” says Sharon. “I’d like to know who they are, because I might not want them to be a customer of mine if they don’t have the same core values.
“Life is really tough when you’re not in the right corporate cultural fit; it makes business and personal lives difficult when you’re not core value aligned. If you can say who you are and what you stand for, you attract the right people and not the people who aren’t aligned to you.
“I get up every morning to build people, brands, businesses and hopefully, dreams. If I can’t build you up as a person, or I can’t build your brand or your dream, then you are not for me and you’re not for my company. It’s not really about marketing; it’s about building those journeys and making people, brands and businesses more successful.
“We’ve got to separate those people out quickly, so we don’t waste time in the wrong association. Choose them carefully because client or team relationships are like a marriage, and marriage is fraught with risks and ups and downs.”
3. Optimise LinkedIn
“Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to date,” Sharon advises. “That’s the best thing you can do to build your personal brand. If that’s the one thing that everyone takes away from this podcast, please get your LinkedIn profile as good as it can possibly be.
“Spend some time working on LinkedIn and making contacts, because they are the people who will open doors to your success; they will be the people who lift you. It’s very hard trying to build a business one sale at a time. So find people who will give you a thousand sales and lift you into partnerships that will elevate you.
“Your LinkedIn profile should look like your personal website – how you’re dressed, how you speak, and how you present yourself can accelerate that journey.”
4. Stay on-brand wherever you are
“Being on-brand across your website and social media is really important,” says Sharon. “They’re your staples, your little toolkit of building your brand.
“It’s about being authentic; if you are authentic on every channel, then you get your brand out there faster. You want to be put in front of the right people and not waste time being put in front of the people who won’t be your customers, or won’t be coming to work for you.
“It’s about being the captain of your personal brand, and doing business on purpose, with purpose, and not letting it just happen by accident.”
Listen to the full First Act podcast episode now to hear Sharon’s wisdom on business marketing, personal branding, and working through hard times to come out on top.
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