#71 PERSONAL BRANDING, AUTHENTICITY & TMI with Tom Megginson

How can we be authentic without sharing TMI (too much information)? How can we be transparent, bring our “whole selves” to work, without appearing unprofessional? Copywriter and messaging strategist Tom Megginson encourages us to be authentic, but focus on our audience.  Code-switching and filtering are two ways to maintain authenticity without compromising professionalism.   RESOURCES TOM MEGGINSON * LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommegginson/ * That’s a Good Story – thatsagoodstory.com PERSONAL BRANDING & AUTHENTICITY * 1997 FastCompany article by Tom Peters * Podcast – How to Communicate your Personal Brand Online * Podcast – Optimizing your LinkedIn Profile * Podcast – Choosing the Ideal Media Talk About Talk & Dr. Andrea Wojnicki * Website – https://talkabouttalk.com * Podcast – https://talkabouttalk.com/podcasts * Email – [email protected] * Free Weekly Newsletter – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup * Andrea on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/   INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: Personal Branding, Authenticity & TMI with Tom Megginson Andrea Wojnicki: Thank you so much, Tom for joining us to talk about personal branding, authenticity and TMI. Tom Megginson: Thank you very much, Andrea. AW: As I was explaining to the listeners, we recently met on LinkedIn, and you responded to a post that I created about how to communicate your personal brand online. And you actually took the time to write a comment that ended up leading to this interview. I’m just going to read the comment here quickly. So you said: “my personal brand is just the professional face that I’ve always shown to the world, now a bit more worn and wise than when I began my career in the 90s. Deciding what to show of myself is easy. What’s important, in my opinion, is to always ask oneself, is this TMI? And is this relevant to my audience? So we’ve all seen or heard TMI, and we know it when we see it? But what is TMI? TM: Well, it’s an interesting one, I’d said two things. There’s TMI, and there’s is this relevant to my audience?. And I think the latter one is probably more specific. Too much information means different things to different people. But what I’d like to start out with is to say – “is this relevant to my audience?“ is probably the number one thing that people should keep in mind. It’s really easy for us as human beings, when we’re in a one to one communication, even on a video screen here, as we’re having this interview. And to take the cues from the people, even when you’re doing public speaking, you see the people you’re talking to, you can tell if they’re bored, you can tell if they’re hanging on your every word. On social media you don’t see the people you’re talking to. And it’s very similar to me,