How To Build Your Brand Through Speaking - With Bethan Vincent

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Bethan Vincent.

Bethan Vincent is B2B Marketing Consultant with over 10+ year’s experience in technology and the digital sector. Formerly a senior manager in the cloud computing industry and founder of several start-ups, Bethan has built her career sitting at the intersection between marketing, product and development.

Why you've got to check out Bethan's episode:

- Discover how Bethan works with technology companies who have a B2B product and how she helps them with public speaking and thought leadership.

- Why it's important to build a personality as a brand so that customers can connect with you in an authentic and human way.

- Learn what impact it can have on your as a CTO by not speaking and presenting, and also what impact it can have for you and your employees if you are speaking in your industry.

- How you can stand out an a professional in your industry and why you need to start small as a speaker before progressing to become a larger scale keynote speaker.

- Get access to a free public speaking training platform that Bethan recommends and also get access to Bethan's content on the below link.

Resources / Links

www.bethanvincent.com/marketing-consultant

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello, I'm Tom Bailey, and in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Bethan Vincent. Who's a business to business marketing consultant with over 10 years experience in technology and the digital sectors. So, Bethan, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's epiosde.

Bethan Vincent: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

Tom Bailey: I really appreciate you been here and just out of interest to the listeners, whereabouts are you in the world?

Bethan Vincent: So, I'm based just outside of beautiful historic York, up north.

Tom Bailey: Beautiful. Love it. Thank you so much. And I just want to share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, Bethan was formally a senior manager in the cloud computing industry and is also the founder of several startups. She's built her career sitting at the intersection between marketing product and develop. The title for today's episode is How To Build Your Brand Through Speaking and Bethane will show us how to do that in just seven minutes. I know no pressure. So, question number one today is who are your ideal client?

Bethan Vincent: So, I primarily work with LG companies who have a B2B product. I'm really where the public speaking fits in is that, you know, building kind of personal  brand voting thought leadership is such an important part of connecting with customers, even in the boring B2B space, where it's seen as very kind of salesy and very abstract. So, it's really about kind of helping people develop a personality, develop a personality and a face of the brand as well, and get in front of their ideal audience on a human life.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, of course. So, with technology and digital sectors, being a lot of engineers, developers, it, people, do you find this a typical challenge that they come across when it comes to speaking?

Bethan Vincent: Yeah, definitely. I think it's, there's this perception of, oh, we're introverts. We can't possibly go and speak to people. And why are they going to be interested in anything we say? So, it's about kind of almost relaying that back to them. And you're the most knowledgeable people you pull in this business. Often you do have something really important to say. Translating off a very technical concepts into, I guess, stuff, normal people or non-technical people will understand.

Tom Bailey: Great. And like you said, they know the subject really well. And I always say that confidence comes from competence. So, as long as they know what they're talking about, you know, it's a great opportunity for them to get in and do that. So, if they're not speaking, what impact does that typically have on either them or their business?

Bethan Vincent: I think it, especially at kind of the senior CTO level, you know, they're, they're the leaders, they're the technical leaders of the company and they can kind of demonstrate a lot of technical competence by sharing that knowledge more widely in the market with other developers with other engineers. So, there's a bit of a trust-building exercise, but it also say for more junior employees going and doing public speaking, getting your ideas out of conferences is a great way of building up your resume and showing potential employers. I contribute to my industry outside of just doing this work. It does make you stand apart. I think, especially when people are looking at CVs and they're like, huh, that person has spoken at that conference. Very good.

Tom Bailey: I completely agree. And if anyone's listening to this, that thinks they want to start speaking, what's the one piece of advice you'd give.

Bethan Vincent: Ooh, that's a really good question. I think start small as a good piece of advice. I started out personally going to kind of user groups and very small meetups, and that just helped me kind of build a little bit of confidence before I got to the bigger stages. So, I've spoken in front of 1500 people in the Barbican Centre Mainstage couldn't have done that had I not built up to it gradually. So don't maybe jump in. Depend, just try and get a little bit of it, especially even if it's just within your company, organizing a mini conference to, you know, internally to have a go at speaking up.

Tom Bailey: Great advice. And it's just like learning to ride a bike or learning to swim. You know, you don't want to dive in the deep end first. Yeah, definitely. Okay. And so, what is one valuable resource that you might be able to share with people to help them get started?

Bethan Vincent: So, there's a really good website platform that's been set up by Ali Gardner who is a really good public speaker, could be the keynote. And it's a lot of, it's free, a lot of really good resources on the kind of bare bones basics of how to structure a presentation, you know, how to deliver an opening buy-in and an introduction. So that, that's a really great thing to go and look at and it's free, which is amazing. Fantastic.

Tom Bailey: I'll drop that into the show notes. People can click on that. And what about yourself? How can people find you online?

Bethan Vincent: So I am on Twitter, Instagram, get hub. If you want to look at some really bad code and also bethvincent.com is my website. I do share bits about kind of some of my experiences, public speaking, more on the kind of developer specific stuff. So, if that's, you might be a good place to check.

Tom Bailey: Great. Thank you so much. I'll drop both of those links into the show notes. Then if you can click on those and get started. So, quick question about you before we move on to the final question, and that is, what would you say is one of your greatest either mistakes or failures and what did you learn from it?

Bethan Vincent: So I, when I did do my really big talk at the Barbican Centre that I didn't, I've never spoken to as many people before and I froze. And literally, you can see in a part of the video that someone shoves me on stage. And I think what I would have done in retrospect is gone and got a bit familiar with my surroundings, because that was part of like the, oh my God. Like, what if I don't know where the stairs are? What if I trip up? So, if you're doing any, any level of public speaking, go to the venue, kind of check out if you walk the route up the stage, just so you don't have that body freeze and look a little bit silly. Like I did

Tom Bailey: Wow, the big lesson that you've learned yourself and great advice to follow up as well. And the last question from me today is what is the one question that I should have asked you today that will also give some great value to our audience?

Bethan Vincent: Again, a really good question. And that would be probably from a marketing perspective, how to structure my talk in a good way. And I, yeah, I always advise people have a very clear takeaway. You want people to take away from the talk, ideally, something you can sum up in one line. So, if nothing else, they have learned X and I generally use a three-part structure. So, I'll have three points of one to get across. I'll kind of go through those and then have a conclusion of recap things. And just giving a little bit of structure stops. You we've all seen those talks that have kind of meandered a little bit, shall we say? So, it just helps the audience understand what they're getting. You can understand what you're doing through the talk.

Tom Bailey: Perfect Bethan. Thank you so much again for your time today and sharing your expertise with us.

Bethan Vincent: My pleasure. Thanks so much.