In our new book, The Visible Expert®, How to create industry stars, and why every professional services firm should care, we share exciting findings on the link between personal branding and professional success—for both you and your firm. We also profile real-life Visible Experts, offering personal branding examples from the worlds of law, finance, architecture, marketing, and more. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at a handful of Visible Experts from our series, looking at what they did to get to the top, and how they fit in with our study’s findings.

Personal Branding Examples: Staci Riordan and Andrew Sherman

If you’re looking for personal branding examples from the world of law, look no further than Staci Riordan and Andrew Sherman. At first glance, these two Visible Experts don’t have much in common beyond a law degree. Andrew Sherman is a partner at Jones Day, in Washington, D.C., specializing in mergers and acquisition. Based in California, Staci Riordan is a partner at Nixon Peabody, where she heads up the Fashion Law practice.

But appearances can be deceiving. Despite differences in age, gender, location, and practice areas, Andrew and Staci share many of the same traits, traits that helped them reach the top of their respective practice areas, where they continue to dominate the field. These shared traits are no coincidence. In the study that forms the foundation of our new book, we interviewed 130 Visible Experts and 1,028 buyers of their services—the results revealed that all Visible Experts share seven common components.

Visible Experts also tend to use similar tools and techniques to expand their visibility. What tools do they use? To figure that out, we started our study by considering a primary objective of every firm: attracting business. The figure below depicts the results: Visible Experts’ Top 10 Lead Sources (it’s important to note that most Visible Experts mentioned multiple lead sources). Next, we will examine just how Andrew Sherman and Staci Riordan employed these tools to become Visible Experts in their fields.

Top 10 Lead Sources Named by Visible Experts

Speaking Engagements

For anyone in the professional services industry, it should be no surprise that personal referrals and recommendations top the lead generator chart. After all, in the B2B world, reputation is everything. The importance of speaking engagements, in the number two spot, is much more surprising. Why do speaking events play such a big role? The answer lies in the potent combination of a targeted audience combined with sheer volume. Instead of educating a prospect one-on-one, speaking engagements allow Visible Experts to wow an entire room full of people—a focused audience that has invested time and money to learn about a certain subject.

 

Andrew Sherman and Staci Riordan know that public speaking is critical to expanding their visibility. Andrew’s personal branding strategy includes speaking at a targeted number of influential events each year. He consistently hosts executive roundtables, gives keynotes, and has been featured on top-name media shows, including NPR’s Talk of the Nation, CBS News Radio, the Associated Press’ Radio Network’s Business Minute, and the Taking Care of Business show on WMAL. His recent TED talk, Harvesting Intangible Assets, garnered almost 5,000 YouTube views in only two months.

Staci racks up plenty of frequent flier miles as she travels around the country, delivering keynotes or speeches for at least one industry event per month. “Public speaking helps me be perceived as an expert,” she says. “It builds credibility—for me and for my firm.” As opposed to many of her attorney peers, Staci makes a point of speaking and attending fashion events—not law events. She asks, “If you’re not meeting clients where they are, then how can they find you?”

Writing

Writing is also a critical tool for Visible Experts, as Andrew and Staci both know. In our study, books take third place on the list of Visible Experts’ Top 10 Lead Sources, with blogs, social media, and articles coming in at 5th, 6th, and 7th, respectively. Like speaking, writing simultaneously builds Visible Experts’ credibility as industry experts, while expanding their visibility to the many pairs of eyes reading their words.

Although writing plays a key role in the personal branding strategy of both Andrew and Staci, it takes a different form for each of them. Staci’s writing is comprised of both formal industry articles and more casual online writing. She blogs weekly on her personal website, StaciRiordan.com, and then spreads her articles through social media channels including LinkedIn and Twitter, where she has over 2,000 followers. She says, “People want to work with someone they like—someone who resonates with them. And because of blogging, social media, and public speaking, people feel like they know me although they’ve never met me.”

Andrew also writes articles and is active on social media (he has over 1,600 Twitter followers), but he focuses most of his writing efforts on books. To prove your credibility and expand your visibility, it’s hard to beat the power of a book, as Andrew is well aware. “If you’re on top, there’s no time to rest on your laurels because there’s someone else coming up from behind with an even bigger idea,” Andrew says. “So I needed to become a content machine. My goal is to produce a book a year. It also keeps me sharp and adds value to my clients.” Andrew has written 26 books, mostly focused around helping companies grow.

Teaching

It is not surprising that both Staci and Andrew are both professors at the university level. In fact, our study shows that being a teacher is one of the seven traits shared by all Visible Experts. Why? Teachers are motivators, excited about their industry niche, and they inspire the people around them. They are able to make complicated subjects understandable and reassure clients that their problems will be resolved. Above all, they engage and educate their audiences, imparting practical wisdom. In our study, both buyers and Visible Experts reported this skill as critical—and one of the major differences that sets Visible Experts apart from other professionals.

In 2013, Staci Riordan began teaching fashion law classes at her alma mater, the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles—a role that she quickly expanded. “I met the dean at dinner one night,” Staci says. “He said he wanted to offer a class on fashion law, and I said ‘I’d love to teach it!’ The classes were so popular that the university gave the topic its own academic sub-concentration, with Staci as Director. They also launched The Fashion Law Institute, a center for the study of law and fashion, with Staci as its Executive Director.

Andrew Sherman has been a professor for 26 years. He started as a visiting professor in the MBA program at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, where he is a multi-year recipient of the Krowe Excellence in Teaching Award. Five years ago, Andrew expanded his teaching, taking on an additional role as adjunct professor in the MBA program at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

Getting to the Top: Faster

We already know that Staci Riordan and Andrew Sherman share the seven traits that are common to all Visible Experts and use many of the tools listed in the Top 10 Lead Generator chart. But they each have a few extra traits that make them even more special, and those traits are responsible for helping them ascend even faster.

Ascent of Fast Tracker Visible Experts

1) Fast Trackers Focus on a Target Market

Fast Trackers are twice as likely as other Visible Experts to focus their expertise on a narrow target market, making it easier to stand out from the competition. Staci Riordan and Andrew Sherman both exemplify this trait, with Staci focusing on the narrow niche of Fashion Law, and Andrew focusing on business growth. Everything that they do—writing, speaking, and client facing—revolves around these narrow topics.

SEE ALSO: An Introduction to Fast Track Visible Experts℠

2) Fast Trackers Embrace Content Marketing

All Visible Experts use various forms of content to build their brands, but Fast Trackers employ a deliberate content marketing strategy. They produce more content, more frequently, and on more channels—and they start earlier in their careers. We’ve already seen how Staci Riordan and Andrew Sherman leverage a suite of content marketing activities—writing, speaking, blogging, and tweeting—to get their message to their audience. This spreads their message wider, faster.

3) Fast Trackers Write Books

Almost 85% of Fast Trackers have written a strategically relevant book, and Andrew Sherman is one of them. In fact, he has written 26 books, with an aggressive goal of producing a new book every year. Why do books work so well? It’s because they are visibility catalysts, conferring instant authority and opening doors to elite speaking engagements like TED talks and media interviews. Staci Riordan is among the 15% of Fast Trackers who have not written a book, but she makes up for this lack with her prolific use of other channels.

Conclusion

Career success like that of Andrew Sherman or Staci Riordan might feel unattainable. But it’s not. Although their accomplishments are great and should rightly be admired, Andrew and Staci are only two personal branding examples of many. With passion and commitment, it is possible to become a Visible Expert in your field. And we can show you how.

Download our free ebook below, The Visible Expert, and learn how to become a Visible Expert in your industry.

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