Top Expert Brand Accelerator

19/12/2021

It's the end of the year, and many professionals and entrepreneurs review what's been done, share their achievements and go straight to planning the next year. Skipping one very important step - creating a vision.

Vision gives you clarity - who you want to become as a professional, what your impact will be. It also helps you to focus on the specific objective that will help you to move towards your vision and to grow your and visibility.

With Elena Marie Ivanushkina we decided to help you in that by sharing videos from one of our programs, giving you ideas, tools and techniques on how to create your professional and business vision and take the most out of it.

Do you craft and review your professional vision on a regular basis?

Marina Vishnyakova
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

02/12/2021

Did you know that Richard Brandon published his new autobiography ”Finding My Virginity“ - 20 years after his famous "Loosing My Virginity" autobiography?

In the new book he analyses last 2 decades of his life, how he has been dealing with adversity without compromising his values and what he learned from that.

What can we can learn from Mr. Branson whose name is a reference in building a successful and powerful ? Here are my major takeaways:

☑️ Be resilient and keep going. As an entrepreneur, Richard Branson launched more businesses which failed, than those which are successful. And despite of the fact, he has never stopped and given up.

☑️ Adopt a habit to write notes every day. Mr. Branson is often asked where he finds time to write blog posts, columns and even books. He takes daily notes about ideas, reminders, requests. It’s a great way to reflect, memorise and learn from what happened. It’s a great source to create the content later for the blog, posts, and even books.

☑️ Be actively present on social media. Mr. Branson insists that every leader should be on social media: to represent the business, to invite clients, customers and employees to his/her world, to analyse in real time the feedback - such a reaction can become a pivot point in the company’s success. The manager, who is active online, learns in real time what customers and employees think and can reply, thank and empathise.

Despite of many changes and technology development, Richard Branson says: “The key entrepreneur skills I used when I first started out are the very sameness I use today: the art of delegation, risk-taking, surrounding yourself with a great team and working on projects you really believe in “.

Growing you Brand takes time and effort, be sure you are passionate about what you do to be successful and happy in your journey.

Elena Marie Ivanushkina
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

28/11/2021

How to communicate your Personal Brand with power:

One of the important ingredients of the Personal Brand formula - is the list of FACTS about you as Person-Brand and about your area of expertise.

📍Using facts in your elevator pitch, social media accounts, bio is the way to stand out and differentiate yourself. Facts validate your professionalism and create trust.

How many people would pay attention to communication like - "I'm a recognized expert in strategic procurement"

vs

"I've published 5 articles on the topic of procurement strategy in Top Industry magazine"

I see that people often mix facts and assumptions when it comes to self-presentation.

✅ Facts have power - they are not debatable. It can be checked or proved.
✅It can be quantitative - numbers, dates in a timeline, or specific names, like educational institutions. It can be qualitative - such as specific results of your work, your achievements, awards, results of your work.

For example,
❌ "I'm an experienced coach", is an assumption.
✅ "I'm ICF certified coach since 2014 and I have over 1500 coaching hours" -it's a fact.

What facts can you share about yourself as a professional, which are unique and make you stand out?

Elena Marie Ivanushkina
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

25/11/2021

Career strategy advice: why leaders and experts in corporate need to focus on becoming visible in 2022:

I'm convinced that Professionals - Leaders and Experts with 10-15 years of experience should focus on building their .

📍The issue is that they already have a reputation for being high-level professionals inside their companies but they are not much known outside. Often in that career stage, they need to break the glass ceiling to attract new opportunities and get to the next level.

My advice is to focus on acquiring skills to become visible, including :

✅ Develop digital communication skills and articulate their expert or leader positioning.

The key here is being consistent to see the results over time.

However, there are several "speedboats" you can use to accelerate your visibility, showcase your leadership and establish yourself as Thought Leaders in the niche:

✅ Get speaking engagements
✅ Write a book
✅ Network for opportunities to build partnerships

Elena Marie Ivanushkina
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

21/11/2021

How do you monetise your expertise? Do you have multiple streams of income? Are you looking for new opportunities?

If you do not see your option in the poll, please share it in the comments.

When I lost my job, back then in 2015, it struck me that actually you can not have all the eggs in one basket. And I started to look for and try different options.

I currently count with 9 monetisation options, among them:
📍coaching and consulting
📍online programs that I market on my own
📍online courses on Udemy
📍delivering tailor-made workshops
📍advertising by leveraging my social media visibility in Spanish-speaking market (Instagram and Pinterest)
📍monetised YouTube channel
📍monetisation of my blog content
📍affiliate marketing
📍speaking

Marina Vishnyakova
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

17/11/2021

At some point of my professional life, to be exact after 2015, I totally changed my professional direction. After almost 20 years in banking and finance, I had a huge professional downshifting (as I thought in those times), that resulted in my enormous personal and professional transformation.

Many lessons were learned.

More in my article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-all-make-choices-lessons-i-learned-from-my-marina-vishnyakova/

Marina Vishnyakova
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

There was one question for a pretty long period of time that I was not comfortable to answer: What do you do? If you would ask me that in the end of 2016, you would hear a long monologue about how I had worked successfully for almost 20 year in banking and finance. With not so many details about wha

13/11/2021

The most popular definition of the personal brand is the one of Jeff Bezos, where he says that "your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room".

📍 We challenge this definition with Marina Vishnyakova, as we think what Mr. Bezos says is more about reputation

✅ It's not al all about cheesy PR strategy, it's about your professional and personal authenticity. About what do you care and committed to.

What do you think a personal brand is? When can you say that a person has a strong ?

Elena Marie Ivanushkina
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

10/11/2021

Great article from HBR explaning how to destingish when praise and not blame for a failure

When I worki with clients - corporate leaders, we often discuss how to change the way they look at failure and give feedback to the team members to reinforce learning culture and here is a great tool:

Failures fall into three categories: preventable ones in predictable operations, which usually involve deviations from spec; unavoidable ones in complex systems, which may arise from unique combinations of needs, people, and problems; and intelligent ones at the frontier, where “good” failures occur quickly and on a small scale, providing the most valuable information.

Strong leadership can build a learning culture—one in which failures large and small are consistently reported and deeply analyzed, and opportunities to experiment are proactively sought.

Elena Marie Ivanushkina
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

05/11/2021

Leadership behaviors to transform Organizational Culture

Self-awareness of the Leaders about their behaviors is a great starting point to transform organizational culture.

📍When I work with Leaders to define their leadership principles, as an example, I use this Table* of Eroding, Enduring and Emerging behaviors from MIT research.

Typically, we answer the following question: what behaviors are critical to adopt in order to achieve company vision? How Leaders articulate their Brand to set up the tone for organizational culture? How Leaders can become more authentic, purpose-driven and more empathic?

📍While company goals answering "WHAT" question, behaviors answering "HOW":

How, as an organization, we'll achieve our vision, engage and empower employees and stay competitive.

I believe, that focusing on values and leadership principles is equally important as focusing on business strategy.

What are your Leadership behaviors to focus on in 2022?

*"The 2020 Future of Leadership Global Executive Study and Research Report", by MIT SMR

Elena Marie Ivanushkina
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

02/11/2021

Shortly after Warren Buffett met Bill Gates, Bill' s father asked each of them to write down on a piece of paper one word that would best describe what had helped them the most.

Both, without any collaboration at all, wrote the word "focus".

This weekend I was re-watching the HBO Documentary "Becoming Warren Buffet" from the point of view of analysing what stands behind such a powerful personal brand, what components of his personal and professional self allowed him to become a thought leader, "The Oracle of Omaha".

He always had clarity about the strong parts of his personality and has been leveraging them.

He was constantly working on expanding his knowledge, expertise, skills.

Did you know that in his office you will not see the degree he got from the University of Nebraska? And you will not see the Masters degree he got from Columbia University. But you will see the little award certificate that he got from the Dale Carnegie course on public speaking. He was not a born public speaker. But gaining that skill helped him a lot in life.

He was building his image, having some fun with that.

"What I saw first and foremost, day in and day out, was consistency," - one of his sons says.

Important components of his personal brand were his values.

He had clear positioning.

In 1986 everyone wanted to hear what Warren Buffett had to say.

He was not afraid of taking responsibility and work on the mistakes that others did. The example with Salomon Inc in 1991 totally demonstrated that and revealed the huge magnitude of his personality. He was saving 8000 people from losing their jobs.

I highly recommend you to watch this documentary, if you need insights and ideas to reflect on. Watch it from the angle of what you might take away from this documentary and from this person, that can help you in building a powerful brand and growing your thought leadership.

In the 4th cohort of the TopExpertBrand Mastermind Program we will be introducing complementary discussions and lessons on thought leaders who are the role models in their fields. We will be adding books, articles, documentaries, movies to provoke creative and analytical thinking and having more fun in the process.

Who are the role models for you? From whom you learn to become a greater person and professional? What traits of their personality impact you the most?

Marina Vishnyakova
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

28/10/2021

Where to find quality free pictures for our posts and articles?

There are 3 major reasons why professionals and entrepreneurs do not post regularly on social media and do not grow their visibility:⁣

1️⃣ They do not know what to write about
2️⃣ They struggle with an Impostor syndrome (what others will think, I have nothing interesting and useful to share, ...)
3️⃣ They say they do not have good pictures⁣
⁣
In this post I am giving you the solution for the third problem.
⁣
It's not necessary to always use your own pictures . Depending on your goals and message you can use quality free (and paid if you want) photos, videos and even graphic vector images to make your post and article look professional and attractive⁣
⁣
Here is a list of 25 free resources that I personally use
⁣
📍Canva.com
📍Rawpixel.com⁣
📍Pixabay.com⁣
📍Unsplash.com⁣
📍Pexels.com⁣
📍Kaboompics.com⁣
📍Gratisography.com⁣
📍Isorepublic.com⁣
📍Picography.co⁣
📍Reshot.com⁣
📍Burst.shopify.com⁣
📍Stocksnap.io⁣
📍Skitterphoto.com⁣
📍Picjumbo.com⁣
📍Freepik.es⁣
📍Vectorstock.com⁣
📍Stokpic.com⁣
📍Lifeofpix.com⁣
📍Focastock.com⁣
📍Magdeleine.co⁣
📍Cupcake.nilssonlee.se⁣
📍Jaymantri.com⁣
📍Stockvault.net⁣
📍Startupstockphotos.com⁣
📍Vecteezy.com⁣
⁣
Some photo banks have also Premium photos, but I usually always find what I need with their free pictures and graphics⁣
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If you find this information useful, don't hesitate to share this post with your colleagues and friends, so that more professionals can see it

Marina Vishnyakova
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator

26/10/2021

Top 10 job skills of tomorrow

❗️ 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025, as the adoption of technology increases, according to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report

Comparing the list of top soft skills of 2020 and 2025, People Management skill replaced by Leadership and Social Influence.

📍For me, it's a great sign. I'm working with People Managers to help them become Inspiring Leaders, which require a shift of mindset from command & control to support & empowerment

Other Highlights from the list:

📍Problem-solving type of skills are top the list employers require in the next five years. These have been consistent since the first report in 2016:

✅ Analytical thinking and innovation
✅ Complex Problem-solving
✅ Critical thinking and analysis
✅ Creativity, originality and Initiative
✅ Reasoning, problem-solving and Ideation

📍No surprise, newly emerging this year are skills in self-management, related to the pandemic, such as:
✅ Active learning
✅ Resilience
✅ Stress tolerance and
✅ Flexibility

From your perspective, what do you see most-in demand, given this double-disruption impacts of the pandemic & automation transforming jobs?

Elena Marie Ivanushkina
Co-founder of TopExpertBrand Accelerator