Today’s show guest is Leonard Kim, a personal branding strategist. Leonard’s company, Influence Tree, is what’s known as a personal branding accelerator. So, if you want to build a personal brand, increase your social media following, grow your audience, or become an influencer, his company will help you get there.

Leonard has a pretty intriguing personal story, he’s very open to sharing his biggest failures, which lead him up to a point where he broke his ankle and was stuck on the couch for 3 months with nothing left to do but write on his laptop. It was only then that he discovered many of the strategies and tactics of how to build a personal brand. I was particularly interested in having this conversation with Leonard, because I’m at a point where I just launched my podcast, and I want to grow my audience. So, I was very interested in what he had to say, what tactics he had to share with me.

I think you guys are going to get a lot out of this episode. So, let’s jump right in to the show.

Jay: Leonard, thanks so much for coming on the Jay Kim Show, we’re very happy to have you here. For our audience who hasn’t heard of you, please give us a little bit of an intro. Who are you? Who’s Leonard Kim, and what do you do for a living?

Leonard: Sure, thank you so much for having me, Jay. I do appreciate being here. My name is Leonard Kim, and over the last 3.5 years I’ve built a pretty successful personal brand. Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, and Forums all named me a top digital marketer. I run a company called InfluenceTree. And what InfluenceTree does, is it teaches people how to position their brand, get featured into publications, and grow their social media following.

Jay: Okay, so you said 3.5 years. That is not a long period of time for you to …

Leonard: It’s not?

Jay: Well, I guess it’s relative. The funny thing is, when you talk about personal branding, you hear both sides of the story, right? You hear people that are overnight successes, quote-unquote, and one-hit wonders. Or maybe they do something that goes viral. And that seems to be the way most people try to build their brand, because they don’t want to put in work. Right? It’s a lot easier if you can do just one funny YouTube clip and all of the sudden become viral and get a bunch of Twitter followers and that’s the easy way out.

Now, on the other side of the story, is when you hear about people that really do put in a lot work, it’s very intentional, it takes years, and sometimes much longer than 3.5 years. So, in my mind 3.5 years is not a long amount of time, a huge amount of time, but it’s also night an overnight type success. So, how did you pull this off?

Leonard: Well, I like you bringing up this point about the overnight successes. Like, for example, if you remember Skee-lo song, I Was a Baller, I Wish I Was a Little Bit Taller. I met Skee-lo a few years ago, and guess what he was doing? He was selling car insurance.

Jay: No way. That’s a good story, actually.

Leonard: Yeah, so you can be an overnight success but that doesn’t always mean that it leads to longterm success. People think that Michelle Phan was a one time, one hit wonder, who became a huge success and it just changed everything for her. But, when someone discovered her video, what they saw is she had this whole collection of videos that were around the same quality, the same message, the same everything as the one that blew up. And that’s what made her successful for the long term. Some people out there, they do have that chance to become a one hit wonder, but that one piece of content sticks out. And, when you look at the rest of the content, it doesn’t have that same quality, that same umph, that same connection, or anything else. Those are the ones that fizzle out and don’t make anything happen.

Jay: So, basically what you’re saying is, the ones that have consistently put out, let’s say it’s content and that’s their form of communication, they’ve consistently put out content. The one piece that does go viral is not necessarily any better than the quality of the pieces they’ve been putting out consistently. It’s just that one, somehow, hit a nerve with the audience. Right?

Leonard: Correct, and what happens when something goes viral is people look at that one piece, and they want to go learn more about someone. So they read through the other content. They look at the bio. They go through everything else. And that’s how you create a fan base. So, there’s a little bit of luck in there. But, what I did to build up my personal brand is, at the time, when I was starting everything out, I really didn’t have any successes I could lean upon. I wasn’t able to say, “Oh, Entrepreneur made me this.” I wasn’t able to say, “Inc made me this.” All I could say is, I kind of failed at next to everything I did at life.

From 2006 to 2012, I just worked in a few different businesses, they all went under, there was that real estate market crash, I was expecting to make $50,000 a month, but that all vanished, because everything just went down in the fire sale. And I tried working at an investment fund, that didn’t work out. I tried doing marketing for a few startups. But, you know, when you’re working at a startup, there’s a 95% chance that the business is going to fail within the first 5 years. But, there was a 95% chance that I’d still be alive after those first 5 years, which I am still alive.

Jay: Thank god, yes.

Leonard: I had that realization that if I keep investing into building the brands, companies, marketing companies and doing things like that, chances are they would fail. And I would have to start over, and over, and over again. Which is kind of what I had to do throughout my life. I just got sick and tired of starting over, and I had this itching urge to just market myself. I didn’t really have anything to market, because there was nothing great going on in my life. So, I just talked about all the bad things that happened. Someone once told me, “Leonard, no one is absolutely useless. You can always serve as a bad example.”

Jay: Right.

Leonard: I thought about it for a moment, and I’m like, “Wait, I’m that bad example.”

Jay: That’s actually genius in the fact that people resonate with others that they can relate to in bad experiences with. Right? The person that comes to mind is James Altucher, who’s very honest and open about a lot of his failures. James, you know as well as I do, he has a certain skill in story telling, where, when you listen to him tell a story, there’s so many times where you’re like, “Oh, I know exactly what that feels like, because that’s me.” Right? And because of that, I think his following is massive, because people just connect with him that way. So, I think it’s brilliant, Leonard, what you did. So, this is actually very interesting, because, why don’t you tell us a little bit about before you started building your personal brand? Was there a turning point? You just mentioned that there were several stumbles along the way. Was there one point in your life where you were like, “Okay, I need to literally just do something with my life and start branding myself?”

Leonard: Well, I mean, like I talked about those failures and everything, things just got worse before they got better. I got evicted from my place. Before I was evicted I had to shower in the dark, because I hadn’t paid my electricity bill for like 6 months. I had to walk over to the hallway, plug my phone in there, sit Indian style for about 2-3 hours waiting for it to charge. I mean, things were just pretty bad. Then, after I was living at my grandma’s place, you have aging grandparents right? When they yell, can you tell me something that’s scarier when they yell at you?

Jay: No no, that’s pretty much the worst nightmare in the world, absolutely.

Leonard: So, what my grandma did when I was living with her, is she yelled at me, “Leonard, go find a job!” I was like, “I want to play video games all day.”

Jay: Yeah.

Leonard: But then I really couldn’t do that anymore because she yelled at me. And I knew that if I didn’t find a job, she would keep yelling at me. So, I went on Craigslist, I found the first place that would interview me, and I took the job. They paid me $2,300 in 9 months.

Jay: Wow.

Leonard: I’m pretty sure that’s a lot less than minimum wage.

Jay: Yeah, wow. Okay.

Leonard: I guess the turning point was, after that, I decided I can’t live with my grandma anymore. I moved back to LA, lived on the sofa for a while. And, I was working at this entry level position at American Honda earning like $16.24/hour. And I had this realization that, if I didn’t do something, I was going to live this way forever. I kind of got sick and tired of being sick and tired. And, I realized that I wasn’t getting promoted at my job.

Jay: Right.

Leonard: And all the ventures I’d worked on failed. I had this huge track record of failures. I never really had any friends. My ex, I tried re-consoling with her, and she was like, “F you!” And she just went away. Everything was just bad, and I’m just sitting there going, “How long do I want to keep living this way?”

Jay: So, you hit a low point in your life, and what action step did you do when you realized something’s got to change, I got to turn my life around? What was the first step that you did that you saw was pivotal in turning the momentum around, shifting the pendulum if you will, to your favor?

Leonard: As ironic as it sounds, what really changed the game and flipped everything around, was actually me breaking my ankle.

Jay: Yet another personal failure, if you will.

Leonard: Yeah, I broke my ankle because I went out with my ex, we got in an argument, she started pushing me away. So, I just walked home, and I was drunk like no tomorrow. And I forgot I didn’t have my house keys on me, so I tried hopping the fence.

Jay: Oh boy.

Leonard: And I landed on the wrong side at first, so I had to go back and hop it again. Then I landed wrong, and broke my ankle, and had to crawl my way up to the sofa I was living on to fall asleep. But, the interesting thing is, when you break an ankle, you’re kind of forced to be at home. And, you have a lot of time. You can’t really go to work, you can’t really go out with your friends, you can’t really go do anything. So, since I had 3 months, I used that time to reflect, because I’m a firm believer that where you are today is exactly where you’re supposed to be. Right?

Jay: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Leonard: And that’s based off all the decisions, all the actions, everything that you’ve done in your life. And where I was, I wasn’t happy with it. I realized that there had to be a reason for that. So, I went through this stage of reflection. I reflected back on my entire life, and I was like, “What’s causing me to do this? Oh, my ex said that she always said that she wouldn’t want to be back with me unless I made 6 figures. Maybe I was taking some shortcuts trying to make money faster just so I could appease her. And maybe that was like what was causing all these failures. Oh, there was this, there was that, there was this other thing. Oh, I’m starting to learn about why I’m such a loser.”

And as time went by, I got further and further back, then I started to remember about how my grandfather raised me. And he did the exact opposite of what I was doing. Whenever someone needed help with something, he’d be there. Everyone would look at him with a twinkle in their eye, because he was like their hero. He volunteered at the school cafeteria. He did this, he did that. And I’m sitting here, going, “I do none of these things.”

Jay: Right, right.

Leonard: So I had that realization that the only way for me to really move ahead would be to live in his footsteps. Like, go out there and do what he raised me to do.

Jay: Got it. Okay.

Leonard: Yeah.

Jay: So, you had a moment of reflection, you’re sitting on your couch, broken ankle. From there, a year or 2 later, you’re, I mean, you can’t Google Leonard Kim now without seeing, probably, a dozen of the top business magazines, publications, featuring your name. You have a ridiculous amount of social media followers. And, you have your own company that does personal branding. So, how did you do it? How did you do it? What’s the short story? Give us some tips.

Leonard: So, kind of like what you said about James Altucher, writing things that connect with people by talking about your hardships and your failures, I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back on it, in hindsight, I had a realization. The first time I clicked that publish button to put out my first article, I sat there for about 30 minutes trembling, “Should I publish this? Everyone’s going to think I’m a loser. They’re going to think this, they’re going to think that.” You probably had the same thoughts when you were putting out your podcast. Right?

Jay: Absolutely, 100%. I still do, I still do. Every single episode, when I relisten to it, I think, “Someone’s going to think I’m an idiot.”

Leonard: Yeah.

Jay: It’s a fear that doesn’t go away. It’s just part of being creative, right?

Leonard: Yeah, and I thought that, too. I’m like, “People are going to think I’m a failure, they’re going to call me a loser. They’re going to call me this and that. They’re going to say, ‘Oh, Leonard, you never amounted to anything.'” And I felt like I was never going to amount to anything. But then, for some reason, that fear, what I realized, is if you fear something, you have to kind of identify what it is, look at it in the eyes. You have to buy in to that fear. And that doesn’t mean get scared, obsess over what’s going on, or anything like that. But, buy into it as an indicator, as an indicator that you’re on to something great.

Jay: Hmm, yeah. I’ve heard that before, actually. Fear being the lead indicator of what you actually should do. So, this is good, because Leonard, I could use some of your help right now, actually.

Leonard: Sure.

Jay: I just launched my podcast. Let’s go practical now. Let’s give our audience a little bit of practical tips. So, let’s take me for example. I just launched my podcast, I’m nobody. Right? For all intents and purposes, I don’t have any sort of public profile, I have like 1,000 twitter followers, virtually no one knows who I am. Right? I’ve written a couple articles here and there, but that’s it. So, what’s the best place for someone to start? Let’s say I hop over to InfluenceTree, and I see you and your partner, you guys are doing some good work, and I’m interested, and I’m like, “Okay guys, help me out.” What would be the first steps that you would take?

Leonard: Well, one of the first things you need to do is figure out what your strengths are, and what you actually incorporate into your personal brand. And all of this really gets incorporated into your bios and everything. We all have a general idea of how the world perceives us. And we all have a general idea of how we perceive ourselves. But, how accurate is it? The way to get the most accurate picture, is 1: to get 2 sets of posted notes. On the first set of posted notes, let’s call these the green ones. On the green ones you write down one word that describes you, on as many as you can.

Jay: Okay.

Leonard: And, you have to keep doing this until you can’t think anymore. Then on the second set of posted notes, let’s say they’re the yellow ones, what you do is you pass them out to friends, colleagues, relatives, whoever it is that you know who’s going to be completely honest with you, and have them write one word that describes you. Let them know it’s going to be completely anonymous. Pick them up in a bag, or just dump them into somewhere, so that they know it’s anonymous, and you’re not judging who says what.

Jay: Right.

Leonard: And get all those back. Now what you have is 2 sets of posted notes: How you see yourself, and how the world sees you. So, what you can do is, you can find a whiteboard, and you can take set A, and start sticking them up onto the wall. Now, you get set B, and let’s say that you said that you thought you were a great speaker. Right? And let’s say 5 other people said, “Oh, you’re a great speaker, too.” What you would do is you would cluster those together, so you could highlight your traits. Those are your strongest personality traits that are the forefront of your personal bio.

Jay: Okay.

Leonard: Now, some people out there, like when I did this exercise, a lot of people said, “Great laugh.” For me, I never knew I had a great laugh, I thought my laugh was kind of like stupid and dorky. But since they said, “Oh, Leonard, you have such a great laugh.” I’m like, “Oh, this is a great indicator that I have something else that’s great that I can incorporate into who I am.” So, sometimes you’ll see things like that.

Jay: Interesting.

Leonard: And, some people who are jerks, who are much needed jerks in life, will tell you about your flaws.

Jay: Yes.

Leonard: And those are the things you need to work on and eliminate.

Jay: Yes.

Leonard: And, after you have all this done, actually you get to see where you are. Then, the next step is to see where you want to be. So, you take 3 people you admire. Let’s say it’s James Altucher, Richard Branson, Tony Robins, and you look at their characteristic traits. And you take and piece what you like out of theirs. So, now you have where you are, and where you want to be. And you kind of are able to create a roadmap in between.

Jay: Got you. Okay, that’s quite interesting. And then?

Leonard: The next step, is, when I used to do sales, there was a 10 step process. Step 1 was meet and greet, step 2 was sell yourself, step 3 was sell your company, step 4 was qualify, and so forth. Right?

Jay: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Leonard: When you’re in person, it’s so easy to be like, “Hi, my name is Jay Kim, and you are?” And you can go, “Oh, do you like going to the beach? What are your hobbies? What do you like feeling?” And you can ask questions. And you can start discovering what other people like.

Jay: Right.

Leonard: So you can be like, “Oh, me too! I like that, too. I did this.” And that’s how you sell yourself. You build that connection, right? Online, it’s a little harder, because you can’t ask questions. I mean, you can, but no one’s going to answer them.

Jay: That’s right.

Leonard: So, what you have to do is you have to talk about the things that you like. So, if you like boat riding, if you like going to the horse races, if you like petting horses, eating ice cream, whatever it may be, you have to incorporate all those things into your bio. So you’re able to humanize yourself and people are able to buy into you.

Jay: That’s quite interesting, yeah.

Leonard: Now, how I would start a bio, is I would start with your accolades. But, if you don’t have accolades, it’s okay. You can start with what you want to aspire to do. Then, afterwards, you put in your personal story. Then you end up with what’s kind of where you are right now.

Jay: That’s quite interesting, because you’re absolutely right. The web, it’s like a 1 way conversation, for the most part. It’s people coming to your page, and reading about you. Right?

Leonard: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jay: And, I think the flaw, again, going back to what we talked about earlier, the flaw of a lot of people, and I’m guilty of this too, is you want to come across as perfect. But, you always want to reflect yourself in the best light. It’s like every single Facebook photo is perfectly shot, and you don’t see the 1,000 behind that were deleted and edited and what not. So, it’s interesting, that when you recommend to mix in, maybe not flaws, but some of the more personal highlights of yourself to give it a more real feel. Right? Like a landing page or a personal website. So, once someone has done that, they’ve set up their landing page, or homepage, and they have their bio. They know what they aspire, who they want to become like. And they’ve done this exercise with the posted notes. Now how do you start building a social media following, a profile, building influence? What are the next steps after that?

Leonard: So, you have your foundation set. Once you start going out there and building with every type of content, getting views, getting people to see it, they’re all going to bounce back to that. And that’s how they know if they’re going to buy into you, and stick with you or not. So that’s why you need that bio. That’s your foundation. That’s your rock. That’s everything that you stand on.

Jay: Right.

Leonard: Now, the next phase after that is basically content creation. And I like what you said about, “Oh, you have to go take the perfect picture. You have to go out and do everything that’s perfect. Right?” When you look at Instagram, with every social media page, it is all these people are going out there presenting their perfect selves.

Jay: Yeah, right.

Leonard: Now, me, I’m not perfect. Jay, you’re not perfect. Are you?

Jay: I’m definitely not perfect.

Leonard: And here’s the problem. We’re imperfect people, but all we see online is perfect content. People going on vacations, people being happy out with their friends, doing things that they love. And me, not being perfect, when I see these types of things, I kind of feel a little empty, and a little jealous inside. What I’m trying to do, is I’m thriving for connection. I’m thriving to connect with others. But I just see everyone living this perfect life. So, who am I able to connect with? No one, really. And it’s really hard, because it’s the same thing when you think back on, like, grade school. When you read about maybe George Washington, or some other person in your history books, you’re like, “Oh, this guy’s like perfect! I can never be a president, because he’s nothing like me. The only thing he ever did wrong was cut down the tree.”

Jay: Right.

Leonard: So, then, like, school’s a perfect indicator of this. Because the history books, they showcase people as perfect pictures. But, you’re not able to connect or relate. Like Helen Keller, she went off and made this socialist movement, and did all these big things with her life, but they only talk about her being blind and deaf. And guess what? In school, she gets made fun of. So, when you only take a portion of your story, that’s kind of what happens. You either get made fun of, or you’re unrelatable, so people don’t buy into you.

Jay: Right. Okay, so back to the homepage, and what not. So, I built my homepage, I’m ready to go, I have my story, and I’m putting out content. I’m putting out my blog posts, my podcast episodes, I have all my social media channels set up. Which, also, another question for you, in the flood of different mediums, where are the best places to be involved in? You know, I think, when you first get involved in this game, it’s very overwhelming, because there’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, personal blog, blah blah blah, medium, Linkedin, all these different things. You kind of feel overwhelmed. Do you have to be involved in every single one of these social media channels?

Leonard: You don’t have to be involved in every single one. The best recommendation is, if you want to monetize your brand, you have to be good at 2. Now, when you’re creating content back to the thing where we talked about people wanting to go out there and connect, what you have to do is you have to not make it so perfect. You have to put in your flaws, and do what scares you. If it scares you, you’re on to creating good content.

Now, where do you place that content? When you’re on Facebook, the only people that can see it are the people you’re connected with. When you’re on Twitter, the only people that can see it are the people that you’re connected with. All these are kind of like closed networks, where you have doors where you can slowly open them up. But, where could you go, let’s say you have like 20 social media followers, where could you go with 20 social media followers and actually get your content read, seen, heard, or visualized? There’s not that many places, right?

Jay: Right.

Leonard: And this is where most people start out. So, what you need, at that time, is you need a platform that will boost your posts into feeds of people who don’t follow you, so they can discover what you have written, what you wrote, your audio, and things like that. If you’re taking the writing route, the 2 best platforms for that are Quora and Medium.

Jay: Right.

Leonard: With Quora, they have millions and millions of users, so you can just write something on Quora. Like, my first post on Quora, I had like 3 followers on the platform, I had 102 views on it. That’s what, 30-40 times more than what my follower count was?

Jay: Yeah. That’s right.

Leonard: And, when you post something on Facebook, if you have 200 followers, 20 people see it. So, you have to kind of like optimize your content into platforms with pre-existing audiences so you can take advantage of more eyeballs seeing your content. With Medium, there’s a lot of sub-publications out there like the Mission, Be Yourself, all these other ones. And you can submit your content to those, and some of those platforms have over 100,000 followers. So, if they accept what you have written, then you get a bigger audience seeing your content, as well.

Jay: So that goes along the … It’s kind of like guest posting. It’s the same sort of thing. You have to put your content somewhere that has a bigger reach, right?

Leonard: Exactly, because, who’s going to go to your website?

Jay: No one.

Leonard: Exactly.

Jay: No one knows who you are.

Leonard: Exactly, and until people discover who you are, that’s when they start going to your website. So, that’s why you need to take advantage of all the content publication networks that you possibly can, while putting your content onto your own website. Some people go, “Oh what about SEO? Aren’t you hurting yourself by not having your same content in the same place?” It’s like, “Who cares? You’re getting more views. And no one’s going to Google what you have written, anyway.”

Jay: That’s right, yeah, exactly. Okay, cool. So Quora and Medium are 2 good places to get started. And, how long do you have to, I mean, so, when you’re a content creator, the one thing is you basically have to be consistent. Right? And so, let’s say you started today, how long do you think it would take for someone? If they were writing consistently, maybe not every not day, but say once or twice a week type of content, blog posting, maybe answering some questions on Quora, doing a little adhoc stuff here or there. But, if they were doing things right, how long would it take before they could see a substantial shift in momentum?

Leonard: Well, for me, that’s probably the best example, because I came out the gate with like no content, no background, no credibility, or anything like that. In month 1, I had 102 views. In month 2, I had maybe 3,000 views. By month 3, I think it went up to like 27 or 50,000. Something like a dramatic increase in the viewership. Then it went up to like 300 to 500,000. And by the end of the year, or within the first 6 months, I had 2,000,000 reads on my content.

Jay: Wow. And this is how often? What was your cadence of publishing content? Was it kind of like, every day?

Leonard: At that time, it was every day, just because I had nothing better to do. I was working at a job I hated. I wasn’t happy, and things like that. But, I’ve had other people, like there’s this guy, Daniel, we chatted a little bit online, and he started using Quora. He got like a million views in like, 2 months, 3 months.

Jay: Wow.

Leonard: And that was based off, maybe 30 pieces of content. I’ve helped Michael Simmons go out there. We worked with like 4 pieces of content. 4 pieces and got 100,000 views off 4 pieces of content. Then Brian Scudamore, we did 2 pieces of content and that hit like 500,000 views.

Jay: This is on Quora?

Leonard: Yeah, on Quora.

Jay: Wow, okay. Yeah, okay, so that’s pretty cool. So this is a nice little side-hussle-hack for listeners. If you’re working at a day job that you maybe aren’t allowed to log into Facebook, but you can log into Quora, you can go and start putting out content there and getting your side-hussle on. Right? Okay, good tip, Leonard.

Okay, cool, and then this just will help, obviously, the more views, the more traffic, it’s kind of like one of those organic machines that just has to grow. So, now, fast forward several years. Your following is pretty big, this has obviously led you to be able to guest post, I guess, at different big publications. How does one go about guest posting? Let’s say they’ve written a lot on Medium, and answer a lot on Quora, and they’re just dying to get into HuffingtonPost, or one of these big publications. What’s the best way to do that?

Leonard: You know what’s the great thing about Medium and Quora and those types of networks? They have media content syndication teams who pick content up from these sites and put it onto those other sites if they match the beat, the tone, the word count, and things like that. So, if you actually want to be in like, the HuffingtonPost, as an author, what you can do is read their articles, mimic the style, mimic the voice, and make your content just like that. And put it on Quora, and if it matches, chances are the HuffingtonPost is going to pick up your article.

Jay: That’s a great tip, too. I mean, that’s like reverse engineering.

Leonard: So, you’re doing nothing.

Jay: That’s exactly how you’re supposed to. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s exactly how you’re supposed to do it, actually. When you read about how to guest contribute, it’s literally, “Mimic exactly how to do it. Link up to that publication’s in your article.” Blah, blah, blah, and then you’ll get noticed. So, awesome.

Okay, cool, so we have to look to wrap up. I just have a couple more questions for you. So, what sort of projects are you working on personally? I know you mentioned before we had the call, that you had a TED Talk coming up. What else are you working on at this point?

Leonard: Working on finishing up a book proposal to get it submitted out to the big publishers.

Jay: Nice, and that’s going to be on personal branding?

Leonard: Yeah, personal branding.

Jay: Excellent.

Leonard: What else am I working on? A few speaking things, here and there, that TED Talk.

Jay: But the main thing that you do is that you work at InfluenceTree?

Leonard: That’s my main focus. We have both the course and we do agency work. So, let’s say you have not a lot of money, but a lot of time, and you want to go out there and learn. We have the whole course set that teaches you everything you need to know.

Jay: Right.

Leonard: With some of the lessons that we shared here. Now we have the agency model where it’s like, “Oh, I have this big company, or I have X amount for my budget, I really want to go out there and build my personal brand, because I realize how important it is.” We go out there and we do it all for you.

Jay: Oh, okay.

Leonard: Yeah.

Jay: Cool. That’s interesting to know, as well, because there’s obviously a demand for it, because I think the trend now, is the more and more people are catching onto this trend of building your personal brand, and after 2008, the financial crisis, we’ve all experienced it, a lot of people, a lot of companies went bankrupt, a lot of people ended up jobless, and people’s confidence in the economy is just not there anymore. And, it doesn’t matter how big, or old, of an institution you work for, you never know. You never know, one day it might go under. Right?

Leonard: Exactly.

Jay: And so, the best hedge is to start building your personal brand. And start making a name for yourself, for the times when you do … when you are at a job where your grandma kicks you out of your house or you break your ankle.

Leonard: Exactly.

Jay: All right, well great. Thanks, Leonard, so the best place for people to find you, follow you, like I said, if you Google search Leonard Kim you’ll find everything. But, is there anywhere else that you want us to direct the audience’s attention to?

Leonard: Well, there’s my website, leonardkim.com, if you want to learn more about me. Then there’s my business, InfluenceTree.com, if you want to learn more about what I do.

Jay: Excellent, fantastic. Thanks again for your time. We really appreciate it, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Leonard: Anytime. Thank you so much for having me, Jay. Appreciate it.