When Your Profile Picture Doesn’t Look Like The Real You! Imagine logging into a virtual meeting, excited to finally put a face to the name of a potential client you have been communicating with online. You're expecting to meet the professional from their profile picture, but instead, you're greeted by an unrecognizable person. That's a jarring experience, right? As the digital age rapidly evolves, the importance of maintaining an authentic and current online image cannot be overlooked. In this episode, I am joined by brand expert and CEO, Shelley Jeffcoat, as we delve into the power of profile pictures and the critical role they play in establishing trust and credibility.
Together, we explore the significance of personal branding and its impact, not just on networking, but on business growth and success. We discuss the repercussions of an outdated profile picture, how it can erode trust, and even damage your brand. Shelley, with her extensive experience as a brand image architect, provides insightful tips on how to ensure your online image aligns with your real-life persona. But it’s not all about aesthetics; it’s about authenticity.
We conclude the episode by discussing how an authentic presence across your social media platforms can strengthen your brand identity and boost your credibility. And the best part? You don’t have to break the bank to upgrade your profile picture. So, tune in and learn how to leverage your online image to create a brand that resonates with your audience.
👉 Key Takeaways:
- Maintaining an authentic and current online image is crucial in establishing trust and credibility.
- An outdated profile picture can erode trust and even damage your brand.
- Your personal brand is tied to your reputation and credibility.
- Your identity, including your profile picture, should match the messaging & awareness you are pushing.
- Authenticity is key in personal branding.
Discussion Points:
- What can be the potential implications of an outdated profile picture on personal credibility and brand image? Can this impact be significant enough to influence the perceptions of your audience?
- How does personal branding play a crucial role in networking, business growth, and overall success? Can a well-crafted personal brand overcome other shortcomings in these areas?
- What are some strategies to enhance identity and awareness in building brand equity? How does this contribute to a brand's recognition, perception, and overall value?
- What could be the potential consequences if a profile picture does not accurately represent oneself? How could this impact your interactions, both professional and personal, online?
- Can you share some effective tips or practices to ensure that your online image aligns well with your real-life persona? How important is consistency across virtual and real-life platforms for personal branding?
- Have you ever experienced an emotional impact upon discovering that a person's profile picture does not match their real-life persona? How did it affect your relationship or interaction with that person?
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Watch Full Episode: When Your Profile Picture Doesn’t Look Like The Real You!
Full Transcript as transcribed by Buzzsprout.
Mario P. Fields: 0:00 Welcome back to the Unarmored Talk podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching each episode and continue pleased to share with your friends and family members and colleagues, and don't forget to leave a rating or review if you feel this is a awesome show. And You can connect to all of my social media on ParadeDeck.com Just look in the show notes or you can put in the search engine Mario P Fields parade deck and get all access to My social media. Well, let's get ready to interview another guest who is willing to remove their armor to help other people. Everyone, welcome back to the Unarmored Talk podcast. I am your host, Mario P Fields, and today's guest who's willing to remove her armor to have a real-life Discussion that hopefully helps the listeners of viewers develop an accurate, accurate way of thinking. Her name is Shelley Jeffcoat was going, shelly.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 0:58 Hello everybody, I'm excited to be here. Let's do this.
Mario P. Fields: 1:02 I don't even feel like Shelley and I talked so much and all the time This doesn't even. Yeah, this is a normal, normal day. But before I get into Enter, you know, given Shelly some time to introduce yourself to you all again, you guys know I got to take care of that admin stuff. So, number one We just again got the audio and video monetized on our retail podcast. So anytime you guys download any episode, you share it with anybody. Anytime you touch anything on our retall podcast, that's either on a YouTube channel or your favorite audio podcast platform, you are generating funds. Ronald, i don't have that special button.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 1:43 You need that button. That's awesome Yeah that's it.
Mario P. Fields: 1:47 Maybe next year maybe the budget allowed me to get it next year So thank you. So you guys are making a difference in helping us support still serving incorporated. Do you want to learn more about our amazing nonprofit? go to www.stillervinginc.com I'm done with the show notes, done with all that admin stuff. Let's get right to it. Everyone we have the CEO and founder of LCM Group LLC. She's also a podcast host and producer of Slice Of Pie. That's Pie for proud, Inspired, and E for empowered, and she is a fellow colleague with me on the ParadeDeck.com. That's all that's in all of my intro audio intro. She's on the board of advisors and doing a lot more round of applause. Again, I don't have that special to us a round of applause. Jeffcoat, baby. Jeff coat, Shelley What's going on?
Shelley Jeffcoat: 2:45 I'm so excited to be here and inviting everybody all of your listeners and watchers, lovers and lurkers to come in here. What we're talking about?
Mario P. Fields: 2:54 Oh yeah, yeah, there's gonna be a good one. Well, they're all good, it's gonna be a fun one, but it's gonna be interesting just like all of the unarmored talk podcast episodes. Can you tell the listeners of viewers just a little bit about yourself, Shelley?
Shelley Jeffcoat: 3:07 Yeah, so you know, as I kind of mentioned before, i'm a brand expert, i'm a CEO, i'm a philanthropist. I've been in this, this walk in the space of them, and you guys can find out more about me under Mrs. Pike, just about everywhere now. But I've been in the brand expert space for quite some time. I'm an award-winning culture builder, which means that There's an organization that I'm with, we. I think we've got 19 culture awards now. These aren't the type you buy 19 cultural awards for a large organization within the last two and a half years, which is nearly impossible. So huge, huge, be proud of all of those endeavors. But Author, mom, speaker, all those things, and I'm just really excited to kind of share this space and be on your platform that You know, give some information. That thing's gonna help a lot of people.
Title: When Your Profile Picture Doesn’t Look Like The Real You!
Mario P. Fields: 3:56 Yeah right, 919 awards, by the way, everyone 19. Well, you guys know the deal. Let's just jump right into the topic from my brief understanding, yes, recently you've gone into some type of networking event or live event, an in-person event, and a couple of stakeholders or potential partners or whatever their profile picture didn't match not even close, Not even close. Let's talk through the power of a profile picture and what happens.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 4:37 Yes.
Mario P. Fields: 4:38 You don't even look like the picture You posted. What have walkers through this one?
Shelley Jeffcoat: 4:44 This. Okay, I was this, this is what happened, y'all. So I was at an event and these individuals and these are folks who've been in the industry, meaning the working, working life for quite some time. So these aren't, you know, we're not talking about interns in recent grads, but these are individuals who've been in the working space for quite some time and they have LinkedIn profiles like many of us do, and the profile picture that I've met on LinkedIn wasn't exactly the person that I met in person, and so I had a person come up to me to introduce himself hey, shelly, you know, you know, I met you on LinkedIn, blah, blah. And honestly, I was so taken aback
And, because I don't do a great job of faking, my response ever My response was what are you? their profile didn't match the person at all, and so one of the things that I thought about what we were talking about this earlier is what are some of the impacts around that from a personal perspective, the areas that it really hits? First of all, it just really damages your credibility. It damages the trust, because now I'm like, well, if you're not even taking care of your basic profile information, then it actually erodes some level of trust and credibility And can I really consider you someone who's a thought leader, which is the way the person was marketing themselves. They're not even up-to-date or current. So I definitely want to dive into this. You know the message that we're putting across, especially on social media, and it's not just your profile picture, it's some of the things that you're talking about, the way that you're presenting yourself. That is actually your brand And I tell people all the time your brand is in that room long before you get there, right.
Mario P. Fields: 6:28 Yeah, so let's talk about and I love how you highlighted your weakness. By the way, you know we teach that in the employment workshop for interviews the ability to highlight your weakness. You know, I love how you say I am not strong at kind of masking, hiding my emotions. So we, when you, when you start to interact with this person or people, at what point did you start to connect I use the metaphor, connect the dots, where you said wait, wait a minute.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 7:04 This is.
Mario P. Fields: 7:04 Mario.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 7:07 I had to turn on my interviewing skills Okay, so the same skill sets that I use on Mrs. Pie, that investigative journalism side had to kick in because, you know, one of the things that you don't want to do is also because of the nature of what we do, Mario is is how people feel like they weren't accepted when they met us. Right, PR is huge for us, so I, I, I go into my kind of my, my headspace, but the first thing I always do this is I try to put other people at ease, so I put the person at ease first. You know, hey, you know it's great to meet you and then trying to get that remind me who you are, but without saying remind me who you are Right, so you know. I did. I do this So and, by the way, I do this a lot.
So, for those of you who ever heard it, I'm sorry, but I usually say you know, I'm so excited to meet you. Can you remind me again, you know, what were some of the things top of mind that we wanted to touch on it? You know, and I kind of work it through that way, I give them a chance to reintroduce themselves And I'll always take the fall. You know, listen, it's on me. There are so many people that I'm meeting so many amazing people. It's really on me. Honestly, my memory shot. You know, I try to put the other person at ease and then give them a chance to explain and really reintroduce themselves. So that's the first thing. The second thing I do, and this really matters, is the tone that you use. Again, back to, you know, almost interviewing one on one. It's a tone. So if I'm speaking to someone and you know I'm trying to get to this person, my response wasn't like who are you Right?
Mario P. Fields: 8:43 Or even your non-verbals.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 8:45 Or you know, look at you know. so now I'm literally, you know, once I caught the name, I had my phone So I was able to quickly go on to LinkedIn and from that person, go, wow, you look even better in person. Okay, you know, now I'm setting the tone for the conversation And then, and then after that, I'm eliciting information, I'm trying to figure out again how to place this person where the networking events, how to place this person in terms of the conversation that will have and things like that.
And then I also try to drop tips, people asking for free advice all the time. So I'll give it tip, and then this person I said you know, it'd be great, you look so much better in person and this photo is not, you know, is not, doesn't reflect. You'll be like I really was like working my way through it. So that person I was like, hey, I'll be willing to let me take a photo of you and you use that on your, on your social media. I actually found out later that this one individual they were under the impression that they needed to get those really expensive, high quality photos and, honestly, you really don't need to do that, and so it was a financial limitation that that he was facing, and so I was like, hey, let's, let's fix this right now.
I'm going to take a picture of you, update your profile, bing Bang, boom, we're done. So there was a way to resolve it And I'm not going to help that individual, but this is, this is really. you know, this is one of those really sticky areas for all of us as folks that have social media profile pictures that you know maybe you have one that reflects your wedding and that's 30 years ago, or people who take photos with that you are your favorite pet. You know that doesn't actually represent you as the person, so this, I think, is a good one, because it really does come down to what you're selling. People want to meet the person who's on that profile.
Mario P. Fields: 10:32 You know, nobody wants to be catfish And so and I love how you talked about and I'm listening to you the amount of effort in time it took for you from out of that event Yes, to try to be, to become more accurate and who you're discussing and talking to if you had two candidates or two potential stakeholders And that came to you in one of them was pretty accurate, you didn't have to spend all of that time. Yes trying to figure out who they were. Any other one was not. Who do you think would be more beneficial? Right, you would be more willing to do business with, and why?
Shelley Jeffcoat: 11:10 Bingo. So I'm going with the person who makes it easy for me to connect. I'm not willing to do the work. And again, if you think about this summer, even recruiting perspective, you have a lot of other people that you can talk to as well. So, easy for us to connect, make it easy for us to do business together and make it easy for us to network and communicate with each other. Don't make it so hard And it's very, very simple. Just start out with you know updated photo and you know, honestly, these are. These are the things that when I think about maybe some of the disadvantages that those of us who've been in the workplace for a long time and you know people aren't updating their photos because they I'll never need that, but, quite frankly, you never know when you don't.
Mario P. Fields: 11:57 Absolutely what they say. almost 60 to 80% of opportunities are on advertising, through networking And and yeah, definitely, like you know, Mario's got a picture of a high top fade, he's got good hair and I'll see me at the event, you know anyway. so so, and I love how you brought up that, make it easy.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 12:17 Make it easy everyone makes it easy.
Mario P. Fields: 12:19 Make it easy What emotions that you experience. Talk about the emotions and how you, how you allow those emotions to process. Yeah, through them.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 12:31 So the first one actually was honestly was shock, because again I was presented with one thing and then I saw another thing. So I was a little bit like no, you're about 40 years older than that photo. That is because I was a little disappointed, because there are opportunities now and it doesn't come around very often where you're placed in a situation you network and you can make business happen right. And for me this was such a loss of an opportunity because I didn't wanna spend 10 to 12 minutes explaining why you needed to be more credible to me right. It just takes away from the conversation. So now in my head you're not someone I wanna do business with. Because, again, if I have to keep coaching you through how you show up and we're not showing up for a client, we're just showing up for each other then it's not gonna work.
Mario P. Fields: 13:32 Right, right, right.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 13:33 You're gonna go to the person who makes it easier, who's already figured out that a part of your business brand is also how you manage your personal brand and how you show up really matters. Like I said, your brand is in the room long before you get there. But if I have to try to figure out those you know, is this right, ss this credible, Is this the right person? If I have to go through that script in my head and then adjust so that I can help you adjust, then it's just not a good. It's just not a good situation. So for me, what it also showed was that that person just didn't care enough about their business brand. Okay, and if you don't care about your business brand, you're not gonna care about mine. So what's left on the table right, Remember, at the foundation is credibility and trust.
Mario P. Fields: 14:19 Yeah right, yeah, your personal brand, business brand, your branding, and you know and I love how you brought that up And let's you know, if you don't mind, let's talk a little bit about that Again that profile picture or whatever social media site or platform that you're using, and the complexities of things that can occur if it's not an accurate photo and represents you well. How does that impact the brand? And let's get rid of the words good or bad, just period.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 14:51 Yeah, it always shreds you. It's immediately so when you think about it. There are a couple of things that you establish when you're a professional brand, and the first thing is reputation. Okay, and reputation is tied to your brand identity. Identity is how you show up. So I'm talking purely about how you show up, how you look, the colors you use, Tony uses all those things. That's identity. And then, after you've gotten identity, is considered awareness, meaning how much you're messaging out that. So imagine you have a stale photo on LinkedIn, for example, and you're looking to transition into the private sector and you're trying to find a job. So now your identity what you're showing up as is an old photo from back in the day when you were married or whatever right. You're showing that.
Now your awareness is now you're trying to message out to people to say, hey, I'm in the market. No, by the way, maybe consider hiring me. And you're tagging, liking, and following posts, but what you don't get is what we call brand equity. You get no equity out of the brand that you're selling, which is yourself. So that's why imagery is so important. So when you think about you know how you. That's why you know how you show up the literal identity. People are looking for that to match your awareness, which is the messaging and the things that you're pushing out, and, whether it works or not, is considered equity right, and that's where it can either tank or help. So if you're thinking about you know what do I need to do to transition into this sector? Or maybe you're not looking for a job, maybe you're just trying to build a community, you're building a following. Whatever that is for you, if your identity doesn't match up to what you're saying, you lose credibility. It can impact your reputation. You can't. It takes a long time to come back to that. Our minds are so you know we react so quickly to images. That's why video is such an amazing form, right?
Mario P. Fields: 16:46 Right, right, yeah, it's such a short-form video.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 16:48 Last you know, last work, maybe you know under a minute, and then we're on to the next step. So think about it from an image perspective. That's what's sticking in our head.
Mario P. Fields: 16:57 Yeah, yeah, you're well, like you were saying, you know if you're smiling, you know, and you're always smiling in all your photos, and I'm just using this as an example. And then you meet Shelly Jeffcoat and you have no personality. You have no personality. Not, you didn't smile once during the networking event. Your stock, your brand, was probably trading on a stock market at about, you know, $7.16 at the opening. But then you show up and it's conflicting.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 17:27 That's right, it's tight.
Mario P. Fields: 17:29 And I love so I love how you kind of highlighted that that there's some equity.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 17:33 Yes.
Mario P. Fields: 17:34 But you gotta be authentic, right, gotta be authentic, and that's the other thing.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 17:37 you know, I am literally who I am, no matter where I go, Right yeah, i'm gonna change my glasses because you know for those of y'all who can't see me I have an addiction with glasses, so I change them all the time. But I'm literally the same personality. No matter where I am, i always show up as the same person, because otherwise it's exhausting. So when you go on my social media pages, same person. And why is that important? It's because I've established my identity. So now when I'm communicating and sharing things out and you're getting to know me right, awareness I can bank on the equity that I have. I'm trustworthy and I'm credible. People know who I am and what to expect. That's how brands you know. That's the simplicity around brands. But it does again, it really does go back to you know, establishing what that identity looked like and really simply, you can just start with y'all have a good photo, have an updated photo And so, and thank you so much.
Mario P. Fields: 18:30 And so, looking back, looking back on when you saw that the first time you saw that profile picture we're just of that person, that person, and then the in-person experience, and then post that looking back, what advice, if you could give that person or anyone, what one thing would you tell them?
Shelley Jeffcoat: 18:57 Get updated before you go to a networking event. Period, right And the same. It's all preparation. And if you take it seriously, if you're going to a networking event because you intend to do business or potentially meet other business partners, anything like that, right, make sure that your profile is up to date. That is your online business card. Linkedin, for me, is an online resume, and so I'll just send people to my LinkedIn or I'll send them to my Parade Deck page, whichever one, because they're going to catch me out of the way. But that is my identity, that is my representation. But if you want to scale your business, if you want to meet new people, if you want to expand your network, if you want to grow up, you want to get a good job, a better job or even a promotion Like Mario, some of these are just even on the job promotion your internal recruiters are going to come and look at your LinkedIn page. So at least, at the very least, for your own preservation, make sure that your profile is updated.
Mario P. Fields: 20:01 Everyone you guys heard it from Shelly the first steps in improving your brand. Just take a photo And make sure you don't go spend hundreds of dollars to get it glamorized. And also, if it's been about 12 months, go ahead and take that other one. It takes less than six seconds And uploaded, so your online business card is ready to rock and roll. Shelly, I'm not going to say that you're busy because you are having fun. Yes, making a positive impact on people, but I truly appreciate you. And how can people find you if they want more of Shelly Jeffcoat?
Shelley Jeffcoat: 20:42 You can find me on ParadeDeck.com under Mrs PIE.
Mario P. Fields: 20:47 You guys heard it, Shelly Jeffcoat. thank you so much. This is exciting. I'm so happy And I'm going to make sure that my calendar is marked for me to update my own photo on LinkedIn. Absolutely.
Shelley Jeffcoat: 21:01 Thank you so much.
Mario P. Fields: 21:04 Thank you for this fun episode. Everyone again on the Armored Talk podcast. Every two weeks there's an episode. We'll see you guys in two more weeks, But until then you guys know the deal. Be safe out there And God bless you all and your families. Bye, bye, Shelly Bye. Thank you for listening to this most recent episode And remember you can listen and watch all of the previous episodes on my YouTube channel. The best way to connect to me and all of my social media is to follow me on the Parade Deck. That is www.paradedeck.com, Or you can click on the link in the show notes. I'll see you guys soon.
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