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William Arruda has worked in personal branding longer than anyone. He read Tom Peters' "The Brand Called You" in July 1997, put the magazine down and decided to start a personal branding company. His three-step process, Know, Show and Grow, has not changed in 25 years. What has changed is everything around it.

In this conversation William walks through how personal branding moved from senior executives to everyone, then from the real world to the digital one, and why AI is the biggest shift of all. Not because it replaces the work, but because the people who use it well will pull ahead.

He shows how AI fits each step. In Know, he uses ChatGPT as a voice-based brand coach and feeds it years of outside feedback to find patterns no human could spot. In Show, he trains it on his best writing so a bio comes back 98% there. In Grow, he turns one article into ten. Along the way: why you should name your methodology so AI credits it to you, why you should ask "how can AI help with this" before every task, and why most people create far more content than they need.

The Q&A covers how to measure a brand by the depth of relationships rather than follower counts, how to carry a past career into a new one, the shift from SEO to GEO, and how to sell personal branding to companies that will not buy it by name. His answer: sell them what they are buying.

William Arruda is the founder and CEO of Reach Personal Branding, a Forbes columnist and the author of "Ditch. Dare. Do!" and "Career Distinction."

0:12 Bobby on first hearing the words "personal brand"

1:09 William Arruda joins

2:43 From Tom Peters to LinkedIn to COVID to AI

7:05 Know, Show and Grow

8:59 AI as your brand coach

13:42 Feed it your best work

16:58 Say it again: repetition and repurposing

19:15 Why the Know phase matters most

21:43 Name your methodology so AI credits it

22:43 Pick one AI tool and build the relationship

27:19 The biggest trend: owning your use of AI

29:59 Measure relationships, not followers

32:30 Changing careers? Take your story with you

33:54 From SEO to GEO

35:51 Share the same idea 7 times

39:09 Sell them what they are buying

41:23 A named AI that knows everything about you

44:26 Client acquisition is relationships

46:36 Where to find William

The Power of Connection is hosted by Bobby Umar, 5x TEDx speaker and Inc Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker. For weekly insights on personal branding and thought leadership, join his newsletter: https://bobbyumar.substack.com