The Power of Personal Branding: Lauren Clemett of The Audacious Agency On How Publicists Shape Influential Leaders
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Your trust currency is the most valuable asset because it converts a follower into a loyal customer.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Lauren Clemett.
Lauren heads up The Audacious Agency, a premier profile building and award writing specialist company. A global thought leader in personal branding, with over three decades of experience in brand management and a reputation as a sought-after keynote speaker, Lauren empowers entrepreneurs and business owners to build powerful personal brands. As the brand navigator Lauren and her team help leaders to boldly stand out from the competition and be sought-after credible brand champions.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! To start, could you share your “origin story” with our readers? How did you begin your journey, and what challenges did you face in the early days?
My journey began at a small wooden desk in a country schoolhouse, where I sat desperately trying to look busy. I couldn’t make sense of the words on the page — they were just strange, blending symbols. My teacher told me I had “word blindness” and would never learn to read or write like the other children. That diagnosis of dyslexia — later accompanied by dyspraxia and undiagnosed ADHD — could have been a life sentence of playing small and hiding behind others deemed smarter than me.
Instead, those limitations forced me to develop alternative ways of thinking. I learned to rely on visual and creative strengths, discovering that my ability to remember the shape of words helped me retain the shape of brands. After 30 years in the high-pressure, deadline-driven world of global advertising agencies, I realised my dyslexia wasn’t a disability — it was my branding brilliance superpower. I later managed through postnatal depression and the stresses of the corporate ladder, only to realise that the adversity I faced was exactly what gave me the empathy to help others find their voice.
Can you share a transformative moment or campaign in your career where you significantly altered the personal brand of a leader, and what was the impact of that change?
When I immigrated to Australia in 2010, I knew I didn’t want to go back to the big agency world. I wanted to help people directly. I saw so many corporate professionals leaving the rat race to start service-based businesses. It’s easy to become a real estate agent, consultant, or advisor — there’s no real barrier to entry — but most had no idea how to market themselves. Back then, personal branding wasn’t even a buzzword; people constantly asked me, “What’s the difference between a personal brand and a business brand?”
The immediate impact I saw was a massive shift in clarity and confidence. I remember working with leaders in finance and coaching who were trying to help every Mary in the dairy — they were terrified of saying no to anyone. Once we worked out their niche and aligned their brand with their ideal client’s specific desires, the magic happened. They stopped chasing leads and started naturally attracting people who valued their expertise. Seeing a leader realise that they’ve had more positioning clarity in one workshop with me than in years of sector training is always a transformative moment.
Specific entrepreneurs and business owners I’ve seen transform into recognised industry leaders include the likes of Raquel Manning of Blue Diamond Property Group, who started out rebuilding her reputation and launching her brand, to becoming an international award-winning property developer, speaking at national conferences and leading the way for other women to follow her footsteps.
And Fleur Madden, who saw the bright lights of New York as a teenager and said to herself, “one day I’ll be there,” and just last year won two gold Stevie Awards for her coaching consultancy that helps women scale up and sell their businesses, and saw herself on a Times Square Billboard. She’s now the Women in Business Champion for Brisbane and is also based in the USA, with an international business presence.
There are so many more stories I have of start-ups and innovative women who have stepped onto a global stage and are totally different people now, creating such a massive impact.
Owning your space, being driven to become the go-to respected expert and leveraging your personal brand reputation as an awarded leader does something to your confidence and self-belief that you are respected and worthy of it.
How do you navigate the balance between a leader’s authentic self and the public persona you craft for them in their branding strategy?
In my view, they are one and the same. People want to do business with people, period. Your values need to flow over into everything you do. There is so much fake, manufactured content out there right now that people are more wary than ever. They want to know, like, and trust you before they even consider opening their wallets.
I don’t believe in crafting a persona. It’s about embracing everything that makes you, you — your story, your approach, and your values — and creating what I call a UPP: a Unique Profile Position. This helps you stand out not as a gimmick, but as a sustainable way of leading and engaging.
I often use the concept of developing an umbrella brand approach. Your UPP is the overarching brand voice, and everything else — your products, services, books, speaking, and podcasts — sits under that umbrella. Look at Richard Branson and Virgin; no matter if it’s a train, a plane, or a bank, the brand culture remains identical. Oprah did the same thing, as have so many other amazing business leaders. They understand how to scale their brand. That’s authenticity in action.
What are the most common misconceptions leaders have about personal branding, and how do you address these in your work?
The biggest misconception about a personal brand? That they don’t need one.
Many in business want to sit behind their desk, hide in the office, especially in cultures like Australia, New Zealand, parts of Europe, where imposter syndrome rules, and the thinking is that if you stand out, you get hated on. That fear of judgment, and too much weight placed on the opinion of others, holds them back. They live by the motto “no one likes a show off”, but they are doing themselves and their legacy a disservice. When you realise the ripple effect you cna have, you understand the power of a personal brand, and if you want o make a tsunami of impact around the globe, change the way things are done, improve a sector, introduce a need concept, or launch a life-changing approach, system, tech, app or thinking, you need to create more impact.
Your impact is bigger than you — it’s the possibility you have to change people’s minds and make a difference that matters. Even if you are only a solopreneur or small business owner, a tech entrepreneur working in a garage — look what happened when Steve Jobs and Steve Wasniaki thought bigger than where they were!
Personal branding is all about positioning you as a trusted expert — leveraging your expertise, the things you do with ease that others do differently — to make sure when your ideal audience needs you, your solution, service or product, they not only find you, they see you as the trusted, credible expert who can help them.
In a crisis situation, what steps do you take to protect or rehabilitate the personal brand of a leader?
It starts with 100% honesty. Fake it till you make it never works in the long run. If you make a mistake, own it. The biggest person in the room is the one who can say, “I made a mistake, I’m sorry, and I’ll do better.”
If the crisis is simply that you are the world’s best-kept secret and your brand is dying of obscurity, back to the foundations. I tell my clients — stop trying to help everyone. Dig out your own niche and don’t be a copycat. You will only end up being the Temu Tony Robbins or the cardboard cutout of Kim Kardashian.
Decide what you want to be known for — your reputation — and then seek out the opportunities that amplify that. Whether it’s speaking engagements, awards, or specific media channels, you need to align your brand with the platforms that represent your values.
If you want to be known as a change-maker or maverick, or a conservative leader, sustainable and resolute, start aligning your brand with awards, media and channels that will amplify that.
Could you list and briefly explain “5 Things You Need to Know to Shape a Personal Brand” based on your experiences and insights?
1. Your reputation
What do you want to be known for? Big brands figured this out — Nike is the name of Athena, the Greek goddess of victory, win at all costs, go for it. Their tagline — Just Do it. Apple — think different, L’Oreal — because you’re worth it… If you could define your brand with a tagline, what would it be? For the Audacious Agency, we help people enter, win and leverage awards to become an industry-recognised leader. We say we “shine a light on the extraordinary”, and that’s what we want to be known for.
2. Your purpose
Who are you here for? What is the legacy you want to leave? It’s more than just you — it’s about who you inspire and motivate. I did a retreat to discover that I am the Cheeky Confidence Creator. My purpose is to help others find that vital self-belief to stand up and step into the spotlight. When we work with leaders who want to win awards, the first thing we ask them is why? Only then can we make sure they maximise the moment by entering exactly the right awards they can leverage, no matter what the result. How can you define your purpose by what you are here to be?
3. Your meaning
My name is an aptronym, and I only realised it recently. Lauren comes from the Greek Laurel Tree, which they wove the branches of into wreaths to place around the heads or necks of their champions. In the same way, we use laurel leaves as graphic symbols of winners in awards. Here I am doing what my name stands for. You don’t need a name that says what you do (like Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone), but it helps if you have meaning behind your personal brand and what you stand for, so it aligns with your marketing message and the way you conduct yourself. When you have meaning, you also overcome the internal critics and self-doubt that can hold you back from creating a personal brand that really stands out from the crowd.
4. Your Audience
As a keynote speaker, I know three distinct sectors that resonate with my message around Finding Your Brand True North — Franchises, Direct Selling and Small Business Associations. Once you have worked out who aligns and clicks with your personal brand, your purpose and your approach, the doors open, and it becomes easy to connect and engage with the right people. If you don’t do this, it’s incredibly time-consuming, frustrating and costly. You can waste so much effort if you don’t have a target to aim for. You can also waste huge amounts of effort on the wrong audience — you don’t want to chase all over the place running after people or convincing them. Work out who already needs you, and you can just give them a helping hand to get what they want.
5. Your Drive
In Australia its not just the snakes and spiders out to get you, the trees want to kill you too! The Stinger tree, or Gympie-Gympie, has hairs all over it that inject a poison into your skin if you brush up against it, and the pain from the sting apparently feels like being electrocuted and having acid poured on you. And it lasts for years! The thing is, building a profile and developing your personal brand is going to take time, effort and investment. It’s going to be painful at times, and you need to have the drive to keep going, stay on track and reach the top.
Looking forward, how do you see the role of technology and social media evolving in the way publicists shape and manage the personal brands of leaders?
AI is muddying the waters very quickly. The barriers have been low, and now they are even lower. It’s so easy to create content and make yourself look amazing, with no credentials or qualifications.
The thing is, in my day (before the internet) you had to have a clear strategy and a clever idea to get it through the steps of creation and placement in the media TV, radio, press, print, outdoor etc. That’s why only the best ideas with the right strategy made it.
We used to start by understanding the brief, then drawing ideas, selecting the ones that resonated the most, before producing them and distributing them at the right time in the right place.
Now, anyone can start their own TV channel on YouTube, radio via podcast, EDM, or LinkedIn newsletter…for free. AI is speeding that up even more — you no longer need expensive tools or platforms to create. Anyone can do it.
Which is good, because it makes it more accessible, but as a result, we are now overwhelmed with content, drowning in content, and not all of it is good, hardly any of it is focused or part of a long-term strategy. Standing out from the noise is getting harder and harder. Too many touchpoints are needed before a sale. If creativity is Queen, consistency is King, and short bursts of trend-following action won’t cut through.
Add to that the need for integrity — that’s when the trust is earned. Your trust currency is the most valuable asset because it converts a follower into a loyal customer. AI fakes are easy to spot, but getting better, and just because someone looks good, it doesn’t mean they are good.
The trouble is, it’s not the best that wins attention, it’s the best known. When you have a clear personal brand, with credentials of awards, consistent content across the right channels, using the media and tech to support it rather than create it, you stand a better chance of sustaining a standout brand.
How can our readers follow your work?
The Audacious Agency: http://theaudaciousagency.com/
Finding Your Brand True North: https://yourbrandtruenorth.com/
Lauren Clemett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenclemett/
Thank you for offering such valuable insights into the power of personal branding. We wish you continued success in all of your work.
About The Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator.
The Power of Personal Branding: Lauren Clemett of The Audacious Agency On How Publicists Shape… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.