Ep 087: Samantha Wilkins

Rejecting revenue to stay aligned to values with Talent & Truth Co-founder Samantha Wilkins

Samantha Wilkins shares how she went from working as a Global Public Relations Manager at one of the leading beauty brands in the world to co-founding a PR and marketing agency in Dubai.

Three key juicy bits from this week’s episode:

  • Building your personal brand on LinkedIn
  • Defining your values as an entrepreneur
  • Hiring and working with a virtual workforce

In this episode we discuss:

00:43                    An introduction to Samantha Wilkins

  • What most people don’t know about Samantha [01:07]

03:27                    Why Samantha was inspired to start her own business

  • How navigating the tough job market in Dubai led Samantha to go into entrepreneurship [6:24]

09:51                    Switching from the beauty industry to the PR and marketing industry

11:46                    Building your personal brand on LinkedIn

15:07                    How Samantha built her client base [15:07]

  • Knowing which clients are the proper fit for your services [16:19]

17:56                    Working your business while it is not yet profitable

  • Finding a motivation to scale apart from money [20:27]

21:37                    Where Samantha got her values

22:45                    Building and managing a virtual workforce

  • Hiring workers from different parts of the world [24:16]

27:39                    The best online platforms for finding freelancers

29:05                    Samantha’s biggest business failure so far

31:53                    Tips for people looking to start building their personal brand

34:02                    Advice for people looking to leave full-time employment to start a business

38:18                    Samantha’s plans for the future of Talent & Truth

40:27                    Samantha’s parting advice for aspiring and budding entrepreneurs

Links Mentioned:

Books Mentioned:

Quotes

  • A lot of people use LinkedIn purely as a place to find a job rather than as a place to build a personal brand and your credibility.
  • If people don’t fit the profile that we want to work with, then we’re very quick to say “no” and direct them elsewhere. We really want to be clear on who we prefer to work with.
  • One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made as an entrepreneur was not creating a personal brand for myself early on. Building your personal brand isn’t something that you need to put off until next year when you’re doing x, y, and z. It’s something that you should’ve started five or ten years ago. Whenever you have had the opportunity to, you should have been doing it.
  • Everyone already has a personal brand, whether you like it or not. But you need to focus on how you want to be portrayed and how you want people to remember you and what it is that you stand for.
  • If you’re looking to leave your job and start a business, start planning as early as possible. Think about the things that you will need six months down the line when you have left the company and started your own thing.
2020-12-17T14:07:44+00:00