Anneli Hansson: How She Launched a Six-Figure Course with The Futur, Built Global Brand Authority from Sweden & What Branding in 2026 Really Means | Be Yourself Podcast

Anneli Hansson

Brand strategist, educator and global keynote speaker with 25+ years of experience — on launching a six-figure course with The Futur as a non-native speaker, building global brand authority as an outsider, and why branding in 2026 is about being as human as possible

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60 minutes
Brand Strategy · Personal Brand · Course Creation · AI & Humanity

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About the Guest

Anneli Hansson — Brand Strategist, Educator, Global Keynote Speaker

She has worked in marketing and branding since 1998 — growing up on a small island of 400 people outside Stockholm and starting out cold-calling for sales commissions, a foundation in selling that shaped everything since

She spent decades as a CMO and senior brand strategist with global brands like Volvo, Levi's and Coca-Cola, then joined The Futur's community during the pandemic to practice her English — and within a year created its bestselling course launch ever

What She Does
brand strategist, educator and global keynote speaker with 25+ years of experience, creator of Brand Strategy Fundamentals with The Futur and founder of Brand Rebels for Good
The Milestone
her course with The Futur became their bestselling launch ever — a six-figure launch by a non-native English speaker from Sweden who bought a teleprompter to record her first module
Core Belief
brands can be a force for good, creative people deserve to be paid for their thinking, and in a world flooded with AI content the only irreplaceable asset is your own human perspective
On 2026
stop sharing how-to content anyone can ask ChatGPT for — share your own stories and show what you're doing behind the scenes; branding in 2026 is about being as human as possible

Key Quotes

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resonate with people who are underdogs because no one thinks that we can do something and then when we shine it kind of automatically liberates other people who are underdogs

Anneli Hansson
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if I could do that, anyone who listen to this, you can do anything you want in life if you want it

Anneli Hansson
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everything about branding 2026 will be about being as human as possible

Anneli Hansson

Episode Chapters

0:00 Episode Teaser & Intro 1:51 First Job 6:33 Fear and Fearlessness 9:22 Meeting Chris Do and Co. 12:19 Content with/for The Futur 20:09 A Bit of Motivation You Need to Hear 23:24 Story on Shooting for the Stars 26:47 Brand Rebels for Good Community 31:08 Mistakes in Today's Branding 37:32 Anneli's Coaching Sergey 45:05 Serving Customers 48:25 Content Creation Mistake 49:49 Professional Reputation 53:14 Influencers Who Worked for Big Systems 56:34 Real Estate Shows 58:00 Get in Touch with Anneli 1:00:20 Final Reminder from Anneli

Full Transcript

BTW: This episode of the Be Yourself Podcast is produced by Beverly Media. Also on the show:
David Brier — Brand Strategist on Brand Voice, Beating Goliaths, AI vs Human Creativity & Decisiveness in 2026 →
0:00 Episode Teaser & Intro
Anneli this middle-aged woman from Sweden who was so afraid of speaking English I had to script everything I said they reached out to me and said you won't believe it but your course is the bestselling launch ever go figure so this was my four brand strategy fundamentals six figure launch
Anneli resonate with people who are underdogs because no one thinks that we can do something and then when we shine it kind of automatically liberates other people who are underdogs
Anneli everything about branding 2026 will be about
Sergey Hey everyone welcome to the be yourself podcast the podcast on expressing our true selves today my guest is Annalie Hansen who is an adu creator brand strategist global keynote speaker a coach to leaders with over 25 years of experience well welcome to the
Anneli Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Uh the the pleasure is mine. So, uh we just talked off the record that we're both not in the US and trying to build a business, an international business being Where are you at? Where where you located right now?
Anneli I'm located in a small town called Ninaman. H about 45 minutes south of Stockholm. Oh. So the ferry to Poland is actually from my little town.
Sergey Wow, that's amazing. And you also shared that right now you have this uh amazing community and an amazing uh coverage. So you're you're you're helping brand strategists and marketers to grow and shine bright, find their positionings, find their create their personal brand.
1:51 First Job
Sergey But I'm I'm I'm I'm interested how did you uh kind of start and how did you find what you wanted to do in life? Quinn, can you tell us a little bit about your backstory?
Anneli Yeah. So, I grew up in this super small island outside Stockholm. It's actually 400 people, around 400 people. So, you can imagine it's small. So, and we were around 30 people in my school, the entire school, five people in my class. So when you grew up like that, you just get a lot of imagination like because you don't have so many friends to play with and you're like outside in nature all the time and my dad did a lot of like hunting and fishing and all of that. So that's how I grew up and then moved to a bigger school and to the city where I actually live now when I was 13.
Anneli And that was like the first time I ever got, you know, in touch and realized what a brand is, for example, because I had no idea, you know. So that's when I was 13. It's really important in that age that you get friends a lot about like what clothes you wear and it was really important to wear those Levis's jeans because those jeans meant belonging and status and you were someone you know so my life kind of changed a lot when I got to that school and then like fast forward I moved from home my my parents got divorced I moved from home when I was only 17 and I just had to do something.
Anneli So I went to the US. I worked for six months as a nanny in Chicago for three small kids. How old were you? I just turned 18. I think it was a week after I turned 18. Super young lady. I was really young and uh totally fearless. Maybe a little bit too much.
Anneli Um, and and then when I got back home, I realized like, okay, I don't have any university degree. I need to pay my own bills. I need to have an apartment. The only thing that I could imagine that I could do to get some money was to start in sales. So my first jobs were actually like cold calling as sales calls like you know pick up the phone 50 70 100 times a day and if you don't sell you don't get commission. Yeah. So that was a rough start but I tell that too because what now looking back starting out with that sales experience which I actually been selling my entire life after that basically at least when I was being a consultant and have my own business you need to know how to sell. So I'm actually really happy about how it started out but being in that age it was it was tough.
Sergey What did you sell?
Anneli I sold a lot of different things. My first job, actually the fun fun story is my first job was not even selling. It was basically matchmaking. So I did matchmake people out in the street like um old school style of Tinder, you know, the dating app, but this was like dating out in the street. So I basically I just found people out in the street, train station, galleras, and I approached them and I said, "Hey, are you single?" And if they were single, I took their information and then I'm like, I could matchmake you with someone nice I meet.
Anneli It sounds weird when I tell, but it was really fun until the police came and like if this is not even legal to do. I had no idea. So that was my real first job. And then I started to sell hockey tickets. I was selling Cerox. Um uh you know uh what do you call that? Like um Cerox. Yeah. the copy machine, whatever it's called. Yeah. So, I sold that. Uh I've been selling ads. I've been selling several things.
Sergey Wow. This reminds me of um In Pursuit of Happiness. You remember this movie with Will Smith? Uh where he was also selling some kind of a copy machines or something?
6:33 Fear and Fearlessness
Sergey So uh how important is this absence of fear and I don't I don't understand how did you develop it in such an early uh age right maybe you can uh tell tell me how but how important is being fear fearless as people try to branch out from their corporate world from their uh jobs and start something on their own.
Anneli I think I was much more fearless when I was younger and I do think it's connected to somehow you know there's different step in when you learn things and when you don't know so much you also don't have any self-awareness about that you don't know you don't know what you're lacking so that could also make it easier to be fearless you know I didn't have any education so I just went for it I had nothing to lose the the older you get, the more you have to lose.
Anneli And I could see that because I've been in the corporate environment for a long time. H and I've been responsible for a corporate brand, growing that brand with like a a yearly budget of six, seven million US dollars and working with six, seven agencies at the same time, you know, with 15,000 employees. So, I've been in that top level in the corporate world and the higher up you get, the more nervous people get and the more they're not really saying what they want because they also are depending on their salary and their titles and I really respect that because you know but so that's sometimes I think that it's easy to say that we should be fearless but people could also have a reality when they have a family to support and they need that job and you cannot say anything.
Anneli You know, if you're totally fearless and say what's on your mind, then you probably end up getting fired, especially in the corporate world, you know. So, I think I started out really fearless. I've been kind of fearless all my life when I was actually running my own business. But then when I started when at 201920 when when the pandemic hit and COVID hit and I actually did that pivot on starting to teach and coach on an international market when I when I met Christo and the future that's when I started to be more have more fear because then I started to doubt myself in ways I've never doubt myself before. Yeah. So the stakes became higher.
9:22 Meeting Chris Do and Co.
Sergey Tell us about this new phase, new chapter in your life. How did you actually met Chris do in the future? How did you become one of their creators? And I know that you're one of the best-selling authors on their platform. So how did it came about come about?
Anneli Yeah, it it was actually kind of a coincident. I was going to have I had a long career since 98 working with marketing and branding in Sweden and I've been having that job on the corporate side and I was going to do a a talk about branding in Sweden. So, I did some research and I came across Chris and his partner Jose on YouTube and I never ever looked at YouTube because I thought that was like for kids. So, I didn't do that.
Anneli But then I saw them and I'm like something interesting with these guys like I I feel like they're talking about their business of design and the design of business and they express themselves very similar to how I do. And especially I like that Asian guy. I'm like, "Okay, Christo, who's that?" I never seen him before. I had no idea what the future was and who Chris was. So I decided that I'll give him a couple of months and see if he's like a trustworthy person or just an internet guy. So I followed them for a while and then I decided to join the future pro group which is their coaching community or Chris's.
Anneli And uh so I was just a member. The reason, the main reason I did it was because I felt I need to challenge myself. I want, and this was before the pandemic, I want to work outside Sweden because I worked with global brands in Sweden, but I never worked like with in English and I never worked with other people, you know, all around the world. So, I'm like, if I challenge myself and do that, then I have to learn how to speak English. So that was like basically my challenge to myself. Just hang around for a while, get to know people, practice your English and no one in Sweden will notice because you will not, you know, you don't have to be ashamed.
Anneli No one you know is there. So that's why I started and it took about like maybe 6 months or a year and then I did my first workshop with the future like for the future in brand strategy. Um, yeah, and I had a like a subgroup in in the coaching community and it was just like a lot of fun. But that's when the challenge started because it's one thing to say, "Yeah, that would be a fun idea." It was a little bit of a guinea pig because I think this was the first time they actually took someone from the community and had that person do workshops and a course.
12:19 Content with/for The Futur
Anneli Also, I was not from the US and I was not even from an English-speaking country. So, this is like a middle-aged woman from Sweden, some country up there, you know, in the north and Vikings. And I we just gave her a chance and see if she if she anyone wants to buy it. Wow. And they did. They sold out all workshops we did and we decided to do this course called Brand Strategy Fundamentals. And oh my god, that was a challenge for me. Um to have the live workshops, I was used to that. It was really fun, but then to record it, oh my god. Talk about like imposer syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. That that was tough.
Sergey So you started as a member and somehow it transitioned to be an opportunity where you became one of the creators, one of the mentors. So is this something that hap that is happening and and could happen inside of the future community? They give a a chances to their uh members to kind of graduate and become become one of their partners in a way.
Anneli I mean they have they don't do I don't see so many courses anymore that they do. So Mhm. But I mean I do know because we did a lot of content during the pandemic on Clubhouse. I don't know if you remember Clubhouse.
Anneli Yeah. So we were we were hanging out there a little bit. I remember before Christmas and then he was like maybe we should try out to do some fun content. So he named it like the mod squad, the moderator squad. So he asked me uh Mo and Rigo both of them worked for him and he uh but they didn't do then they were also members. Oh. So he asked us to do content. So we started to do content and then after that Chris continued to do another mod squad where other people were in but I think it was uh Martha and Juel and a couple of other people who also done content with him after. and I had my own group. So I started to train other people and Mo trained other people. So it kind of grew. So we trained people on how to facilitate, how to be all on Clubhouse. Always on Clubhouse. We did so much content for about six months.
Anneli Um like day almost daily content. Um so it's a really really good school and I had to practice my English. I mean, I started out writing my entire script. Chris was very generous because he's like, "Just sit here and talk when you feel ready." And I was I was literally writing everything because I was so nervous in like of looking stupid English. So that's how it started out.
Sergey This just speaks to us to Chris's such a pure heart, you know, willing to take chances on people who are, you know, different because with me uh he agreed to do a podcast with me. He said, "Hey, you're from Ukraine." And I didn't I didn't understand why he agreed to do so. But then I realized that we kind of share, you know, this distinct thing where uh we're not Americans, right? We're we're or immigrants in a way or trying to capture a global market.
Anneli I think I now realize that he's he's doing that. He's kind of uh he feel he resonate with people poor underdogs in a way you know because no one thinks that we can do something and then when we shine it kind of automatically liberates other people who are underdogs who have maybe low self-esteem and they think huh this guy's different he's got an accent he doesn't have a perfect English but he can achieve these results on an international level maybe I can too Right.
Anneli Yeah. It's been really important for me because he gave me that chance. And I mean I people could be like, "Oh, but why do you price him so much? Like why do you why do you want to talk about him?" And I'm like, "Because he's one of the most generous people I know." And also because he gave me that chance. And of course I deserved or whatever you say kind of a chance because it wasn't it wasn't that like I was a beginner. Yeah. I've been doing it since 98. I I worked with really really big global brands like Volvo, Levis, Coca-Cola. I had the reps in, you know, I I knew my stuff, but it's one thing to to be here in Sweden and feel safe.
Anneli You know how that is in your own country, your own culture, and all of a sudden you're going to record something in English. And I just remember I had like meltdowns of I was so nervous. I had to buy a teleprompter because I could not remember the words in English. So I had to buy a teleprompter so I could read it and then I had to practice how to read it so it wasn't so obvious that I was reading it and I was so nervous and I also did all the curriculum and I planned all the course myself and I have never teached that way. I teached a lot of companies before and coach and mentor, you know, when I was a consultant, but not creatives.
Anneli And it's a little bit different because most of the people I teach before, they have a business background, a marketing background. Most people that I teach in that course are often graphic designers or creatives and they don't have that business background. So I had to be a little bit more on fundamental level first to get the pre-understanding of everything. So it was a challenge, but I'm so glad we did it. And I can show you something. This is like a humble brag. Okay. I actually noticed that I had it here. I haven't seen it in a really in a really long time. But now because we talk about this, so this is like my little award. ah for this when I launched this course with the future in a couple of weeks I think three four weeks they reached out to me and said and you will won't believe it but your course is the bestselling launch ever we did go figure so this was my six uh four brand strategy fundamentals six figure launch
Sergey Congrats.
Anneli So, I don't say that to brag, but I say because I'm proud of myself. Because it shows that this middle-aged woman from Sweden who was so afraid of speaking English, I had to script everything I said. I still challenge myself and I did it. Although I had to do some I had anxiety and I was crying and everything, but I did it. And for me that just shows that if I could do that, anyone anyone who listen to this, you can do anything you want in life if you want it.
20:09 A Bit of Motivation You Need to Hear
Sergey Yeah. I mean, I got goosebumps from from, you know, I have goosebumps with people who I really deeply uh connect and resonate with. what you're saying is something I've been preaching, you know, but when you believe it without a practical evidence, you know, without a real life kind of fact that it's it's one thing, but when you when you're able to do something that were really unexpected or um the odds were against you, now you can say, "Hey, I was able able to do that now you go you don't have an excuse to say that you can't right because we're in a similar uh situation
Anneli I just wanted to share a super short story that was so sweet. It was actually a woman from Ukraine. She reached out to me one day and said, "I'm actually because when the war started, there were a lot of refugees who came through Poland and then to Sweden and they came to my city where I live because the ferry is there. So my city just helped a lot of people coming here and we all did what we could and and I remember she called me and she's like I'm going to be in in some my city
Anneli long story short she called me she's like I think I am in your city and I'm like, "Oh, really?" She's like, "I would love to meet you." Oh, she's been following I met up with her. Yeah. She's been following me for years. So, I met up with her and her boyfriend. They were so sweet. And she said, "You know, all these years I've been listening to you from Clubhouse." I always felt, even though Anna is a little bit older than me, you were the one who had English as second language. that always felt if she could do it, I can do it too.
Anneli And after that, she joined the future pro group as a member and it and that just knowing that I could actually inspire someone to take that step. It was just so inspiring for me. So that's also why I share those stories because people think everything comes so easy for everyone, but it's not. you you kind of have to put yourself into these challenging situations for you to get to those places you dream of.
23:24 Story on Shooting for the Stars
Sergey And overnight success is often there's a lot years of attempts that no one sees, right? And I think Tony Robbins says it right that your the reps that you put in privately um you get rewarded publicly for so many reps that you put in privately, right? So it's never an overnight success. It's been preceded by sleepless nights and a lot of you know doubts but you just somehow need to I don't know find this motivation. um to to to keep doing this, right? And then maybe one day uh there's going to be a break.
Sergey There's going to be this or lucky occurrence worth of well like for me it was the podcast with Chris Doe. Now I'm reaching out to people like uh Mel Robbins or J Shetty or you know coaches of of global magnitude because now I believe that hey if Chris do gave me a chance maybe I'll be able to have these other figures on my show as well.
Sergey Do you know now I and he says something he said something interesting that when he saw when he was graduating from his art school and he was kind of ashamed you know of his own culture of his own roots being from Vietnam and when he saw at the graduation that the representatives from other Asian countries were wearing all their national outfits. He felt so bad that he was looking down on his own culture, right? And that was a wakeup call for him that you should celebrate who you are. You should not hide your identity. You should actually celebrate it.
Anneli I mean, I think if you appreciate someone's content, it's lovely to get a message with, you know, that you appreciate it or just saying something specifically that you liked or what you think something that could be better. I really welcome that. What I don't like, which 99% people do, is to try to sell something in the first message.
26:47 Brand Rebels for Good Community
Sergey So it seems that you took a page from Chris's book and the future uh pro group and built a community of your own called the brand rebels for good. Uh so tell tell us us a little bit about this community and how people um get better or thrive uh in your community with with the help of what?
Anneli when I was I wanted to do something that was very niched and because I had the course brand strategy fundamentals with the future I wanted to give people an opportunity to implement and to practice and to train because it's one thing to read about something or to watch videos you have to practice too and brand strategy is on the highest level in a company and not not so many people know about this they they call themselves brand strategies, but they're basically not brand strategies. They do graphic design. Um, maybe they do branding and then they add something that they think is brand strategy.
Anneli But because I have a marketing strategy background, a branding background, and a business background, I felt like I really want to give creative people who didn't go to business school, who didn't start in marketing strategy, I want to give them a framework and a process how they can actually have a structured way of starting getting paid for their thinking and know how to facilitate with clients. So you take lead and not being that order taker like not waiting for a client to diagnose their own problem and to call you and ask what to do but to really like take take that leadership role and you can do that either when you're really young or really experienced. It's more about knowing how to facilitate and have a clear process.
Anneli So that was my idea like if I start my own community I want to do something that of course is different from the future because I would never compete with them. I still am an author and I'm very much a collaborator and you know I adore them so I would never do that. But this was my own community focused on brand strategy. So and the brand rebels for good is also because I have a background working for companies who really want to do good things in the world. They don't have to be saints, mother theresa, but they still have the intention of actually doing things that are good for for people and for the planet or for animals.
Anneli So, I felt brand rebels for good is kind of a it's a little bit of a statement of you know what, we're not here to just be your hands or pixel pushers. Like, don't tell us to greenwash for your companies. like we want to work for the good guys and we want to help drive change in a positive way. So that's that's brand rebels for good. So that's our like foundation of what we believe in that brands could be a force for good.
Anneli And I still do client work too. So it's important for me that I'm not an academic professor. I'm very much a practitioner with the hands in like in in the work. So during these four or five years, I'd done less client work because I done so much teaching and coaching. But now I'm also going back a little bit more to client work because I think it's really important. partly because I can see that courses and this entire industry goes down a little bit with AI and all the challenges around that but also because it's important for me to help all companies out there to make this shift because we're not reaching the United Nations goals for for sustainability like we're far away from the climate goals and I feel like I want to do my part.
31:08 Mistakes in Today's Branding
Sergey Can you give our audience a few nuggets of uh knowledge on this front? Like what brands nowadays, especially with the rise of AI, overlook or do wrong that could be a quick fix or just an obvious fix, something that can be implemented right after our talk?
Anneli Yeah, I do think one thing that people don't think about so much is that you know there's this expression you can't read the label from inside the jar was Seth Golden who said who said that and what that means is basically do you know Peter Ducker Ducker which was like this guru like one of the old gangsters he said the purpose of business is to create uh a customer And those two things are connected with each other. So what we sometimes forget and when you work with clients what they can forget is that they they have so much like inside out perspective of they don't think about really what do the customer needs what kind of you know what what do what kind of problems are we solving for the customers.
Anneli So here we are fighting about are we going to call ourselves a brand strategist or a marketing strategist or a graphic designer. They couldn't care less. What problem are you solving for us? Mhm. That's what they care about. Right? So if we can help them to to kind of step into the shoes of being the customer, giving them a different perspective of seeing their business from the outside, not inside the jar.
Anneli And in order to do that because a brand is people's perception what they say and think about the company. So if we don't ask people if we don't know how to do research how can we then say that we help people grow brands because guessing or asking chat dbt is not doing research. We need to learn how to do real research because otherwise we can never find out the perception of the brand.
Anneli And if we don't know the perception of the brand and the true identity who they want to be, then it's really difficult to identify that gap. But when we have a gap, it's pretty clear that actions we need to take to bridge that gap. Are we perceived the way we want to be perceived? Are we helping the customers to solve their problems? And do people even know that we exist? Like no. So I think this is a common misunderstanding of brands that one still people think a brand is a logo and a brand identity system like a visual identity. A brand is so much more.
Anneli And the second is if you don't know how to find out how people really perceive the brand then it's really difficult to create a brand strategy. So what I try what I teach people uh mostly creatives then is to to really facilitate that's one of the most important things if you don't know how to lead a meeting it's okay with one people like one person often but when you have 10 people executives that you work with they will argue they will debate things they will not agree about things it's really important to know how do you plan and conduct a workshop, a meeting like that. What kind of exercises do you need to do? How do you challenge people but still align people so they come together and agreeing about what to do?
Anneli Because my work is not telling my clients what to do. My work is facilitating and helping guiding them so we can align. So that's being a good facilitator is really important. And then to know the basic of how do we actually grow a brand, the theory on how to do it and the practice actually how how to build a gr brand and you the main things are you need to know how to build distinctiveness and you need to know how to build differentiation and you need to know how to position a brand and these are things that most creative people never studied in school.
37:32 Anneli's Coaching Sergey
Sergey what what what what do you advise to people who are only starting who don't have like uh an existing brand and who don't have the people who they can survey what if what if we need to like what how how do we create a brand uh from ground up basically
Anneli I mean first of all and now I'm going to be very direct but the thing is when people say I don't know who to survey I don't have anyone to ask then I'm like but if you don't know who to ask in a survey how do you know who to who to sell to so but it's still a guessing game then in the beginning you just feel that this might be relevant for someone
Anneli I think first of all and this is something that I recommend like for everyone I think it's really good to important to be good at your skill first Um, and and this is something that I actually react to a lot when I see on social media. It's like, "Oh, you should charge more. You should do this." I think everyone should get really good at what they do first. Yeah. Uh and if you're good at what you do and you can find one thing that you can specialize in because it's easier when you're starting out to not be like there are few things when it's good to be I don't even like the word generalist but when it's good to be good at many things as for me as being a CMO or being a strategist that I am and a little bit older with experience I do have several things that I'm good at but that comes with education. and experience and everything.
Anneli When you're starting out, you cannot be a generalist because people will not hire a generalist that is not so experienced. And you can be really good at one thing. You can be the one person that solves a specific problem for a specific group of people who want to create podcasts. And you can niche down in that group of people and be the go-to person for that group of people. So that's one thing like specialize and be really good at one thing.
Anneli And second I would say um I think it's also really important that you find out what challenges they have because if they don't think they have a problem worth solving, they will not buy. Yeah. It's easier to work with clients that already are problem aware. Yeah. So they already know what the problem is. And many people who start out, they think it's easier. Everyone's like, I want to work with startups. I want to work with beginners, small companies. I'm like, why do you want to work with poor people who have just no money and a lot of time? Yeah. It's really difficult to sell to them because they don't have the money. They also have way too much time. So they can be involved in every detail you do and they don't have the knowledge about what you're doing. So it's like really difficult in a really a lot of different ways.
Anneli So sell to people who have less time, a lot of money, but not the knowledge you have. Yeah. I would go for a little bigger clients, maybe like business to business or something that is not like the most super sexy industry, but they really want to educate people. They want to share their knowledge. Maybe they want to create a podcast to just be that expert and position themselves like that. Yeah. But they have a big budget. So that's how I would think like follow the money who has the money who has the who are aware of this problem. So you don't need to start educating people because it's a really tough road to take.
45:05 Serving Customers
Sergey That's a brilliant advice because I've just connected with the uh real estate agency from Dubai. Yeah. So, real estate agency and they have a lot of things to talk about that as a part of their business. They started the podcast. Now, the problem obviously which is like a neverending problem is that these businesses they have an internal marketing team who thinks that they know everything, you know, and it's really difficult for the internal marketing team to actually admit that they don't know about YouTube, for example, and they need to hire, you know, an external a specialist.
Anneli So yeah, but um this is a great advice, but you know there's also there's also opportunities in there because you can start offering everything but then you can also be a strategist around that. You come in, you set up everything. You have a strategy for how how they will grow, how they will do this. You get paid to train and educate the internal team and then you become their like advisor and they will do the production. Wow. And you work with another client and this is something that you do, right? This is like a absolutely realistic scenario.
Anneli I I do this a lot because I don't want to really do production. So sometimes I do because I like executing on strategy. You know there is an expression that the devils is in the details and it's true because you can have a great strategy but it's nothing unless you have great execution and it's really difficult to have great execution without any strategy.
Anneli So when we do a strategy and strategy is basically like what is the problem we have here? What is the goal they have and what is the best way to get there. So you can do a podcast strategy too. You know there's strategy for everything. So if you can help them figure that out. Um so then we have a strategy. We have a a problem to solve. We diagnose a problem. We have a strategy and then we execute that. So we have a plan. So often when it comes to execution, I can maybe sometimes to sometimes I work with the designer for example and we do the bigger pictures like the concepts, the sketches of everything so people can see where we're going and how everything is going to look like and feel like and the tone of voice like everything.
Anneli But then I'm happy to help them to find an agency that will take over. And then I become I step into the role of being the client. I'm writing the brief. I'm helping they choose the right people to work with or if it's an internal like in-house. I educate them. I help them. I write the briefs. I check in that are we on brand here? Yeah, I can do like uh quarterly audits to see as I can stay there as an advisor, as a coach, but I'm just not doing the production all the time.
Anneli So, instead of like I think I'm challenging you here. Instead of thinking like this is a problem, I would see what different opportunities do I have with each client because your job is not thinking the client is wrong. Your job is thinking how can I best serve this client from what they have. And if they already have a team and they think they're really good at that, give them the best yeah, you know, strategy. Give them the best training that they need. And then you ask, how can I support you more? how can I make sure that this is going to be implemented the way we want and that could be a really great client.
48:25 Content Creation Mistake
Sergey One of my mentors taught me that you just have to think in terms of giving value. you know, uh people will sooner or later you'll the compound effect will strike and it just it's just that this is like the wall of death sometimes when you just have to give give give and it's not you At some point you're like, "Oh my god, I've giving so much for free." But I think Chris told that he was giving for years and years and years. He was doing things for free before he started to monetize his content, right?
Anneli Yes. But I do think I want to say something about this. I agree most to most of it. But it looks a little bit different now from when Chris started. Mhm there are very there's so many content creators out there or people who want to create content and now saturates it sometimes it's even difficult to know like is this really a AI video or not like it's going to it's just exploding. So, what I'm thinking is, yes, I agree about giving, but I was talking to my community yesterday and I said, you know what, guys? You need to have a strategy where you have at least three different ways that you generate leads.
Anneli Your content creation is one way. That's really long term. It's like branding. Like, you don't know when it will be a return on investment. And I think this is where we start to see we're we're not in the pandemic anymore. People like to meet each other. And during the pandemic, everyone wanted to work on a global market. The the world felt really small because we were all like, you know, on Clubhouse, all these small places, and it felt like the world was really small. But now where people go back in reality again, we're networking. We go into events, to conferences, and and we realize that maybe it's not a bad thing to also look in to the market where you're at and see what are the opportunities where I'm at.
Anneli I think a lot of younger people maybe starting out make a mistake thinking, I want to give away everything for free. I'm just going to be a content creator. I'm going to be on social media and then I'm going to make a lot of money. And that could happen definitely. But if I would have a client service business, that is not how I would get my clients.
49:49 Professional Reputation
Sergey let's talk a little bit about personal brand as we end the show. Um Yeah. So it what if you are not someone who's making money solo not an entrepreneur whatever a corporate worker or like a part of some brand in agency do you still need to start creating your own personal brand do you think
Anneli I think today it depends a little bit what we mean by personal brand but I do think today that Everyone need to realize that we have a professional reputation. Mhm. Uh and if you are on LinkedIn, you cannot be there as your company. You are there as a person. Yeah. And the way you show up, I think it's really good if you thought about how you want people to perceive you and what you want to share and how you want to show up.
Anneli And if you work for a company, it's really important that you talk to that company about what are our values, how do we show up because I think you always represent that company. And so if I work with clients, this is part of what we do when we do brand strategy and talk about the brand like what people are talking about the brand. But who are our brand ambassadors? How can we train people so they still have their own personality but they also have a common ground in who we are as companies because just think about it could be like horrible things that someone just say something racist or about you know whatever could be like horrible things and then people see them represent that company they work for.
Anneli Do you remember the astronomer CEO kissing the head of HR at the concert? So this is exactly what happens, right? Their personal brands hurt the reputation of the entire company. Yeah. So things like that could happen. And so I just think it's like um yeah, it's really important. So I do think yes, everyone have a personal brand.
Anneli Um when it comes to the companies, we need to have a strategy for because I work with with company brands like first but I also work with personal brand but with with a company brand because they need to be integrated. We need to decide about what is the personal brand? What what do we stand for? What do we stand up for? What is our mission, vision? all of that our personality like we tried to humanize the company so it feels a little bit less boring corporate and a little bit actually like an entity that people could connect to and like so and from that who are our spokespersons who can actually talk from the brand as representing the brand.
Anneli But there need to be a strategy like am I on LinkedIn and other platforms as my personal brand or am I there as representing my company?
53:14 Influencers Who Worked for Big Systems
Sergey I've seen this a lot of times with influencers who were a part of a big entity first. Um I don't know for let's take example of ESPN analyst. I like basketball. There's a guy named Stephen A. Smith. So he was working for ESPN for like 15 years. Then he uh started his own podcast, you know, on his own movement. Now he he's he's a he's a celebrity in his own right but you know he's he followed the rules of the game and he associated himself with a big corporation first.
Anneli But I think if you don't have your unique voice it will be difficult to branch out and create this new brand uh only with yourself. So I think I've never been in a position like that, but I think if I was someone who represented a a big popular uh na business name, I would want to also share my own views, you know, um not only the views of my company because maybe in future I would want to go and sell on my own, you know.
Anneli And I think this is a challenge for a lot of people and probably something that you will come up against. Maybe people will say it, maybe they will just think it. But I even know this when I talk a lot about employer branding and how we can live the brand and how we you know work with the uh with the culture in the company and people as brand ambassadors like even you know telling stories about people putting them on the website showing them on social media. A lot of companies don't want that because what happens is that they're basically showing up their most important asset and and a competitor will reach out to them and want to recruit them.
Anneli So this is a challenge when we do things like a podcast for example because one thing is to share your knowledge and what you stand for as a company and to show that the company is the expert. But if it becomes too much about a person and that person want to build their personal brand and show up as the expert because maybe they have an idea that they want to branch off and have their own that could hurt the company because maybe someone else want to hire them or they you know so we need to be a little bit aware about those things like if you represent or if you work for a company then it's actually that company that need to have a strategy for how are we going to build brand equity and value in our brand.
Anneli And then if we use a couple of people as ambassadors, what's the strategy behind that? Maybe some kind of an agreement or a contract where you you should sign a non-compete for five years or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how people do. I just know that this comes up a lot with my clients.
56:34 Real Estate Shows
Anneli I I just I come to think about for example I don't when we talk about real estate I like all these like real estate shows on Netflix. Have you seen any of them? Oh yeah. Yeah. Best Manhattan. Um yeah exactly exactly. So I I like Ryan Serant and uh his show Sarah is um they had this episode in that show that two of the employee like two of the brokers were starting a podcast and the podcast studio was in their office.
Anneli So I guess they actually represented Sir Hunt when they were creating the podcast and the two people then started to trash talk other brokers in at working at SE. Oh, which is like the worst thing that could happen for a brand like you can't have can't have people talking bad things about other people and in the same brand. That guy who started that he got fired.
Anneli But anyway, it was just like a really good example of sometimes when people get the opportunity to do something like this. Let's start a podcast and then they don't think about that they're actually representing the brand and what do we agree about talking about what what are what is a no no to talk about. Yeah, those discussions needs to be in place.
58:00 Get in Touch with Anneli
Sergey How can people follow you? uh how can do they benefit from what you do like any any final um call to message from you analy
Anneli yeah you know I I a lot of my content that I create h and I'm on Instagram that's where I've been most active I've been a little bit having a pause on on social media but I'm I'm going I'm coming back now I'm just like uh rethinking a little bit who I write it for and how I'm going to do that because I think creating content 2026 on social media has to be from your own perspective. I'm not going to show people. I'm not going to share how to do things because people ask Chat GPT how to do things. I'm going to share this is how I do it.
Anneli This is behind the scenes. This is me facilitating with a real client. Like I'm on my way from a client thing. This is what we learned. And this is what you will recommend to everyone. This should be the year of our own stories. Yeah.
Sergey Yes. Because you need to think about can can AI make a fake video out of this? Can can can people just ask AI how to do this? If you help people to to build up their their podcasts, there's stories behind that. There are things you learn. There's like lessons of things. That's a story. Like that's what you can do.
Anneli so this is what I'm going to do. So I'm a little bit like um pivoting my social, but people can find me on Instagram. I'm the Annie Lee Hansen and hopefully you can have some links uh here. And then on the same on LinkedIn where I'm most active and uh you can go back if you want to if you want to learn a little bit about foundations on uh how to build brands, marketing, sales, all these good things that a lot of creative people actually need to know about their business. I've done tons of carousels about that. So it's a little bit almost like a miniourse. So that's the best way to find me, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Sergey Great. So, thank you so much. You have a great great uh week ahead of you. Thank you, Anna.
1:00:20 Final Reminder from Anneli
Anneli Thank you so much. And I I do want to remember just remind everyone that every first of all, if you work with something that is any creative thinking, make sure that you get paid for your thinking. And second, I do think in this world right now with everything craziness that's going on that if we really want to stand out, I think our creativity and imagination and everything that makes us unique creative thinkers, that would be the thing that you really want to embrace. And I do think creative people are like the champions of doing that. So for everyone who wants to to build a brand, don't forget to be human because everything about branding 2026 will be about being as human as possible.
Sergey We're going to make a clip out of this last message and this going to go viral. Thank you, Ann.
Anneli Thank you. Uh thank you so much for having me. This was this was a pleasure.