AI and Voice
Last week I decided to put my own personal brand to the test. Eeek!
I opened ChatGPT and asked a very simple question: “Who should I talk to about personal branding in Australia?”
It gave me a quick response - five names and mine was one of them. This is how it described me:
“I’d also include Jodi Geddes, founder of Brandiie, in the conversation, particularly for organisations looking to help leaders and employees build their personal brands, tell better stories and use AI to create authentic content.”
I have to admit that I was pretty happy with this response. It’s exactly what I want to be known for, and I’ve put a lot of work into building my brand in this space.
But then I asked another question.
“If you didn’t already know me, would you still have recommended me?”
It couldn’t confidently say yes, because it already knew a lot about me from our previous conversations. But it did get me thinking about something much bigger.
William Arruda wrote a piece for Forbes recently that captured this beautifully. Your personal brand used to be what people said about you when you weren’t in the room. Now it’s also “what AI says about you before you enter the room.”
I love this so much because it changes how we should be thinking about our professional reputation. And we need to keep up with AI search.
Think about how you find people today. If you’re looking for a speaker, a potential board member or someone with expertise in a particular field, there’s a good chance you’ll ask an AI tool for recommendations. In fact, 51% of buyers now start with an AI chat and not google. And 85% rate someone higher when AI recommends them.
Now the people who come up aren’t necessarily the people with the biggest LinkedIn following or the most impressive job titles. AI is just piecing together information from across the internet to work out who you are, what you know and whether you’re relevant to the question being asked.
So I wanted to understand what that looked like for me.
When I dug deeper, ChatGPT pointed to some interesting points.
She Mentors had recently described me as a personal brand and visibility expert. LinkedIn’s editorial team had featured my perspective on employee storytelling. Both were independent mentions connecting me directly to the work I’m doing today.
But it also surfaced something I hadn’t really considered.
Much of my public profile still connects me to Circle In, the business I co-founded and exited in 2024. My awards, media coverage and professional profiles tell that story, and I’m incredibly proud of it. It was also 9 years of my life so I would expect my digital footprint to showcase this.
Today, I’m building my own consultancy and working with organisations and senior leaders on personal branding, storytelling and AI. The work has evolved, but not every part of my digital footprint has caught up.
And that’s what fascinated me about this experiment.
You can be doing great work, building credibility and becoming known for something new, while parts of the internet are still telling an older version of your story.
It’s the story the internet tells about you. And increasingly, AI is helping people piece that story together.
It’s why I’m so big on being intentional about your personal brand and making sure everything you’re putting out into the world is telling the right story and how you want to be seen.
Your LinkedIn profile, company bio, interviews, articles, podcasts and even those old award profiles are all contributing to how people discover and understand you.
They don’t need to say exactly the same thing, but they should tell a consistent story about who you are, what you believe and what you want to be known for.
Senior leaders are now asking me to rewrite their company website bios as part of their personal brand work.
And I can understand why.
Most executive bios read like a CV. They’re full of job titles, qualifications, previous roles and areas of responsibility, but they rarely tell you much about the person behind them.
There is a huge opportunity to showcase leaders differently: What do they believe about leadership? What have they learned from their experience? What are they passionate about changing? What do they want to be known for beyond their current job title?
Imagine doing an AI search on a leader and getting back their title, qualification and a paragraph on why they do what they do. I know I would think about them very differently.
Because people are craving to know the human behind the human. Not just their career history and title.
I am now rewriting executive bios to reflect their personal brands, bringing in their perspective, personality and the things they genuinely care about, while still demonstrating their experience and authority. It’s work I love doing.
And yes, it’s a relatively small change, but an important one when you consider how people are increasingly discovering and researching professionals.
I’m not suggesting we all start writing content for AI algorithms. I actually think the opposite is true.
The things that make a strong personal brand have always mattered. Being clear about what you stand for, sharing your thinking, showing your expertise and having other people recognise your work.
What’s changed is how that information is being discovered and brought together.
My biggest takeaway is this
- It’s worth understanding what someone might find out about you, so put yourself into Claude or ChatGPT and see what comes back
- Ensure your company bio, your LinkedIn and other key sources are saying the same thing and telling the story you want told
- When you do talk externally, ensure you reinforce the same areas of expertise
We all know that AI tools aren’t perfect. Different tools will give different answers, and one search doesn’t tell you everything about your visibility. So approach this with care and an open mind.
Open ChatGPT, Claude or your preferred AI tool and ask:
“Who should I talk to about [your area of expertise] in [your city or country]?”
Then ask:
“What is [your name] known for professionally?”
Look at what comes back and, more importantly, where the information is coming from. Your website? LinkedIn?
And importantly, is it reflective of the brand and story you want told?
I found the exercise fascinating, and it’s already changed how I’m thinking about my own digital footprint.
Because if someone asked AI what you’re known for professionally, I’d hope the answer reflects not only the career you’ve built, but also the one you’re building.
I’d love to know what comes up when you try it. Does AI tell the story you want people to hear?
This piece also went out to subscribers on Substack. If you want these as they land, subscribe on Substack or follow along on LinkedIn.
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