The Intersection of Personal Branding and Corporate Identity

Welcome to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast where every week your hosts Mark LaCour and Matt Bertram share proven strategies and real-world tactics to help you connect with customers and close more deals. Let's do this. Hey welcome back to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast. Matt and I are sitting downtown Houston. It's a beautiful day well below 100 degrees. It's 97 degrees, right? The summers in Houston be a little bit brutal and we're

sitting here with Nina from NES Firecroft. How you doing today Nina? Good. I wish you would have the microphone on for the past 30 minutes because you and Matt have so much in common it was a total accident. It's one of my favorite things about podcasting is you uncover things that maybe you wouldn't normally uncover. In order for our audience to understand why we're all laughing at this real quick, Nina, what does NES do? Because one of the dudes will come back

right away and ask Matt how do you know this world? So what does NES do? So NES Firecroft is one of the world's largest staffing and recruitment companies for engineering services. So all types of engineers from all types of walks of life in every type of energy we provide those people to those companies that need them. Yeah and you're very well known in the industry. I can go anywhere in the world. I go to Aberdeen, I go to Rio de Janeiro, I go right here in

Houston, Texas and if I'm looking for engineering talent, good engineering talent, you're the company most companies reach out to, especially when they're in a bind. Now Matt, crazy, how do you know her world? Well I did what she's doing on maybe a smaller level but I actually worked with her old employer and was doing what NES did for well what they do for other people. What are the odds that we sit together to record this podcast and you'll have that in

common? We probably have actually worked in the same buildings at the same time like for sure. For sure. Like we've passed and I recognize your name and yeah we just for everyone listening I texted her old boss, he responded and you know we did a lot of business together in my 20s so I ended up growing a recruitment company that did all the different facets of oil and gas. I started to focus heavily on offshore and I ended up selling that company in my 20s I had a

non-compete and then OGGN's kind of bringing me back into the mix. So Matt said I used to work for this company, West Engineering. I said wait hold on I used to work for West Engineering. You can't make this stuff up I love these type of coincidences. However this is a sales and marketing podcast and so today we're going to talk a little bit about something that I think more people should have an interest in both professionally for their companies and

professionally for their own personal careers and that is corporate branding versus employee individual branding and how do you work those two together and I'm gonna kind of be quiet now because this is both the y'all's expertise not so much mine. So where do you want to start the conversation? I can tell you what I did early early in my career before digital marketing became a big thing. Okay okay and that's maybe like a good starting point and certainly you're

building a personal brand in addition to your corporate brand so separating those out was really important and this was before LinkedIn. Okay so this was before you're aging yourself but okay I am yeah and essentially I was working for a Fortune 500 company in sales and I had to take on a motif and the motif was like educate me I'm a learner right like and so every time I would approach somebody it would be from educate me I want to learn. I quickly developed a blog that I

would reference people to about my personal life so they knew who I was in addition to my corporate brand because if I gave them a business card that was of the corporation it was just my name the corporation whatever they thought. I needed to differentiate myself from other salespeople and other business development people and so I wanted them to know who I was and so that quickly became giving two business cards one of my personal and one of my work early on

so they would they could go check me out to know who I was as a person and I wasn't just like you know I was carrying a bag of a big brand because that's what I was starting to be viewed at it and so that was kind of where the separation started for me. Yeah I think that personal branding is it's a non-negotiable right when any time and it's not just sales and marketing but it's for everybody everybody that you meet everybody that you speak to we as

humans we're judging you right that's what we're doing and especially now in this kind of digital age and you referenced it even before LinkedIn when you think of somebody when you hear somebody's name when you're talking about somebody what's the first thing you do if they're not in front of you. I look them up yeah yeah and so we have that it's it's ingrained in us and I think the old-school version of selling was to be that chameleon right it's to

find that common ground with everybody and kind of mold yourself to whoever it is that you're talking to and personally that's just not the way that I do it it's probably just because I'm not very good at it to be perfectly honest with you and now having a much larger footprint you know NES is global we're huge I watch over the Americas from a BD perspective and so I've got we've got offices all over the place and so the thing is is you I don't have to mold

myself to meet that person my team doesn't have to mold themselves to meet that person they get to tag somebody else and if you're not that person you know if you're if you're not the right fit for that person but the self branding now I think has gone away from this let's be everything to everybody and it's it's this kind of cry for authenticity right so by you doing the blog you're showing hey this is who I am this is this is who I am as a person and then

when people buy into that and not everybody is gonna buy into it right I think if you're liked by everybody you're probably doing something wrong I agree and you know but to go back Nina so when I was younger that molding yourself to fit the prospects personality and experience was taught you literally as a salesperson was taught when I walk into your office what pictures do I notice what universities do I notice on the wall that you might

have graduated from and then I try to engage in conversation a lot of times you were faking it right oh yeah I used to play football no you didn't you did except was taught to salespeople and I agree with you both from the results that I see today in 2025 from me and my sales team selling but also for companies that reach out to me that cold call me if you're authentic and real and genuine you have a probably a hundred times higher chance of me actually returning your

inbound then if you're trying to fake like you know me I'll give you a perfect example add a young man reach out to me cold call me and said that his company works with a lot of oil and gas podcast networks now as far as I know we're the only one on the planet so I asked him I literally said a reply back to him it's like look the quickest way to kill a sales conversation beginning is to lie are you telling me the truth are you really working with oil and gas other

oil and gas podcast networks and he was brave enough to come back said no my sales manager told me to write that we don't have a single oil and gas podcast network in our client list now that he was authentic I engage with him and it looks like I may end up buying something from him because he was real whereas he would have stayed down that road it would have killed the conversation a lot of times you got to have that depth and that's how you

connect right so you might find one thing to build that rapport but you got to go deep people do business with people they know I can trust right and I did write a few books on personal brand so which by the way audience I think it's pretty soon we'll be giving away some of Matt's books so to stay tuned yeah I got like five books out there guys search for me I don't talk about it a lot but I started off with personal branding because it's what I

knew best and being that person that you're not going to be able to do business with everybody like you said and being part of a bigger company to find the right person that's the right match is really important and a lot of smaller agencies don't have that ability to switch out account managers or to find the one that's the right match yeah but it's about being who you are and presenting that and attracting the right kind of people and the people that you

want to do business with that want to do business with you because you're it's a partnership yeah like today right yeah and so NES has one side where we're trying to sell to candidates right and I know that sounds a bit you know cold but we want to let candidates know we're the best person to come work for and then we're also selling to the customers to our clients and actually they're both clients we've got clients that we pay and then we've got clients

that pay us but we're we have to build that authenticity and that personal brand with both of our candidates and our end clients and being so global and having such a kind of global branding I always think of marketing as they're the guardrail that stops the salespeople from going up there the ones that stop me from just going out left field and doing you know they keep me where I need to be because otherwise I would be all over the place but then there's that

extra personal brand that you have to have and that's the salespeople in my team that do the best they know their personal brand because that is them they are authentic in it they don't really apologize for it it has to stay within that guardrail right but it's gonna work for some clients it's gonna work for some candidates it's gonna work you know the recruiters that we have it's just as important for them is it is for the sales team so Nina one of the biggest

things that I've seen is if the person that is in the sales role is doing stuff that's like we used to call it homemade like you don't you're not allowed to do homemade stuff and marketing approves it right and you want to share that with marketing we've talked about this in past podcast okay those are the things that resonate the most and and salespeople sometimes like maybe not in a marketplace environment like what we're talking about of an ecosystem of two-sided

marketplace but I think it benefits the marketplace there's a multiplier but if you take that thing that that business development person's doing share that and then you know tweak it or multiply it run it through legal get it approved whatever then all these different marketing people can use that story right or that case study or that example I mean I've seen in sales meetings while this was back in the day again you take like a newspaper article and they're

like sharing this certain newspaper article told with this story accomplish this thing 85% of the time well if that was brought into marketing they could turn it into a nice sales piece or you know a white paper or something like that where it highlights it like a sales aid and then share that and train where everybody's happy with it you're gonna get this multiplier effect of what you could do with sales if that stuff wasn't kept to them now that's a little bit

different than the personal branding component because not everybody can do it but a lot of those stories or outcomes is what businesses are looking for and salespeople have figured out if I say these things in this way these things connect and maybe not everybody can share it in that way and that's where like sales training and mock training come in but I would just advocate for salespeople to share that with their marketing teams because they can help

keep the guardrails on it but get a multiplier effect for the whole organization and that's what leadership should be looking at. Nina said chills up my sales spine a little while ago I just realized when she was talking about the two different prospects that she has the candidate and the customer you're managing to sales process simultaneously like so for me if I sell podcast sponsorship I'm managing that one sales conversation lead turns into actual

opportunity maybe we close the deal but it's just one you're your company and your people literally have to manage that sales conversation with a candidate to get them to want the position but you're also simultaneously managing the buyer of that candidate that almost sounds crazy to have to do both those at the same time that's a lot but I can see how the branding component will actually make that easier for your salespeople and I do love the comment

about marketing here to keep salespeople in between the rails that is not what they're here for earlier in my sales career I was also that person that I would go sell stuff that wasn't ready to sell yet and then marketing the product literally had to figure out how to make it happen but please salespeople don't be the don't look at your marketing people as the keep you in the rails they do way more important well it's the guardrails isn't because it especially in

the digital age you have the ability if you go off-brand and you go off-script now with everything in an instance I mean you can you can borderline destroy a brand with one poorly placed message so we're in this fight we're in this fight between keeping the brand's message and also being authentic and being salespeople I will say you know consistency if you look at every brand that is you know and you're not just oil and gas any any company that has taken a turn for the

worst in from a marketing standpoint is the people that flip-flop right it's the people that one minute they are you know they're putting themselves as a high end the next minute they're saying you know you need to stick with you know it's the consistency right and it's the same from a branding standpoint and it's the same from a from a personal brand standpoint so nothing nothing negative was meant in regards to the guardrail but I think of them as a otherwise we

would I mean you know salespeople I know I am well yeah exactly I mean you have that ability to to I mean you can be dangerous in in this digital age I want to ask both you all this question so I run a company and when I think of our branding as a company there's a process right basically to find your brand you have consistency in your online presence you develop stories that support that type of brand like there's like a process right now I'm sure Matt you do

your clients all time what do you think when you develop your personal brand if we have somebody new that's just entering the workforce and they're really developing their personal brand should they follow the same process that you would do is developing a corporate brand typically you would define your ICPs okay and then you know you have your value structure which I don't think your value structure would change you could have your personal value structure and

then you have like a customer journey but I think that a personal brand has different nuances and if we were talking about authenticity it's it's you know if you're saying these are the people I want to go after I think you could look at it like who are the people I want to work with I want to go into the office and I want to do my job and these are the type of companies these are the type of people I want to work with because your partnering like we

said before in whatever that project is so if you target who you want but it doesn't fit the authenticity of who you are and who you're going to like work with it's going to be difficult and it's going to be feeling forced and it's going to be a challenge in the big sense and and so so I think that you can't just go who do I want as a customer you got to go where do I fit in best and who do I best serve and you have to really look in the mirror on a lot of

those things you can't just say well these are the customers we want yeah and so so I think that there's more self-reflection that happens when you're building a personal brand yeah yeah and I'm probably less structured in it and I think it probably works better if you're more structured in it right and you think if it is a kind of strategy I think because it is personal it's about like what are your boundaries and what is your comfort level and where does that

set like some people are their personal brand is sharing and potentially oversharing yes and then I have people in my sales team they don't have a digital footprint their personal brand is is kind of a word of mouth now that doesn't work for everybody it doesn't have to just be a digital footprint I think now in the space that we are because of the conversation that we had right the very beginning what's the first thing that you do you Google

somebody you look them up on LinkedIn so you're going to get that reputation build quicker if you go down that road but it's I mean it sounds so cheesy but it's a personal journey right that but I've also seen the opposite and chief marketing officers of major oil and gas companies I don't want to call you out by name or company by know exactly who I'm thinking of right now I know some senior level marketing people on gas they have no social presence in 2025 right I think

that hurts them because because you could say they're being it they're keeping on the low down and they don't you know they won't have everything off their public and people know them by word of mouth however people also could have misconceptions about them that aren't corrected by them putting stuff out there so I think in today's world 2025 especially if you're a sales person yeah your online presence is how you get your foot in the door it's what people

go yes or no I'll take this call and I don't think that if you don't do it well I think the people that do it better you're going to pass you up as far as being able to form those relationships from a sales point of view I completely agree I will say like I've noticed that in myself in the last probably about two years I didn't really have that much of an online presence I do really well face-to-face as any good salesperson you want to be in the same room as the

person but people buy into you more right once they get to know you well you get to know or you feel you get to know somebody when you go through their LinkedIn page you know what their history is you know where they came from you know where they worked if people met me just by me they may assume that I've worked for NES in staffing and recruitment for my entire career they don't know that I've had 15 years offshore they don't know that you know

that I've worked in different which that's my brand and so if I didn't have that kind of branding then there's a whole part of people that you miss yeah and you and I are great examples so we're sitting in your offices when I came in here to set up the equipment you and I couldn't figure out if we had ever met in person some more now think about that people that's really powerful that means we've had enough interaction need and I on other platforms and on calls

and things where we feel like we know each other and but we this is actually first time we met in person it's a perfect example of what you just rattled off if you could not have gone online and check me out listen to the podcast look at my LinkedIn profile you wouldn't have felt that way when I walked in the room and vice versa I checked you out on LinkedIn I knew your background you're from the industry right which automatically gives me a high trust

relationship with you but today is the first time we met in person it's a perfect example what you just rattled off I believe it's it's extremely important today to define who you are as a company and as a person as an entity to everyone else because you're you're broadcasting something whether you like it or not even if you're not broadcasting anything you're now broadcasting you're now but it's that thing about you know first impressions

like you don't get to make that you know that first impression twice and it's a little bit it's a little bit like that if when you look at somebody on a screen or whether you meet that person face-to-face you're sending you're sending something to them you're you know and whether it's you know that I feel like we know when people are trying to mold themselves to us right so we're always reading you whether we're reading you on screen or whether we're

reading you in person and I tell my team that like NES has such a good global brand awareness so they've done their part right in that regard people people know that for the most part we've built a huge online community for our candidates you know they we've got our own YouTube channels all this good stuff that is so important but then what to what are you saying to back up the good brand name that we have what are you saying as a person when you walk in

the door carrying the NES brand because there's two separate things that people are looking at you from yeah so this brings up a good question because we're getting close to wind down the show we're gonna have to come back and have another conversation need this is great but all right so I think we've all agreed we've all established how important it is to have your personal brand what about the companies that say I don't want my employees to have a

personal brand because it may be different than our corporate brand well I'll let you in the oil and gas space we know who these companies are right there they're the major players yeah and they're and they have a brand to protect that's you know shareholder value they they want to ensure that whether you're small you don't even it doesn't even just have to be massive it's it's all sizes right we know them all they and I think it hurts them and I

think ultimately you actually cannot control people from creating a personal brand right just like Matt said like even if you don't have a presence that actually creates an opinion so I think you've got to do it you've got to do it carefully I think also it's hard how do you hire somebody that puts out a personal brand image that is not in line and how do you control that I don't really know unless it's completely you know there's some sort of legality

that's a very hard hard thing to control so let me give you a real example that I love I use this all the time but the chief marketing officer years ago got in a fight internally with their legal head counsel he wanted to open up the firewall so his their employees all over the world could use all social while they work Facebook Twitter Instagram everything and the legal counsel said no it's too big a risk because they're a public company and the CEO cited with

the chief marketing officer and they open up the firewall and they had some mistakes they had employees post things they shouldn't but you know what it did it increased their ability to recruit talent almost double why because then people could see what it was really like to work for the company versus what nothing gets marking but what marketing pushed out from an HR point of view so in the bigger scheme of things even though they had some mistakes and there

was some damage to their brand overall it actually helped them and I think in today's world especially if you're looking at to recruit and retain talent that if you don't let your employees have their personal brand association there you work I think you're actually hurting your ability to recruit talent if nothing else yeah and then I think it probably comes back to like you're trying to hire the best people right I mean that's that's literally what NES

does and so it goes back to sometimes you're gonna get it wrong and you're gonna hire somebody that doesn't fit him with with that brand and you know every that's just that's just business that's life I don't actually know that you can stop people and you can't stop them we've all seen people post things regardless of who they work for or what position they have I think company culture is so important to communicate like so there's a certain amount of

time that has to go by if you play somebody right for it to stick well they they got to like the place it's got to be a culture fit so I think it's really comes down to alignment you got to figure out who are the type of people you want to work for your company and then if it's in alignment with your core values like it's gonna be reflective of that and I'm even seeing this kind of separation right of maybe new college graduates and they have their Facebook

like tightened up and then they have their LinkedIn profile every all information out there it's merging like you're one entity whether it's Facebook or LinkedIn and you need that authenticity and congruency now there's certain companies they're like hey if you don't like working here like we'll give you X amount like we want you gone immediately we want to you know eject that from the culture that we have that we're trying to retain I think it's

something over 12 people or maybe it's between 12 and 20 people I can't remember the exact number that your culture gets solidified and when you add more people to that it can grow that culture when it's a smaller company it can change that that direction of it and so it depends who you are your size if you're building a group of people if it's a small group there's all kinds of dynamics that go into it but I think you got to let people be people like

they're like I'm going to do this and if you don't like it whatever so you got to take that into consideration will you like that right and so I think alignment is is critically important when you're you're hiring people when you're matching companies when you're running a business as that grows you need to eject the people that don't fit that culture because it goes back to your values yeah and I mean from uh and this is not the side that I'm on right because I

don't know how good I would be at this but for our recruiters they have to be excellent at not just knowing does this candidate fit the job are they qualified it's this culture fit is wild like we there's lots of people here that have worked here for a long time which I think is a great great testament to the culture but when we're placing people in other people's culture that is the that is the almost a deal breaker a lot of the time you can train somebody up

they have the basic you know obviously we do very specialized engineering that's hard that's one part of it it's then understanding the culture so going back to the days you you made me think about it like there's certain mid-tier companies that recruit from certain majors okay and there's a culture flow okay and there were certain companies that went to anadarko and apache back in the day there was certain companies like chevron that went to marathon

like there's a certain kind of it's like colleges too it's a pedigree does that make sense no trying to match this certain like stat oil I remember everybody wanted to go work stat oil they had great benefits it was in Austin like there was certain companies that had certain people knew the candidates where they wanted to go based upon their reputation that the brand put out and the benefits and also who was there there was some

superstars there that had a big personal brand people wanted to work with that person I remember in recruitment I was told by someone we both worked with I'll give a quick shout out to Mike van Gamer anybody that knows Mike out there he would point me a specific people that had a reputation in the industry and say go get them like specifics right so brand

matters I think and culture matters you have to send this episode to your buddy this year's rattle notch thing here unfortunately guys we're actually a little bit past time so we need to wind this thing down if you need help recruiting specialized talent reach out to Nina we'll put a link to her website into her LinkedIn profile on the show notes so people can reach out to her directly or check out what her company's doing

this is usually the point where I say check out our two newsletters I still want you to check out our two newsletters but you don't know this map we sold our newsletters for the rest of this year like like crazy right we also sold our mixers out for the rest of this year so audience thank you for your support you're literally helping us donate money to charity and growth so we appreciate that

there's gonna be some changes with the sales and marketing podcast very soon but it's all positive stuff Matt's not going anywhere but Nina this was great I want to come back like like something like we just scratch the surface we got to get you back on you're such a natural in this podcast thank you for having me seriously this has been fun so remember folks make a difference not a sale thank you

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