The Power of Personal Branding: Ray Hennessey Of Vocatus On How Publicists Shape Influential Leaders
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Trust Yourself. You learn a lot about people when you work in personal branding, and one thing that keeps coming up is that many successful folks suffer from Imposter Syndrome and always fear that they don’t deserve their success. Invariably, they do. It is impossible to earn the trust of others if you haven’t earned the trust of yourself.
In today’s digital-first world, personal branding has emerged as a cornerstone of professional success and influence. Behind many of the most recognized leaders and personalities stands a strategic partnership with skilled publicists who craft and convey their stories, values, and visions to the world. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ray Hennessey.
Ray Hennessey is CEO and Executive Partner of Vocatus, a communications, growth, and marketing company that focuses primarily on financial services and reputation management. Hennessey, who has counseled and advised Fortune 500 and Inc 5000 CEOs and CMOs in marketing, sales, and executive visibility, spent 25 years in media, including leadership roles with CNBC, FOX Business Network, Entrepreneur Magazine, SmartMoney, and Dow Jones. He is the author of the book, Beyond Sorry: How to Own Up, Make Good, and Move Forward After a Crisis.
Thank you for joining us. 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?
I never expected to end up where I am now. My career was in media. I wanted nothing more than to be a newspaper reporter, then got what I thought was my dream job for Dow Jones, which led me to writing a weekly column on the IPO market for The Wall Street Journal. That led me to a regular gig with CNBC on-air, which I didn’t expect. I later got the chance to be on the founding team at the FOX Business Network. It was only later, after a stint at Entrepreneur Magazine, that I switched to public relations and marketing at a firm where I eventually rose to CEO. One of the challenges was making that transition. For years, as a journalist, you tend to write and report based on your biases and worldview. So much of public relations is cutting through those biases to craft the right story for your client. Before getting into public relations, I really didn’t have the respect for the industry that I should have. I was surprised how collaborative and symbiotic it was with journalism. Despite widely held misperceptions, public relations and marketing, just like journalism, are about being right and factual about storytelling. It just comes from a different lens.
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?
I once had a client who was having trouble appearing comfortable on television. She was a smart, successful financial-services executive who was charming, knowledgeable, and on-point in meetings and one-on-one conversations. She innately knew how to connect with audiences. But, when she was on camera, she froze. At the time, I did a lot of media training, based on my own on-air career, but I decided to go beyond traditional training and really dig deeply into why she seemed so uncomfortable. We ended up just talking for about an hour about her own personal and professional journey and about how that journey led her to worry about how she was perceived. Over time, we worked on ways to show more of her own confidence. Today, she is a regular guest on financial media and CEO of her own firm. Best of all, she has become a friend.
How do you navigate the balance between a leader’s authentic self and the public persona you craft for them in their branding strategy?
It’s an interesting question because there shouldn’t be a balance. Your public persona should be your authentic self. If it’s not, people are not going to trust you. They can see through it. I laugh when I see some people on LinkedIn or online preach about the need for more authenticity and then post AI-generated headshots of themselves. We are who we are. When I coach people through a crisis or in building their personal brand, it starts with an examination of who you are. For most people, they have become successful based on who they are. So why change? Work with what you have and embrace who you are. That creates an authentic brand.
What are the most common misconceptions leaders have about personal branding, and how do you address these in your work?
As I just mentioned, leaders sometimes think they have to try to act like someone else to be successful, not realizing that it isn’t an act. One of my pet peeves is seeing this inauthenticity in writing. Some leaders wordsmith everything to death and the result is an incoherent word salad of jargon that no one would ever say and certainly no one wants to read. I am a big fan of preaching the benefits of being direct and being real. Your personal brand is you. You are both the messenger and the message.
In a crisis situation, what steps do you take to protect or rehabilitate the personal brand of a leader?
I love this question because it was the reason I wrote my book, Beyond Sorry. We live in a media culture that revels in tearing people down when they’ve messed up. But, we are a nation that believes in second chances, and that same crowd cheers on a comeback. If you have done something wrong, the first step to reclaiming your reputation is to own your actions. Don’t shrink from responsibility. Show the world you know where you went wrong, and then tell the world what you’re doing to repair the breach of trust you created. Then, do the work and show the work. History and business are full of examples of people who have done bad things or found themselves in awful reputational circumstances and came back better and stronger. In all cases, it was because they were committed to not just being sorry, but to really making amends.
Could you list and briefly explain “5 Things You Need to Know to Shape a Personal Brand” based on your experiences and insights? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
1 . Be Yourself. I know this is a recurring theme here, but it bears repeating. Authenticity is so important, and it is, by definition, something you cannot fake.
2 . Be Consistent. One of things that gets executives in most trouble is when they flip-flop. We see that most with politicians. They believe in something so strongly, and then polling shifts and they suddenly believe something else. Nothing hurts a personal brand more than not projecting consistently what you believe in.
3 . Be Visible. Believe it or not, people come to me for personal branding advice and then say they really don’t want a public profile. I understand that. Some executives want to hone a personal brand for more personal reasons, like to change the perception of their family or, more commonly, to present themselves better internally to employees. Either way, you need to be visible. No personal brand can exist on social media alone. People have to see you and hear from you whenever possible.
4 . Trust Yourself. You learn a lot about people when you work in personal branding, and one thing that keeps coming up is that many successful folks suffer from Imposter Syndrome and always fear that they don’t deserve their success. Invariably, they do. It is impossible to earn the trust of others if you haven’t earned the trust of yourself.
5 . Remember, All Setbacks Are Temporary. Building a personal brand and putting it out to the world demands vulnerability and that’s a tough ask for most people. It gets tougher when I tell them that personal branding often attracts personal attacks. But those attacks don’t matter because history tells us any setback is temporary. You can come back from anything — business failures, divorces, lawsuits, job changes. Life is not linear. You can fix any setback on your own journey, and the people trying to get in the way or tear you down certainly have their own issues they need to deal with. You deal with being you.
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?
For better or worse, our lives are in public view. The biggest consideration for leaders concerned with their personal brand should be that personal brands and professional brands are now one in the same. When someone is caught in a “Karen-style” video that goes viral, not only is their name splashed around social media, but their employer or their company is usually tagged. Personal problems are professional crises. I once knew an executive who was going through an acrimonious divorce and custody fight, which is traditionally kept confidential by courts. But the lawyer from the other side leaked embarrassing financial details to the media, which went viral. Executives should remember that every decision they make could be made public and there are reputational consequences.
How can our readers follow your work?
Our company is Vocatus, and obviously the best way to follow me is on LinkedIn. Also, the book, which deals with how to manage a reputational crisis, is published by Fulton Books.
Website: https://vocatusllc.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ray-hennessey-0605112/
Fulton Books: https://fultonbooks.com/books/?book=beyond-sorry-how-to-own-up-make-good-and-move-forward-after-a-crisis
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, and launched and leads an online leadership development community which can be downloaded for free for iOS and Android.
