Karn Malhotra: Founder personal brand as agency mirror

Pauline Bertry 0:13

Hi Karen, how are you?

Karn Malhotra 0:14

Hi, I'm good Pauline. Good to be here. Good to see you.

Pauline Bertry 0:17

Thank you so much. Good to see you as well. Welcome to the den.

Karn Malhotra 0:21

Thank you. It's exciting to be here. I'm so excited to see what you've been cooking with Polar Bear for a little while. I'm very fortunate to be part of the journey as well.

Pauline Bertry 0:30

Thank you so much. Amazing. So let me give you the sandbag right away. Tell us a little bit about your story, yourself, what brought you here and what you do today.

Karn Malhotra 0:42

Sure. So my story starts within 2026. My entrepreneurial journey actually started in 2004. That's when I decided to first, I was freelancing in the last year of college. you know, in a design school, you typically have the graduating show and 70 % of my graduating show was all freelance work. So that actually,

Pauline Bertry 1:03

Yeah.

Karn Malhotra 1:04

that led me to start my first company, which is a a branding and design firm. worked with many, many Indian, large Indian and global brands, primarily as a B2B brand strategy and positioning company. ran that for about 17 years. And then I had a little bit of an overlap with the next thing that I was doing because running a service business, at least for me, after a point, I was getting a little bit bored. I, but a lot of our work had been in the B2B marketing space. And as you know,

Pauline Bertry 1:20

Yeah, of course.

Karn Malhotra 1:35

B2B brand communication is all about consistency and trust building. And we've done a significant amount of work with brand guidelines. And I noticed that the clients that we were working with, they were constantly dealing with this issue of inconsistency in the brand. You create a brand book, and then by the time it gets implemented, the first one or two campaigns itself, there's inconsistencies that start showing up. And so I took that insight and say, the core thought was how is it that you can automate creativity? Now we're in 2026, know, and that's a, some would say it's a solved problem. Some would say it's a very contentious statement or question to think about. But I'm talking about 2015, you know, 2016. So about 10 years ago.

Pauline Bertry 2:16

Good. Okay.

Karn Malhotra 2:26

And at that time, the idea of automating creativity. So If you have a brand book, you have a set number of brand guidelines, know, colors, fonts, et cetera, et cetera. How is it that you can create from one piece of communication, 200 pieces, you know, like that. And that was my first exposure to AI building a tech product myself. So suddenly from being a project manager, let's say, or a business director or creative director for a

Pauline Bertry 2:33

Okay. .

Karn Malhotra 2:56

brand design firm, suddenly I was a product lead for my own product. And we did that for a number of years. Got a lot of, in both the brand design firm and with the product, got a lot of acclaim from a lot of public and press and the product was looking to raise money. But cumulatively, I took too long to build the product in the avatar that it had to get to. So I eventually moved on from that. Post that, I was always

Pauline Bertry 3:06

I'm sorry.

Karn Malhotra 3:23

And by this time I've already had a career of 18 19 years, right? So And it was a tech talent marketplace. He'd been watching what I was doing with building the narrative and the brand story with outline and the work that I've done with exit you know, I'm actually curious to work on the client side. He said, maybe you want to join us, you know, and then I, I did that. happened very organically. And I worked with talent 500 as the head of marketing for a year. I decided to, you know, then move on and I went. just on a holiday, to meet my brother and his newborn baby in London. And that was in 22. And I literally, left the country having left one company and I came back to the country having joined another company. So on the travels, I ended up meeting the founder of Neol. And at that point in time, they were a tech creative talent marketplace. And because it was a marketplace idea, I had that experience. seemed like a fit. And I was actively involved with them for a year and a half, nearly two years. And then the, you know, the while honesty, the working for other people, the money is great. and you know, when you realize that you've been an

Pauline Bertry 4:54

Thanks for watching.

Karn Malhotra 5:02

entrepreneur for a very long time, It's always Which, I won't do this for myself because this is my baby. And this is something that I'm sure you know really well right now, right? You're making those trade-offs actively on a day-to-day basis.

Pauline Bertry 5:13

Yeah.

Karn Malhotra 5:15

So, but then when I worked on the client side, said, listen, what is my time worth? And, you know, I knew what it was worth, but the time, you know, somebody else owned my time. So I decided to come back into entrepreneurship and... That brings me to where I am today, which is now building something called Humanly Brands, which is, in a nutshell, what I was doing with, I started my career in doing for companies, building brands for companies. Now I'm building brands for people, so building people brands. So that's what Humanly Brands does. We help tech founders and driven senior individuals who had a corporate career like yourself. and who are now path to help navigate this world of brand building for individuals. So that's what I'm doing. And yeah, let me stop there.

Pauline Bertry 6:03

Very nice, very nice. It's a super interesting journey. But following up on the personal branding, so could you walk me a little bit around like what is it for you and why would it matter for a person running an agency or a creative studio, like from your experience, how does this... come together. So what it is and why this matters.

Karn Malhotra 6:30

Sure. So personal branding really is about helping make clear to individuals who you are, what you do, how you can help them, but in a way where you don't always have to state that every single time you meet someone. Quite often what happens with, especially with creative individuals, because I've been in that space for so long, very often it is about the work. You want to do the work, you want to create amazing work, and you want to let the work speak for itself. And very often, if an agency owner, because I've met so many of them who don't really lean into building their narrative arc or their hero's journey, they've had an amazing hero's journey, they just don't talk about it. They haven't systematically talked about it over time. And in not doing that, what ends up happening is that you end up going into a room of fresh every time and saying, Hey, this is who I am. This is what I do. Uh, this is what I've done for other people. And imagine if you're doing that every single time, when you go into a new room, uh, it's a, you're, you're losing energy. You, you know, you start, I think as people get older and there's something I've become very conscious of, it's not about the number of hours you have in the day. It's the energy per hour that you have. Right. So how is it that you want to optimize your energy? so therefore also that way and your personal narrative in that similar context, where how is it that I can say this once or twice and it can help create a ripple effect? Now, to do that, you then have to create a system, right? And that's something I, you I know that you're doing fantastically. So the idea of how is it that I can... frame my own individual narrative in a way where I identify what creates resonance. then once I'm putting, I have clarity on that core thing that will create resonance and I'm sharpening that signal, then it can send out that consistent signal. It's like you throw a pebble in the water and you see ripples out. So you've thrown that pebble only once and it's creating those ripples out. So personal branding really is about how is it that I can have clarity around that in a way that those ripples happened for me. And that could happen through people that I've worked with, people that I partner with, people within my organization. Quite often what I think creative entrepreneurs, agency owners, they end up being the default business director as well, right? Especially if it's a one person, two person agency, you know, with 15, 20 other people.

Pauline Bertry 8:47

Okay.

Karn Malhotra 9:10

They're the ones who are going out and meeting people and having to network and all of that. But they don't do it consistently well enough on digital platforms. And today, when everything is AI generated even more and more, it's so important to own your human narrative.

Pauline Bertry 9:26

I like what you are saying around the human narrative because that's been my personal challenge as well, like how to find something I'm excited to share. And there is one... area where I would love to go a bit deeper here. So there are a lot of people talking about personal branding online, offline, and I think it's kind of it's becoming a bit of a topic that is a must have for almost everyone who want to have a certain presence. And I think what I keep hearing is two different types of narratives around this. There are people who are talking about building personal brand. So assuming that you have a very clear audience, you kind of publish what the audience wants to see. So seeing yourself a little bit as a product that you are shaping. And then there is another school of thought, which is much more around discovering your personal brand. where the assumption is that you as a product exist as you are and you are amazing the way you are. And then you kind of look for a way to put the communication out there and almost find the audience that would resonate with you as a product. So there is one which is around like actively building. There is another one which is around kind of progressive discovery. What's your view on that?

Karn Malhotra 11:04

That's a great question. think if I look at my own self and how I've sort of evolved over time, I used to be a go with the flow kind of guy for a very long time. But then you sort of realize that going with the flow is great. To a certain point, I would say that going with the flow also, sometimes maybe doesn't. You could be not allowing yourself to see the opportunities that might open up to you if you had the option of structure as well. Let me draw

Pauline Bertry 11:33

Okay.

Karn Malhotra 11:41

a different kind of analogy. I know that you've played sport. You run a lot, right? You like running?

Pauline Bertry 11:49

Surfing

Karn Malhotra 11:51

Surfing, right? OK, great. Great analogy. Because you're also talking about going with the flow and surfing the wave, right?

Pauline Bertry 11:57

Yeah, surfing and snowboarding, so always with the flow.

Karn Malhotra 12:01

Always the flow, exactly. But if you look at that, that's a great example. You couldn't have got to the point of a flow state or going with the flow if you didn't initially have the structure. It's

Pauline Bertry 12:14

Mm-hmm.

Karn Malhotra 12:16

like having the structure in place. And it's a skill. That's what I would invite people to think of who are maybe looking at, OK, should I be doing this thing around building a personal brand? A lot of people are like, why do I want to put myself out there? Quite honestly, the irony of this whole thing is,

Pauline Bertry 12:32

Thank

Karn Malhotra 12:32

two, three years ago, I was like, you know what? I would love to have a very private personality, not really put myself out there.

Pauline Bertry 12:37

Thank

Karn Malhotra 12:39

Today, I find myself in the opposite end, where I'm having to put myself out there and do the same for other people. So I think God has or a higher force has a plan for you. And that's where maybe the idea of where a lot of people think, OK, there is a higher force in play. Let me just sort of go with the flow. I do feel that, for example,

Pauline Bertry 12:56

Thank

Karn Malhotra 12:58

if you want to get to the point of surfing those waves or snowboarding, physical things like your physical structure, let's say your lower body structure needs to be able to handle some of that navigation that you do, which means that you need to maybe strengthen your muscles. And if you want to be surfing for an hour, two hours, you're not going to do it on day one.

Pauline Bertry 13:18

Okay. It's

Karn Malhotra 13:21

You're going to start with the first five minutes, maybe the first minute, first 30 seconds. You know, so it's a progressive, so watch. And did you get to a point where you're not bound by those rules? You can find your own true expression. So I think personal branding is, is a similar kind of approach where I would invite people to sort of just like company brands

Pauline Bertry 13:21

special.

Karn Malhotra 13:42

can be creating a website. You can be putting out a social posts. you can be putting our job posts, et cetera.

Pauline Bertry 13:49

that's

Karn Malhotra 13:50

but more often than not, especially today where, let's say on LinkedIn, 70 % plus, or the fastest growing audience on LinkedIn is the Gen Z category, people who are below 25 or thereabouts.

Pauline Bertry 13:51

interesting.

Karn Malhotra 14:04

And they make 70 % of their decisions before any kind of first contact, before any kind of call, before doing anything at all. Now you contrast that with people who were just like the previous generation, millennials, who were used to going to a website, checking out a form, checking out some stuff, maybe setting up a call, doing discoveries, cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now the fact is that the fundamental decision-making process has changed. So if you just look at if you want to bring in more business, you want to do more discovery, having clarity on a structured brand narrative for a company. Let's put personal brand aside for a minute. For a company, if you have great clarity on that, usually it has two clear advantages. You will have, you should cumulatively over a period of time see the sales cycle time reduce. You should potentially have clarity on more leads potentially coming in and you will have quality of people applying to you that should become clearer, know, become sharper, right? So you see these around sales and quality of people applying. The same thing applies to people as well. In today's day, especially where people want to know, okay, I want to join this polar bear. They're doing some interesting things. They've created this, uh, I found this guy, and he was on, on Twitter. And it seems like this virtual guy, you know, polar bear tweeting out there. Who is the person that put all this together? So then they go and they look at Pauline and say, Pauline has got such an interesting, you know, perspective on stuff. That's how people look at it today. They want to know who they want to work with. And I think, therefore, it's important for us to rewire what our expectations are and, therefore, embrace what the opportunity is.

Pauline Bertry 15:54

Interesting, but now that we started talking about Like personal brand and company brand. think you, you said one thing that kind of resonated a lot with me. I more and more as we see new companies coming into the market, they are becoming founder led brands. So I think every second startup in there, if not every single one, it's a founder led brand. similar with the digital studios consulting boutique. So in the beginning, the founder is the brand because they are doing it in person, they are doing it online. And I'm curious from your experience kind of being on both sides of the table, like running personal brands and running also company brands, at which point of time should they become separate? So at which point of time a company should start having its own meaningful presence. So of course, when they create a company, they will likely have a logo, they will likely have a webpage, a website, et cetera. But at which point does a company becoming an entity on its own with its own voice separate from... the founders voice and the founders communication.

Karn Malhotra 17:20

Great question. And I think that leans directly into the work that you're doing, which is just about culture. Because if the founder is putting out a certain kind of narrative, they are the flag bearer or the torchbearer of whatever culture is out there that they want to create. And cumulatively, the way I see it today is that, let's say, if there is you, Pauline, and there is Unka, and then there is your co-founder, and then there are three other people like that. Some are virtual, some are real, but everyone is putting out a certain kind of perspective online. Now, this is cumulatively already creating a perception about the company. And the more you are able to gauge what is the real-time reactions

Pauline Bertry 18:06

you

Karn Malhotra 18:07

of people to those mini narratives that are going out. For example, you're putting out Unka on a regular basis. And he has a really interesting humorous take, short humorous take on different things. maybe you might, which is an extension of things that you're thinking, right?

Pauline Bertry 18:21

Yeah.

Karn Malhotra 18:22

I think maybe you might find over time that hey, you know what the number of followers who are following on Twitter are primarily people who are 22 23, maybe youngest even, you know, so

Pauline Bertry 18:36

Umka is on LinkedIn now, by the way.

Karn Malhotra 18:38

Yeah, so on LinkedIn and on Twitter and other places as well. But the way he's communicating, it appeals to this younger audience.

Pauline Bertry 18:44

Yeah.

Karn Malhotra 18:45

And so to answer your question, the way I would look at it is today, it's not a bad idea to have just a simple, if you're looking to create a company brand today, have a very simple website. I have a one page thing, have some hygiene things in place. But let's say on your social presence, instead of creating separate posts for the company, constantly keep reposting stuff from all the people

Pauline Bertry 19:10

Hmm

Karn Malhotra 19:13

onto the company page. The ones that are resonating the most on the individual pages, post them onto the company page. Because then that will give people a sense of what is the true culture of this company. What is the true narrative of this company? And I think if it's a new company, you take that approach, in three to six months, if you were to take all that data and just create it as use it as a data source and put it into an AI framework where you're gauging what is it that people are saying about us as an entity and then use that

Pauline Bertry 19:49

Thank

Karn Malhotra 19:50

as a means to create a version two of your company website, you know, and that's the rate

Pauline Bertry 19:54

Hmm interesting

Karn Malhotra 19:56

that's right. So I think that's the difference between and because if you think about it is This is kind of work that I did a lot of and I really enjoyed because brand strategy and positioning work is essentially a change management conversation. People have a certain perception and you're saying, hey, I want to take you to this new perception. But then there's a bridge. And if you don't do it in a way where you're taking them in that journey, that's when breaks happen. And I think the same kind of opportunity exists today in terms of creating new brands as well. I don't know if that answered your question though, in terms of distinction of company brands and individual brands.

Pauline Bertry 20:28

Yeah, yeah, think you did. I will just kind of play back to make sure I touched it well. So I think what I heard is that at the moment when you start having a presence that is talking about a company in any in direct or indirect way, which goes beyond the founder itself, the perception is already there. So the question is, how do you contain it? And I think in terms of, if I were to kind of answer the question I was asking directly, I think it's less about the number of people or the number of years the company is operating, it's more at the moment when you start having other people beyond the founder contributing to creating this perception of the organization online and offline, because then you cannot control anymore the narrative. So you need to make sure that's... Like the founder brand is getting separated from the company brand and it's becoming its own entity and its own thing.

Karn Malhotra 21:50

Exactly. Because, know, like, like going back to what you're doing with polar bear, Unka might be one facet of maybe Pauline's personality, where there is a little bit of humor that comes through. But Unka speaks only primarily through humor, right? And then

Pauline Bertry 22:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Karn Malhotra 22:05

there's someone that's to speak primarily through that. And that's not Pauline's whole personality. If someone comes to Pauline's personality, you see, okay, you know, she talks really interesting things about systems and about speaking to founders and she has this podcast. And she's doing these bunch of other interesting things. But if I want to get a little bit of humor, then I'll go to Onka. So then over a period of time, as there are more of these touch points, the founder narrative and the rest of it becomes separated. But it's not the rest of it. What originally would be something that would be created by a central brand team is now created by a bunch of different people who are in the organization.

Pauline Bertry 22:42

Yeah.

Karn Malhotra 22:44

and is checked against the resonance of what those perceptions are that outsiders of people outside the organization, what they're engaging with. It's like Google reviews, right? You go to a new place, you're seeing the reviews, what everyone's saying. How many are new? How many are old? How many are high? How many are like made and why? So it's that kind of thing.

Pauline Bertry 23:03

So true. And on Umka, I think I liked how you framed it, that it's a facet of my personality. I think I'm generally not very good at jokes. I'm very much like structure and, you know, how to step by step. So I was very glad that I was able to create someone who can joke instead of me. And I think

Karn Malhotra 23:23

Hahaha

Pauline Bertry 23:24

it is doing it very well because every time he's sending me messages, from my briefing conversations in Telegram or WhatsApp every time I laugh. So I actually laugh at the jokes he's created.

Karn Malhotra 23:38

Yeah, which is amazing and kudos to you for having created a system like that.

Pauline Bertry 23:43

Yeah, he's he isn't it funny Okay, let me let me look at my cheat sheet because there are few other questions. I wanted to ask you Yeah. Going back to the founder brand, and I think you saw those people a lot on the both sides, internally and externally, and you talk to people a lot on how they do things, how they think about things, et cetera. I'm curious to learn other patterns that you've observed. around how someone is showing up publicly and how they work and interact with their teams internally.

Karn Malhotra 24:29

Well, I I would say the ones who best leverage the opportunity of creating a great brand for themselves are the ones who are consistent on both sides, you

Pauline Bertry 24:40

Hmm.

Karn Malhotra 24:41

know, where there is a constant thread in how they show up internally and how they show the narrative that they're building externally. I've worked with founders or founders who worked with me. I've noticed at times where they will say that hey, I want you to drive this. But what they really want is more likes or more follows or, you know, some of it is vanity metrics.

Pauline Bertry 25:03

Mm.

Karn Malhotra 25:04

And I understand if that is what they are looking at, but quite often that isn't communicated at the outset or the importance

Pauline Bertry 25:11

Thank you.

Karn Malhotra 25:12

of that to them personally and why is not communicated at the outset. For me personally, when I work with different founders, et cetera, I'm more interested in figuring out a system. where what you're saying internally and what you're communicating externally, that's consistent.

Pauline Bertry 25:26

Mm-hmm

Karn Malhotra 25:30

Because... And let's relate it back to employees on one side and customers on the other side, and you're in the middle. Because what you're communicating internally to the employees, that's the same experience that they

Pauline Bertry 25:39

Eat.

Karn Malhotra 25:40

will end up creating for the customers when you're not in the conversation, when you're not in the room. If you're treating them not so well, or if there are some challenges internally, while you're having a great relationship with the customer, the employees might not deliver the same thing, know, externally. And then that's what can end up creating challenges with business success or business growth over a period of time. You can create a system also, but if they have not bought into the system, then that system will break, the customer will experience it, you will start feeling pains, then you will come back and becomes a challenge overall. Instead of that, if there is a challenge or there is friction on this side, the ones that I have found that do it really well, embrace a certain degree of vulnerability and transparency and honesty, where they would say, hey, you know what, client? We had a challenge internally, right? And we are looking to have an open conversation with you. And these are our options. And what is it that we can collectively do that's a step ahead, as opposed to saying, this is the problem, this is what happened, this, that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I guess in some ways, I'm also reflecting my own approach. I like approaching things in a way where, OK, this happened, but I want to focus on the next thing, on the solution mindset. And I find that the ones I've seen, the founders, whether agency owner or tech founder or whoever or a consultant building a brand online, the ones who can do that with a certain degree of consistency across, that has a compounding effect. And if you don't, ensure that there is consistency internally externally you miss out on the compounding effect.

Pauline Bertry 27:21

Yeah, and I think it's like it's especially true when it comes to people businesses, I think, because I think when you are building like a digital product or a digital solution, as we were discussing, you have like another brand to hide behind. And if something, if some inconsistency was brought into the picture between the promise and then what actually happened, you can always In most cases, of course, you can navigate it nicely saying, okay, that's something we are still building or we have this in the roadmap, et cetera. But when you have a situation where a founder gives a promise to a client and then the team is not delivering on the same promise or doing completely something in a completely different direction. that's becoming much more difficult because there is no additional brand in the middle to hand behind. You need to be able to own it from both sides. I like it. And you keep talking about systems and how you leverage them to build your personal brand and your personal story. What is, like how do you think about it? What is an advice you would give to someone who is about to start or who is thinking about starting?

Karn Malhotra 28:58

For sure. So I think what ends up happening a lot right now is that firstly, let's assume by default that, hey, I'm working on my own. I'm working on this manufacturing business and I've got a bunch of other people. I know I need to be online on LinkedIn or Twitter or somewhere else. Let me use an AI tool, you know?

Pauline Bertry 29:17

Mm.

Karn Malhotra 29:18

So let me use that and I'll put a little prompt over there and it'll give me something. Before you know it, three months have passed and your entire page looks like it's been written by AI. It doesn't sound like the individual at all. So that I would say, please consider to the people listening to it, that's a major red flag for a couple of reasons. One is that sooner or later, both your employees and your customers will know that you don't talk like that. You don't have that sentence structure. You don't use that kind of cadence. You don't use those kinds of

Pauline Bertry 29:46

Thank you.

Karn Malhotra 29:49

words. When you're sending them an email, you're not putting dashes, the long dashes in the email. Unless that's also AI generated

Pauline Bertry 29:53

Thank you.

Karn Malhotra 29:56

or that kind of thing, right? So there are those kinds of things. What is a way to use AI as a partner

Pauline Bertry 29:59

Okay.

Karn Malhotra 30:06

if you are a busy founder, right? It's something, what I would say is that think of it as, and I'm not advocating for using AI as a therapist.

Pauline Bertry 30:08

Thank

Karn Malhotra 30:15

I'm just drawing that analogy where you are talking to the LLM, know, chat GPT or Claude or whatever it is. If you have an idea, let's say I have an idea for talking about how nature systems, living in nature inherently creates better quality, high performing impact entrepreneurs, right? If you want to be an impact entrepreneur, go and live in a live in nature somewhere as opposed to you living in the city, know, immerse yourself in the space that you want to be in. Okay, so that's an interesting idea. So then what I would say is if you have that core thought and you have the background to talk about that with some conviction, open ShadgpT or open your recorder, just a voice recorder and just have a free flowing conversation. Talk for five, seven, ten minutes, stop that, put that into an LLM, let it and use that as a

Pauline Bertry 31:08

You can't just say,

Karn Malhotra 31:09

basis create a blog post or create a LinkedIn post or a series of tweets. That, I would say, is the simplest system that you can deploy on your own with no hassle.

Pauline Bertry 31:16

So.

Karn Malhotra 31:22

Now, additionally, what is it that you can be doing that over and over and over again? But how do you know over a period of time you're creating a narrative arc for yourself? Now you look at it more from a say a traditional marketing lens where you have say bottom of the funnel, let's say top of the funnel where people are not, they don't really know you. So you're talking a little bit about it. Middle of the funnel, they know something about you and they know a few other competitors. So you're talking from that sort of a comparative lens about the category, cetera. Bottom of the funnel is when they've decided to buy and then you are one of the key people and you you're talking about pricing or some of the other stuff along those lines, right?

Pauline Bertry 31:53

Okay.

Karn Malhotra 32:00

So then that would be an additional level system. But at a very basic level, would say just don't make the LLM something that you're dependent on. Make it dependent on to provide the core thought and then build on it from there.

Pauline Bertry 32:16

I mean, I've been in that trap, so thank you so much for sharing. And I think one, like another follow-up question on this is, I think when you first want to start putting things online and you end up going to chat.jpt or if you're lucky Claude and ask it, like, can you write me a post around X? And yes, you end up having something that does sound completely AI to someone who knows that it's an AI. But to you who is doing this for the very first time, who have never been on LinkedIn for five months scrolling every single post and reading all of the AI generated content, it doesn't sound like this, right? It just sounds like an amazing distinctive piece of content that was just created

Karn Malhotra 33:07

Good.

Pauline Bertry 33:08

out of your head. what are the... Let's assume there are people listening to us who will still try to play with the chat GPT in order to create their first post, et cetera. Can you name a few very, very typical patterns that you see LLMs produce if they don't have a good... input like your voice or your story that you see all over again so that people can think through them and hopefully avoid putting them in their communication.

Karn Malhotra 33:39

For sure. like, and you know, I'll add some and I'm sure in your experience, you'll also know some. So please add to this as well. the more obvious ones are, for example, just the

Pauline Bertry 33:48

Yeah

Karn Malhotra 33:48

dash, right? The long dash that comes. And when you see that in multiple places, people by default assume that, okay, that's AI written. Second is, that was really interesting perspective. But the truth is, it's not this, it's

Pauline Bertry 34:02

Mm-hmm.

Karn Malhotra 34:02

that. There's always this kind of, it's not this, it's that kind of thing, perspective. And that happens multiple times. Even in a LinkedIn post, the full length of a LinkedIn post is

Pauline Bertry 34:14

next

Karn Malhotra 34:14

about 3,000 characters, which is about, 500, 600 words. That happens multiple times. The third thing is a series of short sentences, which might be more than maybe like three words to five or six words maximum. And they just happen.

Pauline Bertry 34:31

Yeah.

Karn Malhotra 34:32

you know, consecutively with each other. Yeah, either straight or it becomes a, you know, a paragraph. But and then you look at it, why do they need to be so many full stops? And, know, in that it could just have been one long sentence. Right. And and the other thing I would say in addition to that is just read it and read it as you would say it to someone. So you've you've read it and you think, OK, it's an interesting piece of communication as an idea that makes sense to me. But now

Pauline Bertry 34:58

Okay.

Karn Malhotra 34:59

look at that and objectively read it in a way where every time there's a full stop pause. Every

Pauline Bertry 35:01

Okay.

Karn Malhotra 35:05

time there's a dash, take a pause. And then just maybe take a recorder, record that, and then listen to yourself. And then you realize, hey, I don't speak that way. But then that's how it's coming across. So these are a couple of things. The other thing I would say is people use like the bold or they italicize certain, what do call,

Pauline Bertry 35:30

sentences.

Karn Malhotra 35:31

words, sentences in it, because they think it brings more emphasis. But then to a viewer that, again, says, you have used an external system to emphasize something, which is that because there isn't enough emphasis already in what you're saying. I'm not saying that people necessarily assume that, but then that is a perception that can get created.

Pauline Bertry 35:44

And so I think that's a great opportunity for me to present a question that's related to a creative philosophy.

Karn Malhotra 35:54

Lastly, everything that I have just said, all these tools, be it Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever, X,

Pauline Bertry 35:56

I hope that you will participate in this and I will get out there and see the value Thank you.

Karn Malhotra 36:05

Substack even, their own AI content generating crawlers have become really good. So you might create that piece of communication and you might put it out, but you will see, oh, it got. 15 impressions, oh, it got 20 impressions. No one saw it. No one interacted with it. Because the LLM inherently tanked your outreach, it didn't show it on anyone's feed because it showed up as a very high score. The likelihood of it being LLM generated showed up at 70%, 80%, 90%. So the platform just didn't show it to anyone. You might think that you posted it, but nobody saw it. So what's the point?

Pauline Bertry 36:48

And by the way, you were talking about the bold words and the Italian words, etc. Same, I've played with it until I learned that actually LinkedIn posts are generally a very good angle if you want to drive traffic to your page. So if someone is Googling something, or talking about something, often Google algorithms, they go and they look through LinkedIn posts. The problem however, is then you use those styled text. It's not showing up as actual letter. It's showing up as symbols to the, the corals and it might actually hurt your reach. So it doesn't mean you shouldn't be using it because I think it's often does bring value because it allows to structure the post. But at the same time, if you use it, you need to make sure you don't use it in the keywords or in the sentences that can allow to get more people to your piece of communication.

Karn Malhotra 37:57

100%. And that's a great point that you made, Depoly. like, till about a year ago, even like six months ago, everyone thought that majority of LLMs, when you do look at, you know, GEO, AEO, et cetera, they were primarily crawling Reddit. But now we're seeing, starting to see a big shift where it's Reddit and LinkedIn, you know, in terms of all the content. which is why all the more reason you should be aware of these kind of details.

Pauline Bertry 38:20

Amazing. Any closing thoughts for agency founders on personal branding?

Karn Malhotra 38:26

Don't be shy and don't assume that your work will speak for itself. We are just in a time where the rate at which AI-generated content is getting out there is just insane. So for example, five years ago, if you looked at something, you looked at a piece of communication on Behance, or you look at the communication even on Google Images. You knew that a large percentage of those would have been created

Pauline Bertry 38:53

Yeah.

Karn Malhotra 38:54

by people. Now you see that a large percentage of those are created by, could have been created by AI, by others, et cetera. So all the more reason, talking about your process, talking about the journey of going there, talking about the difference that someone else's direction made to your career. or how you co-discovered something with a client.

Pauline Bertry 39:19

Thank

Karn Malhotra 39:20

Think of it as writing your book in public.

Pauline Bertry 39:22

Mmm!

Karn Malhotra 39:24

Why do you buy someone's book? Because you, oh, there's such amazing insight in this. And what they're effectively doing is for 5, 10 euro, like 500,000 rupees, they're giving away their knowledge. But on the back of those books, they get keynote conversations, they get consulting gigs, they get so much more. So think of it as the same way. If you think of it as writing

Pauline Bertry 39:46

Thank

Karn Malhotra 39:48

your book in public, the likelihood of more people reaching out to you will automatically increase, but you just have to be consistent with it and think of building an arc over time.

Pauline Bertry 39:57

Sounds great. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Karn Malhotra 40:00

Thank you for giving me fun conversation. Thank you so

Pauline Bertry 40:02

Thank you.

Karn Malhotra 40:03

much for this.

Pauline Bertry 40:05

Bye.