Build An Authentic Personal Brand in 2025 And Beyond (w./ David The Digital Creator)

Elevate your personal brand in 2025 and beyond with insights from David Griffiths, known as 'David, The Digital Creator,' who has amassed over 1.5 million followers across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

What's Covered:

• The journey from obscurity to becoming a digital influencer.
• Simplifying content creation for maximum engagement.
• The role of faith in sustaining a successful online presence.
• Strategies for building and maintaining a large, engaged following.

Tune in to discover the secrets behind building an authentic personal brand in the digital age!

🌟Join David's Quick Win Challenge at  https://quickwinchallenge.com

🤝Connect with David on TikTok

📌Social media apps mentioned in episode:
Descript https://get.descript.com/5xwtd58uh13t 

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💛 Thank you for listening in! 😀

P.S. Don’t forget to leave a review! Much appreciated.

Transcript

David Griffiths: [00:00:00] it's a terrible mistake to not have a personal brand Because that's the authentic connection that people crave. A lot of the bigger companies have manufactured that. If they have a spokesperson, if they hire models, actors, they manufacture it. some of the businesses that we think of have done their branding with large amounts of resources that most of us don't have really just manufacturing what would innately happen if you had an authentic personal brand. 

It's time to reinvent.

Priscilla Shumba: Welcome to the lessons of entrepreneurship, the journey of reinvention. I promised you special people and today is no different. I've got David Griffiths here with me.

David, you have such a great story. David is a celebrated gospel musician and an educator.

[00:01:00] He is a former university professor of music and has reinvented himself. As David, the digital creator with over 1. 5 million followers across social media. What I love even more about this is that you are like the underdog. People didn't see you coming. So to all the listeners who are feeling a little bit like an underdog.

I'm so excited and so honored to have David here. David, please, I'll let you introduce yourself and,

we'll go from there.

David Griffiths: I like to think of myself as someone who is you. had a coach.

She was talking to me,

in a group setting saying,

David,

honestly speaking, you're not who we would think would be,

like an influencer,

And the way she said it, I know she was just being.

honest and sincere, but

Hurt my feelings a little bit.

Does that mean 

my hair's not looking right

I don't have big enough muscles. What's that mean? But I think. The idea that we have often is that the influencer is a movie star and [00:02:00] they have perfect abs

They wear the latest fashion and they live in a mansion and they drive the most expensive cars and have jewels and whatnot.

No, there are people who need your authentic truth and your authentic value. And you just have to make sure that you are clear on who you are. Who it is that you wish to serve. And as you are consistent, you will learn that the algorithm will actually help you find people who need the value that you have.

You don't have to be a fake celebrity. You can just be your authentic self and be able to be discovered.

Priscilla Shumba: I think we could end right there.

just replay that over and over again. And I think

you'll get the message. like what you're saying, because,

you meet so many amazing people who have something to share, who, like you say, they have that,

if you're not whoever's popular at that time, then maybe this isn't for [00:03:00] me.

I'm grateful for you share your message and success through becoming a digital content creator. Tell us how you arrived at this because this is not easy. 

David Griffiths: I'm glad to share. I'm especially glad to share because I'm sure there's someone listening right now. who's been discouraged because they know, people tell me I need to be present online. If you're not present online, is that your quote? If you're not present online, you're not present or something like that, right?

People know that it's important to have a digital footprint. There are over 8 billion people in the world and over 5 billion of them are online. So now, because of that, and we're competing globally, you're competing for the attention of your neighbors with people all around the world. So it's like you're competing with the other 4.

9 billion people. And so you have to make sure in the few seconds that you have to get someone's attention that you do it in a way [00:04:00] that is very clear. the truth of who you are and the value that you have for them. So I was a gospel artist and I was visiting these different gurus at different conferences, trying to figure out what's the thing that I need to do.

I'm independent. I'm not with a record label. What is the thing that I need to do on my journey to be successful? And I remember one particular coach

and she was asking me, okay, so when you post on Facebook,

what are the metrics that you're getting? And

I shared and she was like, oh.

Okay. So it's nice that people like it and you having some views, but how many people share it?

I don't know. I don't think that many people share it, but

Could be those other people are just being nice.

I said, oh no! Wait, I thought I was doing okay! But, everybody has a piece of the truth, and hopefully you get a chance that God allows you to put all the pieces together.

So as opposed to me being discouraged andgiving up , based [00:05:00] upon having a couple gurus both

in the space of social media and business, and in the space of the music business, instead,

I became reflective and I actually thought about what is it that I want to do that's the authentic calling that I feel from God.

And then out of that grew other things. So I was on YouTube for over 13 years and I had barely a hundred followers, just like maybe 120 followers.

But what happened is I came to a point, maybe,

some traditions might call it rock bottom where I no longer wanted to be sharing my music.

my marriage failed.

I was depressed. I didn't want to go out.

I was staying home. I picked up photography because I could do that on my own, right? I could go take pictures and go home and I wouldn't have to go out with anybody. And then at the beginning of the pandemic,

one of my high school friends, Jeff Vargas, he [00:06:00] organized this Zoom called

Dudes Chat.

This was like

to encourage each other when we were

all stuck inside during the pandemic. And one of our friends, Kevin, his mother just died. And he said, David,

I'm having a hard time. Would you mind singing a hymn every morning on Facebook to help me get through?

And when he asked me, it wasn't just him asking me, to me, I sensed God saying, I know David, you've been disappointed with how life has gone, but are you going to start 

giving me your gifts again like you used to?

I told Kevin, yes. And as I started sharing a hymn and praying every morning on Facebook, I realized that only Kevin and people who already knew me would be able to be blessed by that.

If I wanted new people to be able to discover me, I'd have to pay money. I didn't have a large budget for advertising to expose people to be praying or playing hymns or giving encouraging words.

And so I started doing some research and I came across a guru named [00:07:00] Gary V or Gary Vaynerchuk. Have you ever heard of him?

Priscilla Shumba: Yes. Yes.

David Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. So Gary V said, TikTok is the best place for business for organic growth TikTok.

I thought that was for dancing girls.

I'm not a girl and I don't dance.

it's not my gifting

so what's he talking about? But I said to myself,

no. Let me trust the expert. So I got myself a coach for that platform and I made a commitment to myself.

I'm going to laser beam focus

and past times in life. And I hope there's someone here who struggles with this. So here's me. I would see the next new thing and I'd go over there.

And then the next new thing. Oh, wait,

no, that must be it. This was cool, but no, this is new. It's brighter. It's more shiny. And I would be distracted and never give anything a chance to actually see what was possible. So in this case, I said, I'm going to have a focus on one platform. I'm going to get one coach [00:08:00] and I'm going to give this all that I've got.

I want to be able to say I gave this all I got. Every day. I'm not just going to post one time. I'm going to post several times.

I'm a teacher,

previously by trade. And so during summer times, I figured I'll be able to post a bunch of times, right? Cause it's summer vacation. My coach said, you should post about eight, nine different things that you're passionate about and let your audience teach you what they want from you.

I posted, I tried to do , something funny or a trend. Eh, not many people responded. I sang. I have a masters in vocal performance. I sang. I got a hundred, sometimes two hundred views. Which is okay, but it wasn't anything viral.

But 

the first thing that happened is, I asked people a question like, Why is Chick fil A so special?

And I showed a little video of me at Chick fil A. And for some reason, that went viral. And that taught me that [00:09:00] people really want to give their opinion. They want to engage with you. And when they engage with you, the algorithm will reward you with more exposure.

the next thing that I did that went viral was,

I got a stand, I put my phone on the stand, I started recording and I came and sat in front of the phone and I said, wait, don't scroll.

Don't quit.

And I explained to the viewer as if I were talking to a best friend, why they shouldn't quit.

And I said it like, I wish someone had said it to me,

and that video went viral.

it got a lot of views

and I was surprised because I didn't know what was so special about that compared to everything else I did.

as I went through the different things that I did,

I also said,

let me go ahead

and pray, do the things I was doing on Facebook. I sang and then had a little thought and then I prayed. And then of course I was doing the other things I just mentioned to you. And when I prayed,

There was an outpouring of response.

More than any other kind of content, other than of course, what I [00:10:00] just told you went viral. And I thought,

how strange.

Maybe there's a lot of people who don't have someone to pray with them. I continued to pray and on a Tik Tok when you get up to a thousand, then you can go live. So when I could go live, then I would play hymns by request.

And so here's another lesson for people to learn. At the time that I'm describing,

the platform of TikTok was promoting the feature of going live.

So when a platform is promoting a feature, you should use it. Because when you use it, they will reward you with extra exposure on your other content.

So when I realized this, I said, Oh, okay. try To go live every day if I can. Sometimes, two times, because I see that when I go live, people are seeing the other,

posts that I just created, and I'm getting,

a few hundred followers. Wow. Okay.

I want you to lead me into what's of the most [00:11:00] value for your audience,

but what happened was, I learned that by Laser beam focusing on one platform, being consistent, and here is my secret sauce.

It's not sexy, but I promise you it works.

You have to study what it is that you're doing.

, as opposed to just pick up my phone. Oh, okay.

let me see what's, oh, this is cool. A dancing monkey. Oh, how nice. 

Oh, who was this?

as opposed to that. I'll go look. Depending on the platform, you know how to do it.

Either the explore page or you look up the hashtag, look up whatever your niche is,

and when you look up your niche, see what's already trending or being successful. Another way that

I've taught this

for several years, but I've also studied. other people who are teaching it.

and one way that they say it is find four or five people who are doing what it is you'd like to do, and then go to their platforms and look at their highest performing [00:12:00] videos, grab them,

Take the link and get it as a video you can download and then study their top performing videos.

The part that I add is look at what are their low performing videos. and make sure whatever your hypothesis is about what's performing high, that you check and make sure that there aren't low performing videos that are doing the same thing. Then you have to change your hypothesis, right?

But after doing that, then you'll be able to come up with several ideas of content that you could create.

You can take the same structure that they're using, but add your personality, your flavor, your twist, your voice.

And then,

see how it performs. At the end of a week,

look at your analytics, look at your content, study what did well, come up with a thesis, an idea,

why did it do well?

And then, double down on what works.

Test out your thesis. [00:13:00] Literally, this little process here, it's what people use for advertising, a variation of it, it's what people use for content creation.

I promise you, if you are faithful in this process, you will see results.

Yeah.

Priscilla Shumba: you covered so many things. I think someone who's listening would be taking notes you learned the platform you allowed yourself to develop with the learnings you're looking at the feedback.

it's such an important thing and I like that you said you chose one platform.

You quickly found a coach and you did what the coach told you to do.

David Griffiths: Sometimes, honestly, it's just a matter of being humble enough to realize,

if someone's already done probably can help you do it a lot faster than you doing it on your own.

that's one reason I have an offer called the Quick Wins Challenge. And I won't have this offer for a very long time, but I have it right now.

It's where I offer people five mini sessions with me for us to get them some quick wins. First of all,

it's [00:14:00] not every day that someone who has a successful online business actually offers you one on one sessions. Quick Wins Challenge even if there are many sessions, but usually it's one to many.

I have,

a community content creating academy and there are different levels of one to many, but I thought based upon my own experience, it's important at some point for you to have a one on one session. And even if

they could be short, but if you could have

a series of one on one sessions.

And then it's on you in order to get to the next thing for you to take action on what you receive. It could give you the clarity that you need and the actual personal application to make the difference on you actually getting to the next level.

that I think is critical. And so as we're talking, I literally, what I'm doing is I'm trying to share with you whether you pay me or someone else what people pay thousands of dollars for The thing is if you do what i'm saying, it will work at some point [00:15:00] You'll want to figure out another problem and then If you remember that david griffith shared something with you That worked and you'll come to me and be like, okay david You gave me your free stuff and it was fire.

All right Let me join your community because I have these other problems. I need to solve honestly That's it. A lot of people don't really share good stuff when they're on podcasts

or When they're sharing on social media,

they Go to chat GPT and they generate some generic content and it can work a little bit, but it's the personalized stories, it's the insights that you get from actually going through the fire that actually are gold in my estimation.

And so I'm happy to be able to share those.

Priscilla Shumba: Our audience of entrepreneurs, some of them are coaches and consultants. What you're saying 

sharing a way that someone can get a quick win, and then they remember you,

and I like that you used video. Have a special love for video as well, but a lot of people who are coaches and consultants don't want to do that.

But then

how do people experience you [00:16:00] to know that they would like to have that one on one coaching session with you from something you wrote but a lot of people have that mindset and if you could speak

to how people can overcome that sort of

Oh,

I don't look good in video or

I'm no Gary Vee

that imposter syndrome that takes over and robs people essentially of connecting with the people they need to.

David Griffiths: I have a friend, his name,

Growth Coach Danny. He shared something with me that, at the time, I didn't really understand the value of.

He spent a lot of time studying mindset. And I heard this as a buzzword, but I just thought, Okay, it's like a thing that you say,

you have to change your mindset.

But,

it really isn't gonna matter to me.

But then what I realized is this.

What you think determines how you feel.

And if you don't

rigorously guard what you think,

then you'll end up having all of the value to share in the world, but not [00:17:00] emotionally being in the right place to be able to share it with others, and certainly not to be able to sell it.

If you're on a sales call, you have to have a confidence to know that you can get results for people. You have to have a confidence in the value that you've experienced that you're now able to share. Because if you don't,

and you're trying to share the value with someone else, they can hear something off and then they're not going to want to go with you.

They're going to be like, okay, either they're lying or,

if they're this uncertain, then I'm not certain that they'll be able to help me. So

that's something to consider. The mindset can be altered by the things that you feed your mind. And so people like him and another mentor of mine, Kristen Guillory,

we'll talk about the importance of self love, self affirmation,

self care.

What is it that you say to yourself?

Literally I had,

a coach friend recommend to me, David, [00:18:00] Spend some time talking to yourself in the mirror every day.

Remind yourself,

that you love yourself. Remind yourself,

if God says I'm fearfully and wonderfully made,

remind yourself of that.

Actually say it, actually look at yourself and say it to yourself.

these things are helpful because of what I said, right? Imagine that every morning you got

that warm hug, that warm affirmation that you needed so that you're like, let's go. All right, let's do this, right?

sometimes you're going to be the one that's going to give it to yourself.

That's the reality that I needed to mature to a level of understanding. And so someone like a growth coach, Danny would give affirmations that, would be something that we would listen to every day. There are different ways to do it. I Have chat GPT on my,

phone. And so I actually wrote out in a Google doc, 10 affirmations. And so every day when I'm taking a bath,

my phone will read the affirmations to me. So I'll do [00:19:00] a combination of,

saying things myself, as well as listening to things that I've pre recorded or pre,

written.

Because I need to be reminded of the truth about me. Because there's so much falsehood, so much negativity, that constantly is surrounding you. And part of it, people are using it to get you to buy something, right? They're getting you to feel your pain of lack or low self esteem, so that you'll buy their thing that's supposed to fix that.

So I get it, but for our health, For our sanity, for us to be effective in what we do, it's important that we guard the avenues of the soul and that we really focus on positive affirmations, getting those in our minds.

And that will help you to be ready to get on camera had a lot of clients where they struggle with that.

They're perfectionists. Let me give you two strategies that have worked, one. You don't have to record it in one shot.

Literally, you can record it line by line.

Especially if you [00:20:00] use the concept of jump cuts, where 

you say it like, Hi everyone. Today I want to tell you about

three years ago,

that really hurt my feelings,

So if you're doing jump cuts, then literally, you can say a statement. and stop and then go read. Oh, okay. And then do the next statement. You don't have to have it all memorized. You don't have to do it all at once. And so by using that method, it can be less daunting and less stressful.

So that's one.

Two, have you heard of the software called Descript?

Priscilla Shumba: Yes,

David Griffiths: Okay. So Descript, I had a client and

She came to my studio and she recorded and she did this. , I'm gonna

make up stuff right now. Hi, my name is Sarah. And, hold on. Hi, my name is Sarah and today I'm talking to you about the importance of love. So literally, my eyes went that way and came back. With

the script will make it look like your eyes just stayed there.

It's wild.

that's the second thing. And of course, you can use a [00:21:00] teleprompter if you want to. But I think that those are two techniques that help people who are having anxiety over recording their videos.

Priscilla Shumba: thank you for that.

So much of it is mindset because you have everything and you actually need to do the mindset work to be able to use the everything that you have. , Talk about really how people have the mindset of content creation. 

David Griffiths: Let it be fun.

let it be therapy and let it be fun.

If you look at it as, I have to get it perfect in order to be good enough, then that's not going to be very fun, right? So look at it as we're doing an experiment. We're going to share different things. if I record 10 videos, then it's like an exciting thing.

let's see which one does well. , here's something that people don't,

often think of. What color shirt are you wearing?

In my videos that have gone [00:22:00] viral, 95 percent of them, I'm either wearing gray or black.

Okay.

we have to pay attention to these little details, but if we look at it as a game, I think that's something that the wealthy do, right?

The wealthy look at,

like Myron Golden

I saw you previously reference. Myron, he needs to do something, he makes a new offer. And for him, it's like a game, and it's fun.

I don't longer want to do commercial travel. Oh, okay. So Myron comes up with an offer. Now he's using private jets and people are paying to fly with him.

And so even though he's paying 60, 000 or 50, 000 to fly somewhere, other people are paying him money. So he's making a profit on his trip.

I'm not saying everyone could do that particular illustration, but I think the idea that whatever it is that we do with content creation, it should be authentic. It should be an expression, and then it should be an experiment.

Let's see what different things we can do, [00:23:00] and which ones will resonate more with the people that we want to serve. And then, as we keep experimenting and taking notes, then it almost is like another game that we're playing. And people love playing games on their phone all the time, so I think if you keep it in that atmosphere, it'll be a lot more enjoyable.

Priscilla Shumba: that's a great insight there. Like you said, even with people who do really well in business, they take it as a game.

Make discoveries and it's fun. And you take off that weight of

everything's got to happen a certain way. And

it's got to be perfect and you just have fun on the journey.

We are in an age of personal branding. And brand David Griffiths,

people who are listening, who are like, okay, I get it, David,

I'm trying to do it to make sure that I,

get more leads or improve how I get clients for my business. And I'm really uncomfortable with this personal branding thing. I just want to sell my things. I'm sure you've heard that. Oh, I just want to service my clients. I don't want everybody knowing everything about me all the time.

I'd love for you really to go into that common mistakes in personal branding and sort of [00:24:00] an approach to it that you've seen work.

David Griffiths: I feel as though, ,

people, because of very large brands that have had large budgets to do things, they get a mistaken idea of what branding is.

Branding is when I see Priscilla, what do I think of? That's her brand. 

Do I think of her smile? Do I think of her skin?

Do I think of her hair? Do I think of

her insight, what is it that I think of? That's her brand. Like, when people think of David, the digital creator, do they think of digital creation? Do they think of, oh, that's that guy that, I think he was a musician or a singer, a gospel artist. Or, oh, that's that guy that prays every day. He must really love God a lot or love people. What is that message that people are going to, without you,

Choreographing something in that moment, what is it that's already going to be in people's mind? That's your personal brand. People connect with people.

And so for you,

you're going to be so much better [00:25:00] served by having people connect with the essence of who you are.

Because that's the authentic connection that people crave. A lot of the bigger companies have manufactured that. If they have a spokesperson, if they hire models, actors, they manufacture it. And so when we're going, Oh,

, I don't want me to be out there.

I don't want to do that. I just want to brand my product. You can, and there are ways.

I could recommend people who you might talk to about that, but in this day and age, I think it's a terrible mistake to not have a personal brand Because I think

part of the reason why someone doesn't have it is because of a misunderstanding of what a personal brand is and a misunderstanding of how some of the businesses that we think of have done their branding with large amounts of resources that most of us don't have

is really just manufacturing what would innately happen if you had an authentic personal brand.

Priscilla Shumba: I love it. Thank you so much.[00:26:00]

it's been a great chat, David, and please to the audience, if you can go to PickWinChallenge.

com,

this is an amazing story. And if you're really feeling like you want to push your business to the next level and really get out there and reinvent yourself in a way that you feel comfortable, authentic, it's fun, and you attract the people that you want to serve, do connect with David.

And David. Because I see your piano back there and I'm like, you can't tell us you're a musician and you play things for people and then we're just gonna walk away.

We'll have to follow you online and get some music from you.

And if there's something I didn't ask that I should have or a message you'd like to share with the audience, please.

David Griffiths: For many years, people told me that I

was not marketable. I remember not too long ago seeing one of those people, and I would never rub it into the person's face, but,

they had a very small following compared to what God had blessed me [00:27:00] with.

If I had listened to them, and I had stopped being myself, then we wouldn't have this moment here today. Don't stop being yourself, but instead, get mentorship from someone who's done what you want to do.

And whatever it is that they're teaching you to do that aligns with yourmoral compass s with God, do it.

And be yourself, because when you're authentically yourself, you're going to attract the right kind of people. That you want to serve. That's all.

Priscilla Shumba: like that message.

I know from experience that when you're yourself, you repel the people that you should repel and you attract the people that you should, because the last thing you want especially as entrepreneurs, as business owners, is to work with people who don't value you. You would rather the right people who see you as a person of value. And create a good working relationship. So thank you so much, David Griffiths, please. I'll put the link in the description and you can connect with him on TikTok on [00:28:00] LinkedIn everywhere. David is there

and we'll be blessed by that. Thank you.

David Griffiths: Thank you so much.