How a personal brand is your BATNA, why LinkedIn beats Any Negotiation Tactic and how GenAI is helping you with it.
Want to negotiate better fees? Be considered for more opportunities? Move up the ladder?
You need a better brand!
Yes, you heard me right. The Negotiation Whisperer is telling you that NO negotiation skill, strategy or tactic can beat the power of your personal brand.
Because personal band = BATNA. Aka your insurance for great opportunities outside any current negotiation. It’s easy to hold firm on your fees or ask for that promotion if you know you are in demand.
In my workshops, I always stop at this point and say: Who has a proper LinkedIn profile? Like beyond your name, role and photo. Silence.
Most lawyers have what I call an MVP (Minimum Viable Profile). Foto, Name, Firm, Position.
“But I am not looking for a job right now“, one young lawyer said to me the other day. Face Five.
“Know any good lawyers?”
Let me give you a personal example: I often have friends come to me and say “hey I need a competition lawyer in Europe” or “I need a family lawyer in Singapore” or “a trade expert in India“. I have probably trained dozens of each of those, and seen panels presented by even more.. on every continent. But I couldn’t name one. Because they don’t stand out and haven’t found a way to be memorable.
So next, because I want to help my friends, I head to my LinkedIn, searching my 17k+ connections, most of them lawyers of major firms where I have trained. Again, my keyword search for their requests results nothing.
The Problem
Most of us are:
1) Not memorable when we meet others (“Hi, I am Gernerico, and I am a Senior Associate at Frogg & Bogg”; use any name and firm), and
2) Not crafty in how we present our unique personality/value add/angle to the world in a story they will remember. For example, on LinkedIN.
The Solution: Work on your personal brand
What do people say about you when you are not in the room? What do they know about you? THAT is your personal brand! To be memorable, you need a “hook”. This can be a passion, a characteristic, an unexpected skill or hobby, a mission or cause, a unique point of view, a personal story etc. Anything that gives people a flavor of who you are and what you stand for. Take a hobby, for example.
Example: Diving meets M&A lawyer
I like to do this in class, where I ask lawyers about their angle, eg to start easy, a hobby, and then speak a prompt as a live demo into ChatGPT to see how that hobby might be turned into a catchy personal branding story. Take this former dive master turned M&A lawyer:
Me: “Hi Chatty! Imagine I am a lawyer at (Frogg and Bogg) and I do capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. I used to be an active dive master for a while in my former career. Can you give me 5 creative ideas of how I can merge these two for a unique personal brand?”
Then wait for the magic. Some examples we liked that day:
“Depth matters — in diving, and in deals.
Before law, I was a dive master. Now, I help clients navigate capital markets and M&A — spotting risk below the surface, reading pressure, and steering complex transactions with clarity.
Sometimes I help protect value. Sometimes I help unlock it. Always, I go deeper than the obvious — because that’s where the real issues (and the best solutions) live.”
Not that we are expecting perfection on the first prompt, but HOW much more interesting and memorable has this lawyer just become as you hear her introduce herself on a panel or browse her LinkedIN?
Your personal brand is like your Swiss Army knife: Once you find it, everything flows from there. How you introduce yourself, what you post about, speak about, publish, share.
And it’s never been easier getting creative with it!
TLDR: Nobody remembers you if you tell the same boring facts others tell. Get a hock, tell a story, start building a personal band. That is your BATNA, or power, for negotiating your career and your value.
To your success!
Your Negotiation Whisperer
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