Annie [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the whole assistant podcast. Today I have a very special guest, Clara Chukwu. Clara, will you please just introduce yourself and let my audience know a little bit more about you and maybe perhaps the correct pronunciation of your last name, because I'm pretty sure I just screwed it up, and then we'll take it from there.
Clara Chukwu [00:00:18]:
All right? Hi, Annie. A pleasure to meet you. And hi, everyone else listening. My name is Clara Chukubu. So you did a great job. Pronounced.
Annie [00:00:29]:
She had a W in there somewhere, I'm pretty sure.
Clara Chukwu [00:00:32]:
Geez, you did a great job pronouncing that. Yeah. My name is Clara Chuku. I am an executive assistant. Been an executive assistant for about seven years now. And I'm also the founder of Boss behind the Bus, a community of assistants where pretty much just help assistants level up. And our goal is to put the EA career in the spotlight and help people understand what it truly means to be an exec, both from an assistant's perspective and from a founder's perspective. In the last seven years working as an executive assistant, I've grown to really, really love this role.
Clara Chukwu [00:01:12]:
A couple of people say I'm obsessed with the role, and I cannot really blame them because I really love the ride. There's nothing I can do about it. So I'm excited to speak into you today.
Annie [00:01:21]:
So I first discovered Clara when we were on a panel together, and I looked at her socials and her LinkedIn, and the girl is crushing it. Like, Clara, you. You just have this great online presence. Your personal branding is on point. So as of the time of this podcast episode, when it comes out, it will be the last podcast episode for May, and in June, Clara is going to be doing a training inside of Empowered Seat on personal branding. She's already submitted the training to me. I have to tell you guys, I think it is hands down the best training I've ever seen on personal branding for executive assistants and support professionals. And I'm not just saying that because she's trained for me inside of Empower Seat.
Annie [00:02:09]:
I'm saying that because of who Clara is. I just wanted to have her on the podcast, first of all, so that you know about her, you know all the amazing work that she's doing. But also, I feel like Clara is very skilled at positioning herself and also delving in a mindset. So that's another kind of thing that we vibed on as well, was the mindset piece, because it's a piece that's missing a lot from our industry. Yeah, yeah. So, Clara, would you mind just Telling my audience a little bit about your own personal journey with branding and personal branding and why you feel it's so important.
Clara Chukwu [00:02:48]:
By the time I started personal branding, I didn't exactly think about it as personal branding. I just thought I wanted to share things from my own perspective, from how I see things, from how I understand things, from the experiences I had as an exec executive assistant. Right. So I, I didn't tell me personal branding at the time, but over time I got to understand that personal branding really means the intentional efforts you put in shaping how people perceive you professionally. And emphasis on intentional because it's not something that you just do. However it comes to you, you have to be intentional about it. And I also understood that it doesn't just stop at being good at your career. You also have to be visible.
Clara Chukwu [00:03:41]:
Right. So personal branding can also be termed, can also be tied to visibility. And that was when I decided to be a lot more intentional with everything from how I write to how I kind down to even the kind of pictures that I put out on, on. On my socials. Right. And another thing that I would like to say, at least for me and something that I learned in my journey of personal branding is, and this is also something a lot of people have said is you have to be authentic. That's also something that I learned while building my personal brand. You have to be authentic.
Clara Chukwu [00:04:19]:
It does. You don't have to be some sort of thought leader. You just share from what you know, share from your experiences, share from your mistakes, share from. Just be authentic. Just be you. And for me, that's how it really started. And over time, I just continued that way. I became a lot more consistent.
Clara Chukwu [00:04:37]:
And you just grew from there, really.
Annie [00:04:39]:
Yeah. I think the visibility piece is something that we all struggle with as support professionals because most of us really enjoy being the behind the scenes person. And so that's the challenge, right? Like, how do you balance being this amazing administrative professional who's behind the scenes running things and also put yourself out there a bit more to be more visible? I feel like that's the rub for most of us. Like, that's where the discomfort lies for a lot of us. So in your own personal journey, how did you move past that and actually embrace this idea of being more visible?
Clara Chukwu [00:05:25]:
Well, yeah, like you said, for a lot of assistants, at least about 90% of us, we just want to be in the background. Not really. Just because we are so used to it. It makes us really comfortable. It helps us do our job better. And all of those things and that's very understandable. And I've also spoken to a lot of assistants who feel like building a personal brand might kind of distracts them from being an excellent executive assistant. But the truth is you can actually blend both of them.
Clara Chukwu [00:05:55]:
You can blend building a personal brand and being an excellent ex. And I'm not saying this because I've always known. I also learned as I stay building my personal brand, that you can just have a blend and a mix of both of them. And for me, what I did was at the time I started putting out things on LinkedIn in particular, I really just wanted to share. I've not. It's not like I'm some sort of great writer. It's not like I'm an excellent writer or something. I, I really just wanted to share and I didn't think of it of as trying to build visibility.
Clara Chukwu [00:06:32]:
I just thought of it as putting something that might be helpful to someone else from my own experience, just something that would help someone else become better. And that was how it started for me. And over time, at the time I was working with an executive that really, really encouraged that fact that I was not, not exactly teaching, but helping other assistants become better. And I would say, honestly, the encouragement I got from my executive at the time helped me, just pushed me to create some sort of balance. So I know I can still be great doing performing my role as an executive assistant and also building a solid personal brand. So what I don't do is let one interfere with the other. So if I'm, if I have to write or if I have to create some sort of content, I have to do anything about my personal brand. I make sure that it's not exactly within work hours.
Clara Chukwu [00:07:30]:
Of course, I make sure that it, it doesn't affect any of my deliverables. I make sure that it doesn't affect anything that has to do with my executive or the organization. Right. So it's just, you just have to find a way. And the way it worked for me might not be the way it works for someone else. It's just trying to find a balance between everything. And that's just it.
Annie [00:07:51]:
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I also feel like for me, I've gone through a transformation over this last six months to a year with my own personal brand. Prior to that, I had put out really beautifully branded photos that were professionally taken and it was fine. I also brought in somebody to manage my content for my business and discovered that I felt disconnected from the person that I saw online. And that authenticity piece was just missing for me on some level. And I think I had also evolved and shifted with time. And so over the last four months or five months, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna pause putting out a lot of content on LinkedIn because I want what I put out to feel true to who I am now, and I want to speak more and share more of my life. And that was actually prompted by a business coach that I hired last year to work with.
Annie [00:08:55]:
And she's, she's, she's really strong in her personal brand and she puts out a lot of content. But I didn't want to rely on AI for all my content either. I didn't want to have AI regurgitate content that I'd already created and put it back out there. So I'm kind of middle of figuring out my own personal brand. So I do feel like this is an evolution and it's a journey that we all are on if you want to develop a personal brand and making sure that your personal brand is authentic to who you are, are now, and where you're headed and where you're going in the future as well. So I will say that I have, too, been on my own journey with this, and actually watching your training was really helpful for me. I'm like, it brought me back to myself and I'm like, yeah, I loved everything that you said. I loved all your points.
Annie [00:09:45]:
And I, I also appreciate the visibility piece because we can tend to hide. I know we've already touched on it, but authenticity and visibility are big when it comes to personal brand. So thank you for that. I do have another question for you. So how has your personal brand contributed to being perceived differently in your role as an executive assistant?
Clara Chukwu [00:10:11]:
I started being persistent on LinkedIn sometime in 2025, at least 2025, I think January or so. So it's been like a year of being consistent on that thing, consistently sharing my thoughts, everything. And because the executive assistant industry is not, is not one that a lot of people talk about, because people don't, don't we all know how executive assistants are undervalued and all of those things that come with it. So building my personal brand and being a voice in the space has actually attracted, that helped me attract a lot of opportunities, and not just regular opportunities, but opportunities that I can genuinely feel valued. Right? So in the last one year, I worked with a couple of people, including you, Annie. I worked with a lot of people that I, I, I probably wouldn't get the opportunity to work with if I didn't start building my personal brand. Right. So there's that piece of attracting opportunity.
Clara Chukwu [00:11:21]:
There's also the piece of getting a lot more respect in your organization where you work as an executive assistant. Because like I said, most people see the EA role as they undervalued the EA role. They see it as just people carrying out traditional admin tasks. But compared to. So when people see how you write and the kind of content you put out and it just gives them a different perspective and view of you as a person and they begin to see you in a different light, it just attracts a lot more authority, it attracts a lot more values and all of those things. So for me, since the last one year it has given me a lot of opportunities. It has giving me solid authority in my career in the show that I work for. So yeah, that's, that's it.
Annie [00:12:10]:
I love that. I also feel like this touches on there again the mindset and self concept piece because I would imagine also that as you're presented with opportunities, your self concept is challenged and, and you're challenged to grow and then your self concept gets better and then you believe in yourself more and then you're willing to put your out your yourself out there more. It's like this interesting cycle as well with your personal brand which is just so cool and so fun when you think about it. Right?
Clara Chukwu [00:12:43]:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. So, so yeah, because when you start out there's the, there's every tendency to doubt yourself. I'm not saying you start building out your personal brand today and tomorrow you're attracting a lot of opportunities. But then there's just that tendency to, to doubt yourself at some point and just wonder if you're doing a good job. If this is really, if you really should be doing this, it should be consistent. Is it really worth it? Because to be honest, there are times when I'm awake till 2:00am 3:00am Writing and, and writing a whole lot of content. There are times where, you know, talking about balancing being a great exec assistant and building a personal brand, I, I probably look at my executive calendar and I see that it's going to be a whole lot of work in the coming months and I take a whole night to write a month's worth of content.
Clara Chukwu [00:13:36]:
So you can imagine how exhausting it would be. So all of this sacrifices are things that you make because you, you just understand what impact building a personal brand will do for you. And like I said, when you start out it can. You have the tendency to doubt yourself. But then you, you get one opportunity and then you begin to wonder and just think about it, oh, okay, I didn't know I could do this. And then after that, just like you said, the circle just keeps going. You get the next opportunity and the next opportunity and next opportunity and then you just. And then it also forces you to build yourself because the opportunities that you get, that you've probably not been in that position at all at any point, but because you really just have to do it, you just, you, you, you find a way to build yourself, you find a way to grow, you find a way to develop yourself.
Clara Chukwu [00:14:29]:
So those are also things that you experience as you build your personal brand aside getting all of those opportunities, it forces you to develop and build yourself as a person and as an executive assistant.
Annie [00:14:40]:
Yeah, and I love that too because it's also very public. So you're putting yourself out there and you're setting an example for others of what's as well. And that's one thing that I feel very strong about, is being an example of what's possible. If you're feeling disconnected, I'm speaking to my audience here. If you're feeling disconnected and you're feeling like you aren't sure which way's up and down or where you want to take your career, I would honestly encourage you to connect with people like Clara, to follow them, to see what they're up to as well. Because I am so inspired by you. And I'm also really inspired by the personal brand that you've built online and your LinkedIn profile I've got pulled up right now on my other screen. And you are an example of what's possible.
Annie [00:15:31]:
And we need more of that in our industry. And we need more of that in different cultures in our industry and across the board as a whole of women doing really amazing things and who are empowered and who are using their voice and speaking up and advocating for others in our industry. We just need more of that. So I think that that's another thing about personal brand is that when you put yourself out there, it attracts other like minded individuals to you and other people who are trying to do cool things and build cool things and create cool things, especially in an industry that has largely been overlooked. And so all that to say, Clara, I respect you and I'm really excited for where you're headed and I'm really excited to collaborate. I'm really excited that you did this training inside of Empowered Seat. You should all join Empowered Seat to take it. And I'm not just saying that because I think Empowered Seed is amazing.
Annie [00:16:30]:
I do think it's amazing. I'm very biased that way. But also, I am a huge fan of Clara and I'm very excited that she has agreed to do this with him for me. So, Clara, would you please share with people how to connect with you? And I will include all the links down below as well. But share, share with people where to find you, how to connect with you, that sort of thing.
Clara Chukwu [00:16:49]:
Right, yeah. Just like Anya has mentioned, I share a lot on LinkedIn. A lot. I probably answered almost every question you might have in your mind as an executive assistant. Well, maybe at least 90, 80. 80, 90% of it. And of course, I'll keep putting out more things, but you can connect with me on LinkedIn and he's going to put the link for you to follow. But that's.
Clara Chukwu [00:17:18]:
That's really the best place you can connect with me. And there's so much to learn, trust me. There's so much aside learning. There's just so much we can connect on and can just build together. Aside that you can also check community. Boss behind the Bus. That is also a place where you can connect with me and we can go from there.
Annie [00:17:40]:
Yeah. So, Boss behind the Blast or Clara Tuku. So I will add links to all the things below. Thank you so much for joining me today, Clara. It has been such a pleasure to chat with you. And that's all for now.
