How to Define Your Image and Influence in Trade

In this Career mini-series episode, Hammer & Heels (Renee & Julie) unpack one of the most underrated skills in a trade professional’s toolkit — self-branding. Whether you’re defining your personal image or shaping how your department is viewed, your brand determines how others trust, engage, and value your work.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

Who Are You (or Your Department)? – Identify your values, authenticity, and risk profile. How do you show up in your organization and community?
What Do You Do? – Define your scope: import, export, compliance, or operations — and what sets you apart.
Who Do You Work For? – Understand how company size, industry, and complexity influence your brand and the story you tell.
How Do You Operate? – Highlight what makes you passionate and effective. Use AI tools to refine your personal branding statement and showcase your strengths.

Renee and Julie share practical examples, including using AI to craft branding statements that truly capture who you are. Julie’s own example:

“Turning global trade complexity into a strategic advantage — from borders to bottom line.”

Julie’s FIO (Figure It Out)

👉 This week’s action item: Answer the four branding questions for yourself (or your department). Revisit how you and your team are perceived, and refresh your personal or professional brand statement to match where you are today.

Keep the Conversation Going

Join the Trade Geeks Community at Global Training Center and tell Renee & Julie:

Did you go through the four branding questions?
How would you describe your personal or departmental brand?
What’s one thing you’ll change to strengthen that brand?

Credits

Hosts:
Renee Chiuchiarelli – LinkedIn
Julie Parks – LinkedIn

Producer:
Lalo Solorzano – LinkedIn

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Presented by: Global Training Center — providing education, consulting, workshops, and compliance resources for trade professionals.

Connect with Us

Don’t forget to rate, review, and share with your fellow trade geeks!

Want to be on the show or have topic suggestions?
Email us at SimplyTrade@GlobalTrainingCenter.com
DM us on Twitter/X @SimplyTradePod

Machine Operated Script:

Renee Chuichiarelli 00:00

Welcome back to simply trade tips with hammer and heels. Renee and Julie, as always, we’re going to give you a call to action and an FIO. You probably know that by now, right? Figure it out if you’ve been listening to us, so in less than five minutes. That’s our goal. So Jules, we’re on episode three of our career series, managing up. What should we talk about today?

Julie Parks 00:26

Well, I love your thought of managing up. I think that we need to give some folks some tips around how to kind of deal with the upper level management that you’re reporting through. And I think the first point is, mind your communications, right so we know that the top level management wants things a little bit more streamlined, but it also is kind of treat the human the way that they want to be treated. So sometimes there might be a need for more. And we also think the form is important here, right? So if you want your if your manager likes things in PowerPoint, make sure you’re communicating in PowerPoint, etc. Or if a Word document is better for them, or bullets versus paragraphs, I know I have my own challenges with that. Shifting different industries, different leaders require different communication. Renee, what are tips folks, for folks out there trying to communicate with management? What are things they can do to make it better?

Renee Chuichiarelli 01:23

Well, I was at a job. I had to go meet with the CEO, and he wanted to talk about trade, and he said to me, I want you to tell me this in like three words. And I’m like, Are you kidding me? You know, as you guys know, I can talk talking. You’re off of anybody. And I thought, you know, he would ask me very complex questions, and he literally wanted me to talk to him back in three words. So I mean, that’s a little crazy, but that happens. So the moral of the story is, learn their comms preference. Do they want, all you know, verbal in three words or less? Do they like Julie said? Do they want PowerPoint? So I think your point on there, on learning their communication style is key,

Julie Parks 02:01

yes. And I found too, that if you write out your big paragraph, Renee, if you write out your big paragraph, sometimes you summarizing your big paragraph is is the way to go, and maybe even getting a peer to read that document before you send it off is a good

Renee Chuichiarelli 02:16

thing. Yeah, that’s a good point. And I, I find that the higher I would go up in an organization, the more simplification that I tended have to do, because they have less time, right? That’s that’s just my humble opinion. But you know, again, you’ve got to learn the organization

Julie Parks 02:35

All right. So it’s not all about communications. Renee, I think we need to talk to some folks about visibility. How do you get yourself some more visibility? What do you do? And I think in our previous episode, we did cover some of the aspects of mentorship, so you want to make sure that you’re reaching out to get that mentor. But what are some ideas on how folks can get some more visibility? I mean, I know with tariffs, it’s a little bit easier today, but what are some thoughts,

Renee Chuichiarelli 02:59

yeah, I mean, how do you get yourself in the boardroom? Well, you know, one of our big tips is to have this committee right? Create a task force, or a customs committee or council, whatever you want to call it in your organization. And maybe you’re volunteering for working groups or writing this, you know, these trait tariff chaos communications, and maybe you’re volunteering for delivering these presentations. Get yourself in front of people, you know, take risk, get out there.

Julie Parks 03:27

And we love here. Y’all, you need to be curious, right? So if you don’t know a lot about the finance function or a lot about what’s on their plate, ask some questions. That helps get you more visible and get you more understanding as well. So we’re going to communicate, we’re going to be a little bit more visible, and I think we need to get our proposals locked in. So what are the cool things that you wanted to do? How are you communicating those things, the problems in your area and the solutions that you’d like to pursue? Ray, how have you done strategic proposals in the past, and how do you think about them?

Renee Chuichiarelli 04:03

Well, I think they’re to your point. You, you, I think you taught this to me, the triangle method, right? Scope, money and time and so strategically, you have to again, we’ll go back to balancing the scale from our previous episode. How do you balance the scale with your scope and money and time. Can you? Can you strategically introduce these proposals, say for automation, that was really big for us. And how do you? How do you make sure that proposal gets accepted?

Julie Parks 04:32

Right? We think we need you guys to FiO in the area of asking for what you need roll your chair back. Think about the things that you wanted to get done forevermore, right? And we covered this in one of the tariff episodes, to not waste a good crisis, but we want you to think about the one thing that you’d like to change and try to employ some of these techniques. How do you communicate your the issue? How do you gain more visibility on the topic? Garner some support from your stakeholders and move into those actual an actual proposal.

Renee Chuichiarelli 05:06

Oh, that awesome tips. Thank you. And again, get to our community. Let us know how you’re doing, and thanks for listening to our simply trade tips. Thanks, Julie, great advice. See you next time you I’m.