Paula Out of Africa, Part 2: Egypt and What Your Personal Brand Preserves
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Description
Ancient Egypt isn’t just something you read about in a school history book or see in an old Elizabeth Taylor movie. It was a real, thriving civilization filled with people who lived, loved, worked, governed, worshipped, and left behind evidence that they had been there. Millennia later, we still know their stories because someone took the time to document, preserve, and pass them on.
Standing in a papyrus gallery in modern-day Egypt and learning how ancient writings survived for thousands of years made me think differently about personal branding. Your personal brand helps preserve your ideas, your work, and the story of the impact you made. It also gives you the opportunity to shape that story for yourself instead of leaving someone else to define what you are known for.
In Part 2 of my Paula Out of Africa series, I’m taking you through the Egyptian leg of my trip, from Cairo and the Nile to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the pyramids, and the Sphinx. I’m sharing why joy belongs in your personal brand, how your vision can expand before anyone else sees it, and why documenting your expertise matters if you want your work to continue speaking when you are no longer in the room.
If you have ever assumed your work will speak for itself, this episode makes the case for giving it a voice.
Chapters
2:03 – How Paula’s arrival in Egypt was completely different from when she first set foot in Kenya
5:02 – Real joy as a brand asset and credibility as a reward for authentically expressing it
7:24 – How a photo taken on a dock overlooking the Nile expanded Paula’s vision for her brand
8:40 – Highlights from the breathtaking Grand Egyptian Museum tour
10:54 – The importance of owning your story and not letting others define your professional reputation
12:54 – What ancient paper can teach you about showcasing and protecting your expertise (and legacy)
15:31 – A valuable business reminder from vendors hustling outside the pyramids
17:16 – Why building a stronger personal brand might start with leaving your calendar behind
Mentioned In Paula Out of Africa, Part 2: Egypt and What Your Personal Brand Preserves
Paula Out of Africa, Part 1: Kenya, Wonder, and the Brand You’re Becoming
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Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.
PGE Consulting Group LLC empowers individuals and organizations to lead with purpose, presence, and impact. Specializing in leadership development and personal branding, we offer keynotes, custom programming, consulting, and strategic advising—all designed to elevate influence and performance at every level.
Founded and led by Paula Edgar, our work centers on practical strategies that enhance professional development, strengthen workplace culture, and drive meaningful, measurable change.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Paula Edgar: Welcome to Branding Room Only, the podcast where your personal brand gets a front row seat. I'm Paula Edgar and if you're here, it's because you know your brand isn't just about what you do, it's about how people experience you. In each episode, you'll hear stories, strategies, and lessons from leaders and influencers who built their brands and made their mark. And I'll share the tools you need to do the same.
Let's go. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to Branding Room Only. This is episode number two in the Paula Out of Africa series. And if you listened to my last episode, you know that I spent the first part of my trip in Kenya, where I completely fell in love with the Maasai Mara, saw elephants in the wild, I cried under a rainbow and I came home feeling more grounded than I had in a long time. That experience reminded me to slow down, to be present and to make room for wonder. But today I want to take you to the Egypt leg of my trip, because this part of the journey affected me in an entirely different way. If Kenya made me feel connected to nature, Egypt made me feel connected to history, to legacy, to our ancestors. It made me think about the stories that we inherit, the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that we leave behind. And as someone who spends so much of my professional life spending with other people helping them think intentionally about building their personal brand, I left Egypt realizing that branding is not just about visibility. It is a hundred percent also about legacy. I have wanted to visit Egypt for as long as I can remember. I can't tell you exactly where that fascination started, but maybe it was something about learning about ancient Egypt in school or, I don't know, watching things on TV. I'm not sure. Perhaps it was seeing documentaries or reading about it in the Bible, but whatever it was, Egypt has always felt very familiar to me, before I had even set foot there. What's interesting is that my experience arriving in Egypt was completely different from arriving in Kenya. When I landed in Nairobi, I expected this immediate spiritual connection that didn't actually happen until I was standing out on the savannah, surrounded by elephants and other animals.
But Egypt, on the other hand, met me spiritually almost immediately. The airport itself was a fantastic introduction to the country. Like being in Cairo, instead of feeling like another airport where you're just trying to collect your luggage and find transportation, it almost felt like I had walked into a museum. At the Cairo airport, there were sculptures, artwork, artifacts and beautiful architectural details that immediately reminded me that I was entering one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Now, if you know me and y'all do, you know, I studied Museum Anthropology in college, so before I had even gotten to the hotel, I was already smiling, thinking this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. We checked into the Fairmont, which is gorgeous in Cairo and when I walked into my room and opened the curtains, y'all, there it was, the Nile. I stood there for a minute looking out the window. The Nile. Not the Nile from history books, not the Nile from Sunday school, not the Nile from documentaries, the actual Nile. You know, it's funny that certain places exist in your imagination for so many years that when you finally see them in person, your brain almost needs a moment to catch up. And that is exactly how I found myself thinking about the generations of people who had stood near that same river, how many civilizations had depended on it and how many stories I've heard throughout my life that suddenly felt tangible, because now I was looking at the place where they happened. Like, oh my gosh, this is where Moses was found, right?
There is something, for me, incredibly grounding about realizing that history is not abstract, that these places are real and they still exist. And for me standing, looking out over the water, I felt this immediate sense of connection that I had expected in Kenya, but didn't experience until much later. So that first evening when we were in Cairo, we boarded a dinner cruise on the Nile. And I have to tell you, it was one of my favorite nights on the entire trip. You could see the city lights reflecting off the water. And Cairo was like literally buzzing. It's a city, right? It's like... New York, well, nothing's like New York, but it's like, you know, any major city. And there was this, like, juxtaposition between this incredibly modern, vibrant city and also the realization that you're floating on one of the most historically significant rivers in the entire world. My mind kept wondering about history and faith and the countless stories connected to that river. But because you know about me, you know that I can be deeply reflective in one minute and then also ready to dance the next. And that is exactly what happened. So this cruise was like a, you know, dinner cruise with entertainment. And so there were singers and musicians and drummers and belly dancers. So you already know where this is going. There was absolutely no chance I was going to sit politely in my chair all evening, because I never do. I got up and danced with the belly dancer. I got up and danced when the drummer came out. And somewhere in the middle of the dinner, one of the men who was serving at the buffet told me that if I danced, he'd give me more food. And so I was like, challenge accepted. I loved it. I laughed, I danced, and I had an absolute ball. It was so much fun.
And as I was reflecting on that later, I realized that something we don't talk about enough when it comes to personal branding. Joy is also something that belongs as a part of your brand asset, not manufactured joy, not performative happiness, but real actual joy. And it's the kind that comes from fully participating in your life and it resonates. Somewhere along the way, many professionals convince themselves that credibility means always being like serious. And folks spend so much time trying to prove that they're capable that sometimes we accidentally edit out the parts of ourselves that make us memorable. And for me, joy has always been a part of my brand. I love to have fun. People expect me to laugh. People expect me to dance. And people expect me to genuinely enjoy being around other people and I do. It's not something that I've really had to manufacture. It's just simply who I am. So we're out and music starts playing, there is a very good chance that I'm going to get up. If somebody invites me to participate, I'm going to be the one that says yes. And of course, if there's an opportunity to experience a culture, instead of simply observing it, I want to do that. I've realized over the years that these moments don't take away from my professionalism. They actually reinforce it because people are only looking for competent leaders. They're looking for human leaders. They're looking for people who are fully alive and that they can connect with. One of the greatest compliments I receive is when somebody tells me, you're the exact same person on stage that you are off stage. That's intentional, because I don't want to build a personal brand that is not authentic, that is only around performance. I am authentic.
Anyway, one of my favorite pictures that I took that evening coming off the boat wasn't actually on the boat. After dinner, we stopped near the dock where there was a podium that was overlooking the Nile sort of area. And so, of course, I climbed up and struck a speaking pose and, of course, took a picture. And at first, it felt like just taking another fun picture, which you know I love to do. But then when I looked at it later, I realized, I was thinking to myself, look, I've already spoken internationally. So it's not like, I hope someday or wouldn't that be nice, but it was like, I can. And this could also be another place where I can take the stage. So it may not seem like a huge moment to anybody else, but for me, it was a reminder that my brand can expand privately before it expands publicly. And I set an intention to come back to Egypt and speak. So that picture wasn't about me pretending to give a speech, even though I did. It was evidence that my own vision, my goals for myself had gotten bigger. And so I'm looking back at that and I smile. That's how growth happens. And it's not just with a standing ovation, not just with an award or with somebody else's validation, but it's with those moments, where you realize that you start believing something new about yourself. So anyway, the next morning, we boarded a bus to visit what I had been looking forward to almost as much as the pyramids themselves, the Grand Egyptian Museum. And honestly, I don't think I was prepared for what I was about to experience, because I didn't even, I wasn't even familiar with the museum, even though I love museums.
Y'all, the Grand Egyptian Museum is honestly one of the most extraordinary museums I've ever visited. You know, I love museums. Like I said, I studied it in college, so I can happily spend hours reading everything, looking at all the artifacts and probably annoying everybody who I'm traveling with, because I want to stay longer than everybody else. This museum was no exception. We were a big group. We were 130 as a cohort, but we were broken up into about, I think, 20, 25-ish per tour guide. And we spent four hours there. But we could have honestly spent four days. It is enormous. It's beautifully designed and every room and space reveals another piece of that civilization that feels so present, thousands of years later. I'm going to talk more about this in part three, but let's just go back to the museum. So we walked through the galleries and they were filled with statues of pharaohs and carvings and hieroglyphics and jewelry, furniture and sculptures and objects that people actually lived with. And for me, it was like another realization that ancient Egypt is not just something we learned about in school, not just from the movie Cleopatra, it was a thriving civilization, made up of people who loved, who worked, who created, who governed, who worshiped and who left evidence that they have been there.
One of the highlights for me was seeing the gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun or King Tut to you. You've probably seen photographs of it many times, but seeing it in person was completely different. It is breathtaking and not simply… just because of its beauty, but because of what it represents. I keep sitting with the fact that more than thousands of years later, like 3,000 years later, we're still talking about this young king. We're still studying his life. We're still fascinated by his story. And as we moved to the museum, our guide was explaining how to recognize different pharaohs by the way they were depicted, the symbolism carved into the statues and the meanings behind the hieroglyphics that were covering the walls. And I deliberately slowed down. I wanted to absorb as much as I could, because every object was seemingly answering one question and then raising five more. And what struck me just as much, though, was learning about how many of these treasures had been repatriated for this museum, returned to Egypt, after spending decades in museums and private collections and places that colonizers and others had stolen from the civilization. Yeah, I thought about the fact that these artifacts had finally come home. And standing there, thinking about branding and what I talk about all the time in my work. Who owns the story matters. Who gets to tell the story matters. And history, remember, is shaped by the people who preserve it, who document it and who pass it on, but also who tells it, right, who tells the story.
And so standing here, that realization hit me really hard, because I started to think about how this impacts our own careers. How often do we allow other people to define who we are professionally? How somebody else introduces us? How someone else summarizes our accomplishments or not? Or how somebody decides what we're known for? And then, you know, years later we have these goals, but we're frustrated, because people don't realize, or understand the depth and breadth of our experiences or the impact that we've had. And one of the reasons why I care so much about personal branding is, because I don't think anyone should outsource their story. If you don't intentionally shape your narrative, somebody else will eventually, or even worse, there will not be a narrative. So, now that I've gone off on that. After the museum, we visited a papyrus gallery and I learned something I honestly did not know before or have thought about, like, because I didn't have a reason to, but papyrus is incredibly durable. So the folks at this gallery demonstrated how it was made and explained why it survived for all these thousands of years and talked about why so many ancient writings still exist today.
So I'm sure that many people walked away thinking, oh, that's really interesting. But again, and this was like the whole time I was in Egypt, I walked away thinking about branding, because it wasn't just about ancient paper. It was about documentation. And I was thinking about legacy. Thousands of years later, we know what these civilizations believed, what they built, how they governed, what they celebrated, and even what they feared, because somebody took the time to preserve the stories. And so of course, I've thought about brilliant professionals that I meet every single year, lawyers, business leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, people who are mentoring others, leading organizations and changing industries. But unfortunately, almost nobody outside of their immediate circle knows what they're doing, because they've never documented it. They don't write it. They don't speak. They don't publish. They don't go on LinkedIn. They don't share their expertise. They don't preserve their ideas. And then they're surprised when someone else becomes the person everyone thinks of first. I find myself thinking your personal brand is the modern-day papyrus, right? It's the place where your work lives and not just when you're saying it, but also after a meeting ends. It's the record of your expertise, the collection of your stories, insights, the values that continue speaking when you're not in the room anymore. And that's why I encourage people to write articles, start a podcast, say yes to speaking opportunities, post your perspective on LinkedIn, document what you're learning, because you're not doing it just to chase attention. You're doing it to preserve your legacy and your contribution. Anyway, later that afternoon, we made our way to the pyramids and to the sphinx. And yes, they are every bit as incredible as you have imagined. It is also incredibly hot, my goodness. I don't know what I expected, but standing in the middle of a desert in that heat definitely reminded me that some bucket list experiences require hydration. But of course, I also did all the tourist things. I took a picture where it looks like I'm kissing the sphinx. I met my first camel. And I took so many selfies and other pictures, and I loved every minute of it.
There's something else that stood out to me that I want to talk about too. It was the vendors. They were everywhere. And you know, my business tagline is Engage Your Hustle. I was really watching them with genuine admiration. They were hustlers. They were persistent, creative, resourceful and every interaction started with the connection. Where are you from? Jamaica? Are you Jamaican? Come look, only $1. And now, okay, they didn't always guess correctly, but they understood something that was fundamental, I think, about business. Connection is really what makes people want to transact, right? That they weren't leading with the sale, they wanted to create rapport. And I think that that's something that all of us can learn from. When you're networking, building a business, developing clients, growing your career, relationships almost always come before any opportunities. Now, our tour guides were being haters and they were trying to stop us from moving and talking to the vendors, because as soon as you stopped to talk to one, 10 more would appear, but they promised they were going to be taking us someplace later with much better prices. Let's just say that turned out not to be true, so I was very annoyed. But I still laugh about it, because every destination has its own version of commerce and negotiation and entrepreneurship. And you know I love negotiation and I always respect the hustle.
Egypt has challenged me to think bigger. Egypt has filled me with perspective and Egypt has connected me to history. All of the experiences I had in Africa have changed my personal brand in ways I just didn't know. I couldn't have predicted before I left home. I knew I needed to do this trip, but I didn't know how it was going to shape me. I often tell clients that your personal brand is not built only in conference rooms or board meetings. It's built by becoming a more interesting human being, by staying curious, by exposing yourself to different cultures and learning history and making room for joy and definitely by collecting experiences that shape the way you see the world. Every one of these experiences that we have and even me telling you and you listening, it shapes how we perceive the world, how we communicate, how we solve problems and how we connect with other people. And travel has a way, I think, of reminding you that the world is much bigger than your to-do list, or your calendar. And it's one of the greatest gifts that it can give us.
So Egypt makes me keep thinking about what story am I leaving behind? What is my legacy? And I'm going to talk more about that in episode three. But for now, I want you to think about how you're going to be remembered. Go somewhere that stretches your perspective. Read something that changes and challenges your thinking. Visit museums. Laugh and dance. Take the pictures. And imagine a bigger and different and better version of yourself. Because I don't want you to wait until the end of your career to start thinking about what your legacy is. Because you are writing it every day. That being said, thank you for joining me for episode two of Paula Out of Africa. Next time we're going to be talking about more Egypt and my visit to the Red Sea, which was honestly one of the most joyful, peaceful and unexpectedly restorative parts of the entire trip.
Until then, y'all, remember your personal brand isn't something you built once, it's something you leave behind. It's one experience, it's one relationship and one story, one visit at a time. See you next time. Stand by your brand and see you in the Branding Room. Bye.
That's it for this episode. I appreciate you hanging out with me on Branding Room Only. Now, please do me a quick favor. Head over to ratethispodcast.com/branding, so more people can join this conversation. And make sure to stop by PaulaEdgar.com/events to see what's next. Whether I'm live, online or in person, I'd love to see you there. See you next time in the Branding Room.
And until then, stand tall, shine bright and always stand by your brand.
