By Sarah Bennett-Nash, founder of Ikonology
For years, my script was predictable: work hard, collect certificates, stay grateful,
hope the right person notices. It kept me progressing on paper, and invisible in
practice.
Then two forces quietly rewrote the rules of careers, credibility and clients: AI search
and personal branding. Almost overnight, the question shifted from:
“Are you good at what you do?”
to
“Can AI find enough proof that you’re good at what you do to confidently show you
to other people?”
That single reframing changed everything.
It shaped every pivot I’ve made since. The book deal, the visibility strategy, the
business that now pulls opportunities in instead of forcing me to chase them.
This is the real story of how an investment banking professional-turned-founder in
London used AI, SEO-driven visibility and a strategic personal brand to become
AI-visible, and why that shift matters for every small business owner reading this.
Pivot 1: turning my story into strategy
My first pivot wasn’t about technology; it was about permission. I stopped treating
my experiences, M.D. at a FTSE100 company, founder, mother, as disconnected
chapters and started treating them as intellectual property. Instead of apologising
for career “zigzags”, I turned them into a clear narrative: the woman who rebuilt,
redefined herself and now teaches visibility and wealth to ambitious women.
That story became my north star. I repeated it everywhere: on LinkedIn, on stage, in
podcast interviews and at local business events, until other people started repeating
it back to me. The lesson for small business owners is simple: a story doesn’t
become compelling until it becomes familiar—and familiarity only comes from
deliberate, consistent repetition.
Pivot 2: training AI to recognise me
The second pivot came the day AI tools started summarising people in a single
sentence. I opened a browser and asked a confronting question: “Who is Sarah
Bennett-Nash?” The answers were not wrong, but they weren’t strategic either.
Patchy fragments from different chapters of my career that didn’t add up to the
authority I actually hold today.
That was my wake-up call: if AI can’t find you, it can’t position you. So I audited my
digital footprint across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews, then
deliberately filled the gaps with evidence. I wrote articles, said yes to interviews,
pursued targeted podcast guest spots and standardised my bios, topic tags and
“about” sections around a handful of core themes: money, women in business,
authority and visibility. I wasn’t trying to game the system; I was training it to see
what was already true.
Pivot 3: building an AI‑SEO spine
Most people post at random and then wonder why nothing sticks. I made a different
choice: to build what I call an AI‑SEO spine. A tiny set of reusable, recognisable ideas
that appear everywhere my name appears. For me, that spine includes concepts like
“Visibility Economics”, “AI authority for founders” and “podcast guesting as a
deal-flow engine”, each expressed in slightly different ways but always pointing back
to the same expertise.
In SEO terms, this becomes your authority signal; in AI terms, it becomes the pattern
the models learn to associate with you. Once those systems could reliably map the
shape of my expertise, they began surfacing my work to the exact people searching
for it—founders, executives and small business leaders who care about visibility,
income and impact.
Turning content into a book—and a business
Once the spine existed, AI shifted from threat to multiplier. I used AI tools not to
replace my voice, but to extend it. Concretely, that looked like:
● Analysing which posts generated saves, shares and direct messages, and
using those data points to refine my topics, hooks and headlines.
● Turning keynotes, podcast interviews and long-form newsletters into chapter
outlines, article drafts and scripts, which eventually formed the backbone of
my book.
● Mapping recurring audience questions into offers, which became the
Ikonology suite: strategic visibility consulting, podcast placement services
and authority-building programmes for ambitious women and leaders.
This was not about shortcuts. It was about leverage – using AI to turn one piece of
thinking into an ecosystem of assets that work across search, social and AI
assistants, all pointing back to the same brand promise.
Why this matters for small businesses now
AI search and SEO AI now reward three things above all else: real, lived experience;
clear, demonstrable authority; and a consistent trail of useful content that proves you
are who you say you are. When those signals are present, AI systems and human
buyers often reach the same conclusion: you are a safe, strong choice—and that is
when referrals, speaking invitations, media requests and higher-quality leads begin to
compound.
The opportunity for SBREC businesses is not to become louder, but to become more
findable. That means: telling one coherent story about who you are, training AI to
recognise that story, and building a simple AI‑SEO spine of ideas that show up
everywhere your business shows up online. When you treat each pivot in your
journey as data—not detours—you give both algorithms and audiences a clear path
to you, and your brand shifts from quietly capable to consistently chosen.
About the Author
Sarah Bennett-Nash is an Authority Architect and founder of Ikonology®, the
personal branding consultancy that helps C-suite leaders, entrepreneurs and
ambitious people build AI-visible, opportunity-attracting personal brands.
After more than two decades in high-stakes roles at Goldman Sachs, Morgan
Stanley, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered, she now specialises in turning
overlooked expertise into unmissable authority through strategic visibility, AI-led
positioning and narrative design.
A sought-after speaker, podcast host and author of the forthcoming book “More
Money, More Life”, she tackles the gender wealth gap and empowers women to fund
their dreams with financial power, clarity and purpose.
Based in London, she partners with FTSE leaders, elite advisers and founders to shift
them from competent but invisible to sought-after and AI-recognised—all while
pursuing her mission to help millions of people build real, lasting wealth on their own
terms
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