Today we’re talking about how to build a personal brand. These are my steps straight to you. This is our ultimate guide to personal branding. That’s what we’re talking about today, how to start a personal brand.
DEFINING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
What is personal branding? Let’s set the definition here first before we get started. For me, personal branding is really all about reputation. Your reputation defines how people see you, approach you, and eventually want to do business with you. Your personal brand is how you represent yourself to the world.
As an example, let’s say you are starting a business. Maybe you want to be a coach or a mentor, or provide some kind of service where your reputation is the basis for the service and drives the success of the service. You’re going to want to make sure that you are doing a few things.
You’re going to want to make sure that you are positioned in the market. In other words, that people know what you do, how you do it, and if you’re good at it or not. You also want to be able to explain to people why you’re different and what it is that makes them right for your service and you right for them in terms of helping them.
HOW CAN YOUR SKILLS HELP PEOPLE?
This is all about figuring out who you are. When I help people get started on their personal branding journey, the first question I ask is, “How do you want to help people? What are you looking to offer?”
I think it’s a simple question. However, it’s one that a lot of people struggle with right off the bat because they know what they’ve done in the past. A lot of people are experts in something because they did a job for many, many years.
There’s a good book on this called The E-Myth. (Not online E, but E as in entrepreneurship myth.) The book talks about how when you leave something like a corporate job or you’re a technician or a specialist, then you switched to wanting to be an entrepreneur, you aren’t prepared for that.
You aren’t used to all the other things that come with being an entrepreneur, which include running business sales, business development, execution, all that other stuff. You just know how to do your job.
THE THREE PILLARS OF A PERSONAL BRAND
In terms of personal branding, figuring out the thing that you want to help people with is number one. It doesn’t come from them. It’s not you asking everyone that you know how they think you can help them.
It’s you figuring out what category of thing you can start helping people with today and then talking to people about that. Therefore first it is how do you help people? The three branches, the three-pillar framework that I like to explain for personal branding really revolves around the ideas of content, community, and impact.
I used to think this was, “Create content around the thing you love. Gather people around that content that love the thing that you’re talking about and then ask them how you want to serve them.”
I have started to evolve the way I think about that when actually working with people who are building real businesses.
YOUR PERSONAL BRAND IMPACT BEGINS IN SMALL WAYS
What I found is we start with the impact. We start with the piece of the puzzle that is closest to the customer. In other words, how can you help someone today? Let’s talk about that first; let’s talk about impact. What is your offer? How can you help people today?
Now, the way I want you to think about your offer is this: your offer should be something tangible. There are “done for you” services. There are “done with you” services, and there is knowledge which could be digital courses, things like that.
I think a lot of us start with the content and we never get into the actual “done for you” or we charge so much for it that it’s everything and the kitchen sink and no one would ever want to buy it.
What I would challenge you to do, especially if you’re starting, is to say, “What is the “done for you” service that I can help someone with right now, keeping it small, simple, and easy to understand?”
FIND TANGIBLE, SMALL SERVICES
If you are a marketing consultant, like I was when I left a corporate, it’s something very small like, “Let me help you write your email sequences. Let me help you set up your email campaigns, help you manage your Instagram profile, or let me run Facebook ads.”
That is something very small, simple, singular, and tangible that isn’t coaching. It isn’t a strategy, mindset or teaching people your special approach. It is a simple “done for you” service that people need help with right now.
The reason you want to start with something like that is to start creating impact right away. You want to say, “I’m going to find people that I can serve based on my skill-set and the things that I know, my knowledge base. I’m going to start helping people right away.”
What that does is it puts you in a position where you need to be outward-facing with your energy.
A SUCCESSFUL PERSONAL BRAND TAKES ACTION
Instead of internalizing that energy, sitting in your bedroom and typing up websites and cool offers, you are out there networking. You are meeting people and making offers to help them based on the things you can do that are “done for you”, that are small and tangible.
What that does is that the energy you’re bringing to meeting other people puts you in a position to start building relationships. It also starts to build some credibility and reputation in your industry. The more people you help, the more you can evolve and grow what you’re helping them with.
Then you can start to bake in these other ways to help them. As the demand increases for your services, as more people want to work with you and your time starts to get crunched, that demand changes what your offers are.
Instead of it being “done for you” for everybody, you might have to offer “some done with you” because you just don’t have the time. You can also raise your rates because you just don’t have the time. Let the demand dictate how the offer evolves.
BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR IMPACT
Impact comes first, even if that means that you’re helping people for free. That is okay. Again, build some reputation with the impact you can make. Maybe there are some people you can barter with and trade with. Say, “I’ll help you with this. You helped me with that. I’ll help you with this service and maybe you can build my website.”
Take some professional photos, help with an email system, refer a client. Every person you meet has the energy and the network potentially to introduce you to several more customers. There’s some efficiency to that where you’re putting your energy. Start with that; start with impact.
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
A PERSONAL BRAND IS IN THE COMMUNITY
The second thing I want you to lean into is the community part of this. What I’d like you to do is think about, “Where can I show up?”
Not, “How do I build a community,” which is how a lot of people think about it, but “Where can I show up and represent me to other people? How can I put my reputation out there to as many people as possible that are relevant?”
That might mean trying out a bunch of different things. It might mean joining your local BNI networking group or joining a coworking space in your local city to meet other entrepreneurs and business owners. Maybe it means going to your chamber of commerce. I know that’s old school, but still going to those meetings that they have to just meet other people.
It might mean showing up to events in your industry that are local to you that won’t cost you a lot of money. It might mean just figuring out where people are speaking in your area and your neighborhood with interesting topics that other people like you might attend so you can meet attendees at these events and conferences.
SHOW PEOPLE WHO YOU ARE
The goal is to show up in as many places as possible with other people. That way, when you’re there, you can show up, tell them who you are, what you do, not “sell” them but get to know them a little bit.
Then say, “You know what, maybe we can follow up and chat sometime. I’d love to know more about what you do.”
This is especially if you meet people that would be potentially good for your service. If nothing else, seek out people that have the energy of connecting you to other people. You can always find that person in the room that tends to know a lot of people. They’re that connector. They have a lot of friends. Find those people.
The point is, get out there into the communities. Meet as many people as possible.
GO WHERE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND NEEDS TO BE
I personally was slow to meet people locally. I was more interested in going to conferences that were a little further away but were in my industry, going to the marketing conferences, the social media conferences, the podcasting conferences. That’s where I went to meet people and share my energy.
That network of people, (people that I felt like understood me, and I understood them) starts to become your community. That’s where you need to represent yourself, let them know what you do, and follow up.
SHOW UP AND FOLLOW UP
Showing up isn’t enough. After you meet people, make a habit of getting to know them, following up, and setting up one-on-ones. Step one in Community is to show up at all these places and introduce yourself.
Step two is to take back from those meetings and events a list of people that you can follow up with and not offer services. Just get to know them better on a one-on-one phone call. Be genuinely interested in what they do and think about.
Is there anything you can help them with? It doesn’t have to be a service. It could be a referral. That’s a common one.
It could be just asking them what they’re doing and getting, just being someone for them to talk to. It could be sending them something thoughtful that you had a relevant conversation about. Maybe you talked about something and say, “Oh, there’s a good book on that.”
You can send them the book. Maybe you can send them an invite to an event that’s coming up that they might be interested in.
BE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND IN REAL LIFE
Whatever it is, make a connection. Follow up, check on them, or just engage with them on social media. Show up first in real life and then engage and follow up afterward.
Beyond the events, you can also join groups and clubs, other kinds of things that are online or offline (or both) that are in your business or industry. Join clubs, memberships, masterminds, and networking groups, and be involved. Get to know people in them.
The more you can put yourself out there and put your energy outwards instead of inwards, trying to strategize your business, the better off you will be.
CONTENT IS THE FINAL PILLAR OF A PERSONAL BRAND
So community is part two. Part three is going to be content. I used to have this flipped and say content first. I actually think now the more time you can spend outward is great.
However, you’re going to have free time. The more you can fill your free time with productive tasks, the better. I would say schedule those days where you just don’t have anything going on as content days.
All those things you’re experiencing now, out in the world, the ways you’re helping people, try to write it down or express in a recording, like a podcast or a video. Or just write it down like a blog.
Write down your processes for helping people, how you approach those little things, the step-by-step and little tips that you have along the way, or questions people ask as you start to work with them.
USE QUESTIONS AND CONVERSATIONS TO CREATE CONTENT
Start to answer those things in a recorded content form and save them because there are going to be other people that ask those questions too. You can now send them this content. Think of it as a great follow-up mechanism.
You can say, “Hey, based on our conversation the other day, it inspired me to write this article that answers that question. Here you go. I hope it’s helpful for you.”
Design your content to serve in reality-based instead of fictional content. Create content that really helps people based on questions you were actually asked in real life.
Then, as you start to do that more often, you might decide that there’s a really big theme or category that all this stuff falls into. Maybe you want to create something bigger around it like a show, some kind of podcast or YouTube channel, blog, or whatever that is more consistent.
The people that you’ve started to get to know out there in the real world, hopefully you’ve gotten their emails and you can start to send them this content over time.
BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND AROUND THESE 3 PILLARS
That is how you connect it. You’ve started with impact. You moved towards community and getting involved in meeting people. Now that you’re creating content, that content also starts to have an impact because it’s based on real-world scenarios. That content can really help people.
That is your follow-up now to real people, as opposed to just putting it on the internet where no one is going to see it.
Start with the impact, move on to the community and then finalize it with some content. That content is going to anchor you. It’s going to start to define who you are.
PLAN FOR YOUR PERSONAL BRAND TO GROW
It’s going to help you find your voice and your perspective so that you can start to apply that, build constructs and frameworks for helping more and more people. Eventually, instead of helping one or two people and then ten people, you’re going to want to build your business to serve more people over time.
As the demand grows, your content now can be a gateway for them to come into your world and serve the people that you don’t have time for, or that aren’t sure yet about you and are getting to know you via content because they didn’t meet you in real life yet.
Use that as a catalyst. Over time, all these things work together and your personal brand now will be focused on strong anchor points of you actually helping people, which helps build your reputation.
You get involved by serving in communities that matter, which builds your reputation with more people. You putting out knowledge that helps people see what you are all about and what you want to be known for builds your reputation.
All of this contributes to your personal brand. It is the ingredients to a strong reputation, which is your personal brand.
PERSONAL BRAND FIRST, THEN OTHER BUSINESS THINGS
Then you can get into all the other things. Design your website, figure out how you want to present yourself in terms of how you introduce yourself, and how you build your offer descriptions that are more pronounced and more specific.
However, start with just figuring out how to help one person today with something small that is “done for you” instead of “done with you” or the things. Start with that and grow.
I hope this framework helps you take one step. I hope that this process of figuring out how you can build something for yourself (that isn’t just your job in a corporate world) and makes a little clearer how you can think of five or ten things that you could help people with today, small “done for you” type services.
When you can do that, you might have a little bit of momentum and energy flowing in the right direction. That’s my personal branding framework. I hope that speaks to you. If you guys ever want to set up communication with me or talk to me one-on-one, you can always go to brandsonbrands.com/coach.
CONNECT WITH BRANDON
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MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
If you’d like more content about how to build your personal brand, check out my free Content Marketing Starter Guide.
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- What Business to Start with John Lee Dumas
- Personal Branding Masterclass with Chris Ducker
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Talk soon!