This week we’re talking about the four stages of personal branding, and today we’re specifically talking about finding your identity. This will be part one of four. We are diving into the stages of personal branding, how to get from zero to a hundred in four simple steps.
PERSONAL BRANDING STAGE 1: IDENTITY
The first stage which we’ll dive into today is identity. Stage two is introductions. Stage three is offers and stage four is voice.
With each of these, we’ll be talking about how you build your message, the things you say at each of these stages for your in-person and offline interactions. Also, how do you get attention for your personal brand and your business at each stage? It is different.
I’m excited about these episodes because, to be honest, one of the first questions I get all the time is, “Where do I start?”
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BEGIN WITH IDENTITY AND AVOID WASTING TIME
Marketing is intimidating. It’s a fair question. There are so many choices, and if you choose the wrong step and you do them out of order, it’s easy to waste months of time on something that’s not going to drive business today. I hope this is super useful for everyone out there.
Stage one is identity. This is the first and most important step. If you do not know who you are, who you serve, why you serve them, and what the value of that is, then you don’t have anything to sell. People are not going to know if they should work with you or not. Figuring out your identity is phase one.
DEEP DIVE INTO YOUR LONG-TERM GOALS
I would start with just asking yourself, what is your goal? What is your mission, understanding what you want to accomplish long-term not just short-term? Understanding what your long-term goals are versus short-term is important.
That long-term goal long-term mission should align with your core values. It should align with what makes you want to help people. What makes you for them? A lot of the time your personal reason for being passionate about a project and passionate about helping people is a differentiator that sets you apart.
Dive into that. Try to understand and write out. “This is my mission. This is what I see as my grandiose vision for the future. If everything was perfect, this is what would happen.”
ENVISION YOUR POTENTIAL FUTURE
Second, dive into your vision of what that would look like if you achieved your mission. Paint those pictures. These are the kinds of people I want to help. This is what I want to help them accomplish. This is how I believe we can get there.
Within that, you can start to realize and write out what is the third piece of your identity, which is your value proposition. Value proposition, simply put, is what you offer, why it is important and necessary, and how you position it as different than the other things out there in the market.
Understanding “I help people accomplish this,” and the value of that result is number one.
FINDING YOUR IDENTITY MEANS GETTING SPECIFIC
For example, if you are a fitness coach, understanding that your offer is to help them lose twenty pounds is number one. However, understand what the value of that is: losing twenty pounds and keeping it off. The value of that being that you will live a healthier lifestyle that you can maintain for the rest of your life so you never gain them back.
Tap into those special things. “The reason that works is because of the special process that I’ve created, and I know it works because of XYZ…” You start to get into why they would choose you in the first place.
They want something effective. They want something that is for them that works in the way that they would naturally want to work. Identifying all that at the beginning is part of your identity. It’s part of the process, the first phase that you need to map out.
You might be talking to your friends or the people you’re meeting on a daily basis. You can at least explain what you do, why you do it, and maybe get some of your first customers simply based on your conversations right now.
DESCRIBE YOUR IDENTITY IN SIMPLE WORDS
We’ll talk about how to introduce yourself on the next show and how to take all that information and put it into an introduction. Starting with you mapping it out yourself is number one.
Map out your mission, map out your vision for your business, and then what the value is of the thing that you want to help people with. Start there as your simple identity, in as simple of words as possible. Don’t try to overinflate the words you use.
Use layman’s terms so someone would understand. “I help people lose weight.” Okay, cool. I get that right. You have to keep it very basic. People aren’t scientific. Get that part identified very quickly.
FIND YOUR IDENTITY AND THEN GET ATTENTION
That’s the message phase. When you figure those things out, where does that live that’s going to help you get attention?
There are four phases for attention as well that I will go through with you over the next three or four podcasts. I’m mapping it out like this.
The first phase is One-to-Zero, which is you creating things. You’re the one and you are creating them at the beginning. It will reach zero people. You create a website and no one is there to look at it yet. You are creating assets, but no one is looking at it yet. That’s One-to-Zero messaging.
There’s One-to-One messaging, which is phase two. We’ll talk about that on the next podcast. One-to-One messaging is you having direct communication with someone. We’ll learn how that works, whether it’s in a networking setting or something else.
The next is One-to-Few, which would be phase three. That is you connecting with a small group of people. One-to-Many is the last phase. How do you scale attention?
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
USE YOUR IDENTITY TO INSPIRE A WEBSITE
The one we’re talking about today is One-to-Zero. This connects with the identity information because first you need to figure out who you are, how you tell people who you are, and why you’re doing this in the first place.
Then when you’re creating your One-to-Zero attention plan, you need to figure out where are you going to put those messages that you just created?
The first is your website. Every time you meet someone in person, especially when you’re starting out, you are the person who’s out there getting attention for your business, social media and everything else. None of it works unless you are taking action.
When someone finally is suddenly curious about the thing you told them about, they need to go somewhere to learn more and your website is going to be step one.
KEEP YOUR WEBSITE SIMPLE AT FIRST
The website doesn’t need to be crazy blown out to begin with. It just at least has to explain to people what you do. If we work together, I’ll help you figure out what to build, how to build it, what to say on the different pages, and what to put in the different sections.
When you’re starting out, the point is to keep it simple so that it gets done. You could easily spend six months and five to ten thousand dollars building a website that zero people are visiting.
Your goal is to get it up quickly and not spend that kind of money. Build it in a way that is effective enough that people understand what your identity is and potentially you can collect their information.
That’s with a simple request, which is “Enter your email here.” You can give them a freebie for that, or you can entice them in some other way, but your website is where you explain simply what you are and how you help people.
The people you meet in person go to that. They Google you and they find this website and say, “Oh, okay, this is who that person is.” It’s a validation point when you’re just getting started. That’s the first phase, is a website.
IDENTIFY A WAY TO COLLECT EMAILS
Then the other media channel within the One-to-Zero attention category is your email list. These are the two things you focus on when you’re building attention. When you are a day one entrepreneur looking to build your brand and your reputation, get a quick website up and create the channel you need to develop an email list.
What does that mean? It means every time you meet someone or every time you offer to help someone, there should be an opportunity for them to give you an email for you to send them that help.
What most people do is develop a very simple digital download of some sort. For example, “Here are the three tips that we talked about. Here you go.” Even if you’re talking to one person, you can ask for their email. “Hey, I’m happy to help. Let me send you my tips. Just give me your email. I’ll write it down and email this to you.”
CREATE A LIST, CHECK IT TWICE
What I’d like you to do is to collect those emails on the list. Right now you can start with an Excel sheet if that’s what you want to do. What I would recommend is that you invest in a simple email marketing system.
There are free versions when you’re getting started for different ones. The one that I recommend for email would be Convertkit. You can go to brandsonbrands.com/convertkit to check that out. There’s an affiliate fee attached with that for me, but it gets you a discount on the software.
That’s what I use. That’s what most of the pros use to develop their email list. Getting it started early is great because then you don’t have to worry about it. You don’t have to transition it later. Whatever you need to do, having some way to collect people’s information and then later communicate with them and nurture those conversations Is huge when you’re starting out.
You might have to do most of that manually when you’re beginning. Maybe it’s your contact book in your Gmail that you are just managing and keeping up to date. Eventually, you want to get that into an email list provider, a CRM, as they call it like Convertkit.
YOUR IDENTITY WILL HELP WITH YOUR NAME
That’s all you need in this One-to-Zero phase, the website. If you guys do not have a website yet, try your best to get out there and get your domain bought so that you know what you’re going to call yourself. See if the name of what you want to call yourself is available.
If it’s your name, that’s great. Those are unique. If it’s a clever name that really relates to your industry and your business, that’s great too. You can choose one of those. Again, if you’re in my coaching program, I’m happy to help figure out the naming of these things, and even with the website development.
We can be working on all these things so you’re not doing this in the dark without any input. We can do this hand in hand together to make sure you’re taking all these steps correctly.
SPEND TIME ON THE RIGHT THINGS
The website is super important when you’re getting started and so is an email list, but to only to a certain extent. If you’re wasting hours and days on these things, now you’ve missed the point. You’ve gone too far.
That’s almost as huge a detriment as the next biggest problem, which people is wasting time developing social media when they haven’t built a business or a network yet.
Again, these are things that happen later. I know there are a lot of choices out there. Start in phase one. Understand your identity, your mission, your vision, your value proposition, and then set up a simple website and email list.
That is what I talk about all the time in phase one. That’s going to set you up so that when you take the next step, which we’ll talk about in the next episode, (talking to people One-on-One,) they now have this to refer to after your conversations to back you up. That’s why it’s hugely important.
I hope that’s helpful for you guys today. That’s where I would spend my time when I’m getting started in terms of the development of my personal brand. We have a few more episodes just like this coming out. I hope you guys check them out.
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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Talk soon!
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