This week we’re talking about the brand of you. What does that mean, and how can it work to your advantage? If I had to describe to people personal branding, the brand of you, and branding yourself, what does that mean? Why is that important?
WHAT IS THE BRAND OF YOU?
When I was working in a corporate job, my brand was very simple. I was an employee that had a resume that did a job that fit into a very particular career path. That was my brand and who I was. That was my reputation.
The problem with that is it didn’t lend itself to growth. It wasn’t a valuable brand. Like a lot of other people, you could take me and my resume and insert me into that same position at any company.
Then you could take me out and put a new person in with that same title. It wasn’t really ownable. As they say, if you’re talking about products, I was becoming a commodity. It’s weird to talk about people as commodities, but it’s true. If you are replaceable, you are a commodity. If they could just farm your job out to the next lowest bidder, you are a commodity.
The key is how do you make yourself into something that people want that is irreplaceable? That’s when this idea of a brand came about for me.
A RESUME IS NOT A REPUTATION
At the time I wasn’t thinking of it as branding. I was thinking of it as, “I have a resume and I’m worried that eventually, that resume won’t be enough. There are going to be too few jobs at the top and too many people applying for them. There’s no guarantee there.”
That created a lot of fear in my world, so I said, “What can I do to stand out, be different, and chart my own path, to be in charge of my fate?”
I thought to myself, well, what matters is reputation. A resume is great, but reputation is what matters. All I was was a resume. I had no reputation. That was a scary thought.
I know a lot of you out there have moved past this, but I’m sure a lot of you haven’t. A lot of you are experiencing that same thing. If you’re building your reputation, are you thinking about building your reputation for the first time? It’s huge and it’s important.
We talked about this in the last episode, a couple of ways to start doing that and identifying who you are, tapping into knowing yourself and how to really get connected to what that brand is.
The reason that this is important and why building the brand of you can help you is threefold. I’ve broken it down into three things. You want to be findable, recognizable, and you want to be desirable.
THE BRAND OF YOU IS FINDABLE
To start off, when people are looking for something in particular, either a person to fill a role or a solution to a problem, they go to their normal means of finding those solutions, whether it’s a Google search or a referral from a friend. They ask their friend groups to solve a problem or they ask a question. Maybe they’re reading a book on something.
You want to be able to be found as one of the answers. You want to be referred to, be found in a Google search, and referred to in a book or in a blog post or in a YouTube video.
Be findable. At the very least if you meet them in person, and they do a little search on you afterward, when they Google you, you want to be findable.
POSITION YOUR BRAND TO BE FOUND
Tim Ferriss talks about this a lot. What is it that people find when people Google search you? How do you change those results, and how do you become more findable with what you want them to find? How do you position yourself with the information that you want to be put out there about you, as opposed to what just randomly what was gathered?
That was the first “Aha” moment for me, figuring out what is it that I want people to find and how do I get them to find me.
It started with this idea of creating more content and putting things out there into the world that were findable. Creating a website, social profiles, and a presence, actually existing out there in my perspective created some findability for me.
START SMALL AND CONTINUE TO GROW
It started small, but as I started to do that more and more, getting opportunities to speak on other platforms, branching out every chance I got, I became more findable at the very least in the digital world, but also offline.
I was also growing my network and meeting more people, which also made me more findable. I started to be more places. The more people you meet, the more places you are in, the more reputation you create online, the more findable you’re going to be. That was step one.
PEOPLE NEED TO RECOGNIZE YOUR BRAND
Number two, you don’t just want to be findable. You want to be recognizable so that when people are looking for something, over and over again, they start to recognize that you’re the thing that keeps popping up over and over.
Over time they’re becoming familiar with who you are and what you do. When they first stumbled across you, they don’t need something that you would be offering. However, eventually over time, they might. They might be in the market for that service or that kind of relationship, or someone they know might be in it.
You come to mind because you’ve been present enough. You’ve shown up consistently over a long period of time so that you’ve become recognizable.
THE BRAND OF YOU IS A LIFELONG JOURNEY
That consistency is something I want to hammer home. When you start on the journey of creating the brand of you, you have to recognize that it is a journey. It is you taking the first steps and committing to the process of six to twelve months from now, two years from now, five years from now.
You are always curating your brand. You are always adding to that reputational cache of experiences and things that you’re building online. What’s beautiful about it is it’s a huge snowball that you’re continuing to add to. Once you’ve created some of this stuff, it doesn’t go away. It just gets added to and built over time. It accumulates.
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
BE CONSISTENT IN YOUR BRANDING
That’s why consistency is so huge. If you can contribute every week in some way to your reputation, to the brand of you, it has a cumulative effect and a compounding effect on top of that frequency of you showing up every day, all the time, every week.
You now interacting with people more and more over time becomes a contributor to you being recognizable in the world, in your industry, and in certain aspects that you serve.
The key is that not only do you need to be consistent with your delivery and showing up. There also needs to be consistency with where you show up. In other words, are you consistently showing up to the same group of people, to the same group of actions, behaviors, searches, and industries?
YOUR BRAND NEEDS TO BECOME A FAMILIAR FACE
If I only experienced or created something once, put it somewhere, and then tomorrow I did it somewhere else completely and I spread myself out, no one going to be familiar enough or have engaged with me enough to remember me.
Your recognition comes from continuous exposure. That’s true in advertising as well. You need a frequency of exposure to be memorable. I think it used to be three or more times was the magic number. Now it’s seven or ten for someone to see your ad to remember it.
Think of it like that for you. How many times do you have to interact with or be shown to someone, or have them see your content or your social profile, that when they interact with you in person they remember you and recognize what you stand for and how you can help?
IS THE BRAND OF YOU DESIRABLE TO PEOPLE?
Then the third piece is desirability. What this means is you don’t just want them to find you and recognize who you are and what you do. You also want them to desire to work with you. You want to be the thing that they say, “This is what I need in my life.”
That comes with alignment. You being there over time has to align with them needing that opportunity. They say preparation plus opportunity equals luck. Luck is just eventually you are prepared enough that when an opportunity arose, you were able to step through the door and be there at the right time.
That’s what this is about. You’ve now been there consistently enough over time that you’ve created and you’ve established that you know how to help. You are there for people and you become desirable in that way.
People want to work with that person who’s going to show up, be consistent, who was there when they were looking for them and that they saw overtime was still delivering.
YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR REPUTATION
That desirability can come in a lot of ways. It can come with being around forever or from referrals and with you actually doing good work, having that reputation growing over time. It can come through testimonials and accolades, and through you taking on projects that people deem as important, influential, or authoritative.
Maybe you write a book, you speak on a stage, you go on a podcast, you share your knowledge in a way that helps them. You create a course, you put together some kind of digital product. All these things are one more element that contributes to the desirability of wanting to work with you or to buy something from you.
You have to put that in front of them in the right ways, at the right time, with the right environment. Also, you have to do that consistently over time. That’s what it means to be the brand of you, consistently finding time and opportunities to do these things.
INVEST IN THE BRAND OF YOU
That’s why this is important because if you don’t build the brand of you, you won’t be findable, you won’t be recognizable and people won’t want to work with you. You won’t be desirable.
What it takes is you investing in and asking yourself, “What does this brand look like? How do I develop this over time?” That’s why being just a resume isn’t enough these days, especially if you want to be an entrepreneur and write your own ticket.
Just settling in and hoping business comes to you never works. Picking one service and offering that, but never building your reputation behind it doesn’t work. That’s why those businesses get driven to the bottom of pricing and become commodities.
Avoid being commoditized. Find a way to be finable, be recognizable and be desirable. That builds the brand of you.
CONNECT WITH BRANDON
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.
And here are some more of my most popular thought leader interviews!
- What Business to Start with John Lee Dumas
- Personal Branding Masterclass with Chris Ducker
- Built to Serve with Evan Carmichael
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Talk soon!