How To Build Your Personal Brand
Before we get into the ‘nitty gritty’ of how to build your personal brand it’s important to understand why this is important for you as an entrepreneur. We’re making an assumption that you are reading this because you are either starting or are on your entrepreneurial journey.
In our experience working with hundreds of students over the years they all want to get right into the business without thinking about the importance of branding and the part that their personal branding will play in the now and the future.
We know this from a personal standpoint because we asked our first mentor the questions “how do we stand out from everyone else who is promoting the business” (it was a high ticket affiliate online business training program)
His answer was “what is your reason for doing this business and what is it that you think makes you unique”
We sat down and thought about it
Firstly it was our age – we were in our mid 50’s
Secondly it was our background – we were accountants and management consultants
Thirdly we were facing our retirement and had insufficient funds to fulfill what we wanted from it
Now we could create a story around all or any of these elements and that became our personal brand…
One that has remained with us throughout our online business even though we have had to pivot on a number of occasions
Having set the scene for you through sharing how we created our personal brand let’s go to the next stage
This is how to build your personal brand and one that will last you throughout your entrepreneurial life and allow you to adjust and change as you go.
Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos famously quipped that branding is “what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” It’s an arresting thought; what are the lasting feelings that people around you feel when you’re no longer in their presence?
In order to create an authentic personal brand, you need to have a clear focus for how you’d like people to perceive you just as we did.
Start by asking yourself some pointed questions.
What is the core of my offering to my consumers or audience?
What makes me unique and allows me to offer my audience something that others don’t?
Which brings us to knowing your audience
We cannot stress how important this is because if you don’t know who your audience is you will be one of many who think they can sell to everybody and we can tell you from experience you will very soon find it doesn’t work!
Start by constructing a profile of your typical audience persona; who they are , what they like and dislike. You may have heard this as creating your avatar profile
We’ve put together a complete training on this because it’s so important
What Is A Target Market
There are a couple of really helpful articles here
A few words can change the course of a life; they have the power to shrink, expand or transform someone’s identity.
Social psychologist Mesmin Destin explores how everyday interactions and experiences play a powerful part in who we become, sharing the key moments and messages that can inspire us to grow into our best selves.
We’ve included it here because your brand grows with you and we really hope his message inspires you to go out there and do something good with your brand and help transform lives.
Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about working on your personal branding profile please do contact us and we can hop on a zoom call and answer your questions
How To Build Your Personal Brand
Chris & Susan Beesley
We’re former accountants and management consultants ‘of a certain age‘ with 5 great kids, 5 grand-kids, 1 grand-dog and a little old cat called Vincent. We love skiing, the mountains and travelling the world and we’re passionate about helping others to start and build successful businesses online to generate them a full or part-time income to support their retirement lifestyle.
