What’s the importance of having a personal brand this year? 

To answer that, you must know first what personal branding really is. Is it about being a social media influencer? Podcaster? Author? Speaker? Consultant? No, personal branding is not any of those things.

Personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation. 

Being a social media influencer is really just a mechanism that supports the much broader concept of reputation.

What do people think when they think of you?

Rory Vaden, New York Times bestselling author, Hall of Fame leadership speaker, and co-founder of Brand Builders Group shares his expertise on personal branding. He helps mission-driven messengers build a reputation that grows their business.

So if your business is on the rocks, it is not really much of a revenue problem. What you have is a reputation problem. 

Reputation Precedes Revenue

When starting a business, many people instantly think of the strategies that can help them make more money. What they don’t know is that reputation precedes revenue. 

Rory shares The Reputation Formula: your RESULTS x your REACH = your REPUTATION.

The reach doesn’t even have to be as big as you might think. As long as your results can balance it out, you’ll still arrive at your desired reputation.

So no, you don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars.

Personal branding is the digitization of reputation, and personal brand strategy is the monetization of your reputation.

Positioning Before Messaging

If you talk to everybody, you talk to nobody. Your personal brand strategy should rely on the importance of clarifying what your message is and who you’re talking to.

There’s a lot of noise out there in the industry. When many people are doing different things online, how can you become the go-to expert in your field? 

Positioning.

Messaging is an external conversation—it’s what goes on your website, what you tell people you do. Before you can have a clear messaging, you have to have a clear positioning. 

Who are you, and what makes you stand out? 

Sheehan’s Wall

Every industry, niche, or vertical has a wall that separates two groups of people: the well-known and the unknown. On the known side of the wall, you can find clients, opportunities, and money. On the unknown side, there is only noise and obscurity.

This is where many struggle with. If you’re unknown to people, you can’t impact them. And if they don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you. 

Most people approach their personal brand by “I’m gonna talk about a lot of different things to a lot of different audiences and launch all these different products.” 

The world can’t really understand who you are, so you bounce off the wall.

The real secret is to find your uniqueness. 

What can you really be known for? That’s how you have a clear positioning. And when you focus your positioning, you get to focus on your monetization strategy, content, and finally, your external messaging. 

Then, you can break through the wall.

What is your ‘one’ thing?

For every person, you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. There is an inextricable power that comes from you talking about what you’ve actually done.

The pain you’re experiencing in life is simply preparing you for the purpose you’re supposed to serve one day for somebody else.

And that’s how I realized that everything I went through in my life set me up to do what I do today. 

How to find your “one” thing

Your uniqueness is more connected to the thing you’re going to spend the Saturday afternoon reading about or learning about for no reason, even if it was not connected to your job. You’re drawn to studying those things because of the through line in your life.

There’s a reason why people are in the job they’re in today, why they have or don’t have relationships, why they have read the books they’ve read, or why they live the way they live now.

All of these are connected to your uniqueness.

And once you’ve figured out your positioning, the next important thing follows: how do you make money from this?

5 Ways to Monetize Your Brand

Rory teaches us the 5 vehicles to turn your pile of followers into a pile of money. He calls these the PAIDS.

Products

Choose your physical products wisely. It would be better if it’s something you’re passionate about, be it shoes, cosmetics, gadgets, or anything.

Ads and Affiliates

This is a really interesting business model because you actually don’t sell your audience anything; you sell other people access to your audience.

Information

This has been super popular in recent years. Many people create non-physical, information-based products like courses, membership sites, certifications, assessments, licenses, and many more.

Deals

Artists enter deals such as book, TV, music, and publishing deals with a third party. They get paid for their creation of the art even if it doesn’t perform well. But if it does perform well, there’s usually a payment of royalty associated with that.

Services

This model is the fastest path to cash. Most clients are in the service-type model. They sell professional, consulting, coaching, speaking, and training services to others. 

The Brand Builder Journey

If you feel stuck on the unknown side of the wall, you may be doing the right things in the wrong order.

People on that side of the wall jump to all the external before they’re clear on the internal. They jump to the messaging before they’re clear on the positioning. 

Starting the first step can be challenging, but don’t worry! 

Rory Vaden is here to teach you how to build and monetize your personal brand. Jump on to https://freebrandcall.com/torigordon/ for a free strategy call! Remember to tune in to our latest podcast and other Coachable episodes!