Brand Thyself: In this course you’re going to figure out what your passion is and how you can brand that passion to the max. A great read for this course would be Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It! it will set you on fire for entrepreneurship and personal branding.
- Now that you know yourself its time to brand yourself. May seem a little premature but better starting out with a solid idea of what your brand is….
- Whats your passion?
- Are you on fire? Are you dedicated? Is the pain worth the gain?
Alrighty, so its time to figure out what your brand is..
..yes even before we have a product, website or business plan set in stone. Branding yourself is going to be at the essence of everything you do from now on. Just like you wouldn’t take on a project or job that conflicts with your life’s purpose (set up in part 1) you won’t take your business in a direction that dilutes or conflicts with your brand, your “image”. It’d be like if Apple decided to launch a line of PC’s. They’ve already set themselves up as the anti-PC people. MACs are known for their elitist attitude and loyal MAChead following, what do you think would happen if MAC partnered with Microsoft to make a line of Apple PCs and started selling them in their stores? What if they changed their commercials where the MAC and PCs are fighting and made it so everything was hunky dory? It would cause millions upon millions of dollars in losses for Apple and possibly completely sink their brand.
So what is your brand going to be? Lets take an example & then you can figure your own story out from there.
Jane is a teacher, she loves children and loves teaching kids to learn in out of the box ways. She decides her brand is a revolutionary, though caring, teacher of children and her business, website and persona will all follow that. Jane is mixing her passion (educating and children) with a business model (selling highly educational videos and online courses to parents to teach them how to expand their kid’s minds) and is creating a definite brand for herself in the process. Now what if Jane also decided to sell adult videos on her site? Maybe through an affiliate but still on her site next to the kid’s learning blog? She’d probably lose a lot of her fans and irrevocably damage her brand. Sexy, sultry and porn doesn’t mix with Jane’s wholesome, smart and kid friendly brand.
Its better to take a strong stance, nail down your brand early and stick to that brand that it is to flip flop around trying everything. If people wanted a place where they could get anything under one roof (or in one website) they’d go to Walmart (or Walmart.com).
So what is your brand?
First give me 7 adjectives people could use to describe you: i.e. Fun loving, Stern or Hyperactive
Then take 7 things your passionate about: i.e. Rock climbing, Business development or Fine Dining
Next imagine how any of the adjectives that describe you could fit hand in hand with one or two of the things your passionate about. Like I’m hyperactive and fun loving so I’ll do a series of youtube videos on rock climbing that are super exciting and light hearted. Maybe you can do a fun, fresh and funky podcast on the sport and a blog to accompany that. Later after your brand Dan the fun loving, hyperactive rock climbing guy is established you’ll start to sell products and charge for speaking events in front of other high risk sports enthusiasts.
So what is your passion? What would you do for free? What would you do night and day if you could? Mine is writing (blogging), start ups, social media & networking and finding freedom via entrepreneurship. I also LOVE talking about any of those topics to other people. Some of the adjectives people could describe me with are: young, positive, motivated, creative and social now I can use a combination of these adjectives and my passions to start profitable businesses and to develop my brand.
Side note: don’t be scared that defining your brand means you’ll be stuck in it forever, you can always change. But what you’ll do when you change or expand into new personal brands is that you’ll build a new online persona for it. So if you are the hyper active, fun loving rock climbing guy Dan but you also want people to see your serious business side you can do that too, just not on your rock climbing site.
Action Items:
- List 7 adjectives people could use to describe you
- 7 things your passionate about
- Create a branding sentence about yourself that combines a few of the above. You can make several of these and pick the one that feels right and speaks to you the most.
- Read ‘Crush It’ by Gary Vaynerchuk
Giddy up onto section 3 here.
