The Secret to Unlocking your Personal Brand

All you beautiful people, welcome back to the podcast. Okay, so today we’re gonna talk about how to build your personal brand. Specifically how to think about your avatar, how to put out content that attracts them. And this comes up because I was just talking to a gentleman who’s in a mastermind group that I’m in. He’s a successful CEO, has built multiple, you know, businesses. And the question that he had is, okay, I want to start building my personal brand. Because him, like I, like me back in 2019, realized the brand that you have as an individual, it stays with you regardless of market cycles, regardless of how your different businesses are doing. So it’s like one of the most valuable things that you can invest in is to build your own personal brand.

It gives you more opportunities, it gives you access to better hires. It gives you more reach to potential customers. There’s practically zero downsides to putting out content, to building your personal brand, with the exception of, you know, you’re going to sacrifice a bit of your privacy, people are going to know who you are, right? And that’s, I think, a fair exchange to have the impact that you want to have on the world. The other side of it is that you need to build up a thick skin of what people are going to think about you. And that’s. That’s no small matter. But if we’re looking at this through the lens of personal development, and one of the most valuable things that you could develop as an individual is to prioritize the opinion you have of yourself over the opinions others have of you. So not letting their judgments of what you’re doing stop you from doing what you’re going to do if it’s in alignment with your values and if it’s in alignment with your goals, right? A lot of times we don’t even pursue our dreams for fear of what other people are going to think of us.

As we attempt this, as we attempt this audacious thing, we’re afraid how they’re going to judge us in failure more than we are afraid of actually failing itself. We’re afraid of the judgments more. That’s all a side note. Anyways, so he’s asking, okay, so, guys, what do I think about when I’m creating my content on a day to day basis? Because what I teach to my students is you need to be putting out content every day. In particular, one video that you’re shooting on, say, Instagram Stories, and you’re just bringing people into your life and you’re showing them what you’re working on. You’re being a lighthouse rather than a tugboat. You’re letting your light shine bright and you’re attracting to people who are, you know, into similar things as you. And so that means sharing what you’re reading, sharing if you’re working with a coach, what you’re working on, sharing, you know, the struggles that you have on a day to day basis.

Sharing, like the gym workout, if that’s what is a part of your life and it’s a meaningful part of your success path, then share it with people so that they can get inspiration and they can implement it into their life. Well, this gentleman, he goes, well, my audience, the people, you know, I don’t have a product to sell, but I do want to raise awareness to my personal brand and an extension for my business that he wants to drive sales to. And in this case, the business is a pet supply company. And the problem that I pointed out to him, it’s just a mindset shift. The way that he’s looking at this right now, he thinks that his audience wouldn’t be interested in the books that he reads or his gym workouts and the fact that he’s building a business. He is thinking about this backwards. He is thinking about this through the lens of, okay, the customers of my pet business, the pet owners aren’t interested in me reading books, building a business and going to the gym. The way that you reframe this, though, when it comes to building a brand, isn’t that you are attracting the exact avatar of the business and trying to create content on the personal brand that attracts them to the business.
What you’re actually doing is you’re creating content around yourself. You’re becoming an attractive figure. You’re sharing your thoughts, your beliefs, your habits with the world, and that’s going to attract similar people and those similar people who are interested in the gym, who are interested in reading, who are interested in building a business, people like myself, like that. I would be the perfect avatar for his content. I’d come in, I’d be like, I want to learn how you’re building a business. I want to learn how you’re running your life. And I want to learn about like, what you’re consuming to, like better your minds. I would be totally into that.
And guess what? Those people, a lot of them also have pets. I have two cats as of last week. Two weeks ago, I had a dog. Unfortunately, we had to put her down, so she’s gone now. But the thing is, if I was attracted to him through his content, the books, the habits the business that he’s building. And then I go down the rabbit hole and I’m like, oh, he’s also got this pet business. He’s sharing, you know, nuances of how he’s built his business, and he’s given context through the lens of this other business. I’m going to go down that rabbit hole, I’m going to see what he offers, and I’m going to go, oh, actually, that product would be perfect for my cats right now, for my dog.
That’s what you need to think about is your personal brand is to attract people to your unique personality and perspectives to you. And they will also, if you are trying to attract them and want them to go to your businesses, a portion of them will be the correct avatar for those other things. But if you do it just through the lens of my avatar for this business and me, like, you are not your business now, the content, your brand puts out, the business brand that does need to be around that thing, because there is a direct RoI associated with, I want to bring people in who are pet owners who are interested in this thing. Doesn’t do you any good to have anybody in your funnel. That’s not that. But when you think about your personal brand, you can’t think of it the same way because your personal brand, you’re so much more multifaceted than just that one thing. And if you’re afraid of that, your avatars for the business brand aren’t going to be attracted to all the things that are part of your personal life, then you’re looking at it completely wrong. And this was a lesson I had to learn the hard way, by the way.

So when I first started building my brand back in 2019 2018, it was to drive business towards escape climbing, which manufacturers rock climbing holds, and to raise awareness, bring more deal flow and more investors into Invictus Capital, which is our real estate, private equity fund and management company. And so all the content that I was putting out was around those two topics. And what I found was the growth didn’t really start exploding until I viewed myself as the product and I was sharing the things that would attract people to buying into me. And that was not buying into the different businesses. Those were just a small subset. And you’ll notice in these videos, if you’ve been around these parts for a while, you know, I don’t talk a lot about the individual businesses. I’m not trying to sell you and push you on those things. I’m trying to sell you on me.

And in the process, if you go and you discover the other things in my ecosystem that you think could serve you, that’s fantastic. I would love to do that. But when you’re consuming this, when you’re building your personal brand, you are the product, not the product of the business. And I think that’s a mindset shift that if you can adapt, that will serve you very well. So hope this brings you guys a ton of value. I will see you in the next episode, but until then, my beautiful people, stay hyper focused.