Ep 251: 10 Rules for Personal Branding

We’re going to talk about today is the 10 Rules for Personal Branding. I want to talk about personal branding, and I’ll show it correlates very much with business branding.

I think in this day and age, you’ve got to build your personal brand, I know within my companies, I have a brand, and why I know this. People will partner with me in business all the time. I don’t remember ever asking someone to be a business partner of mine who’s ever turned me down. I know I have a brand because I can get investors and I get offered money to invest with me if I have an idea.

I have clients that at one time paid me $3k at now effortless, we pay me $200k, so I’ve built a brand over time. Now, I want to tell you how you can build your brand. All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOS of our own companies. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketers for the brand called You. And that’s so important. I mean, even if you’re not an entrepreneur and you’re an employee, you build a brand and that brand will allow you to get hired by other companies and get paid more.

I mean, if you look at TV personalities or sports stars like Tony Romo. He created a brand. When he started at CBS, he was unique. He was different as a football commentator, and he’s parlayed that into I think he’s a little more than a million dollars per game. I mean, he’s getting paid starting quarterback money to sit in a safe booth because he built a brand. Arnold Palmer built a brand and he was a top 10 endorsed athlete in his 80s.

You need to have a brand, and I know everybody in this kind of space, listening to podcasts and learning, people want to have a personal brand.

I’m going to give my pre-25 kind of a warning. Be an expert at something, develop something where you’re worthy of a brand. There’s not a lot of 20-year-olds that are branding fans.

I mean, Tiger Woods. He was a three-time amateur champion at 20. So you got Mike Phelps and things like that. I mean, it’s just because you say you’re a brand doesn’t mean you are a brand. So these are my 10 rules for personal branding.

Why are You Building a Brand in the First Place?

• Is it going to further your career?
• Are you trying to monetize it?
• Is it a hobby?

What is Your Brand Going to Be?

What is your brand going to be? It needs to be authentic and it needs to be earned. So that goes together. It’s not anything you want it to be. No, it has to be authentic. Has to be you. And it has to be earned.

Can You Deliver on It?

You’ve declared a brand, and let’s say your goal is to be a real estate guru.

Well, is that authentic? Have you done a lot of real estate deals? Have you earned it? Have you been successful at it? Can you help other people do it? Do you have a track record of delivering on that?

What one promise that if you made to your followers would make them follow you and chase after you because you can deliver on it?

It Needs to Be Authentic and It Needs to Be Earned

So again, your brand needs to be authentic and it needs to be earned. It needs to be based on something that you can deliver on. A company can declare this brand position, but if you’re not the best at it, and you’re saying you’re the best, and if you say you have the highest quality and you make your products with crap, or if you say that service is great we love our customers but when they call you nobody answers, then you’re not delivering on it.

How Will You Be Different from Others Who are Similar?

There are only so many categories, how are you different? How can you be different?

Because you don’t want to be similar. There’s a lot of people, especially in the expert space, that are not that far apart.

Dave Ramsey, just as a perfect example, he positioned himself in the financial market because he was so opposed to debt. That was his difference from everybody as other people would tell people how to save money, put money away, this and that. He took one thing, debt, and made that his absolute Holy Grail.

So you need to find out what yours is and that you can deliver on and how it can be different from other people next

Is It Sustainable?

This is huge. I know in developing my brand, the one thing I said to everybody was working with me, was I can’t continue to do that, that’s not me. Like on Instagram, every day you need to post a story about your life ago. My life is not that exciting.

I get up early. I write, read, and I work out for about an hour. And then I’m a guest or I have people in my podcast for about two hours, relax for a couple hours, go to my office for about an hour and a half to two hours in the afternoon, come back, and typically all waits later in. I’m a fitness guy but what can I possibly put on Instagram?. All they’re going to find is a man who doesn’t really doesn’t kill himself anymore in the gym.

I don’t work my tail off like in my 20s. I worked like a maniac in my early 30s, and then it started getting to where I was able to delegate and hire other people to do things that didn’t want to do. I don’t really do anything anymore that I don’t want to do unless a family member asked me to do it.

So is it sustainable? You need to have a brand that is sustainable, and you need to focus on only one thing. I could put this at the top of the list, but I’m giving you all 10 and you can decide. You gotta find the one thing again, that’s sustainable, that you can deliver on it and then just focus on that.

You Need to Live It and Breath It

You cannot just turn it on or off. I heard a great story about the Undertaker from WWE. For the last 20 years he’s been, I think, in more premier events and anybody. And he said when he decided to create the character, the Undertaker, which uses all-black makeup under the eyes and particular music that comes, he said, “I knew I had to be it everywhere”. He said, “I couldn’t be the Undertaker on stage, and then in the airport, somewhere in a Hawaiian shirt, I find all my fans”. He needed to live it and breathe it. Rick Flair, as another example. He lived it and he breathed it.

So you gotta have a brand that you can deliver on, and that you can sustain, live it, and you gotta breathe it. That’s why you can’t kinda jump around on it.

You Need to Promote Your Brand

You absolutely need to promote it. You need to put money into building it, promoting it, or feeding it. However you can do it, you need to promote that brand. If you want people to know about it, if you wanted to have traction, you need to align your brand strategically. Not only do you need to line it strategically, you don’t align it in a bad situation. I get a lot of offers to do a lot of things, and I get a lot of offers for people to be on my podcast, the 10-Minute Entrepreneur Podcast, but if they don’t align with me strategically or they don’t win with my brand, then I don’t. I don’t want to have them if I know somebody’s coming on my podcast and all they’re going to do is start selling something. It kinda feels icky.

I can’t tell you the offers like that that we get, but I want somebody somewhere in that entrepreneur space. My brand is equipping, encouraging and educating entrepreneurs, so it’s really easy for me to decide if something aligns with my brand, whether it’s something I should be involved in or whether it’s something I should have somebody aligned with me on something that I’m doing. Does it equip entrepreneurs? Does it encourage them?

I don’t mind having a person who ran ultra marathons on my show, even that it’s nothing to do with entrepreneurs because I want to know how you build that type of discipline because if you can do that, it carries over. Discipline carries over and it teaches you how to be successful, so I don’t mind stretching a little bit on the encouraging side, but it has to align somewhere.

Guard Your Brand

And this is kind of what I’m talking about there. If you align it quarterly, then you’re really not guarding it, but I’m very careful about things that I would be a part of, like events. Again, I don’t want to do something that doesn’t fit my standard or I feel like it’s going to be so sales-related, and you kinda walk out of there like you want to take a shower…because I tell people I don’t really want to sell anything from the stage, which eliminates me from a lot of things. I don’t understand. If I’m a successful entrepreneur, which I say I am, shouldn’t I already be rich?

I’m not saying I’m Tony Robbins rich, but I mean, I’m not missing any meals. Why would I be peddling stuff on stage? To me that would diminish my brand. If I look desperate and broke, always selling you something on Instagram, swipe up, swipe down, that to me that that doesn’t align strategically with what I want to do. I don’t do it because I’m trying to guard my brand. I’m a successful entrepreneur who equips, encourages, and educates aspiring entrepreneurs, so it’s really easy for me to pick things that I think work for my brand. Hey, listen, in this day and age, social media online, you’re going to have a brand as an employee too. Decide what yours is going to be.

 

I just went through 10 quick rules in no, perfect order, but here they are again:

1. Why are you building the brand in the first place?
2. What is your brand going to be?
3. It needs to be authentic.
4. It needs to be earned.
5. Can you deliver on it?
6. How will you be different from others who are similar?
7. Is it sustainable? 
8. Live and breathe it.
9. You need to promote it.
10. Guard your brand.