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Video transcript:
If you want to build your personal brand and grow your business, here are nine things that always come up and I want to just address them head on. So the first one is a business brand versus a personal brand. A lot of people want to know, can I just simply build a business brand without building a personal brand? Can I stay behind the scenes in the shadows? And the answer is no, not anymore.
So the way things work at the moment is that the only brands that get to cut through the noise are personal brands. And there are a lot of examples of this. We can see Ryan Reynolds massively catapulting the value of the businesses that he's involved with.
We can see Richard Branson, who's got 14 million followers, whereas Virgin only has a couple hundred thousand followers. We can see Rihanna, who is massively overtaking similar brands that are faceless. We can see historically Steve Jobs overtook IBM.
We can see Elon Musk, who has massively outperformed the entire car industry. So I can go on for days, but essentially big businesses and small businesses, the only brands that are getting cut through is the personal brand. Human brains evolved to recognize names and faces and voices and way less.
So logos and abstract concepts like limited companies. So punchline, you must build a personal brand, but it's not all bad news. So number two is the difference between an influencer and a key person of influence.
So an influencer is someone who says, look at me, check me out. Here's my gym routine. Here's my amazing, fabulous life where I'm getting on a private jet today.
Now this works for picking up a large number of very naive people, but it's not very powerful if you're building a business. So what you want to do is build a key person of influence brand, a key person of influence is not saying, look at me. They're saying, look at this.
Rather than chasing the spotlight and saying, put me in the spotlight. They're saying, I want to become the spotlight. And I want to shine that light on something in value.
So what a key person of influence is typically doing is telling stories about what the product and services are doing for people. Talking about how amazing the innovations of their team are. They're talking about data and research and analogies and stories that relate to the product or service.
So think about someone like Tim Cook of Apple. He's never saying, check me out, look at my life. He's saying, check out what Apple's doing and all the amazing innovations that we've got.
So you want to be a bit more like Tim Cook, and you don't necessarily want to be like Kim Kardashian. So number three is about being the spotlight versus chasing the spotlight. So how do you be the spotlight? Well, what you need to do is publish more stuff and publishing more stuff where the word publish means to put into the public domain.
So you could be putting things out that people watch, read, listen to, or interact with. And these are all things that showcase what it is that your business does. It's things that make it very easy for people to understand the data, the research, the stories associated with your products and services.
So what do we want you to do to become the spotlight? You publish more stuff and publishing more stuff is as simple as getting into the rhythm of putting things out that are videos, text and workshops so that people can take any of those types of things that you're putting freely in the public domain that helps to make you the spotlight. Now, number four is about owning your authority. So a lot of people, especially in certain cultures like the European culture, they don't like the idea of claiming authority.
They don't like the idea of saying, hey, I am the authority in this and I'm the person you should listen to. It feels awkward, but ultimately you have to claim some authority. Now, how should you do this? Think about how a doctor does this with a patient.
So they sit down with the patient and they say, there's nothing to worry about. I've done this operation many times before. I'm experienced and my team are amazing.
So they basically credentialize themselves, not for their benefit to say, look at me, check me out. I'm amazing. They do it for your benefit so that you are at ease, that you feel comfortable in their safe hands.
Now, what you want to do to claim authority is not to do this in a way that says, hey, I'm amazing. You want to do this in a way that says you can trust our judgment. You're in safe hands.
We know what we're talking about and it's not for your benefit. It's for their benefit. So you do need to claim authority, but you're not doing it for you.
You're doing it for them. So key people of influence have opinions and they share opinions. Now, it's very tempting when someone asks you a question to answer with, it depends.
It could be this way. It could be that way. I've got no opinion.
It depends on the situation. Well, that's great in a world of nuance, but we don't live in that world anymore. We live in a world where the people who get cut through are the ones who share their opinions.
So you need to form some opinions and share those opinions and get known for those opinions. You want some signature methods and some signature content built around your best thinking. And that is going to be your strong opinions, strongly held beliefs that you're going to share and put into the public domain.
Now, some people will agree. Some people won't agree, but to become a person of influence, you want to have some opinions and you want to share them freely. The next issue that people bring up is they always ask the question, if I become a key person of influence, will that mean that people want to buy me? They want to buy my time, that I can never leave the business, that I'm trapped, that I can't sell the business, all of those questions.
And the answer is no. So I want you to think about it like this. The key person of influence attracts people into the business, and then they have an ecosystem of products and services around them.
Now, the more they sell those products and services, the business takes on a life of its own. The key person of influence attracts talented people to come and work in the business. And eventually, they even attract an exit.
So how does an exit typically work if you're a key person of influence? Well, you've attracted a talented team. You've got an ecosystem of products and services. And you've probably got recurring and forecastable revenue.
And all of those things are attractive to an acquirer. Now, if someone does buy your business, they may even hire you to still be the face of the business. And you can keep earning for as long as they want that role to exist as well.
So it's a win-win. Rather than thinking about people buying you and your time, think about people buying the product and service ecosystem that will be around you as a key person of influence. For example, Elon Musk.
No one gets to buy Elon Musk's time. But you do get to buy a Tesla. No one gets to buy Rihanna's time.
But they do get to buy all the products and services that she represents. So continuing from that last point, people always wonder, if I'm the key person of influence, does that mean that I get roped in on everything? And the answer is actually no. And the reason for that is, the bigger your brand grows, the more talented and amazing people will come and work with you.
If you can build a little bit of a brand, what happens is that the really talented people are going to come and work with you. They check you out online. They Google you.
And they say, yeah, I really want to work with this person. You end up attracting even better people than you could get if you had no brand. So you end up with a more talented team.
And the more talented your team, the less you need to be there in the room. The next principle to talk about is, the idea that at some point in your career, you are going to have an amazing opportunity that is right there within arm's reach. And right before that goes ahead, the person is going to Google you.
And if they Google you and everything looks great, they're going to go ahead and do the deal. If they Google you and they can't really find you, they're going to second guess the deal. So you want to be ready for a game-changing moment.
And that is by having a really good profile. When somebody Googles you, you want to look like a key person of influence, not a worker bee. So here's the principle that I've noticed, which is that when you're close to something, you don't put adequate value on it.
It's called the proximity bias. And what it means is that if you are standing on top of a mountain, you actually can't see the mountain that you're standing on because you're too close to it. If you're at a distance, you can see it quite clearly.
And it's the same with the value within your business. Most people who are in a business and who have been in a business for five or 10 years, totally take for granted the value of their stories, their intellectual property, the data, the research, the contacts, the connections, all of the different things that make up that business. If you're too close to it, you might have forgotten that you've got this massive, incredible, valuable asset that you haven't done anything with.
So what I want you to do is step back and take a little bit of a new look at your business with fresh eyes and see if you can see what it is that is of high value to others that you've been ignoring or not paying enough attention to. Finally, I want to share with you the principle about the importance of sharing your story. I believe that one of the best assets your business possesses is the origin mission and vision statement.
An origin story is your background. It's how you came to have the business before you even started it. Your mission is, what do you consider to be the most high value thing you do each day? And your vision is what you hope to see happen in the future.
Now, getting a nice short statement around each of those three things is a very powerful asset that leads to more people wanting to work with you, buy from you and invest in you. So consider your origin mission and vision a real asset for your business. So hopefully I covered a few key things about building a personal brand that may have been causing you some resistance.
If I've missed any, put them in the comments below. I'd love to make another video to follow up if there's any particular resistance points that you've got around building a personal brand that I didn't cover. Now, if you want to try out some of these personal branding strategies, check out the first link in the description where I give away all my business training for free to get you started.
You will get access to all of my branding courses in the membership area. Thanks for watching. And I can't wait to see you in one of the next videos that will show up right about now.