Artists: Here's 4 Steps To Build Your Personal Brand Online

One of the most powerful things an artist can have on the Internet is a personal brand. And I'm not talking about, you know, getting on camera and crying all the time or like feeling like you have to be an influencer, but if you want to sell your work, you know, and a lot of you are doing it in real life, but you can't make it work online, well, you don't need to be an influencer, but you do need to have some sort of influence in some way.

Right?

Because a personal brand is simply what are people saying about you when you're not in the room? And if the only thing that they can say about you is, oh, they make watercolors or they do abstract work, it's not enough. And so today I'm gonna walk you through a four step process on how you can build your personal brand online, including the type of content that you need to make. And we're going to go step by step through this. So. So make sure you have a pen and paper ready and let's go ahead and jump into it. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Stop the Starving Artist podcast. I got a comment this week that said, wait, a podcast is now a video? And I said, yeah, welcome to 2025, where, you know, hamburgers are also made of vegetables. It's a wild world out here. This is what we do. But I'm so excited. We've seen over 1400 new subscribers in the last 30 days, which absolutely blows my freaking mind. And I'm so grateful to have you here. But more than anything, you know, I just want to make sure that you're getting the value that you need. So all the sweet comments that you guys have left have been the best. I also want to celebrate our community. We are wrapping up the first half of the year with $244,334 in art sales and inside of our community and it's just frickin the best. So I'm just excited to see how the rest of the year plays out. But let's talk now about your personal brand and how can you build one online that allows you honestly to not find your ideal buyer, but to be more findable for them? What's the difference? Well, when you think about it, right, I hear a lot of people using things like, hey, you know, go post in groups on Facebook and blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like, here's the beautiful part about social media. The way social media works is it's always trying to put the right piece of content in front of the right person at the right time. There's no magic trick for the fact that you all are finding me on YouTube, right? It's not a magic trick. It is a strategy. And the strategy is exactly what we're going to talk about today. But if you understand that whatever platform you're on is trying to find the right person and put the right piece of content in front of them at the right time, then if you start talking to a certain kind of person, you will start reaching more of those people. So that brings us to step number one, which is understanding who, not who you are, but who they are. Who is they? They is what I call your ultimate badass buyer or your you bad.

Right?

Or your ideal buyer, whatever you want to call it. I like to flare things up, y' all. I like to get spicy. So think of it this way, you know, if I come up to you and I say, what's your name? You might be like, oh, I'm Sally or whatever. But if I came up to you and I said, are you Sally? And don't you like selling your work online? But you're also like, you do it at markets and stuff, but you don't necessarily make it work on the Internet. But I know you're trying to do that. Is that you? You'd be like, holy crap. Like, first of all, if I did that in real life, you'd think I was a total creep, right? But, and I, you know, rightfully so. But if you think about that on the Internet, it's normal, right? We hear people calling out a certain kind of person all the time. And so it's really important that you understand who your ideal buyer is. And so I want you to answer this question, okay? In your friend groups, like your best friends that are not artists, okay, what do you all talk about all the time that gets you either lit up or heated? What do you talk about all the time that gets you lit up or heated? And that's going to be a hint as to the type of people that you might want to resonate with the most. It might not be exact, but it's going to give you a hint, right? And in my heart based sales accelerator, I actually have a whole AI system, like a bot that walks and coaches people through this step by step. So they can outline this all the way down to their psychographics. Meaning like, what are they hanging out and watching online? Like, what do they feel? What do they value in their everyday life? What are they coming up against? It's like a heavy struggle. You Know, these are things that you also want to know. But I guarantee you, if you just start with this idea of like, if I could just talk about something all the time with someone, what would it be?

Right?

And that leads us into question number two. And if question number one here of who are they? Is a little fuzzy, maybe question number two will help you open up number one. Number two is what your mission for them? What mission do you have for your ideal person? Now, don't worry if you're a little confused, I'm going to give you examples or an example of this that we're going to start to walk through the entire rest of this process. So you can see how these things pair. But why a mission? So when I think about the heart based sales system, what I'm thinking about is a heart. The heart of everything is the mission. And why is a mission so powerful? Because a mission now when you go out and you talk about who you are as an artist and what you do, and you say, I'm on a mission to do blank, right? Or I make art for blank. So they can have some sort of transformation, right? When I'm on. If you're on that mission, even if I don't want to buy your art right now, I can get behind the mission that you're on. And that creates connection and trust. And that's so much more powerful than just saying, I make acrylic art, right? It's like, no, here's why I do this thing. Here's who it's for. Here's what I hope to, like, do to change my little corner of the world. Does this make sense? So let me give you an example because I think this will be helpful. So I have a client or two clients. They're a husband and wife by the names Hannah and Nemo. Actually, I'm using them as an example today because we just bought a couple pieces of their art and we're gonna unwrap those either tonight or tomorrow. I'm really, really excited about them because they just came in. But their mission reads as, we're on a mission to create art that restores your faith in yourself and humanity. We're on a mission to create art that restores your faith in yourself and humanity. So if that's the mission, then who do you think their person is? Who do you think their ideal buyer is? Well, they start to outline even a little more, right? They say, because if you're like us, you're probably sick and tired of people that are unwilling to love each other for Their differences. You're tired of companies that claim sustainability, but they don't actually practice it. You're tired of people that refuse to support the earth and each other. And recycling is often being treated as a difficult task. So the type of people that they're trying to reach are people who value the Earth. And they may feel like they want to do more, but they don't necessarily know how. And they know that they want equality in the world. That's a big value of theirs. So this is a beautiful statement because just through one sentence and four little bullet points, they've lined us up with what their mission is for this person. And they're saying, we're on this mission. Do you want to come along with us? So number three then is, why does this matter to you? Why does this matter to you? And this is where you get to introduce yourself. This is your story of how you became this kind of person. Now, Hannah and Nemo's story is a really interesting one because they started as architects and they had very cushy six figure jobs where they got to basically live whatever life they wanted to live. And they realized that they didn't want to just have more money or more things. They actually wanted a slower, simpler life. And they remember seeing a, like a bunch of recycling that was or a bunch of trash that was being dumped into a recycling bin. And they thought, well, wait, that doesn't make any sense. Like, this is supposed to be recycling, but it's not like. And you just see that all the time. People are claiming that they're recycling, they're claiming that they're doing these things, but they're not actually acting on them. And so they started to ask, well, what can we do in our own little way to reuse materials, to maybe create a little dent, you know, in society, even if it's just small, just to do something, right? And so they started to make art that used upcycled aluminum cans. And they started creating these moving mosaics. So now what's really fascinating, right, is that all of that stuff that leads up to the moving mosaic, it doesn't start with the moving mosaics. It starts with, they were architects, they did this, they have these values, they blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we get to this place, right? So this is why this mission matters to them. So if you're interested, like, I would actually pause the video here and ask yourself, who are they? Who is your ultimate badass buyer? Or start with the question, what mission are you on for someone? And I want you to just Ask yourself, if you didn't have your art, what would you do anyway? Because that's the thing about this mission for Hannah and Nemo. Even if they didn't make art around it, they would still talk about sustainability. They'd still talk about what? Sorry, that. Just being inclusive and being loving and caring for one another. They would still talk about those things. So what. What would you do even if art wasn't the main thing? And then why does this matter to you? How did you get to this place? Outline those three things, and then we'll move on to number four. So number four is, how are you going to achieve this mission? How are you going to achieve this mission? And I think of this in three, we'll call it categories. So you have a physical category, right? Which is likely your art. This is the thing that you physically offer. We have a digital category. So this is likely your social media, because this is like you're going to show up and try to achieve this mission there as well. And then you have a social category. So this is maybe live events. And I'm not talking about, like, gallery things, but that could be part of it. But I'm also talking about maybe charitable things that you do, charities that you may connect with, other things. I don't know. It could be a lot of different. Different things that you connect with in a more social atmosphere.

Right.

This is kind of your tribes. Like, what would you do socially in these tribes?

Right.

Okay. So when you have those three things, and so for them, for Hannah and Nemo, the physical thing they offer is their art. The digital thing is social. And the social. Sorry, it gets a little confusing. The physical thing they offer is their art. The digital thing they offer is social media or content. We'll just say content. Right? And then the social side or the more interactive side is they do live events and they partner with some charities.

Right?

Okay, so now we have these three levels. And then we say, okay, well, this is great, Lennon. Like, these are the ways that I'm going to offer that. But how do I use this information to build my brand online? Okay, we're going to ask three questions here. And these three questions are going to give you all of your content ideas. Everything you create, content wise, will go around these three questions. Okay, the first question, how will you educate your audience on what they need to know in order to achieve this mission alongside you? Repeat it. How are you going to educate your audience on what they need to know in order to help you achieve this mission alongside you? Because remember, when you Have a personal brand that's based around this kind of thing. You're drawing people into the feeling right away, and they're saying, do I like this person? Do I not like this person?

Right?

And a mission doesn't need to be this big, grandiose thing. It can be definitely just like, how are you going to change your little corner of the world?

Right?

So write down as many things that you feel like someone might need to be educated on. So with Hannah and Nemo, you know, they talk about slow living. They educate people on that. They educate people on first steps toward recycling. They educate people on how they can offer things to upcycle for their art. They educate people on how their art is fulfilling that mission. You know, so they're always teaching people little things that are helpful in order to achieve the mission. Now, why is this valuable? Because people come to social media to get educated, inspired, and entertained. So you can guess where the next two questions are going, right? So question number two. How will you inspire them to move forward? So this means you also have to ask the question of, where are they getting stuck? What frustrates them when it comes to the mission that you're on? Where are you frustrated? When you ask this question, you get to come up with answers, right? And a lot of my clients don't love this about me, but I can't just give people every single thing to do, like, go make this thing with this hook, and it's going to be fine. You're going to get views. Why can't I do that? Because then you're going to make a bunch of stuff that you don't want to make, and you're going to be talking about a bunch of stuff that you don't want to talk about. And then eventually you're going to burn out. And some of you are already doing that. And you still come in and say, lennon, I don't want to do any of this work. I want to just go publish something and have it go viral so I can just sell my art. Well, good luck. I'm not the guy for you. You can go somewhere else. Because if you don't want to do the work that matters, you're not building a business that you actually love. You're building a job. You can get a job anywhere. Go get a job at Wendy's and then sell your art however you can. But if you're going to have to put all this time and effort into building something online, you might as well do it in a way that you actually like it for people that you like to engage with. I'm just saying, right? So if you think about it, even in that instance, like, how will you inspire people to move forward like that alone? Like, I know that people come to me and they say, well, Lennon, this is going to be hard. Like, I have to do some internal work. Yeah, you do. And if you can't do that, then why are you even trying? You don't have to do social media. You don't have to go do something else. But the truth is, is like, content creation, doing things on social marketing, your work, it's not easy. Anybody who's been telling you it's easy is lying to you. It is simple, but it is not easy. It's a skill, you know? And so this is me trying to inspire you to move forward and say, like, give yourself some freaking grace to say, I'm learning a new skill here. Okay? So as you're learning this skill or the skills that you need to learn along your mission, what would you want to how and what would you want to inspire your people about? Make content around that. And then question number three. How can you entertain them with stories from your everyday life or interests? This is where it gets to be a little more loosey goosey. This is where it gets to be a little more fun, right? Because you can just share things that are going on. You don't have to talk about your art or your mission all the time. If you do a mix of these three things and then you throw in content that is specifically around selling, it's game on, right? Because what you're doing here is you're building a story people can tell. Let me give you an example of this. So I was at the coffee shop the other day, and I heard a gal talking to a friend of hers on the phone, and she was talking about this artist that she was really, really into as a music artist. And she talked about two things. Number one. Oh, they kind of sound like this other group. So she tried to give her a reference, right? This is the what?

Okay.

But she didn't talk about that very much. The second thing she talked about was the why. She talked about their story. She talked about the hardships they had went through. She talked about where they were from. She talked about the lyrical content that they spoke about often. And she painted a picture for her friend that said, if you're this kind of person who aligns with these kinds of values and ideas and you like this style of music, you're probably gonna love this. And that's what I'M talking about if you're this kind of person who aligns with these ideas and wants to change your little corner of the world in this way, and you love beautiful acrylic art pieces that are landscapes that draw you into a space that allows you to see the world differently. This is, for you, it's a whole different approach. When we start to think about things this way, I'm gonna be real. Most of you won't ever do this. You'll watch this video and you'll just say, well, this is great. But, you know, I just, I don't. I don't have enough time. I mean, I don't know what you want to spend your time on. I know it's making art, that's great, you know, but what I'm also saying is, like, this is the stuff that changes people's lives. Your story is the stuff that will change people's lives. Your story and these elements are the things that will start to make people go, wow. When they show your piece on the wall, they're going to go, you got to hear this. And that's the stuff that trickles down for generations. That's why we love the artists that we love, because there's a story there of what they believed in, what they cared about, what they were passionate about. It's not just techniques and how to's. So I hope you'll take this and run with it. And if you're asking, well, Lennon, how do I turn this into sales? How do I start to actually generate sales from this idea? I have a free masterclass that you can go watch. The link for it is in the description below. So go check that out. It's called Posts to Profit or the Post to Profit Masterclass. And I walk you through how to take these ideas, turn it into a 30 day sales system that you can do for you and your art. And I do talk about how we can work together. So if that's something that offends you, don't go watch it. Just keep watching these free YouTube videos and that's totally fine. But it's not just some big sales thing. Like, I give you the layout of the plan and how to use the whole heart based system. So check it out if that's something that interests you. And I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you that are here. And don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget you don't make art. You are the art. I'll see you on the next episode.