Authentic Personal Branding

How would you describe your personal brand? We all have one, and most of us don't even think about it. So in this video, I want to encourage you to think about what your personal brand is. In other words, what's most memorable about you? Who are you at your best self? And what does your ideal audience remember about you? What do you want them to remember about you? One of the examples for— is that my personal brand includes my dog, Buddy the pup, right? Now, he doesn't show up in my videos often enough, and I've had audience members ask me to show my dog more often. And that's one clue to what your personal brand is, is when you create content, enough content, your audience will start to respond to certain aspects of your content, and they may even start to request more of that kind of content from you. And that's a clue to your personal brand. So how do we discover our personal brand? And I'm gonna give you more comprehensive ideas in the notes of this video, so you might want to take a look at that. But let me just give you a couple of quick thoughts and questions here in this video for you to think about. So first, let me describe what I mean by personal brand. It's what your ideal audience, which is your— the clients that you most want to work with, the referral sources that you want to have, people that you want to remember your business— what do you want them to remember about your business? And here's the thing that's really important. People don't have as much mind and heart space for your business as you think they might have. They're only going to remember a little bit about your business. So what do you want them to remember? That's the key. And generally speaking, people remember feelings a lot more than they do words and ideas, right? And feelings are conveyed through through graphics, conveyed through your personality and your values. What values do you represent a lot in your content and in your message and your products and services? I mentioned graphics. This is what people typically think brand is. Branding is what's your logo or what font do you use in your email newsletters and in your website. Now those are all aligned— those ideally would all be aligned with what you want people to remember about you, but really those graphical elements are really connected to what your values are and what your personality is that you want people to remember about your business and about you. And so you might want to pause the video now and just jot a few notes on what do you want your ideal clients, your ideal audience, to remember about you if they can only remember a few things. And generally speaking, how do you want them to feel about your business and about you? For example, I have— one of my big values is simplicity, being simple, and I might even say humble as a marketer. This is how I juxtapose myself because I believe it's such an important value that's not being expressed and championed enough in my industry of marketing, is this idea of humility and compassion and generosity. And so that's what I and simplicity. I'm not dressed fancy. As you can see, I'm very casual in my videos, but that's become my personal brand, right? I think an authentic personal brand is who are you when you're most naturally you, and also who are you when you're at your best self. So that combination of your best self and the most natural self is I think is your authentic personal brand. So think about that, reflect on that. This comes from conversations, like I said, with your ideal audience, with your colleagues, and also as you see what needs to be championed more, what needs to be expressed more in your industry that's not expressed enough, that you can fill when you are your most natural and best self. Think about what that might be. So again, I'll have more comprehensive ideas in the notes of this video, so take a look at that. And until the next video, I wish you some productive journaling and reflection on your authentic personal brand. Be well. Thank you, George.