Best Cayman Personal Branding FAQ's from Qamar Zaman Coffee With Q

Good morning, Cayman, and welcome to the Zone of Caymanian Genius. #OneCaymanian. I'm your host, Jaycee Patrick, joined by the visionary Qamar Zaman. Today we dive deeper into how we're turning the Cayman Islands into a buzzing content hub reminiscent of Silicon Valley. But with our unique Caymanian flair. In our premiere episode, I shared my journey of being on the world stage of Miss World Cayman Islands to the global platform of Miss Supranational. But beyond the glitz, we're here to challenge perceptions and uncover the true potential of our island. Not just as a paradise of sea and sun, but as a technology oasis. So whether you're tuning in from Seven Mile Beach or from cities around the world, be prepared to be inspired as we bring technology and innovation to the forefront of the Cayman culture. So let's innovate, inspire, and influence. One Caymanian at a time. Kumar, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast today, and we are going to be talking a little bit about personal branding. So Kumar, you are kind of the king of personal branding. It's something that you talk about all the time, and it's something that I'm currently learning from you. So can you tell us a little bit about personal branding and Really explain to us what personal branding is.

Thanks for having me again. Let's do this. So personal branding is not what you think about yourself. Personal branding is about what people perceive you. So in the old days, and you can probably remember, as your dad might say, all Qamarians will all say that, you know, my word is my bond. You know, so in those days, people really didn't sign contracts. Whatever they say, they made it happen. So that's your personal brand. Whatever you are, you represent. So in marketing terms, there's a term called what you see is what you get, right? So in personal branding, you are the brand representing, you know, your word is your bond. Okay, so, and in certain legal frameworks also, even if you didn't say it on paper, whatever you said is legal and binding. So that's what a personal brand is. And a lot of people don't understand that part. So just to give you some context.

Great. Thank you, Qamar. That really gave me insight into what personal branding actually is. And I think a lot of businesses are now starting to realize that They need to have a brand in order to get the target audience that they're really looking for. So Qamar, can you tell us what are the benefits of being a personal brand?

So personal brand is the foundation of a person. So the benefits are multiple. People are making millions of dollars, billions of dollars. The biggest example is Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins' brand is worth $3, $4, $5 billion.

Yeah.

Okay, versus some influencers that are now on TikTok, Instagram. And if you hear the TikTok chatter that is going on, that people are really worried what's going to happen if TikTok closes in America. They're concerned that they're going to stop losing, you know, their revenue, their income. So how did that all happen? So let's go back into The history. So a personal brand, as we are kids and we grow up and we go to the school, we are a personal brand in the eye of teacher. If you're a smart student, you are considered a smart personal brand in the eye of the teacher, you know. And I don't know about you, but there are some teachers, they like a certain kid more than the other because that kid is their personal— their personal brand, you know, the kid is doing that. So, and some kids are notorious. They are, you know, not the eye of the teacher. So that's what happens. Now, as we grow older and we are ready to go to school and we are applying to become, you know, applying for colleges, we are writing that resume or the bio that we are going to send it to a top school like Harvard and Yale. You're writing your personal brand statement, who you are, why they should take you, because it's not just the GPA. They have to see what you did in your life as a kid, as a young adult. So that's a personal brand. Then you take that and put it into LinkedIn. And at that point, you don't have a lot of experience, right?

No.

People that are finishing college, they only have 4 years of college. They worked maybe a few jobs, so they don't have a lot of experience. So that's your personal brand. Now, you can take advantage of that and build it into a brand that makes you money. So, let's go into that. So, that is the foundation of a personal brand. Who you are. What are your strengths? Again, going back to my framework of Ikigai. You know, who you are, what you are good at, and what can make you money. And most people, they go into who they are. For example, if they're an engineer, you know, or a technician, they go and work for somebody, you know, and they build their— they're not building their brand at that time. They're building the business brand, right? But let's say if you're going back to your friend's example of a hairstylist, let's say she worked in some of the biggest salons in the Cayman Islands and you found her there. And then 2 years later, she starts her own business. Where are you going to go? You are going to follow your friend. Yeah, the personal brand. So that's why personal brands are very, very important.

Great. Thank you, Kumar. That is something really interesting that you said with your personal brand actually being what others think about you or how they perceive you. And for me, I've always thought that branding is Again, what you put out into the world. And yes, part of that is true. But when you're talking about marketing yourself to others or companies, you want to be able to make a good first impression. And I think it's really important when you're using, like you said, with the resume and LinkedIn, you're finding that you're making your personal brand use for different aspects of your life. So Qamar, kind of going back on that, how can we kind of differentiate who the personal brand actually is for, whether it's for you personally or for your viewers?

Okay, before I answer that question, hold on to that thought. So think about LinkedIn, right? In LinkedIn, if you create a LinkedIn page, for your personality. They don't allow you to put picture of a cat. Why don't they do that, right? They'll force your account, they'll shut it down. They want your picture, and then you can create— if you have a business, they have a business page you can create. So what is the genesis of all this? People want to see who you are, where you went to school, what you do, and then if you have a business, you can create a business page. So now let's go back to your question. What was the question again? Can you repeat it?

How can you differentiate who the personal brand is for?

Personal brand is again the avatar. So anytime you're confused about who is it for, think about who am I most uniquely qualified to serve? I will repeat that. Who am I most uniquely qualified to serve? So the second question is, you might ask me, Qamar, how do I know what is my uniqueness?

Yeah. Right.

So everybody will say that. How do I know? Because, you know, I have so many things that I'm unique about. What is it that I'm unique about? So the answer to that is, within your own question. So just the way, who are you uniquely qualified to serve? So I'll put it back to you, JC. So you are Miss World 2019, right?

Mm-hmm.

Now you're going to Miss Supranational. So that means that your uniqueness is being a person on the stage Yeah. You're very confident to be a person on the stage. You have done these ramp walks in the modeling shows. You are again going to do Miss Supranational. That means that if somebody asks you a question about how to become Miss World again, or for their kids, you can write it down on a napkin and give it because it's in your head. You have done it so many times that this has become your ikigai, right? So that's your uniqueness. So if you want to know what's your uniqueness, the answer is go back to teaching people who you once were.

Yeah.

Okay. So you were once Miss Cayman 2019. So now If you want to start your education business, business, business, whatever you want to do, you know, you were uniquely qualified to be a Miss World. You know, you were once there. So if somebody says, Qamar, what's your personal brand? I am very good at search engine marketing. I have gone there. I build personal brands. So who is my target audience? My target audience, again, is people that can benefit from my story because I've been there. So as Bruce Lee said once, I'm really scared of people that have practiced one thing 10,000 times compared to somebody that has done 10,000 things. Okay?

Yeah.

So that is your uniqueness. You are very good at that one thing. So that's a personal brand.

Great, thank you, Qamar. And I actually think it's quite interesting when you said, um, that you have to be able to find your uniqueness and find how you can serve others. And, you know, with me personally, I've always tried to be pretty much a jack of all trades and kind of do it all. And in my kind of later years, I'm finding that If I focus on one thing and I get good at that, then that gives me the kind of platform that I can use to teach that to others. So I think a lot of businesses in the Cayman Islands can actually benefit from that because going back to talking about finding your target audience, you want to be able to really hone in on what your customers want, but find what makes you unique and find how can you serve your customers by doing that. So a lot of businesses in the Cayman Islands, Kamar, I find that they struggle with, you know, making a profit for their brand and making a profit for their business. So how can Caymanians, young Caymanian entrepreneurs and businesses in the Cayman Islands actually make money from their personal brand? How can they make a profit?

So there is a triangle that I will help you understand. So there are 3 sides to a triangle, if I got my geometry right. So your first foundation of the triangle is make money with what you know best.

Okay.

So if you are a bank teller, you know, you're starting, you're going to high school, you got a teller's job, You go and do that first. Okay. Because now you have a guaranteed paycheck coming, you know, because that's your skill, right? So you are good at counting money, dealing with the customer service. That's what you are. That's your foundation. Now go back outside of that comfort zone because we work mostly in our comfort zone, you know.

Yeah.

So you get up in the morning, you get up your coffee, drink your water, go to bank and work there from 9 to 5. Now that is your comfort zone. When you come out of from your comfort zone, now you are going into your zone of genius, as you call it, right?

Mm-hmm.

The zone of genius. This is where you are really a smart person. We only use 1% of our faculties that God has given to us. So we can go into learning the skill that I'm very good at. Okay, so let's say a person that goes to the bank and they are dealing with customer service all day, you know, so they have a lot of experience doing that. Why can't they write a book, for example, on how to deal with troubled customers? Now that's uniqueness because troubled customers have a set of rules that they're always like that, or how to create your bank account in the Cayman Islands the right way and get answers to the clients because people are frustrated. If you look at bank reviews, they're really bad, bad reviews. People don't call. So identify your zone of genius and become an expert in that. And maybe publish a blog, create a TikTok channel, Create an Instagram channel on your zone of genius and create a lot of content. Again, going back to like Bruce Lee says, practice 10,000 kicks. As you post content, people think, well, I just posted 2 videos and I didn't get any likes. You know, you have to do at least 100 before you get noticed, right?

Yeah.

So once you've posted your uniqueness, people start to follow you. And once they start to follow you, they start to be— you start to become an influencer in that space. So like that banker example, or like that hairstylist example, you know, she cuts hair all the time, but now she needs to spend 2 hours on doing things that are mostly asked for, what we call the FAQs of that. So create more content on it. When the content gets generated, the third difficult part is, well, who's going to see my content?

Yeah.

That's where we come in as digital marketers. What we do is we amplify the content that is out there and get your brand out. And once you get that out, you get that status of being an influencer. Your content is getting a lot of likes, you're getting found. If people search for your name in Google, because now you're becoming a brand, they're finding you. And that's when you start to make money. So becoming an influencer to get money is taking time. However, you can go to 4 years of college and come out and don't make money.

Yeah.

But in personal branding, you can spend a year and make the 6-figure income that you can do when you come out of college. So it's a shortcut and it's your passion, what you really love. So that's the way to do it.

Thank you, Qamar. That was really good insight into personal branding and actually finding out how, like, what are the benefits of personal branding. And what I find with a lot of businesses in the Cayman Islands is that businesses that actually have a personal brand they use that to their advantage. So Hannah, for example, she started off being as a, you know, hairstylist at a small hair salon in the Cayman Islands and really worked her way up. And she's built a very successful brand, not just, you know, making videos and content, but again, going out there, being able to network and have that intimate marketing moment with other customers. And Qamar, can you just touch base, speaking about personal branding, for those who simply don't know what makes them unique or they don't know how to take the steps of starting a personal brand? What would you say would be, I guess, the first steps needed to build their personal brand?

So like anything else, if you are trying to lose weight, you go to a nutritionist. Okay, they do your assessment where you are, where you want to go. If you are trying to become fit, you know, for a competition and you want to be Miss World Fitness, you know, you have to go to a coach. You, when you became Miss World, you had to go to boot camps, do things. So there is no shortcut. There's not even a book out there that gives you the direction. But the good thing is I'm here in Cayman. So if they want to build their personal brand, we do offer a personal branding course. We are having 12 students right now, so they can reach out. So when we open the new course, that's one thing. And our coach— the course teaches not only to identify your uniqueness, Mm-hmm. But how to monetize that uniqueness and become a 6-figure earner using your personal brand.

Wow, that's amazing, Qamar. Thank you. I think a lot of businesses could benefit from, you know, using your services and again, building their personal brand because as you mentioned in this podcast today, personal branding is the foundation of being successful, of, you know, really showcasing your ikigai. And for me, what I learned personally in this podcast is that personal branding is not a one-size-fits-all, and you have to really find out who you are, what you're passionate about, what you enjoy doing. And like you said, how can I use this uniqueness to serve others? So that's something that I find a lot of businesses are trying to do now, getting their target audience to You know, align with their values, align with their morals. And I think that's what a lot of Caymanians are looking for— companies that they trust, companies that they can really be loyal to. So, Qamar, thank you so much for giving me the insight and our listeners the insight on personal branding. And I know that you have so many tips and tricks for us, and I look forward to speaking with you again and going into more topics of helping Caymanian businesses and entrepreneurs. So thank you so much. And listeners, remember to share your thoughts and join the conversation using our hashtag #OneCaymanian. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

Thank you, Dizzy.

Thank you, Qamar.