#002 How To Make Money Being You

And I've got it. I've got my water. I hope that you guys are grabbing maybe a cup of tea or grabbing a coffee or whatever it is that you want to drink. I'm not going to tell you what to do. Welcome to Personal Brand Breakthrough. My name is Sheryl Plouffe, and today we are going to talk about how you can actually make money being you. That's what we're going to focus on in today's show. So really what we're talking about today, and thank you so much for being here. If you're watching live, type live in the comments if you're watching this on Facebook, because I do the show live on Facebook, and then a little bit later on in the day I post this also on YouTube. So if you're watching on YouTube, thank you. You can leave a comment or question or what have you on YouTube and I'll get back to you. But if you're watching live on Facebook right now, type in the comments that you're watching live, which is Thursday, 2 PM Eastern time. And if you're watching the replay, then type the word replay in the comments. So today we are going to talk about how you can actually make money being you online. So if you're an entrepreneur, a coach, a consultant, an author, a real estate professional, anyone who is looking to leverage social media, leverage the online space to build a business. The key to making money being yourself is to build a personal brand. This show is called Personal Brand Breakthrough, and, and really the intent is to help you to break through so that you can get to a place where your— sorry about that— that your brand is really what, what sets you apart from others, right? It's the differentiating factor. I'm also going to be watching on Facebook here. Let me— let's go over actually to the Facebook page just to see in case you guys have any comments. I just want to refresh here to make sure First of all, let's make sure we're broadcasting. Okay, good. I see something live. That's awesome. Okay, so if you have comments, you just put them in there and I'll come back occasionally and check in on it, okay? But basically what we're looking to do here is we're looking to build a personal brand so that we can really get in front of more people with our product or our service. So my name is Sheryl Plouffe. For those of you who are new to me, I'm a video marketing strategist. I actually used to be a broadcaster and I was on TV for a very long time and I, you know, been hired by, you know, some of the bigger brands in the country to be their representative and to really help them build their brand, right? And so the way that we do that is threefold. So today I want to give you 3 action steps to help you start building your brand. The first thing we have to do and get out of the way is what is a personal brand? Like, what is it? I love Dorie Clark. I love how she puts it. She says that your personal brand, essentially, when you mine it down to its core, it's your reputation. And I think that's really a great way of putting it. Your brand is your reputation, the image that you put out, whether that be, you know, entirely authentic to you or not is another question. My feeling is that if you want your personal brand to help you, then it should be authentic. A lot of people will put out an image or a reputation that is contrary to who they really are genuinely and authentically. And while that may make some money for someone in a, you know, in a get-rich-quick kind of way, it doesn't have longevity. It doesn't have legs. It will not allow you or sustain you to build a successful business for the long term if you're not authentic. Because you can't, you can't continue being someone else forever. Like at some point, you have to say, you know, this is who I am and be comfortable to do that and to share that. So, so essentially, you know, it's really important to make sure that your image and your reputation is is in line with who you are as a person, your beliefs, your core values, you know, your point of view, the way you see the world. I'm gonna get into some action steps in just a moment on really 3 actionable things, tangible things that you can actually do to start pushing your brand forward and to start building yet that reputation that's authentic and real to you. So I just have some messages coming through there, okay? One thing I would say too is if you have any questions while we're doing this live, or whether you're watching the replay, please ask in the comments. I get— I go through all the comments and I will answer all of your questions. Okay, that's really my, my gift to you is to come in there and really make sure that we're answering all of your questions. Why I'm here, I want to be of service to you at that level. The other thing I would ask you to do is share this out to your network if you're watching on Facebook. And if you're watching, um, this on YouTube, please share it out to your network as well because that will help me to reach more people with my message. So I really appreciate that. So why don't we go over— I'm going to show you— let's just go over to my computer right now and dig into some action steps for you today. So let me bring up my— first of all, let me make sure Hi Marina, nice to see you. So great being on your show this morning, loved it. Okay, so let me bring up my keynote that I made for you guys, and I think you can see this. I'm just checking as well. Yes, I think you see this. So it's 3 action steps. I'm just verifying here that you can see this. Are you seeing this? I don't know. I'm not holding— ah, just let me make sure that you're seeing this. Okay, I'm going to go ahead. In any case, I've got some slides here. If you don't see this, then I'm going to just talk through it. 3 action steps to help you start building your personal brand today and really start being able to make money by being yourself. That's what we're talking about. Number 1 is to create content. In fact, you know what I'm going to do? Let me go back to Facebook. Marina, I'd love for you to let me know if you could see those slides. Could you see those slides a moment ago? You do? Okay, good. Okay, thank you. So let me just go back. I'd hate to talk through all of that and then find out that you're not seeing them. That wouldn't be fun. So creating content, you know, when it comes to creating content, there's really 3 different types of You have to create your own original content. You know, you have to get into the mindset that you must become a content creator. Otherwise, you cannot build thought leadership in your niche and in your industry if you save it all to yourself and you're not putting it out there and packaging and publishing it for consumption. That's what we're trying to do, package and publish for consumption. So when we don't create original content, one of the things I see a lot of people do is they will, they will go and curate content from other people, which you can do a little bit of. I'm not against that entirely. I like to use the 80/20 rule on that, in that I believe that 80% of the content that you publish, say on your Facebook page or YouTube or wherever that is, wherever your platform is, should be of your own accord, like your own original content. And if you do that, then yeah, sure, 20% of the time you can curate some amazing content that's related, that's still going to be, you know, beneficial to your audience, related, and publish that. But 80% of it really has to be your own, okay? So creating content is one. There's 3 different types. So you can create audio, that would be like a podcast, for example. You could do, again, a podcast. You could— one of the most exciting platforms right now is anchor.fm. If you want to do a podcast, trust me, that's the easiest way to do it. A podcast is great. You could even go so far as to do audio trainings that you might, you know, share with your audience privately or publicly. But a bona fide podcast is a great way to create content. You could also do video. Of course, I'm all about the video. I love video. Video is a fantastic way to build your brand. That's how I've built my brand. That's how I've gone from, you know, from being stuck in a green room, you know, at work, you know, in my previous employment, sitting there talking about the same thing over and over and over again in my previous broadcasting profession, which in the last few years of it were not that much fun for me. In a seemingly on the surface successful environment, but still very unhappy and unfulfilled, and I wanted to move into something that was going to make me happy. And I've been able to transition from that to a 6-figure business from doing video. And so you can too. You can build thought leadership in your space. Become known as a subject matter expert with video. And it's really the most powerful way because it's the closest thing we have to being there in person. Okay, so video is another way. And written content. So this could be again, you know, blog posts, written It could be creating— gosh, it could be creating PDFs or different types of content, written content that you might put out there and publish. So different ways to create content, 3 different styles here, audio formats really: audio, video, and written. The second action step to building your personal brand and really starting to be able to make money being you is by leading by example. And what I mean by leading by example is that you have to live your truth. I'm gonna use health coaching as an example. If you're a health coach and you're eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups day in and day out, but yet you're telling other people that they should be eating right and doing all the right things, right? That's not living in truth. It's not leading by example. Most health coaches don't sit around eating Reese's peanut butter cups all day, but I think you get my point. If you are saying to other people, "Do this thing," and you're not doing it yourself, it's hypocritical. It doesn't— you're not living in truth. It's not authentic and it's not real. It's not genuine. And so when you want to, you know, start building your personal brand, you have to start living in your truth. And showing your real life, right? Leading by example. So living your truth, leading, being authentic and genuine, and really showing your real life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. A lot of people freak out. They're like, I don't wanna show the bad parts of my life, right? We wanna Instagram and Photoshop our lives. And while sure, you always wanna put your best foot forward, but you don't want to shy away from sharing The pain, essentially, the pain. And I'll be honest with you, this is the part I struggle with the most. This is the part that I struggle with the most, the really sharing deep down truthful, I don't have a problem being truthful, but being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is a challenge for me. I'm doing a better job of it in the last 6 to 8 months and I keep trying. To be more real and authentic and vulnerable and showing that it isn't always fantastic. You know, there is pain and I try to show that vulnerability and it's really something that I think is important. I think we have to show that it's not all, you know, rainbows and sunshine and unicorns. So the third action step to building your personal brand is to be visible. Yes, yes, ah! Like this, where you have to actually be seen. Don't freak out, it's okay. You have to put yourself out there. You have to be seen. You've got to be visible. This freaks people out. This morning I was interviewed on a, on a show talking about fear. That's really what's at the root of this, right? It's the fear of the unknown. But we have to break through the fear in order to get to the promised land of where we want to go. And if you want to make money by being yourself and have the ability to work from home like I do right now, I get to work from home. I can, I I don't have to commute for hours and hours every day anymore. I can, you know, sit here and make myself a coffee in the mid-afternoon or have some lunch here at the counter. You know, like there's— I can create my own schedule. I can choose to work a little bit on Saturday, but that means I get Friday off. You know, like different things around that that afford you the lifestyle that you probably want. So being visible is really important, being seen. And by You know, being seen could include, again, back to video, you're seen on the screen, right? You're, you're seen on video, you're visible, you're really putting yourself out there. And the beautiful thing about that is you're connecting. It really is about building relationships and connecting. Another great way to be visible, to be seen, is to start speaking. This has been the thing I believe that has brought me to 6 figures and beyond quicker than probably anything was, was actually speaking. And, and so you could seek out— maybe there are some women's luncheons or some men's groups locally where you live that would be looking for a guest speaker. You could approach them and say, "Could I come and speak to your group about A, B, C, or D?" Another thing that you could do is you could be a guest. And I don't know if guesting is a word. I think I made my I might be making up a word, and that's okay. Let me know in the comments if guesting is a word or not. But basically, guesting on someone else's show like I did this morning. I'm constantly asked to be a guest on people's shows, which I love. It's fantastic because I get free publicity. I get to get my message out to more people, and you can too. But it all works to build your personal brand. Okay, so video, speaking, guesting— these are some ways. It could be on a podcast, in a virtual summit, in a video interview, what have you. So these are the things that you can do, and it's time for Q&A. I just want to go back into the group. Alexandra says, "It's what makes us human, but it definitely isn't easy." True, it is not. Oh, okay, sorry. If you guys didn't see those slides, I'm apologize. It looks like they might not have come up, but in any case, hey, mistakes happen. So I got to figure out how to get you guys to see the slides. But okay, regardless of that, I think that you, you see where I'm going with this. There are 3 action steps to help you to build your personal brand. One is create content, right? It could be audio, video, or written. Number 2 is lead by example, live in truth, and Right? Live in truth, be authentic, be genuine, show your real life. And the third is be visible, be seen. That could be through video, it could be through speaking engagements, or it could be through being a guest and getting free publicity on other people's virtual summits, podcasts, or video interviews. So Alexandra says, it's what makes us human, but it definitely isn't easy. And that's because We have to break through the fear. The fear is the underlying problem. There's no question about that because we, we, we fear ridicule, rejection. We are scared of change. We don't— there's so many limiting beliefs. Personal development is a huge part of it, and it is definitely a way that you can start to expand your mind into thinking and really believing your ability to break through and build the brand and the image and reputation that you want. You know, you don't have as much control over your personal brand as you may think, and that may come as a surprise. You might not want to hear that, but the truth is that your brand is the perception that people have of you. You can alter the perception people have of you to a great degree by doing the things that I'm talking about today. Okay, so any questions in the Q&A? I'm sorry you didn't see those slides. I will look into it and figure out why. As we, as we muck along here in Personal Brand Breakthrough, I'm using some really cool technology and I'm doing all of this by myself. One of these days I'm going to actually do a tutorial. And by the way, if you want to learn more about again, how I'm doing stuff, right? How am I doing the show? How am I switching from here to that? And I have all these amazing tools and things that I use, and I share that in my inner circle. So if you want to know more information about the inner circle or how to work with me, or you just want to chat about an action plan for you, what I would recommend that you do is book a free 30-minute call with me at calendly.com/cherylplouffe. I'm putting it on the screen for you. You can book a free 30-minute call with me, and, and we can talk about what is a good next step for you in terms of an action plan. But the Inner Circle is a place where I do, uh, much more in-depth coaching and mentorship and teaching on, on some of these matters. So they may be of interest to you, so you might want to do that. Uh, but in any case, it's Q&A, so I'm just looking for any questions. If you're watching live, then Thank you for being here. If you have watched the replay, type in the comments replay, okay? I do the show every Thursday at 2 PM Eastern Time live in the Personal Brand Breakthrough Facebook group. Please share this with your network if you know someone who would benefit from this type of coaching on a weekly basis and have them, have them join the group because this is where I broadcast live on Facebook book. And then not too long from now, actually, I will be publishing this on my YouTube channel as well. So if you're all about the YouTube, subscribe to my channel and, and make sure you set notifications so that you're notified every week when I go live, because you may not be able to watch it live, right? We all have busy lives, I get it. But I'd love for you to be able to come back maybe later in the evening and be able to put your earbuds in, grab a, you know, water, tea, whatever, and, and sit back and sort of do some, some personal and professional development. Okay, I don't see any questions, so thank you so much for being here today on Personal Brand Breakthrough. I hope that you will take action, action, action, action on these things and start building your personal brand. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I'm here to help you to break through. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.