Should I Build My Personal Brand?

I meet a lot of people.

 

Some I meet with and think: shit, they’re the shit. And others I think shit, they’re shit.

 

Aww, c’mon, you do it too.

 

Thing is, when I’m doing it, I’m thinking whether or not they’d make a shit hot or shit show personal brand.

 

And, in that case, it’s a public service to advise those who are a bit shit not to worry too much about building their personal brand at all.

 

Look, I know you might be thinking “Wow. What a knob”, in which case I may have just tickled your nerves there and will be fully expecting a mean comment, but, seriously, hear me out…

 

Everyone’s got a personal brand. Everyone.

 

Just some use it as an asset and others don’t…or really shouldn’t.

 

And before I get into how you know whether you should or shouldn’t, let me just say this.

 

Even though everyone has their own personalities, personal branding ain’t just about the person in the personal brand, it’s about THE PEOPLE WHO THAT PERSONAL BRAND SERVES.

 

And everything, EVERYTHING about that personal brand should totally resonate with those people.

 

The way you talk, the things you say, the worldviews you hold, the services you offer…

 

…it should be 100% authentic to you, but also a million% authentic to what your target audience wants and needs.

 

Let me just clarify that by using myself as an example.

 

I niched (or ‘quiched) into Personal Branding about 18 months ago after I realised I was being totally fake.

 

I was serving social enterprises and the third sector and branding myself as an ethical marketing consultant that totally hid the real me.

 

It was a load of poached egg ball sacks.

 

And I crippled myself with imposter syndrome over it…except, I actually was the fraud, because I knew how fake my “why” was.

 

So, what did I do?

 

Well, I decided to “come out” and thus the Personal Brand Provocateur emerged.

 

I understood exactly *who I wanted to help, **what I wanted to help them with and **how the hell I was gonna brand myself to be the person THEY believed could help them.

 

*Daring personal brands who want to seriously stand out; who aren’t afraid of experimenting with personality-driven branding and who absolutely LOVE anything that piques their perv nerve, btw)

 

**(but err, don’t let me fib, that didn’t come easily and I’m still refining it)

 

Bayaaam.

 

I created a space for myself based entirely on who I am.

 

In short, I took the best bits of my personality and matched it to an audience who I knew would dig it.

 

One without the other seriously wouldn’t work. I’d be skint.

 

So, what the daffy fuck has that got to do with whether you’re a bit shit or not?

 

Well, think about it logically.

 

Say you’re an accountant (I love using these guys as my hypotheticals, as their continued contribution to the bore-whore stigma is just full-on Lol)

 

Right, so you’re an accountant. You do peoples’ accounts. You get your business through word of mouth and your lifestyle goal is to pay your bills and fuck off to Alicante for 2 weeks every summer…where you wear socks with sandals and say “hola” in the most cringe-British-trying-to-sound-Spanish way poss. You tell your kids Genesis are still the best band in the world, and you say stuff like “At borewhore accounting, we take pride in putting our clients’ businesses first”…and you don’t really care who you work with, you just want to do your work then go home to a plate of pork chops.

 

And you’re perfectly happy with that.

 

I repeat: AND YOU’RE PERFECTLY HAPPY WITH THAT.

 

You are NOT gonna wanna pump a load of effort into building a personality-focussed personal brand, as it would be totally inauthentic to you, you wouldn’t have a clue who you’d want to serve, and people would just die of boredom anyway

 

Yeah? And in that case it’s just good business sense for you to trade under a business name rather than tugging on your personal brand.

 

And that’s what I mean by being a bit shit.

 

So, what about the flip side, then?

 

What if you’re not shit and personal branding is actually a really good thing for you to do?

 

Well, I’ve decided to be an absolute click-tease and say you’ll just have to check out my Personal Brand Provocateurs FB group on…

 

…Nah, only joking.

 

The flip side is pretty simple.

 

If you want to be the face of your business and punch your personality into as much of it as poss, whilst serving people who’ll resonate with it, oh, and you’re not shit, then you and I should probably talk.

 

During lockdown, I’ve been talking to a fair few people who are now putting focus on their personal brand, and together we’re creating some nip-tingling stuff.

If you’d like a friendly chat about yours, drop me a comment here, or email me lucy@lucywithawhy.com

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