As an entrepreneur or business owner, one of the most important things you can do is build your personal brand, here’s why:
7 Reasons Why is a Personal Brand Important for an Entrepreneur or Business Owner
1) A Personal Brand Gives You More Credibility
There are lots of very smart, talented people, that struggle financially because they don’t know how to position and present their knowledge, skills, and expertise. Put differently, they don’t have any credibility to people outside their circle of influence. That’s what a personal brand is at it’s core – a strategic presentation of your knowledge, skills, and expertise – that expands your circle of influence, and boosts your credibility.
Building a personal brand is almost like creating your own “Credibility Bank” where you make small daily and weekly deposits. Over time, you’ve got a huge asset that continues to grow on it’s own.
2) A Personal Brand Will Attract Clients to You vs. You Chasing them
Do you find yourself chasing clients? Or, after you have your initial meeting with a client, they seemed to have vanished into the witness protection program? Yep, it’s happened to us all.
A strong personal brand is like a magnet for business.
A well-built personal brand will attract more business than you know what to do with, but it wont happen over night.
3) A Personal Brand Gives You The Ability To Work With Higher-Quality Clients
Not only will your personal brand start to attract clients, but it will also start to attract higher-quality clients as well. Successful people want to do business with other people who know what they are doing. It’s much easier to be selective, and say “no”, when you have a steady flow of people who want to work with you.
4) A Personal Brand Allows You To Charge More Money
A personal brand builds your credibility, and allows you to charge more. It’s basic economics – supply and demand. As a personal brand, you personally have a limited amount of time in a day. As demand for your time, skills, and expertise increases, you can start to charge more for your time.
One way to start charging more money faster, is to establish your personal brand in a specialized niche of your industry. Specializing allows you to focus and get results for your clients/customers. People pay for results. The bigger the results you get, the more you can charge.
5) A Personal Brand Allows You To Choose More Freedom
When you can start charging more money, you now have the ability to choose how much you want to work. You can still work crazy-long 12-16 hour days, and stash cash. Or you can scale back your hours, work with only the BEST clients that come your way, and enjoy a better quality of life.
Starting out, you may only be able to charge $25-$40/hour. Eventually you can charge up $100-$300+ or more per hour (depending on your industry, skills, and expertise).
Once you’ve established your personal brand, working 4-5 hours per day is the same as working a 10-hour day when you are just getting started. That is FREEDOM!
Even if it takes you 5 years to get to that point, isn’t it worth it?
6) A Personal Brand Helps You Build A Better Network
Have you heard the saying, “Your network is your net worth”? Well it’s true, and building a personal brand is one of the best things you can do to build your network, and ultimately, your net worth.
Building a strong personal brand gets you access to exclusive networks of people. Lets say two people want to interview Michael Jordan. Who has a better chance at getting a one-on-one interview with MJ? Someone with no personal brand, or someone like Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank. (I don’t know if Herjavec knows MJ or not, but for this example lets assume not). Neither of the two people know MJ personally, but Robert Herjavec has an amazing personal brand, and as a result of his personal brand, he has access to other world-class individuals and businesses.
One of the critical aspects of building a personal brand is creating a platform, or a loyal following. Even if you don’t have the business success, or have your own TV show, if over the next 12-24 months, you could build a podcast to 10,000 downloads per week, you’d be surprised the types of people you would be able to get to come on your podcast as a guest.
Essentially, building your personal brand establishes your platform and enables you to access to a better network, which in turn furthers a your personal brand. It’s a beautiful cycle.
Not only will building a personal brand make it easier for you to access a higher-quality network, but it will also help attract opportunities and introductions that increase your level of reach and influence. Podcasts have been all the rage the past couple years, and people with strong personal brands get interview requests all the time, and the people hosting the interviews often have a rolodex of great connections.
Building your personal brand will allow you to both build and attract a stronger network.
7) A Personal Brand Will Get You In On Bigger, Better Deals
As you build your brand, you will build a following and as a result a lot more people will want to work with you. If done right, your personal brand should also attract other movers-and-shakers who can bring bigger, better deals and opportunities your way.
As you build a personal brand, you’ll need to get very good at vetting opportunities quickly and saying “no” a lot!! While a personal brand can attract bigger, better deals, it will also attract 20x more awful deals as well.
Only say yes to deals that further your mission and align with the direction you are heading.
This is where I’ve personally seen personal brands get derailed. They start saying yes to opportunities that are not a direct alignment with their values, goals, and mission. It’s important to start developing your “no” muscle early on!
I hope this information was helpful.
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