Written by: Alek Angelov & Robert Murray, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The future of successful businesses is personal. More and more people are noticing that successful businesses have a face. Take the likes of Gary Vee, Elon Musk, Bill Gates... the list is endless. The majority of businesses that succeed are all driven by people.
It would be foolish, in an age of personal branding, to sleep on this opportunity. Which is why in this article, I will show how you can grow your personal brand, and use it to help you meet fortune and fame.
1. Identify your zone of genius
Knowing where you excel most is going to act as the biggest driver for your personal brand. You need to know where you excel, and where your weaknesses lie. This will give you clarity on what to focus on, and what to delegate. Grab your notepad, or fire up a word document on your computer, I want you to note this down:
Take 5 minutes to identify what other people compliment you for.
Take 1 minute to think about what activities you get lost in.
Take 1 more minute to ask yourself if it's profitable.
Take 2 minutes to ask yourself if it's sustainable. Make sure you can do this for a long time.
Take 1 more minute to write down what types of people would benefit most from this.
Now let's cut out what you dislike.
Spend 2 minutes acknowledging where people have said you're not great at.
Spend 1 minute writing down what tasks and activities you dislike with a passion.
Spend 2 minutes to consider what tasks you need to do to keep your business running. Anything else should either go, or delegate it.
2. Be a mentor
There are plenty of people who are stuck. They are looking to get to the next level, but there's one piece of advice or information that's missing. This is where you come in. By being of service to people a few steps behind you, you'll notice people learning with you. Growing from what you have to share. When people grow as a result of your efforts, they will remember you.
3. Grow your network
It sounds cliché, but if you want to go far go together. Many of my own connections have went on to refer business, and even become employees. Finding the right people comes down to what you put out into the world. This is why being intentional is important. Take specific actions that align with who you want to attract.
Want to attract people that are kind and caring. Put it out there.
Want to attract people that are bold and ruthless. Put it out there.
Want to find yourself in a room with smart, intelligent people...
Your vibe will attract your tribe.
4. Create a common enemy
Using a common enemy is the oldest and most effective trick in the book. Storytellers like Disney use this to get you invested in the protagonist of their story. It works equally as well when building your personal brand, why:
People advocate for brands with a clear enemy.
It makes your audience feel like you're on their side.
It makes your audience & customers feel heard.
Think back to your favourite movie, what made you love the main character. The bad qualities of the bad guy often heighten the good qualities of the good guy. This is why when building your personal brand, you should:
Personify the problems your audience faces.
Stretch out those problems for greater impact.
Use the problems to stress the importance of the solutions you offer.
5. Learn human psychology
The better you understand how people think and feel, the greater advantage you have. An understanding of psychology will help you improve communication with your audience. It will help you navigate conflict and challenges within your team. All this will ensure your business is going in the right direction. I could write a whole article on psychology principles you can use to help you make money and build your brand. To prevent you reading for 10+ hours, I will keep it simple by sharing resources. These are my go to psychology books:
For Sales & Persuasion skills:
Influence by Robert Cialdini
The Psychology Of Selling by Brian Tracy
Neuromarketing by Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin
For Marketing Skills:
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Contagious by Jonah Berger
Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath
For Communication & Leadership skills:
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown by Daniel Coyle
6. Write a compelling brand story
The most successful personal brands have a story to share. This will help you connect on an emotional level with your desired audience and turn them into fans. Chris Do for example, tells the story of his career – combining his past achievements with the mission he’s focused on now. It serves as a clear direction to attract people that identify with his background, and where he is now. To help you craft your own personal brand story, here are some prompts:
What is your background?
How long have you been in your field?
What obstacles have you faced on your journey?
Out of those struggles, which ones do you believe most people struggle with too?
How did you overcome those obstacles?
What solution did you find that helped?
What mistakes did you make when trying to find the solution?
How did finding the solution change your life?
How do you prevent others facing those obstacles today?
This will give you a solid base to start sharing your own meaningful story with your audience.
7. Document your journey
One thing that's important to remember about your brand story is that it's always evolving. As you experience new challenges and struggles, share them. Share all the things that didn't work, and all the things that did. This acts as a roadmap for others to follow.
8. Follow the rule of 5
Also referred to as the Golden Rule. World-renowned business leaders such as Bill Gates, didn't get lucky. They were intentional. By planning out exactly what your vision looks like, you can take informed steps to reach your goal. This is where your rule of 5 comes in. Identify 5 actions that you can take every day that move the needle, here are some guidelines:
Have a huge goal you wish to achieve, remember it, live it and breath it daily.
Reverse engineer your large goal and break it into 5 actionable steps each day.
Ensure that these smaller tasks fit your vision and will lead to a greater win in the future.
Each goal should enable you to become 1% better each day, if any of them don’t, replace it.
Commit to them daily! You break your rule of 5, you break your success!
9. Build your brand identity
Building a memorable brand identity will help people to differentiate yourself from others. We are visual creatures after all, so the way we dress, what we say, how we act all play their part. Here are some useful tips to differentiate your brand online.
1. Use custom patterns or shapes in static content.
2. Create customised save/share/heart icons.
3. Try 2-3 colours in your profile photo.
4. Use photos of you in your static content on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter etc.
5. Become renowned for using a specific emoji.
6. Create a signature sign off. Remember Looney Tunes, "That's all folks". It has the same effect, simple phrases are memorable.
7. Identify a font people in your space aren't using.
8. Speak passionately about a cause you believe in.
9. Be controversial... (but, don’t go overboard).
10. Use the same songs/sounds in your video content to build familiarity.
11. Write your content how you would talk.
12. Track your competition and outperform their efforts.
13. Align your brand identity across all social platforms. Use a similar photo, banners, covers, post style and personality in your content.
14. Make your business cards a different shape.
15. Niche your services to a particular customer and industry.
10. Build Marketing Systems
Without a clear marketing plan, you can have the best laid out brand strategy, but no audience to interact with. This is where your marketing comes in to grow your audience and make money online. I am going to share with you our marketing roadmap. This has built an audience of over 350,000 people across social media, and it's proven to work.
1. Start with your audience
Identify critical information on who they are, their struggles, desires, and their income.
2. Interact with that audience personally
Engage by message, build a connection with them and learn what they need.
3. Create an offer
Based on their feedback, you should have a good understanding of what they need.
Note down their biggest pains.
Capture critical recurring themes such as time, happiness, health, wealth, security. These are fundamental human wants and drive people's motivations.
Add these themes into our marketing message.
4. Create a Freebie
Solve one small problem for your audience with a quick actionable guide. Make sure you are capturing people's emails with your freebie. Freebie ideas:
A 15 minute masterclass
An actionable guide.
A 1-page cheatsheet.
An interactive quiz.
5. Market your Freebie
Use social media to push your freebie out to your desired audience.
Create content that demonstrates a problem your audience faces. Then present the freebie as a solution.
Make the freebie easy to access. Meaning doesn't make people jump through hoops to get it.
Include your freebie in your link in bio.
6. Grow your email list
Your email list to this day is still your biggest asset. If social media were to disappear tomorrow you will have nothing. Look at what happened to Andrew Tate, lost all his accounts in a heartbeat. Social media is not yours, and it can end in an instant, which is why building an email list is essential.
Use your freebie to collect emails.
Have a newsletter people can sign up to.
Ask people to sign up often.
7. Market your offer in private
Social media is all about being social. People don't want to be sold to. When your customers ask for your help, that's when you sell. They have given you permission to. Your content on social media should:
Show your ability to solve a problem.
Help your audience's day-to-day life.
Allow your audience to come to the decision they need your help.
8. Set automations in place
Tools such as Manychat help you guide your customer through your sales process. This ensures greater success rates when converting strangers into buyers.This is my go-to tool for qualifying customers.
Learn what your customer needs.
Qualify their budget.
Then get them on a discovery call.
9. Establish your premium offer
If you want to scale your business, you have 3 choices: raise the prices, sell to more people, or leverage systems. 84% of people are undercharging their services. If 6 out of 10 people who buy from you, don’t say it’s expensive, you are probably charging less than what you could. Lower prices often signal lower value of offer too. Therefore consider increasing your prices, as this would also mean growing your business. Selling to more people comes down to either finding a mass-selling method through inbound techniques or a magnetic referral system. To achieve the second, which has proven wonders for our business, you simply need to do 2 things:
Deliver a phenomenal service.
Ask your current clients WHO do they know that you can help further. Get a name, contact them and close the deal.
Finally, use leverage to increase the money generated. We all have 24 hours a day, but not all of us achieve the same results. Extremely successful entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, all use a type of leverage.
Human Leverage (staff)
Capital Leverage (investments)
Media Leverage (Social Media)
Code Leverage (software creation)
Those 4 are the most essential ways for you to use leverage in order to scale your business further. Some of them are free, such as social media, while others require a particular skill (coding), and others may require more money (human + capital leverage). Start with the one you can excel at now, before jumping on to hiring staff without having automations and systems set in place. Validate the offer, and only then, consider hiring to get more hours back in the day.
10. Start selling high-ticket
As we already covered, one of the ways to increase the revenue of your business is by increasing the prices. If you will charge more, you need to provide more value. As a rule, we recommend having 10x the amount of value compared to the price ($1000 offer, should have at least $10,000 value). When it comes to selling higher value, dependant on your experience, you can sell a programme between $5000 and $75,000. To achieve that, package an experience that doesn’t just provide information, but provides a transformation for your clients.
Information can easily be found on Google, but a unique transformation can only be delivered by you. Therefore, have a clear promise, that 10x the price of your offer. This way, you are building an irresistible offer that can easily be sold. When it comes to selling your programme, we recommend you getting on a Sales call and leveraging the following tips to get better results:
Listen more than you talk. Most people just want to be heard.
Showcase understanding and empathy. Acknowledge people’s problems, take them into account and provide them with solutions.
Problem solving attitude. Do not say you ‘can’t, or don’t want to do something’, instead explore HOW you can do it.
Stay calm. If people showed on a sales call, it means they have a problem. Remind them of it, and how you can help them alleviate their pain.
Be a doctor. Before prescribing medicine, actually diagnose the problem. Only then, proceed to offer a solution.
11. And Repeat
Repeat steps 5-10, stay on top of all leads that download your freebie and you will have a winning marketing plan.
Final thoughts
With that all wrapped up let’s leave you with a parting gift. These are our Favourite tools that speed up the process of building your brand online.
Video editing: Inshot
Video captions: Capcut
Content creation: Canva
Trending ideas: Exploding Topics
Finding free images: Unsplash
Finding free video: Pexels
If you follow these steps you will build your own successful brand online. For more advice on marketing, brand-building and making money online; Follow @therobbiemurray and @alek.octopus on Instagram. Thanks for reading.
An article by Alek Angelov – Sales and Marketing Expert and Robbie Murray – Brand Strategist and Social Media Marketing from CEO Sphere.
Alek Angelov & Robert Murray, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Alek Angelov and Robbie Murray are partners and business coaches of CEO Sphere, an Online Community and Coaching Service that has a mission of helping 1 million entrepreneurs live a financially stress-free life. Through their combined 18 years experience, they have merged their collective knowledge in sales, marketing, and branding to deliver up-to-date and practical business knowledge. Having already helped thousands of entrepreneurs build their businesses, grow their presence online, and increase profit margins, if you are looking to increase your businesses potential, they are certain they can help.
