How and Why You Need to Build Your Personal Brand

Too often business owners focus exclusively on creating customers and building their business. This is, of course, essential to success. But regardless of your business, your role or your industry; if you want to increase your level of success, you must build a personal brand. In this article, you’ll hear tips on how to do that from Mike Koenigs. Mike has become a reinvention expert by building and selling seven businesses, and he’s perfected the art of building a personal brand. Discover the little known methods to become to your industry what “Bill Gates has become to software and technology. Personal branding will not only improve your engagement with your market, but it can also open doors to public speaking gigs and private consulting… you decide how far you take it.

Regardless of your business or your industry, you can easily increase your level of success by building your personal brand. Many of the principles that catapulted 4 Level Coach to success stemmed from the personal brand building, Randy Stanbury, CIO, and Founder of 4 Level Coach learned about from a brilliant guy named Mike Koenigs. Randy first discovered Mike in an online series featuring Tony Robbins. What Mike was doing, and teaching made so much sense to Randy, he eventually got to know Mike on a personal level and decided to work with him. The results included Randy being able to write a book, get it out into the marketplace and become an Amazon number one bestseller.

If you’re wondering “Why would I ever need or want a personal brand,” let’s illustrate the importance of a story. When you hear the names, Warren Buffett, or Oprah, or Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos, you will have a reaction or a response. The same thing would happen if you heard the names, Jay Z, Beyoncé, Tim McGraw, Celine Dion, The Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

But the name Max Martin might not cause any reaction or have any meaning to you. But it turns out Max Martin, a Swedish singer, songwriter and record producer is number three in the world for writing the most number one song. And the guys ahead of him are John Lennon at #2 and Paul McCartney at #1.

Max is worth hundreds of millions, but if you saw him on the street, you wouldn’t recognize him. Yet everyone in the music industry who needs to know him knows exactly who he is. The guy basically prints money when he gets involved with an artist or project as most artists don’t write their own songs.

But whether it’s Bezos, or Gates or Oprah, or anyone who’s got a one-word name, at some point in their life, no one knew who they were. They built their fame and status. But if they get involved in a project today, their network, their celebrity, their fame immediately increases anything they touch.

How A Personal Brand Shortcuts Your Success Curve

Right now, we’ve entered a time in human history where all of us can build our own brands and reinvent ourselves. Both Mike and Randy have reinvented themselves multiple times by building and selling a business — then starting again from scratch.

To understand what a personal brand enables you to do, think about it like this.

Let’s say you’re a home builder or a tradesperson with relationships that you’ve built over a period of say 10 years. Whether it’s with ten other builders, or ten bankers, or ten bakers… whatever it is, those are relationships who trust you and know who you are.

You could bring those relationships to someone who could benefit from them but would normally need two to four years to build them. You could go in and say, “Look, this person has something that you need, and I know how you think and what matters to you. In other words, I know your messaging. I know how you communicate, and I know your values.” And for you to act as an intermediary has massive value. You could make a transaction happen in days or hours instead of months and years.

And much in the same way, having a personal brand means you can make a call, get on TV, talk to a magazine publisher, get on a podcast, or even write a book and get it published — all of which will allow you to get the right message to the right market.

Then people raise their hands and say, “I want to work with you,” and suddenly your value with a brand is 3, 5 or 10 times more than if you didn’t have it. So, getting back to this important time in human history, digital media is the norm and much print publishing is going away. Your ability to communicate a message to an audience in a way that is easy for them to access, adds value and shortens time — gives you massive value. The value of a personal brand right now is more than just monetary.

How Your Brand Relates to the Brand of Your Business

In terms of creating a personal brand, it’s important to distinguish between your brand and the brand of the company. As an entrepreneur or the owner of a business, you obviously want to emulate that brand yourself as the company. So for example, whether you are a painting contractor, a home builder or an interior designer, if you decide to do a podcast, you want to discuss topics and interview people that have relevant things to say about that business. You want to be out in the marketplace doing what you’re talking about and, showing yourself as an authority and an advisor as well. That changes the game for you completely. You’re seen as more than your business, now you’re the expert delivering value.

A simple formula to remember for building value is to think of the market, message, and medium.

Market — Who is your ideal buyer or client or customer?

Message — What do they need to hear to feel connected to you, trust you and feel you understand them.

Medium — How are they going to consume it? Social media, books, audios, podcasts, radio, video or TV.

One of the smartest things you can do is create relationships or partnerships with people who can bring value to your audience and help them get what they want and need. You’ll gain visibility and approval in their market, especially if their market is your market.

Why Should a Business Owner Have A Book?

Having a book that delivers a message that works for your clients will bring massive amounts of credibility, and it is part of the overall structure of your brand. For some people, having a book might not be the best first step, but if you need a tool to go out and market yourself and be able to get the attention of the media and credibility, a book is an excellent tool.

It’s also one of the best ways for you to have the chance to get in front of an audience and share your story hundreds or thousands of times without actually having to be there telling it. A well thought out book will make people say “Yeah, I want to work with you” and people will get to know you, like and trust you and then come to you saying, “ I read your book and everything you wrote about spoke to me, it’s as though this book were written for me.”

Having a book creates more visibility and authority (i.e. positioning), and that that enables you to bypass, weeks, months, and even years of time having people vetting you.

Not Sure What to Focus on For Your Personal Brand Building?

Often we are so absorbed in our business, it can be hard to start the creative wheels turning on what our personal brand would even look like. Here are some prompts to get you thinking about your personal brand and even what you might use to outline a book.

• What makes you unique?
• What do you stand for?
• What are your values and beliefs?
• What are you passionate about? What do you want to be known for?
• Who are you?
• What makes you unique?
• What is your vision for your personal brand?
• What is your goal with personal branding?
• What are your professional goals?
• Who is your audience? Who can you help?
• How can you help them? What makes you different?

Building your personal brand allows you to position yourself beyond your business. You’ll attract people who want to work with you and can even get to the point where you have a line of eager clients standing outside your store. Then, you ideally get to pick who you’ll let in. That’s what a powerful personal brand ultimately enables you to have — and do.

For more in-depth tips and information to build your personal brand, along with a ton of other great information, head over to https://4levelcoach.com/randy-stanbury/podcast/ to listen to the full podcast interview with Mike Koenigs.