The Five-Point Guide: How Guy Kawasaki Built his Personal Brand

The strength of your personal brand plays a huge role in how people connect to you. Happily, you can look to the experts to see how it’s done.

Your personal brand is your lifeblood as a speaker.

Remember that credibility and authenticity are both huge parts of being a storyshower. You’re not just showing your story when you get up on stage. You’re selling yourself.

You’re asking an audience to engage with you on an emotional level and care about the story you show. Most importantly, you want them to continue engaging once the speech ends.

That means you need a personal brand to show them after the event.

That’s where the hard point come in. You have to figure out how to build a brand. That means working out how to get people to care about and engage with you.

You’re not alone in your efforts as there are thousands of people trying to do the same thing. Happily, there are people who’ve succeeded and can inspire you.

Guy Kawasaki is one such person.

Who Is Guy Kawasaki?

Guy Kawasaki is what’s known as an evangelist. In the business world, this means somebody who goes to bat for an organisation. He puts himself out there to talk about what makes the businesses he cares about so great.

You can think of him as a business preacher.

During his career, Kawasaki has acted as an evangelist for the likes of Apple and Mercedes-Benz. At the time of writing, he evangelises for Canva.

If that’s all he’d done, Kawasaki would have an enviable career. However, Kawasaki is also a keynote speaker he shows his story at upwards of 50 events per year. He also happens to have written 13 books, several of which are bestsellers.

In short, he’s one of the guys to go to when you’re building a brand. To reach that position, he’s had to develop his personal brand.

How did he do it?

There’s a five-point strategy to Kawasaki’s success that you can put into practice today.

Point #1 — Find Your Meaning

You’re running a speaking business, which means you want to make money. That’s what every entrepreneur wants, regardless of their industry.

The key is that it can’t become the only thing you want. And that goes doubly if you’re trying to build a personal brand.

Guy Kawasaki says that it’s crucial that you have a meaning behind your brand. This applies to both businesses and to yourself.

In the context of business, he says: “Meaning is not creating a cool place to work with free food, Ping-Pong, volleyball, and dogs. Meaning is making the world a better place.”

When it comes to your personal brand, you have to show people that you care about more than the money you can get out of them. Remember that it’s all about the emotional connection. Without a greater purpose or meaning behind your work, people will struggle to engage. Even if you know they can benefit from your product, they don’t buy because you’ve failed to connect on a more personal level.

Kawasaki offers up two questions to ask for finding your meaning:

1. Is there a wrong that only you can make right?
2. Is there something you can do to prevent something awesome from ending?

You can boil these two questions down to the big question:

What can you do to make the world better?

It’s this reason that gets people to engage with your brand. And it doesn’t have to be something huge. Making the world a better place can be as simple as inspiring a couple of people to choose a new path.

There just has to be more to you than money. And as Kawasaki says: “If you make meaning, you’ll probably also make money.”

Point #2 — Be Who You Are

So many people try to fit in to what they think people want.

As a speaker, you may think that your audience expects you to turn up suited and booted. You may think that they want you to present them with a certain look and message.

The problem here is that trying to do this dilutes your authenticity. People can tell when there’s a faker standing in front of them. If you’re not being who you are, you’re not going to get people to engage.

You have to show people the personal in your personal branding.

In Kawasaki’s case, this means showing an infectious enthusiasm for everything that he does. He’s a loud and extremely positive person and you can see that in his speeches and how he evangelises.

Kawasaki knows that his personality isn’t for everyone. That’s because there’s no such thing as somebody who can make everybody happy. No matter how much you chop and change yourself, there’ll always be people who don’t connect with you.

Be true to who you are in everything that you do. It’s about finding the audience that wants to hear your story, rather than trying to create a story that appeals to everybody.

Point #3 — Showcase the People Who Like You

Long before Kawasaki had the army of social media followers he has now, he had one person.

Steve Jobs.

The Apple co-founder loved Kawasaki’s energy and passion. Long before he had a personal brand of his own, Kawasaki found a supporter in Jobs.

That’s what led to his role as Apple’s chief evangelist. From there, a personal branding phenomenon was born.

You can apply this situation to your early days as a speaker. You may not have a massive audience yet. But there are people who connect with you and the story you’re showing.

Showcase those people. Engage with them directly on social media and make them a part of your story. They’re people who share in your vision and your passion. That makes them a powerful tool for finding others who share the same outlook.

Here’s the best part. The people you showcase will often return the favour. They may talk about you on their own blogs and social media channels. When they’re talking to friends and business partners, your name is more likely to come up. All of the while, you’re building a network of people who think like you and believe in your purpose.

That’s what Kawasaki did as an evangelist for Apple. He showcased Jobs and the company he’d created. In return, Jobs did the same on Kawasaki’s behalf.

You may not get such a huge influencer in your corner from the off. But there are bloggers, fellow speakers, and business owners who’d love to talk about how amazing you are. You may just need to do the same for them to get them started.

Point #4 — Focus on Engaging Your Audience

Many new speakers think their pitch is the focus when they’re on stage. They have something that they want an audience to buy, which means they need to sell it.

That approach may get you a few sales. But it’s not going to get people to emotionally engage with your brand. You’ll only pull in the people who love your product. To build a personal brand, you need people to fall in love with you.

“The purpose of most keynotes is to entertain and inform the audience,” says Kawasaki. “It is seldom intended to provide an opportunity to pitch your product.”

The sale comes second to engagement when it comes to personal brand building. You’re looking to offer something valuable that engages your audience. This builds trust.

This trust leads to the sales that you’re looking for.

Point #5 — Build on the Three Pillars

The final point relates to the three pillars that Kawasaki says are essential to building a personal brand:

“The three pillars of a personal brand are trustworthiness, likeability, and competence,” he says.

We’ve covered trustworthiness above. If people don’t think you’re authentic, they’re not going to trust you. You can’t build a personal brand when people don’t think you’re sending a legitimate message.

Likeability is a more abstract concept. Guy’s personal branding success hinges on his personality. He’s an energetic and positive person, which a lot of people love. This pillar is about finding your audience. Figure out who’s going to connect with your story and you have a group of people who’ll like you.

Competence links to credibility and the other aspects of your expertise that form the backbone of your brand. You could have plenty of charm and still fail because you don’t have the expertise to back it up. Proving your competence helps you to build that all-important trust.

Kawasaki succeeds in personal brand building because he focuses on all three pillars.

The Final Word

Guy Kawasaki built a personal brand out of his role as an evangelist. Once people saw how authentic he was when speaking about the company he presented, they latched onto him.

Kawasaki recommends finding a meaning beyond earning money. He notes the importance of being who you are instead of trying to please everybody. Plus, he understands that building a personal brand is about engaging an audience rather than selling to it.

Finally, he has the three pillars that underpin his brand. Establishing your trustworthiness, likeability, and competence gives people more reasons to engage.

All that’s left is to put all of this into practice.

That’s where Speakers Institute can help. We’ve helped hundreds of people become amazing storyshowers who have powerful personal brands.

We can do the same for you. Just follow these steps to get started:

🔘Take me to GREENROOM. The #1OnlineHub connecting you to the world’s leading Influencers, Training and Curriculum.

🔘Join SPEAKERS TRIBE CONFERENCE. The ultimate annual event for Influencers globally. (Apply to Speak)

🔘Attend MASTERING STORYSHOWING FOR INFLUENCE AND AUTHORITY last event. A free event, learning from 7 times International Best Seller and Professional Storyteller, Sam Cawthorn, learning his secrets and techniques.