Why Your Personal Brand Is Failing & How It’s Impacting Your Business

Jay Shetty & Gerard Adams

People ask me all the time, “how did you build a successful personal brand?” or “What are the hacks or secret tips?”

Truth is, there isn’t a shortcut. It takes hard work, consistency, discipline, patience, and understanding the deeper purpose of your personal brand. See, what I’ve learned is that as an entrepreneur, social media is a powerful tool that can be leveraged to help you make more sustainable income while impacting lives and becoming an expert in your industry.

The crazy part is that I didn’t even really start investing in my brand until about four years ago.

Before that, I was building EliteDaily.com which my team and I decided to sell to the Daily Mail for $50,000,000. All my time and energy was being invested in building our business. I was an entrepreneur before it became a trend online and before I decided to get on social media. This is important because many people who want to build a successful personal brand haven’t created or done anything meaningful in the world…they just want the attention.

Sure, some brands have built massive brands online by posting inspirational quotes and videos but that happens because they become the GO TO page for inspiration. But, now that social media has been around for a while, it’s much harder to do this because there are thousands of different brands all preaching the same message.

The question is, how will you stand out? How will you cut through the noise? What will you be known for?

See, over the last few years, I’ve learned the “Dos and Don’ts” of building a personal brand. One of the foundations of your brand is getting clear on your purpose and messaging. The only way to build a loyal community around your brand is if your audience knows why they follow you.

It’s important to start figuring out how you can become the go-to thought leader in your industry. This comes down to the type of content you’ll be posting and the purpose behind it.

The purpose can be to get more attention to your business or to inspire people with your story. You can share your past experiences with the world and how you’ve got to where you are today or take people on your journey of building something new from the ground up. I didn’t think anyone cared about hearing my story or what I had to say…but I was wrong.

I started to realize the impact I was making on people’s lives by sharing my lessons in life and business.

Here are the four DON’TS for a personal brand:

1.) You Don’t Know Your “Why”

This may sound cliche but it’s true. Without having a clear understanding of what your brand’s mission is building credibility will be a challenge. People follow brands because they can relate to who they are which creates a meaningful connection with their community.

Whatever industry you’re in, having a clear vision for what your brand is known for is the key to building valuable relationships and creating opportunities for others to collaborate with you.

Here are a few questions to help you gain clarity:

• What do I want my brand to be known for?
• What do I want brand’s purpose & message to be?
• What lessons and experiences can I share with others?
• Why is it important for me to create an impact?

I highly recommend taking the time to write out your answers to each of these questions because they can help you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and defines a clearer purpose for your brand. Everyone’s in a hurry to build their brand awareness but they’re not clear about their true intentions.

If you’re trying to build your brand solely to become rich and famous then you’re going to be waiting for a long time to see success.

2.) You Don’t Bring Value

The next key pillar in building a successful personal brand is by making sure that the content you’re sharing with your audience is valuable and relatable. What separates the biggest brands from the noise?

It comes down to how much value you’re bringing to your community. They must feel like you care about them on a personal level and you should. Your content must be geared towards being relatable, creating a certain feeling/emotion and helping others overcome a common problem or fear that we all face.

Ask yourself this:

• What problem or fear am I helping people overcome?
• How do I want people to feel after seeing my content?
• How can my past experiences help others?
• What do I want people to learn?

There are millions of different brands but the key to distinguishing yourself from other brands is your uniqueness. Be vulnerable with your story and speak authentically about how you’ve gotten to where you are today. This includes talking about the losses, failures, setbacks, and obstacles which are all apart of the human experience.

This helps people feel like they’re not alone. When people can relate to your story, it builds the most trust.

Without trust, there is no brand.

3.) You Don’t Have Self-Awareness

A major key in understanding who you are today and who you want to become is learned by gaining self-awareness. This is such an important part of your personal brand because if you lack self-awareness, being consistent with your brand’s message will be difficult.

You need to get a deeper understanding of who you are because as you learn more about yourself, the more vulnerable you can be with your audience. In turn, this will inspire others to learn more about themselves.

Giving people a fake perception of who you are will only backfire on you. It’s easy to spot people who aren’t authentic, especially online. You can try to get short-term attention by posting yourself with exotic cars, girls and fresh kicks but that won’t last long. Eventually, people want to know you as a person, not just for the things you show off.

Being vulnerable and authentic with your audience is a critical component of your personal brand. As you share your story with people, it gives them the opportunity of resonating with you and creating a connection. You’ll need to make sure that your personal story is as relatable as possible because this is why your audience will continue to follow you.

By asking yourself the right questions, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of who you are which will tie in with your brand:

Think about these four questions:

• How do I want to be remembered by my family, friends, and community?
• If I could achieve or become anything in this lifetime, what would it be?
• How can I best serve the most people?
• What are some of my biggest mistakes or vulnerable stories I haven’t shared?

To leave a lasting legacy, you’ll need to be clear on who you are which can be done by constantly refining what your true purpose is in this world. As you discover more about yourself, the more aligned you become with the most authentic version of who you are.

This plays a key role in your brand and business because if your audience doesn’t feel like they can trust you then they’ll never want to work with or buy anything from you.

4.) Your Brand & Business Don’t Align

A personal brand can be leveraged to help you get more leads, impact more lives, become the leader in your industry while building a sustainable business and income stream in the process. If you aren’t maximizing your personal brand for your business, then you’re losing out on money, time, energy, fulfillment and freedom.

There’s a process I teach to my clients which I call the M5 method to grow your business. It’s mastery, messaging, marketing, model and movement. This is the method that helped me build two 8-figure businesses by the age of 30.

Here’s the breakdown:

1. Mastery — Mastery means mastering yourself as a leader and a person. I believe that by improving the leader, you improve the business. This includes mentally, physically, financially, and spiritually.
2. Messaging — The second M is messaging which ties back in with point one. It’s getting a clear understanding of your brand’s message that you want to share with the world and who your ideal client is.
3. Marketing — Marketing means the strategy you’re using to get more attention to your brand and business.
4. Model — Model is the systems and processes that you have in place to scale your business when it’s time.
5. Movement — Movement is the final piece which is creating a movement around your brand and business. This can only happen when the first four M’s are in place.

By following the M5 method, I’ve been able to align my passion with my purpose and it’s helped my clients bring in millions of dollars in revenue. People underestimate the power of a personal brand but it can be exactly what you need to go from 6-figures to 7-figures and so on.

If you’re an entrepreneur, I challenge you to improve your self-awareness so you can get clear on your “why.” This will help you bring more value to your community with content you post which in turn will help you build a profitable and sustainable business in the long run.

Don’t you want more time, freedom, income and impact? You can have it all by implementing these steps.