Transform your online presence and create a strong personal brand! In 2024, a personal brand is no longer a "nice to have," it's a MUST have.
In this episode, Christine shares her strategies to create a simple, but powerful personal brand. She also provides you with an exercise for how to figure yours out! You’ll hear simple strategies to craft your personal brand, as well as common pitfalls to avoid.
Have a question or topic you’d like to see covered on the podcast? Go to www.lifewithpassion.com/podcast and I’ll create a custom episode just for you!
Transform your online presence and create a strong personal brand! In 2024, a personal brand is no longer a "nice to have," it's a MUST have.
In this episode, Christine shares her strategies to create a simple, but powerful personal brand. She also provides you with an exercise for how to figure yours out! You’ll hear simple strategies to craft your personal brand, as well as common pitfalls to avoid.
Have a question or topic you’d like to see covered on the podcast? Go to www.lifewithpassion.com/podcast and I’ll create a custom episode just for you!
Welcome to Let's give visible entrepreneurs. This is the podcast where we bring you the secrets behind what it actually takes to get seen, get known and get more clients. I'm your host, Christine Amerman. And I'm sharing my best strategies from over two decades of experience as a media marketing and messaging expert, to help you expand your exposure, grow your personal brand, attract dream clients, and more, all while staying true to your authentic self and unique vision. If you're a passionate, heart centered entrepreneur, thought leader or expert looking to stand out from the crowd with confidence, you're in the right place. Are you ready? Let's get visible. Welcome to this episode of Let's get visible entrepreneurs, where I'm going to talk to you about how to create a powerful personal brand. And not only how to do that, but how to do that with a shortcut, I have a really, really simple exercise that I'm going to share with you about exactly how to create a powerful personal brand. And do that quickly. Because I think this is something a lot of people miss in the online space. They talk about messaging, they talk about getting visible, they talk about your offer, and maybe even funnels, and maybe even your website, and having great pictures. Look, none of these things are the end all be all in creating a personal brand. And I've been working with personal brands and bigger brands my entire career. And so I want to break this down for you and help you understand how to create a personal brand that is authentic to you. Because I know if you're listening to this, you're really really tuned in to the desire to be authentic, and at the same time to serve. So we're going to talk about how to be authentic. And I'm going to give you a very, very practical tool to very quickly begin to shape what you put out about your personal brand. So first of all, let's talk about having an authentic personal brand, we can probably think of people that we've seen where their personal brand does not really match up with maybe the person that they are when we meet them in person, or maybe their personal brand seems all over the place. Or maybe we just simply don't resonate with them, right, they're not our people. The biggest thing to keep in mind when you are thinking about a personal brand that's authentic, is that, as my friend Kevin Kwan says, you want it you want your personal brand to be the same when you're doing your marketing when you're doing your sales process. And when you are coaching your clients, he calls this coaching the enrollment, but essentially, who you are behind the scenes, who you are when you're working with your clients, who you are in your pictures, who you are in your content. All of these things should capture the real you, the real you the authentic you and help people to get a an idea, a glimpse a taste of what it is like to hang out with you what it is like to work with you. If you have to be somebody different to attract clients. But then that's not the way that you coach, like people are going to feel that. And also, that's a very short lived strategy that is not playing this for the long game like you want this to be your career. Right. So understand that bringing your real self to your brand to what you put out there informs everything else, and will attract the right people to you. And speaking of people you want it, you do want to know who you're looking to reach, right? Go back and listen to the niche episode just a couple ago, if you want more information on this one, but remind yourself who you're here to serve. And why. Remind yourself that you have a mission, that you are in touch with your calling and your purpose, and that you are clear on who you take a stand for who you are, who you're here to serve, and how you're here to serve them. Now, you probably know that consistency is important, right? Consistency creates credibility, the opposite of consistency. Being all over the place can create a perception of maybe being flaky. ungrounded not trustworthy. And obviously we don't want any of those things for you, right? Want you to really be able to become the go to expert for something become known for being the person who helps with this and who helps in this way. Right? Like you probably hear a lot oh my gosh, I love your energy, or I want to work with you because of your energy. Well, that might be true, but that's not the whole story, you're the person who does what you do, and who helps people in the way that you help them with your type of energy. So how do you encapsulate that into what we call a personal brand? Well, I'm gonna give you a really, really simple exercise. And I'm excited for you to have, because you can use this anytime. And it can inform all of your content. And it can help people get to know like and trust you. And it can really, really simplify what to share about yourself without oversharing. Because you know, we've all had that fear of being that person. And I'm not over promising on this exercise. It is a really powerful one. Are you ready, I got this exercise from my friend, Dana Wilde, who was trained in it by the folks who helped people like Jimmy Kimmel and Ryan Seacrest to create their personal brands, these people know what they're talking about. And the idea is for a personal brand, you choose three positive things from your life, three things that could be perceived as positive, that you want to talk about a lot. And one thing that could be perceived as negative, that's also true, that's also part of your life, and that you are willing to talk about. Now I'm gonna give you my example. And then we will talk about some others. But just to get you started, three positive things that most people know about me now, because I've been practicing this exercise are that I love the color red. Red is my brand color. I'm known to wear a red dress. Usually when I'm speaking or in person, known as the lady in red. There's a lot of red around me, right, I've got a red microphone. And a lot of my wardrobe is red. I love the color red. It's in all of my branding. Another thing about me is that I love horses. I love to jump. As of this recording. I'm getting ready starting tomorrow to do my first weekend long Horse Show. A long weekend. I don't know if I'm going to be able to walk on Monday. By the time this thing is over. I am 42 years old. This has been a dream of mine my whole life. I did not grow up riding and competing regularly. But it was my dream. So now as a grown up, I am I'm finally doing those things. And I love horses, and I've owned horses, my whole adult life. And I've bred them as well. Arabian horses if you're into horses at all. And so horses, horses are a big part of my life, they show up in my content. They are some of my greatest teachers, and they are one of my true passions, personally, and hobbies. And then thirdly travel. I love to travel, any chance that I get when you run into me in person, if you follow me online, the most likely thing for someone to bring up about me after they mentioned if I'm wearing a red dress, is Hey, I saw that you've been traveling a lot looks like you've been up to cool things. What was it like to be an XYZ? What was it like to be in Northern Ireland, whatever. So wearing red, loving horses, riding horses, and traveling are my three positive things that you will see all over the themes of my content. And then my one negative thing is actually the origin story for this whole business for life with passion, and trigger warning, pregnancy and infant and child loss. My inspiration, motivation reason for starting this business for pivoting from my online marketing agency, which is the job, the company the business that had gotten me out of my full time job and replace my full time income was that I lost my very first daughter and a full term stillbirth. And it's been almost nine years. And what happened in that in that event in that process? And everything that followed was this exploration of like, what am I here to do? Who am I here to do it for? And how can I do that in a way that honors her. And so that is very, very much part of my brand story. And to the point where it would be inauthentic if I didn't talk about it, but to many, many people, that's totally negative thing. I can't imagine it. It's such a tragedy, right, all of all of those things that come along with hearing about such an experience. So yes, very traumatic. So this is something that many people see as like an inspiration. Wow, okay. She was able to survive that and go on to thrive after that. And for me, it keeps me grounded in why I do what I do. So those are four things that infuse my business and if you hang around for any length of time consuming my content, you're gonna hear about all four of them. Now, I want you to think for a minute about some of the influencers that you follow. What stands out to you about their brand? Can you think of like one person that you maybe jokingly say, like you want to be them when you grow up? What are the positive things that they share? And what are the negative things that they share? I know Dana, who I learned this exercise from Dana Wilde, she shared that her negative, even though she never saw it as a negative, but a lot of people would see it as a shortcoming is that her highest level of education was a high school degree. And she went on to create to seven figure businesses. So like, what an inspiration, right? But a lot of people would see that as a challenge or a negative thing. And the positive side, she's vegan, she loves animals, and those types of things. Somebody you know, super, super famous, like, first name only famous would be Oprah. For her, we know that she's famous for interviews, we know that she's famous for her book club, we know that she loves dogs, they've been on the cover of so many of her magazines, right. And then a negative that has been a constant, like, people have been aware of her entire career is her fluctuating weight, I say negative, but it's something that actually people like find really relatable about her. Maybe a better word than negative, is it something that makes her imperfect, it's something that makes her human, right. And even as of the time of this recording, like she's in the headlines again, for her way. Right. And this, this has spanned many, many decades. And she has also been open about it, she has embraced it and made it part of her brand, she has not hidden it, like a lot of celebrities do. And that has made her relatable, even more relatable, because she is not some perfect, I don't know, out of touch unreachable kind of robot. Now, I want to quickly mention what you do not need to do, in order to have a powerful personal brand. You don't need to have a whole website built out nothing wrong with websites, I built plenty of them in my day, I have one and it is not a reason to not be out there signing clients, okay, you do not need to hide behind a website, because a website is like a house that gets built on a big, huge plot of land, okay, you still have to build the road to the house. And you still have to get cars on that road to the house cars being the traffic, the road being how people find it. Right. So website does not solve all of your client attraction problems. And it's not the first thing I would ever recommend that someone do in order to strengthen their brand or strengthen and grow their business. So you don't need it. Let's just bust that math right now. You don't need to try to include your whole life on social either people make this mistake, they get completely overwhelmed, because they're like, I don't know how to include everything that I do. So I just won't include anything. And I'll hide it. Right? Like I have two young daughters. And it's very intentional that I don't show their faces online. In fact, some people say to me, I didn't even know you had kids. Well, you know what, I could get a lot more clicks and a lot more likes and a lot more shares. Because these kids are gorgeous. I mean, objectively, they could both be models, blond hair, blue eyes, all the things. And yet I made a decision when they were very young, that I wasn't going to do that. That's my personal choice. Everybody gets to decide for themselves. That's a part of my life that I don't share. Because I am choosing to keep them out of the public eye. But having these three hooks the read the horses that travel and speaking about my angel daughter, that still gives me tons of content, but I don't have to include everything. And then also knowing that most of us have a fear of being like that person that we see in our field or like oh my gosh, I can't believe they just posted that again. Oh, gosh, you need to stop, honey, you need to stop. It's embarrassing for you. And it makes me uncomfortable. Share your scars, not your wounds, don't share your wounds, don't overshare don't share the stuff that you're in process around. Right. I didn't share about my divorce until well after it was finalized. And it took many, many, many months from the time that we made the decision then separated, then did all the paperwork and as anybody knows, it's quite a process. And then the divorce was finalized. And that was my choice. I was in process around it I was dealing with I wanted to get to a certain point before I made a public announcement. And you get to decide that too, you know, it had become more of a scar. It wasn't an open gaping wound. So whatever you're going through today, whatever you're really struggling with today, I would encourage you to really make more sense of it and get some distance from it. And share those things that have been true for you for years. Before you feel like you have to turn that into lessons for other people. Share your scars, not your wounds. So I want you to remember This really important exercise that you can do anytime and that I recommend that you do, and then come share it with me. What are the three positive things that you are going to talk about to create your powerful personal brand and what's the one negative? What are those four things that you're going to include? This is the kind of thing I love, love, love, helping my clients with because it really simplifies and you are never going to run out of things to say you're creating a container for yourself you're creating a lane to be in whenever it is that you want to talk about something personal or you want to tie in something that is important to you personally, with your professional work without you help your clients. I hope this episode was helpful for you and I can't wait to hear what you're going to do as you create a stronger personal brand