LISTEN TO THE LATEST PODCAST EPISODE:

How to Build a Personal Brand

SUMMARY

In this episode, we talk about how you can brand yourself and create a personal brand so that you become that premium provider who is sought after because what you know makes a big difference in people’s lives.

If you don’t get this right, there is going to be tons of friction, you will start to feel isolated and ultimately you will be invisible. If you get it right, you will be in this natural state of flow, you will create a community and you find yourself in demand. So what you need to realize is that deeper thinking leads to valuable impact, your positioning is intentional and you need to have platform obsession.

The Influencer’s Evolution

There are 6 stages to it:

  1. Purpose: What is your purpose? You are it. This is really about you. If you don’t get it right, you will find friction in life and if you get it right, you end up with flow.
  2. Perspective: This is about what you know. You know it. It will be a drain if you don’t have a process to it and if you do, then it gives you distinction.
  3. Positioning: Positioning is about them. They see it. If you don’t do it properly, you are invisible but you will be in demand if you do it in a proper fashion.
  4. Platform: They get it, your stuffs and solutions. If it’s not properly done, you will be isolated but if when it’s done right, you’re building a community who will champion you forward.
  5. Prosperity: This is about the rewards. We value it. If we don’t know what is going on, then you will be unfulfilled versus being fulfilled when you get it right.
  6. Plan: We see it and we need to plan after we get the five mentioned above right. If you don’t plan properly, we get random results. But if we keep the five in mind and make the right plans, we end up with predictable and deliberate results.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to brand yourself so you can have more impact, more income and more freedom. And welcome to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. In this one, we’re going to dig into something that I think is really, really important today in today’s market, for you entrepreneurs and a lot of people in my community and that is, how do you build a personal brand.

For instance: How does someone like a Simon Sinek or a Seth Goden or a Brendon Burchard or a Jim Collins, how do they go about building a person brand? To get themselves out there in a way that they’re know for the differences they make with the knowledge they have in their head and what I’m going to introduce you to is this process that I call The Influencer’s Evolution. It’s the process that I take my people through in Thoughtpreneur Academy and when I’m working with my high level clients and it’s how I built my practice.

And with this episode, just like most every other episode, this comes with a specific action guide and in this action guide, I’m going to talk to you and give you a tool. That tool is what I call The Influencers’ Personal Brand Articulator. It’s a worksheet that allows you to start to articulate your brand out into the world in a different way that really elevates you up the ladder of the evolution. You will understand it when we get into it deeper in this session but if you want to get the action guide which I think you should, just go to MelAbraham.com/session081 and you will be able to download the guide.

If you are not by your computer and you are out running around, maybe, you’re driving, I want you to be safe but I still want you to have the tools, I still want you to have the value. So here is what I want you to do is at some point, when it’s safe, just text me one-word no-spaces MYLEGACY to 38470. When you text me that, you’re going to get a link back to you that you can download the action guide and really start to get into this Personal Brand Articulator and understand what it takes to elevate you to a personal brand.

So, let’s jump in because I think there is some things in here that we need to think about as we move forward and really start to build this concept of a personal brand. How do you get known for what you know and that what you know makes a difference and so, the key here is this. Is that if we don’t get this thing right, the challenge that you’re going to face is one of the challenges you’re going to face is that there’s going to be tons of friction.

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In other words, when we talk about personal brand, it’s about you. There’s a reason that personal is in the front, in the beginning of that.

  • It’s about you.
  • It’s about what you know.
  • It’s about what’s internal to you.
  • It’s about your ten thousand hours.
  • It’s about your expertise.
  • It’s about your journey.
  • It’s about your wisdom.

There’s some things that have happened to you that are valuable to people out there that you get a chance to have a conversation with, to train, to work with, to help them along in their journey and in their struggles that maybe similar to yours. For instance: I’ve been a CPA. I’ve lost one-third of my net worth in a Ponzi scheme and re-built it within 18 months. Not only rebuilt it but rebuilt it to 300%, three times of where it was at but understanding a certain level of skills.

I’ve been a martial arts sensei. I’ve been in the martial arts for 40+ years now and the fact of the matter is, is that all of those things create a level of expertise in different areas. They’re not all in the same area that allow me to be with you here today but they come from within. See the challenge is that, that a lot of times, when we don’t get this right there’s tons of friction because it doesn’t come from within, it’s not part of your being, it’s not who you are and so we need to figure that out.

The other thing that happens when we don’t get this right is that you start to feel completely isolated.

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You start to feel on an island because it just doesn’t, it’s not you and so you seem to realize that and there is this lack of congruency and you’re out of touch.

And then, the third thing that happens when we don’t get this right is that ultimately you’re invisible.

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People don’t see you. People just affectively don’t see you and what happens, what do I mean by that is that, is that the marketplace doesn’t even know you exist. When we don’t get the personal brand piece right,

  • They don’t know about what you know,
  • They don’t know about the difference you can make in their lives, and
  • They don’t know you exist.

If they see you at all, they see you as a commodity and we don’t want to be a commodity. I want you to be that premium provider, that one that’s sought after, the one that’s chased after, the one that is hunted because what you know makes a huge difference in people’s lives and so, if that’s what happens, if we don’t get this right what happens when we do get this right.

I think one of the first things that happen is this, is that we find ourselves in this natural state of flow.

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I can sit here and talk with you about the different elements and concepts of my intellectual property, the things that I know because it’s part of me, it’s what I’ve lived, it’s my ten thousand hours plus if you will. So, there’s a lot there for me to do. So, I’m in this natural flow and I can chat and we can talk and I can go deeper and deeper as needed based on that. So, you find yourself when we get this right in that natural state of flow.

The second thing that happens is that you create community.

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In this process, you create community because what happens is that you actually attract the people that you resonate with. You actually attract the people that see what you have essential to their lives and you attract that and they then create a conversation with you and you have a conversation with them which creates community and they all support each other and all of a sudden, you have a bunch of people standing shoulder to shoulder on a journey with you because you’ve done that.

And then, the third thing that happens when we get this right is that you find yourself in demand.

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Ultimately, people are searching you up. You become the hunted. It’s an interesting dynamic. Like many of you know, I’ve been doing, I value businesses, buy and sell businesses, I’ve done this for decades now and have had the blessing of learning a ton about entrepreneurship and businesses through that process.

Now, I started out doing marketing and all of that for that part of that business. I don’t do a lot of that anymore because I’ve built a reputation, I’ve built that presence in that industry that the phone will ring, people will search me out, they’ve heard about me, they know about me and they will search me out and that’s what we want.

Imagine this, can you imagine what it’s like for you to just wake up and know that you have positioned yourself properly in a marketplace, in an industry, in a niche to solve a problem, a solver, an influencer in that space where you know that people are always searching you out and when they search for you, you’re the first name that comes up, you’re the second name that comes up, you’re that top of the top of doing it. And that’s what this is about.

So, if that’s why it’s important, in other words, in other words, we got to get ourselves in a place where we’re in demand, where we’re creating community and that we’re in flow. So, what do you need to know? And that’s the principles that I think are really important to really bring this home for you and I think the first thing that you need to realize is that, that your deeper thinking leads to valuable impact, leads to the impact that you have and in society, in your community, in the industry, in the marketplace that you’re working with and here is the thing behind this that it’s no longer about information; Information is ubiquitous.

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We’ve got GOOG, the Mr. Goog, the Google; however, you want to call it that allows you to have access to information at your fingertips. I can just go type in and I can get as much information. Now, I’m not saying it’s all good information and I’m not saying it’s all real or true information but there is information nonetheless and that’s where you fit in.

This isn’t about information anymore because it used to be that the keeper of the information was the one that had the highest value. That’s not the case anymore because information is now a commodity. We’ve got access to it at our fingertips, in our phones, whatever it is that we want to do, we’ve got access to that information that allows us to be able to bring that forward.

So, the real key is how do you interpret the information that you become the interpreter of the information, that you broaden the conversation around the topic, the subject area, the solutions, the challenges, the problems that you’re solving? You broaden that by expanding the thinking, by deepening the thinking. So, what we want to do is we don’t want to just repeat the things that other people have said on the topic.

Let’s just for instance look at it and say, well, maybe you’re talking on productivity or maybe you’re talking on leadership or maybe you’re talking on corporate culture or maybe you’re talking on relationships or fitness, you know what? Repeating what other people have done doesn’t necessarily extend the thinking, doesn’t extend the body of knowledge and that won’t set you apart. It will just set you with.

In other words, people will see you as the more of the same. What we want you to be seen is different. We want you to be seen with a distinction. We want you to be seen at a point where they’re going, “Huh, they know everything that’s going on before and they’re giving me a little more”. That deep thinking is going to lead to greater, great impact. So, you’re going to have to do the work to get this stuff out of your head, to think it through and to build the depth and the layers into your content, into the information that you have, the solutions that you bring to the table to really make that come to life.

And then, the second piece of this and the second principle is to realize that your positioning is intentional.

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In other words, we can go out there and say, just start putting blog posts up and then just start YouTube videos up, going out and speaking, picking up gigs, you get a call and someone says, “Can you write an article?” and you say, “Yes” and it’s this haphazard, hodgepodge, mess of content that doesn’t position you in this specific way that you are choosing to be positioned.

So, what do I mean by this concept of intentional? Just that. I want you to define. We need to define what we want to be in our space. The question is what do you want to be in your space? Do you know that specifically? And is everything that you’re doing moving you towards that space, towards that place and if it’s not, we got to shift it.

The bottom line is this, is that your positioning in the eyes of your market, your positioning in the eyes of the industry, your positioning in the eyes of your peers need to be intentional and not be left for them to decide because if you allow the market to decide, they may define you in a role that becomes, to take a term from the Hollywood is you become typecast and we don’t want to be typecast. You want to present yourself in the light, in the posture, in the position that you want to be presented in. So, we need to be intentional about that and this process allows you to do that.

Then the third thing is to realize that we need to have a platform obsession.

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So, what do I mean by platform? There’s a couple of things that I mean by platform. First things first is that, that platform for me is about reach. It’s about audience but it’s about reach which means that it’s also about impact. We need to be obsessed with reaching our audience

  • Reaching them geographically,
  • Reaching them emotionally,
  • Reaching them intellectually,
  • Reaching them in their demographics,
  • In their psychographics.

Understanding what industry they’re in, in location. So, we need to be obsessed about being there with them, for them and standing by them and serving them in that process. That’s what I mean by platform obsession. It’s about getting your information out there in a way that serves them in a place they’re at, with the pains that they have to move them to the solutions that they need.

The bottom line is that businesses to me are all about improving the human condition. It’s not about profit. Profit becomes the by-product. Let’s improve the human condition, let’s have the greater impact, let’s have the high impact and in the process, the profit becomes the by-product of what it is you’re doing.

So, those are principles that I think that we need to focus in on. There’s a couple of other ones but these are the most important ones. How do we bring this to life?

And this is when I want to introduce you to what I call, The Influencer’s Evolution. In order to do that, I’m going to jump on to the iPad so we will draw this out on there. If you’re not watching on the video, then go to the YouTube channel. You will see this on the video but you will see this also in the blog in stills and pictures also.

So, let’s just jump into The Influencer’s Evolution. Let’s jump to the iPad for a moment and let’s understand what it is we’re trying to do here as this comes through. So, the first thing is this, is that we need to realize, we need to realize that some of the things that we’re doing is there’s six stages if you will of what I call The Influencer’s Evolution.

And the stage one, stage one is what I call Purpose. What’s your purpose? What is it about you? This is, if I had to make it in a statement, You Are It. This is really about you. You are it. This is what is internally your 10 thousand hours. What is inside of you that we need to bring out in this process.

Here is the thing. If we don’t get this right, if we don’t get this right, this is why you’re going to find that there is a fair amount of friction in your life, in your professional life because it isn’t congruent with who you are, it isn’t part of who you are. It’s not flowing from you. But when we do get this right, that’s actually what happens. We end up in what I call Flow. This is the first stage of The Influencer’s Evolution.

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The second stage of the Influencer’s Evolution is what I call Perspective and this is about what you know. This is about the insights, the ideas, the things you know, the things that you want your audience, your marketplace to really understand. So, this is really you know it. It’s what you know in the process.

So, we need to capture all your insights and there is a process to do that. We need to capture your insights; we need to capture the things that you want to teach with your audience in a way that you can then communicate it. Here’s the issue, is if you don’t have a process to that, it’s a drain. If you have a process to extract the unique insights, the things that you know out of your head, what that actually does is it gives you distinction. It makes you distinct in that process. So, that’s one of the reasons this is really important for us to do.

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The third stage is what I call Positioning. Positioning is about them. This starts to move; it is about you a bit but it’s about them. It’s like who do you want to see? Who do you want to serve? This is really coming from a place of understanding that they get a chance to see it. It being what you know. They get a chance to see it and that’s the challenge that we need to start to move through.

Here is the deal. If we don’t position yourself properly; remember, I already said that I want you to be obsessed with positioning in the sense of being intentional with it. If we don’t position you properly, you’re going to find that you’re invisible to your marketplace. They don’t see you. They don’t even know you exist and if they do, they don’t see the value in you. We need them to know you exist. We need them to know what you exist for. We need them to see them value in it and they need to see the need.

Bottom line is, it’s, if you’re going to be an influencer, it’s not about knowing stuff. It’s about making a difference with the stuff you know. That’s the key. It’s not about knowing stuff. It’s about making a difference with the stuff you know and then you become known for that. And if you do that positioning properly, you find instead of being invisible, you’re in demand. You’re in demand.

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And so, now we’ve moved up those three stages and these are really important stages and then it’s the last, this next stage, that’s where the core of the work is to really become an influencer, to build that personal brand is in this next piece. It’s really about Platform. This is when you finally get it to them. They finally get it. It being your stuff, the solutions, the insights that you have.

When you have the platform properly done, it’s amazing. But if you screw it up, if we don’t have the platform, in other words, we don’t have the reach, we’re not getting to the right people, we’re not getting to the people that need us, we’re not working with our core because we don’t understand them, you’re going to find that you’re isolated.

Yet when we get this right, now you’re building community. Remember that community piece becomes important because they’re going to be your champions, they’re going to move your forward, they’re the ones that are going to be screaming to the hills about what you know and what impact you’ve had on their lives. They become your army, the sales force. Well, you don’t even have to pay them, okay. That’s the cool part about it.

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Then the next piece of this is what I call Prosperity and this is about the rewards. This is about the meaning. This is about being fulfilled if you will in doing that. This is about what do we value. What do we value?

If we don’t know this going in, we might be chasing like I said, the profits, the cash flow which I get it. We got to pay bills and we got to make a living and all of that and this is a commercial endeavor. Absolutely, we will never take that away. Listen, I am a CPA. It is about making business successful but business in it of itself is about creating an impact, about doing something that’s meaningful, it’s about creating community, serving society and living your dreams. Let’s build it so that becomes the reality.

It’s not about, solely about profitability. Profitability, when we do it right becomes the byproduct not the focal product. Profitability becomes the byproduct not the focal product when we do this right. The thing is that if we don’t get prosperity right, all of a sudden, we’re running and we think we’re successful but we can’t figure out why we’re unfulfilled and miserable.

I got a guy that I know who is probably worth 150 million dollars and he’s miserable as hell. Miserable as hell. He’s got three or four airplanes; I don’t even know anymore and cars and property and all of that but he is unhappy. To me that’s not success. Success is a holistic thing.

  • It’s about health.
  • It’s about relationships.
  • It’s about financial.
  • It’s about experiencing life.

It’s about a lot of things. It’s not about one. It’s about a lot of things.

So, if we don’t get this prosperity piece right, we’re going to be unfulfilled versus when we get it right, we will be fulfilled because we’re working for the right reasons for the right why (if you will).

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Some of you’ve seen me draw that model of when Jeremy drew the picture of me when he was six years old that kind of taught me one of the most important business lessons I learned which is about the why of business versus the what and the how in doing that.

So, then the last piece of this which you kind of look at it and go, “Huh, why is this the last?” That is about the Plan. We need to plan. In other words, I need to be able to see it and I do this last because if I don’t get the first five right, I can’t create the right plan for it. So, I got to know my purpose.

I got to know my perspective.
I got to build my positioning.
I got to understand and build that platform.
I got to understand what the prosperity piece is.

And then, I build the plan to make that all a reality. And so, if we don’t plan based on the decisions and the things that we’re doing in the five stages before in this Influencer’s Evolution, what you’re going to find is that, you will have random results. You know you will have up years, you will have down years, you will have random results, you’re going to have random outcomes and it’s just not going to be filling. It’s peaks and valleys and that’s really not a way to live. It’s in fits and starts so just you can’t live that way, you can’t sustain it that way. So, the reality is that when we set the plan in place, the strategies, the tactics and the things that I teach and put it in place we end up with predictable and deliberate results.

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And so, that’s really what we’re dealing with in this whole thing of the influencers evolution. This is the key to changing and shifting the things that you do. This is the key to building a practice that puts you at the forefront of a personal brand to elevate you into a place where people are searching you out because you will make a difference in their lives. The difference that you make with what you know is tremendous, it’s dramatic and that’s the key.

So, we need to extract that out. We need to position you properly. We need to build the platform so we can reach, we can build it around the prosperity that you want in your life. We create the plan and we execute on the plan. So, how do we do this?

Well, I’m going to give you a tool here and you need to download the action guide. If you haven’t done so already, in order to use this, and it’s really the influencers personal brand articulator. To download it just go to MelAbraham.com/session081 or text me. Text me MYLEGACY one-word MYLEGACY to 38470. I will send you the download link.

And when you get this what you’re going to find is that you’re going to get a summary of some of the work that we’re doing and a workbook, a template from which you can answer nine questions, nine questions that as you’re building this out, when you work through these nine questions, it starts to give you a template to elevate you to that personal brand status.

And so, I’m not going to go through the nine questions here. I want you to download the guide. Yes, I’m going to make you download the guide to get the nine questions and to work through the exercise in a way that really starts to build things. Because in those nine questions, we’re going to worry about what’s your solution, how do we position that solution uniquely, distinctly, and with depth in the marketplace. We’re going to walk you through a couple of questions that talk about your tribe, the people you serve, the community that you’re creating. What do you need to do with respect to that? And then, the last piece is what’s the results you get about the results that you get.

So, download that, walk you through those elements and really start to build this out. Use the tool consistently and constantly to build that personal brand out in the marketplace because when you build that personal brand,

  • You move away from commodity
  • You become known in the market space
  • You will be able to command premium fees
  • People will search you out

Here’s the thing. It’s not about marketing that’s going to get you the personal brand. It’s about creating the depth of knowledge that has a huge impact and then when you layer the marketing on top of that, it’s says, as my son says, “It’s a match to gasoline” and it’s going to explode your business. So, that’s what we need to do to really build this out.

So, I hope that you found this of value, to understand the influencers evolution, the stages you need to go through to build your personal brand just like Seth Goden, Simon Sinek, Jim Collins, Brian Tracy. These are the stages that you’re going to need to go through to build your personal brand and get yourself out there.

If you haven’t done so already, download the guide. Again, MelAbraham.com/session081 or text me MYLEGACY one-word to 38470. We will get that to you because this is the first step to building your personal brand and getting yourself out there in a big way that sets you apart from everything that is out there, that is commodity based. We want to set you apart, we want you to make a huge impact.

So, if you haven’t done so already, do me a favor. Subscribe. Hit the button right now. Don’t wait. Hit the button right now. Subscribe. Stay with me because these tools are going to continually come. This is my way of becoming your personal mentor in this context. We can go deeper in other ways but right now this is one of the greatest ways for me to do that.

The other thing is if you have a question, if you have a challenge, if you have a problem that you’re trying to deal with in business, in success, in wealth, in thought leadership, anything like that, go ahead and leave me a note. In fact, you can go to AskMelNow.com and leave me a message. I will make sure that I pick it up on one of my upcoming episodes or just leave comments. I love comments and I want to have a dialogue and I want this to be a conversation not me talking at you, talking with you to really build some things out.

And the other thing that I ask you is do me a favor? Share this. Share this information. Share this link with a friend. Get it out there so we can help people shift their paradigm in their life to give them the tools that they need to be successful just like you. So, thanks again for being a part of this. Thanks for being on this journey. I hope this serves you and I can’t wait to see you in the next episode. And until then,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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Mel is one of the smartest business people I know. I don't make any decisions without him! "

Brendon Burchard
#1 New York Times
Best Selling Author

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