Creating a Personal Brand

When it comes to supercharging your business and taking it to record-high levels, creating and (later) amplifying your personal brand just might be the secret.

Maybe you launched your own business or went into freelance work because you hated working from 9-to-5 in a cubicle farm full of people you didn’t care for (been there, done that), but your business really is more about you than it is about your products and services.

Yes, people buy from people. They really do. Most purchases are emotion driven, so your personality and the way you show it off every day in your business truly are essential to your brand and its success.

Who you really are

Having a personal brand, or a personality-driven business brand, doesn’t mean you must share every single detail of your life on social media.

It means having real interactions and sharing genuinely. It’s rooted in knowing what you want your business to be, who your ideal clients are, and what they are looking for.

And that means knowing who you are and what you want to show the world as a starting point.

Dialling up, dialling down

How much you lean into or away from your core brand will vary according to who you’re dealing with. Take me, for example: parts of my personal brand include being highly confident in the quality of my work, handling any shooting situation, and making people laugh all the time.

The interactions I have with my entrepreneur clients are straightforward, brief, and low on corporate jargon. I ask a lot of questions and listen.

But when I am working with a client who appreciates colour and creativity, I dial up the emphasis on my capability, evidence of special events I’ve photographed and reassurance that no amount of silliness bothers me.

They still get me, in both situations—but I’m adaptable to serve my two core groups of clients.

Brand Clarity

Creating a personal brand is all about brand clarity.

That’s where creating a personal brand which reflects who you are begins — getting very clear on:

what’s important to you
what your values are
why you launched your business
who you want to work with
where you want your business to go

Knowing what you don’t want is also important, especially in the early stages or when it’s time to refresh your brand. It’s easy to fall into the trap of following what’s expected when you start a business—and if you’ve just left the corporate world, corporate thinking might be your default setting.

Mentoring, coaching or journalling can help you get clear on your values. That’s a significant starting point right there.

Defining your ideal clients

Who is the person you most want to collaborate with? What kind of content, language and visuals would most resonate with them? Creating your personal brand should always include your clients and your personality.

If you have favourite clients, the ones who were easy and a delight to work with, examine what they have in common.

If you don’t, or if you haven’t had ideal clients for a while, this could be down to a mismatch between your personality and what your business brand is telling the world.

You want to go as deep as you can into this—the better you know yourself and your ideal clients, the better you will align your personality, brand and message to attract them.

Building your brand

Whether you’re creating your brand from the ground up, or looking at it in depth ahead of a rebrand, or you simply want to refresh and brighten up your logo and other visuals, once you have clarity, you can build.

You build your brand around pillars like your voice, your visuals and your values. The joy of running your own business is you get to decide what these pillars are.

Showing off your brand personality

Hopefully by now you’ll have a good idea of how your brand can take the parts of your personality and values and amplify them to bring you business, connections and clients which suit you.

The really magical part about creating a personal brand is that you can embody it without effort—it’s a reflection of who you are, and vice versa. This makes interactions and engagement and yes, even selling your services or products (or both!) much easier.

What is your brand's personality?

Get in touch and we’ll talk about getting you on the road to the success you’ve always wanted.

Creating a Personal Brand