You might say that you’re “loyal, fun-loving, and down-to-earth.” Or perhaps you’re “adventurous, creative, and caring.” Or maybe you’re “outgoing, bubbly, and thoughtful.”
It’s likely that you think you’re all of those things together, and if you were to describe yourself completely, you’d probably want to use all of those terms. The people who know you might agree with you, but they’d probably want to highlight one or two in particular. Your friends might find you very funny, for example. Or they might like you because they know you always listen or because you always have such smart advice.
When they think about you, they tend to associate you first with your most obvious characteristic. Whether it’s your wit, your big heart, or your giant intelligence, your prime feature helps you to stand out from the people around you.
You can think of that characteristic as your natural brand—and everyone has one. It might not be something you’ve worked hard to create. It might not be something you’ve worked at all to create. It’s just who are you, and it’s how other people have come to see you, and it’s how they distinguish you from everyone else they know.
When you’re building a coaching business, you’ll want to plan and build that brand deliberately. You won’t be the only person offering coaching services in your field, and you certainly won’t be the only person offering information about your field on your blog and in your products. Your brand will help you to stand out from your competitors. It will help to build a relationship of trust with your audience, and it will show them instantly what they can expect to receive when they join your community.
In the past, branding was mostly restricted to large corporations and specific products. Faced with a shelf full of unfamiliar fizzy drinks, all offering to quench thirst and supply bubbles, Coca-Cola’s branding power meant that customers knew what that product would do for them. It wouldn’t just refresh them. It wouldn’t just give them a sugar rush and a fizzy tongue. If “Coca-Cola is life,” then drinking it would give them an instant burst of happiness, energy, and excitement. When choosing between three products whose name you’re not familiar with and one you do recognize, you’ll choose the one you know. Because you’re familiar with it, you can trust it to deliver what it says on the bottle.
Branding helps customers confused by a giant range of choices to make smart buying decisions. Especially on the Internet, where the next option is just a click away, it’s an essential factor in turning leads into customers and creating a closely knit community that not only returns, but even evangelizes on your behalf.
In the past few years branding has changed. It’s become individualized. Now it’s possible—even essential—for people to have brands of their own. It’s something that’s come about through a number of factors. A better understanding of the way branding works is likely to have had much to do with it. We recognize the importance of brands in our own lives, whether it’s the Apple logo on our mobile phones, the Nike swoosh on our shoes, or the giant signs that follow each other down the highway. Brands have not only become more commonplace, they’ve also become recognized. We know what they’re doing. We know why they’re doing it. And we wonder if the power of branding can do something for us, too.
But the importance of personal branding also has a lot to do with the changes in the job market. Once, it was possible to join a company and know that you would be there until the day you retired. You’d get regular pay raises, earn the odd bonus, and leave with a gold watch and a gold-plated pension. Those days are gone. Companies no longer think twice about cutting employees loose—and the employees think nothing of quitting for another company... or setting up shop on their own.
That means we are all responsible for how we appear to buyers, whether those buyers are employers or customers. It means we have to recognize those positive characteristics that help us to stand out and project them so that we’re instantly recognizable and never forgotten.
There are two steps to building your brand: (1) understanding the elements your brand should contain and (2) creating the structure that will broadcast that brand.
IDENTIFYING YOUR BRAND
In his book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, branding expert Dan Schawbel talks about the importance of basing a personal brand on authenticity. Brands need to be real, he argues, and should be based on an individual’s true character, personality, and outlook. “Why do you need to be real?” he asks. “Because everyone else is taken and replicas don’t sell for as much!”
Those are two good reasons, but there’s a third that’s just as persuasive.
Basing a brand on who you really are is the easiest option available. You won’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You won’t risk getting caught out when you talk to people at conferences and workshops. And you won’t have to wrack your brain wondering how the person you’re trying to project would behave on Twitter, on Facebook, or in your e-books.
You can just relax, be you... and make money.
Nor should you have to look too hard to find a unique characteristic that sums up your attitude. It could be your sense of adventure. It could be your head for statistics. It could be nothing more than your winning smile and your positive attitude.
You don’t need more than one characteristic to build your brand, and chances are, the first one that comes into your head should be the one you choose.
Psychologists always ask people to say the first thing that comes into their head when they look at a picture. They don’t ask for the second thing, and they don’t give their subjects time to have a good long think. They want their most immediate reaction—because that’s
