People don’t have to do business with you, but they’ll give you a chance if they understand who you are. Take the time to understand what you offer as a person to do business with besides what product or service you offer. The result will be stronger business relationships.
Key Takeaways:
- People like to do business with people they like.
- Personal branding based on your authenticity helps you establish your corner of the market.
- Personal branding makes you credible, makes your business credible, and can lead to business (and personal!) growth.
“Branding” has become a buzzword. These days it seems that everybody has a personal brand — from billionaires to baristas. In popular culture, high school students have personal brands that they hope to use to become social media influencers.
But before you ridicule and reject the idea as too fancy for your home business, let me suggest that branding is critical to your small business success.
Branding Defined
Branding itself is the totality of what a business conveys to the world. It’s the business name, its logo, its colors, the way it does business, its terms, its packaging, how it deals with customers, how it chooses to heat its buildings, where it advertises… in short, everything. Maybe you always wear green (terrific if you run the local farmer’s market), or use a fountain pen (memorable if you’re an architect).
“Personal branding is an intentional, strategic practice in which you define and express your own value proposition,” according to Harvard Business School Personal Branding Lecturer Jill Avery and Executive Fellow Rachel Greenwald. They add, “It’s the amalgamation of the associations, beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and expectations that people collectively hold about you,” in the Harvard Business Review. This becomes important because in your business you need to prove your value to the people you come into contact with, whether they’re potential clients, customers, employees, investors, vendors, or lenders.
Personal branding is how you comport yourself in the world. You could consider it a subset of your business branding, just as Elon Musk’s brand is a subset of SpaceX’s branding. And, if you’re an entrepreneur and your business is a sole proprietorship, a startup, or hasn’t quite yet achieved a trillion-dollar market capitalization, your personal brand might be the most important asset you’ve got.
The result of clear branding is trust. According to motivational coach Tony Robbins, “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships. Trust is the foundation of every successful relationship.” Even business relationships.
Why Your Personal Brand Is Important
When people understand the value you can provide, it opens a lot of doors and generates a lot of opportunities. When people have a sense of who you are and believe they can trust you, those defining attributes go to work for you. Projects will find you, and you’ll attract the right kind of opportunities. When you’re clear about your personal brand, there’s a synergistic benefit to you, too. You’ll find yourself more confident about your financial and leadership abilities. You’ll more easily see what your goals should be by following your values. You’ll live with your authentic self.
Behaving in the way that you’re comfortable with, adhering to your brand, and being authentic about it leaves you less to think about.
Personal Branding: Time + Effort + Authenticity
You should be thoughtful and deliberate about your brand because it’s not the kind of thing you can create on a whim. The people who want the service or product you provide likely already have a sense of who they want to do business with. By learning what they’re looking for, you can stress the traits you have and want to feature. Also consider whom you’d like to do business with, which will let you shape your brand to better attract those prospects. You can study your competitors, too, but remember that if your brand is too similar to someone else’s, you don’t give a customer much of a reason to do business with you instead of that other business. Once you’ve taken your notes, move on to addressing these specifics and you’ll be well on your way:
Step 1: Identify Your Passion and Strengths. Are you an animal lover? Do you believe in cryptocurrency? Do you collect jazz LPs? All of these will tell something about yourself, even if you run a flower shop.
Step 2: Define Your Target Audience. Know whom you’re hoping to do business with. If you’re going to sell real estate, your traits will appeal to certain home buyers and home sellers.
Step 3: Craft Your Unique Value Proposition. Who you are and what your brand is then helps you focus on why you are the right person for the work you’re pursuing. For instance, as a comic collector, you may better understand how to clean a home full of expensive art prints.
Step 4: Develop Your Brand Messaging. Once you know your brand, you can talk about it and talk about it some more. As a basketball fan, perhaps you give your landscaping customers the “full-court press” when it comes to beautifying yards.
Step 5: Establish Your Online Presence. Social media are perfect for branding. You can be casual, helpful, and relevant without selling. Beware, however: People can spot phonies faster on social media as well.
Once you’ve got a handle on your brand, leverage what you’ve decided. Spend time on the right platforms on social media talking about the things that relate to your personal brand — but don’t just harp on your business. Show up at professional events and community events where you can be “the web lady” or “the bowling guy.”
You can expand your brand with thought leadership. For instance, I write these articles in which I share my personal brand, which is believing in the power of entrepreneurship and owning a small business. I also write blog posts and speak to business groups. All of this serves my brand, and can serve yours when chosen appropriately.
In Support of Your Brand
You’ll want to gauge your success as you build your personal brand. Monitor what people say about you, especially on social media (yes, this means you should have pages on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and any other platform with viewers that may align with your brand). See what people say about you on business sites like the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, and consumer complaint sites. Address any complaints there while keeping your personal brand in mind (though you also, as a marketer, need to keep the consumer’s needs in mind). If something truly bad about you pops up, you may need to avail yourself of a reputation management site or bring someone in house.
It’s true that a personal brand requires some work. But at the core, business is about who people want to do business with. It seems every day I read about a group of people urging boycotts against companies for supporting certain people or doing business with certain people. Your job is to be the kind of person most people like to do business with. Then they’ll give your business a chance. If your business is good, a chance is all it — and you — need.
