3 Things Keeping You From Building an Impactful Personal Brand
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If having a powerful personal brand is so important, why do so many people struggle to create one?
Now, we all know there are about a million things in life that are important. Things that we should be doing. Things we, on some level, want to do.
We all know the importance of being healthy, eating right, exercising regularly, being fit as a fiddle. But how many of us actually fit that description? How many of us take the time to and put in the work to revamp our lives to turn our body into the temple that the gurus all claim it to be?
We know that on some level, our lives would be better if we took the time to become fit, healthy humans. We’d have more energy. We’d be more capable. We’d have more confidence.
So what holds us back?
For each person, it’s a mix of various feelings, challenges, and blockers. But ultimately, if you do the research, it all comes down to a few key elements.
We’re not exactly sure what to do. We’re inundated with content telling us that vegan is the way to go. Or keto. Or paleo. That we should run for our health. That running is terrible for our knees and stress levels and we should lift weights. The onslaught of information and confusion only continues.
Change is freaking hard. Becoming a different version of ourselves takes work. Hard work. It requires us to change our habits. To not just make the decision to change once, but to back that decision up over and over again. Every time we take a bite or choose between the couch and the gym. It’s constant. And it’s exhausting.
Fear dominates us in more ways than we think. When you really dive deep into conversations with people about their health, there are a lot of fears lying just below the surface. Fear that our friends won’t like us if we don’t go to happy hour, or share a plate of nachos anymore. Fear that we’ll try and fail. Fear that we’ll succeed and our lives won’t change the way we dream they will. The list goes on.
It turns out the challenges preventing people from building a strong personal brand are eerily similar. Let’s unpack this in order of difficulty, just like I did above.
Knowing How to Build a Personal Brand is Confusing
There is an absurd quantity of content out there about building a personal brand. When you’re looking at high-level content, much of the advice is the same. Know who you are, know whom you want to reach, start sharing content, connect with others.
At first glance that’s helpful! And it’s at least simple enough to get someone started, but most people will hit a roadblock incredibly soon. The question of how to complete all of those steps looms large and, for many experienced professionals, can feel both intimidating and futile. It’s oddly simple and extremely challenging at the same time.
And this is one of the gripes I have with much of the content that exists. It simplifies the process in a way that can be somewhat helpful, but also glosses over the actual process someone needs to go through. You watch the video or read the blog post and think, “I can do that!” But once you sit down to actually crank out that work, you wonder how they got from point A to point B? There must be a missing step.
Having a strategy and a plan is, as with most things, the most important step, but is ultimately the hardest to complete.
It requires a level of self-reflection and discovery that we’re not always prepared for and can often feel “woo woo”, or detached from the nuts and bolts reality of your work, particularly when you’re already an experienced, relatively successful professional.
Building a Personal Brand Requires Change - And Change is Hard
The second most challenging aspect of this whole personal brand-building enterprise is that creating change in our lives, in any way, is incredibly difficult. Especially when we’ve been doing pretty okay up until this point.
We naturally resist change. We might be willing to make slight adjustments to how we operate, to the way we do things, but when a new endeavor is this personal, it doesn’t feel like a slight adjustment. It feels like a wholesale transformation.
Deciding to embark on a personal branding journey requires a few things.
First, it requires admitting to ourselves that where we are currently, in our careers and reputation, isn’t enough. That we deserve more. And that can be a harsh realization.
Second, it requires that we change our habits. And habit design is challenging. That’s why books like Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg are so ridiculously popular (full disclosure: I am a super fan of both - especially Atomic Habits).
What I’ve noticed is that this level of change, and especially habit formation, is somehow more challenging for personal branding than other aspects of business.
In all of my work with entrepreneurs, I notice there’s something about this personal branding exercise that stops many entrepreneurs and ambitious, driven business professionals from applying the same get-shit-done mentality they so readily put into action in every other part of their work.
Successful entrepreneurs tend to be very systematic and organized.
When there is a problem that needs to be solved, they do their research and learn the right method to apply and get it done.
They don’t use that same model of thinking for personal branding. There’s something about this enterprise that, I think, hits too close to home, feels too personal for them to use their typical entrepreneurial problem-solving skills.
Building a Personal Brand Instills Fear
And this brings us to the third, and most, challenging aspect of personal brand building.
Fear.
Because of the personal nature of this work, fear tends to be the most common blocker in the pathway to success in building a powerful and impactful personal brand.
Now, let me be clear. Not everyone recognizes it as fear. Sometimes they say it’s time management. Or that they’re just private people. But every single time I start to ask deeper, more probing questions, we arrive at some statement or belief like,
“I’m worried that I’ll say the wrong thing.”
“I feel like people will laugh at me.”
“I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
“Who am I to act like the expert online?”
The list goes on and on. It’s fear. Ego and fear.
Far too many of us were taught, growing up, myself included, that people who talk about themselves are rude, tacky, selfish, or just plain embarrassing. If you were raised by baby boomer (or older) parents, you were often taught that if you just put your head down and work hard, you will be rewarded. That no one likes a bragger or complainer.
And so we learned to get along. To keep our heads down, do good work, and hope that somehow people would notice.
But our society and culture have changed.
They are busier and noisier, which means it’s become significantly harder for people to notice our hard work. We can bemoan that evolution, and long for the “good old days,” but I’d rather revel in the opportunity that this new reality creates for us.
Now, it is not only okay but celebrated that we share ourselves with the world. The prevalent feeling now is that we are all valid and worthy. That we have something valuable to share with the world, and that by doing so, we help others learn, grow, and evolve into who they were meant to be.
And while we’re still a long way from seeing a truly diverse representation in the workforce, this trend has increased at a dramatic pace. And it’s a beautiful thing. We are now vastly more likely to see bodies of all shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities gracing the pages of a magazine, the listings of a catalog, or the stock images on a website.
There are podcasts, YouTube channels, nonfiction authors, Instagram influencers, and LinkedIn thought leaders from nearly every background who are covering a wide range of topics.
And you might think, “Yeah, that means I have nothing new to add.”
But that is where you’re wrong.
What is particularly beautiful about this transformation in our culture and media is that it's no longer only about the message. It is also about the messenger. And no one can represent your unique blend of experience, expertise, and background the way you can. No one.
Sure there may be thousands, or even millions, of people that are similar to you in one way or another, but in all ways? Heck no.
Now when we amplify what makes us different, we find the people, partners, and customers whose interests and desires are perfectly aligned with the value we provide and problems we solve. And we make it easier for them to find us.
One of the most common responses I receive when I ask the clients I work with why they struggle to build a personal brand is “Well, I don’t like to brag.” They genuinely believe that the whole exercise requires them to simply ramble on in public about how great they are.
So I ask them, “Are there business leaders, thought leaders, that you follow online? People that you respect and maybe even admire?”
They always answer yes, often rolling their eyes at the obviousness of my question.
Do they ever brag?”
A long pause…
“No, no they don’t.”
That’s when I explain that this has nothing to do with bragging.
It’s sharing. Sharing your story, the lessons you’ve learned, the experiences you’ve gone through, the processes or strategies you’ve developed, the ideas you have, the things you’ve tried, and the things you failed.
When you tell your story, teach your lesson, share your insight, the message will be delivered in a truly unique way. Even if that exact content has been delivered a million times before, because it is coming from you, it will resonate with a different audience and in a different way.
Sharing yourself with the world could make the difference between someone giving up and continuing to press on. All because they see something in you that they identify with, and your hard work, your experience, inspires them.
That impact is why you have a responsibility to share with the world.
I know this isn’t always what we’ve been taught, and the transition from staying quiet and playing it safe, responsible, and reasonable, to playing it big, bold, and brave, is a terrifying one.
But when you recognize that it’s the limiting beliefs ingrained in you from childhood, and the fear those beliefs stir up in you that holds you back, it becomes just a little easier to face them head-on and take that first step forward in building a personal brand that reflects who you are and who you were meant to be.
Remember this: a belief is just a thought you keep thinking.
So what if, instead of thinking, “Who am I to build a personal brand?” you started thinking, “I deserve a bigger platform so I can make a bigger difference?”