Before I get into what I learned, it’s important to understand why I started my own business to know the personal brand lessons I learned. If someone asked me even 5 years ago, I would never have said that I’d start a business much less call myself an entrepreneur or be writing about personal branding.
So what is an entrepreneur?
A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.
Dictionary.com
It’s a difficult moniker for me to handle but there it is – I am, essentially, an entrepreneur.
- Do I operate a business? ✔️
- Do I take on greater than normal financial risks? ✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️
I’ve stretched the dollars I’ve earned from consulting and freelance work to the very last penny to become a full time photographer and blogger over the last 7 months. And recently someone asked, “Why don’t you look for a full-time job instead and work on this on the side?” My answer was very simple. I’ll never work on this on the side. It’s not in my DNA. I’ll put every last ounce of attention into the full-time job even if I hate it because I don’t like doing a bad job at anything don’t like disappointing my boss. Secondly, I like having my own time – time that I govern and time that I am free to determine how to spend it. And I’m very adamant on this point because of a multitude of experiences. But that’s for another time.
And so I didn’t follow the conventional advice to start a side hustle while I still worked at a six-figure corporate job. Honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do at all. I quit out of desparation to save my sanity. But things evolved quicky about a year after I left said full time job moving from contract work, to consulting to freelance work. Then one morning I realized, ‘I am a business!‘ and that getting more work was all based on how I represented myself and if people are able to connect with me.
But here’s the conundrum: I hate talking about myself. I don’t share and I don’t voluntarily put myself out there. There’s a reason why I began with web development and then photography. I’m either behind a desk or behind the camera. It’s comfortable. I don’t do groups and I don’t do social gatherings or networking. I might as well be scraping nails on a chalkboard. That’s how painful it is. And don’t get me started on how long it took just to write to this very point of this post.
So you see, my business – my personal brand – was non-existent and still in obscurity.
But I’m finally ready for things to change and actually grow my business. Here are the 3 personal brand lessons that’s been banging on the door and I’m ready to open to it.
Lesson #1: Business is personal.
Why it was hard
The fact that I have to be the face of my business is worse than the nails on chalkboard. It’s the equivalent of standing naked in front of a room full of people. With perhaps an encore of a nails on a chalkboard sonata. Besides the fact that business and marketing only ever equaled the bottom line to me, regardless of the quality of the service or product, having to stand up – stand out – to be heard is beyond anything I ever thought I could handle.
I’ve lost more leads and clients this way than I can count.
What I learned
Business without marketing is impossible, improbable and impersonal. Whether you’re job hunting, auditioning for a role or starting your own business, you are marketing. You are a personal brand. People may come to you for advice on how which car to buy, recommendations on the best restaurants in town or the go-to person to fix a problem at work, it’s because you’ve earned that trust and respect. The words you say and the actions you choose to do, people connect to that and see you as a trusted source. You’re marketing yourself everyday without knowing it. You’re building your personal brand and so, if you decide that you want to start selling your expertise people will buy it because they know, like and trust you.
As an entrepreneur and creator, your brand is what people want, need, to see. It’s not what they’re connecting with – it’s who.
Lesson #2: Show up.
Why it was hard
As mentioned before – standing naked in front of a crowd with the nails-on-chalkboard sonata – an entrepreneur it does not make. I didn’t grow up in an environment where sharing came naturally. Most Asian cultures are usually about face – you don’t ask for help and make it look like you can do it all yourself. Feelings are non-essentials of communication. It’s definitely difficult to strike out on your own into a business where sharing is pretty much the name of the game. And so this was, and still is, a very difficult thing for me to manage. It’s something I have to work on every moment of every day. It takes me that much longer to think of what to say and then how to say it. I can spend an entire afternoon writing and then scrap it before going to bed.
It’s been a real Debbie Downer to say the least. I’ve lost so much time because of it.
What I learned
I know it’s not just a culture thing. It happens to a lot of people. Many, many, many people no matter where you come from. It’s a persistent theme across many Facebook groups I’m apart of and since this is an on-going thing for me, I know I’ll have other insights eventually.
What I know so far and what I’ve noticed, is that sharing on social media tends to come in a triplet of questions:
- What should I share?
- How much should I share?
- When should I share?
I call it the The Trio Tripper. It’s what causes us to not post anything at all. And the simplest most mundane answer of all, is that it doesn’t matter. Yes, there are content planners to help you plan. Yes, there are apps with statistics on what the best time of day is for your post. And yes, there are idea generators on things you can write about. But what’s missing from all of these tools is you. You have to write about what matters to you. Go as deep and vulnerable as you want or allow yourself to be and can share it at any time when you’re good and ready.
Because your personal brand is your personal development.
All of the other things are tools to support and help you reach your audience – the branding aspect (check out the difference between a personal brand and personal branding). But the actual sharing is the foundation that binds it all together. And you just have to start. There are no magic beans and no secret sauces.
I’ve learned that I don’t have to bare everything and present myself naked but I can show a lot without compromising my privacy and looking like I have something hiding up my sleeves.
Which leads me to the next lesson.
Lesson #3: Don’t take it personally.
Why it was hard
I always felt that a personal brand required something different, something unique. In your business plan – if you did one! – you get asked, ‘What’s your unique selling proposition? What makes you different? Try and bluesky it!’ This is probably worse than the 5-year plan question. I could never think of it and it was a question I left blank. It was even harder to answer when I was only beginning to figure out what my business was even about. For someone like me, a business plan was more than I could handle. And now as a personal brand, what makes me unique? What’s my unique selling proposition?
Is it that the night owl in me is completely opposite from morning routines and what highly successful entrepreneurs have in common? Or is that one of my favourite games is Left 4 Dead and my friends and I periodically create escape plans in case of a zombie apocalypse?
Or maybe I’m afraid of trolls and will end up holding my own episode of ‘Mean Tweets’ not read by celebrities.
D. All of the above.
What I learned
The thing is, nothing in business is new. There are new inventions because of new technology but the actual business of serving people isn’t new. What you and I struggle with, our experiences and what we wish to communicate to our audience, it’s not particularly new albeit influenced by the time our society is in. But it’s still not new.
The one factor that is unique and is new to all of it is me. And you. Plus the lady across the hall learning new crochet patterns for all the new babies in her church community.
We take a pattern, learn it and put our own perspective on it to create a new one. That’s what makes it different and that’s what makes it new. The ‘personal’ part in all of this is that it has to come from your own experiences. There’s no room for hurt pride if you want your business to succeed. You have to accept that there will be failures and successes and it comes in all different shapes and sizes and as a personal brand, it’ll hurt. You also have to know that vulnerability is a part of the process and will help you, and ultimately, your business to grow leaps and bounds.
What is new?
- How you decide to apply your knowledge;
- How you decide to use the marketing tools at your disposal;
- Who you decide to serve people with the service or product you’ve created;
- What you choose to share in your stories.
These things are new because you will choose the path that best suits you, your business and your personal brand.
That’s why, trolls be damned, you still have to get started. No one starts out knowing everything about their business and no one starts out being fully confident of their personal brand and absolutely no one, at any level, is immune to trolls.
If someone doesn’t agree with you, listen, take stock and reply politely. There are actually people out there who will genuinely benefit from your help and people who are genuinely able to help you grow – friend or stranger. Trolls, however, don’t belong in either group and attention only feeds their growth.
Don’t take it personally. Take it with grit, grace and humour. That will grow your personal brand.
And that’s enough.
