How To Treat Your Personal Brand Like A Business (MINDSCALE EPISODE 16)

Intro There's a reason a lot of gifted people are broke, and until you understand the need to position yourself properly as a brand, you'll be priced like everyone else. In this episode of Mind Skill, I'm going to be teaching you how to treat your personal brand like a business that makes you money. Hi there, welcome once again to yet another amazing episode of the Mind Shifting podcast that you love mind skill Widow Lushala. Thank you for always grinding with me and my team. It's such a pleasure and we're committed to keep on giving you value every single time you click on the play button, which is why I'm wondering why some of you still haven't subscribed. I mean, you love it, you love the because you talk about it, you comment you like it, but why haven't you subscribed? I'll take it that it's perhaps an oversight. So why not kindly click on the subscribe button? I'm waiting, I'm waiting. I'll also click the follow button in case you are currently listening from any of our audio podcast streaming platforms. Thank you so much. And while doing that, kindly turn on post notification so you'll be the very first person to know when next we drop another jaw shifting video. Amazing. Let's say jaw shifting. OK, jaw opening. Well, I beat you with the truth sometimes and that's OK. Anyways, let me go right into the juice as fast as possible. Why am I trying to teach you how to package your personal brand and treat it like a business? This is very important. You know, Jeff Bezos once said that your personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Although that quote has actually been attributed to maybe just more than one person, but you get the drift. Your personal brand, more than many, many other things, is beyond logo, is beyond writing, is beyond the font size, is beyond what you wear. Your personal brand is your reputation Your personal brand is reputation, and this is important because it is reputation. But one thing I need to say about the reputation is if you are not intentional about creating your own reputation or crafting it in such a way that your impression of yourself is what rests in the minds of others, they will form a reputation on your behalf. You know, if you do not brand yourself, others will and they might not brand you the way you want to be seen. And so it's important that you take the initiative and you're proactive in showing up in a very solid way. I take it that this video is addressing not just newbies but also people who own personal brands. And this video is going to help you scale your brand to a very given extent by helping you treat it like a business. Now, why are personal brands important? Why are personal brands important You know, according to Forbes, in 2022, people are 71% more likely to buy from a personal brand that they follow online. You know, I once heard Daniel Presley say that about 60% of people are likelier to patronise personal brands than they are to patronise establishments right now. There's been a paradigm shift family in the past. I dare say before the 20 tens, for you to be credible, you've got to be an institution, you've got to show up as an institution, you've got to have maybe traditional media, you've got to have several other things. But with the advent of digital media and social media particularly, there's been a massive, massive decentralisation and a paradigm shift which means from the comfort of your home, you can now build a solid brand. This is so important. But today I want to teach you how to do this by being business conscious because a whole lot of people just treat their personal brands like I could just show up once in a while. I could just do this thing once in a while. While is deeper than that. If you are going to build a formidable personal brand, you've got to be really intentional. You've got to build a structure around yourself to show up efficiently. If I got a dollar for every time I'm asked by people how I do it, how I show up across different touch points. And now I'm consistent enough to be one of the leading lights and taught leaders within the business and leadership space in Africa. If I were to answer you, I think I would have to send you this video. So join me as I talk about this. I say all of this to say one thing that beyond just an idea, your brand needs a budget, it needs visuals, it needs platforms, it needs positioning, and it needs your seriousness. And I dare say it needs a team. This is very important. So let's get right into the talking point. How can I position my personal brand and treat it like a business #1 understand that you are the product. Understand that you’re the product You, you are the product, you are the product. Now, this is very important because a whole lot of people tend to put the cart before the horse. They want to brand when the product is not ready for the market. They want to scale when the product hasn't even successfully satisfied and fulfilled some existing sales orders. Why am I telling you this? You are the product and it starts with you. It starts with you. Now, before I talk about you packaging yourself as a product, I want to start by saying you are the product in the sense that you need to ensure that you've got stuff to give that is admirable to other people. A whole lot of people emphasise packaging more than the content itself. But I dare say that your packaging might get you into a room, but there is a content that ensures you stay there. And so the very first thing I would say is hone your expertise and show you carve your voice and show you understand your brand equity. This is very important. But after you've done all of that, I need to let you know that you're the product. And so packaging is just as important. And so see this point as a combination of content and packaging. On one hand, the content must match. It must be ideal. You can't claim to be the best thing since sliced bread and your knowledge base is dry. Absolutely not. So I always tell you, go for nerd, go for information, build yourself, train yourself, embrace self leadership and then be ready for the market. Now the market will demand that you actually learn how to package yourself because every content that you post, you must see it as an expression of your thoughts and your stance on specific topics. And so you must show up a certain type of way. It is not enough to be intelligent. It's not enough to know what to say. It's another thing for you to actually understand how to brand and package yourself as a person. And this is important. You are the product, and this means that you need to first and foremost be in touch with yourself. What's your story? What's your story? What's your expertise? What can you do better than almost the average person? What's your vantage points? What do you get the most compliments for? Understand your strength and your weakness is fine, but ensure that what you project are your strengths. Understand your strengths and your weaknesses. Your weaknesses are important in this because we want to ensure your weaknesses don't come in the way of the expression of your strengths. Yes, but more importantly, it's your strengths that would actually get you into the main rooms. And so what's your expertise? What are your strengths? OK, Understand also your voice. This is important. Your that, that's your brand equity. That's what's important. So you are the product. You before the light, before the camera, before anything else. You are the products. Are you sellable? Are you sellable? Are you sellable? Are you sellable? If you put you in a room with all the people you've always dreamt of meeting, would that be stuff that you've got to say to them? And so this would involve a lot of things also going to call to question your readiness, your readiness, your readiness. This is a call to self development. It's a call to tireless learning. Are you really ready? Because you are the product. That's the first step to treating your brand like a business. You have to make a commitment to improving yourself daily because the business has got to grow and you are the product. You are the first level of the business. And it leads me to the second point, which is ideas won't be enough. Ideas won’t be enough, you need a strategy You need a strategy. Ideas are not enough, you need a strategy. Ideas are raw. They're all many ideas are basic. They are cool stuff. I have this idea. That's something I want to say. I have an idea there's and a lot of people try to build personal brands and show up as content creators or try to grow and build thought leadership just off ideas, but it will never suffice. You need to create a strategy. You need a content strategy and not just content ideas. A strategy is important. A strategy is all-encompassing. It's important. And so posting randomly, for example, is not the same as building intentionally. You must be particular about building intentionally is one thing for you to say I want to be. This is nothing for you to have a strategy around it. The strategy involves and entails different tiers and different levels. A strategy involves different things like how am I going to show up? When am I going to show up? To whom am I going to show up? Who's my audience? What's my message? What's the medium for this? What social media touch points am I going to start with? How do I begin to even carve it and craft it? The strategy also inculcates your appearance, right? How do I show up? How do I ensure that I look the part of what I'm trying to announce to people that I am? This is important. So you need a content strategy. You need you need content pillars. You need many of all these things. You need a strategy. It will help you to have one. And this leads me to the Third Point. Now this is a bit of a spin off content strategy. This talks about your brand offer. I always advise you to build offers and not just attention. A whole lot of people gain attention. They're popular creators. Maybe they understand the science of virality and the art of showing up in a way that grabs attention. But that's cute because many of them end up broke because most of them don't know how to create funnels. Build offers not just attention They don't know how to be strategic enough. They don't know how to build offers. Listen, a brand without an offer is a billboard with no business behind it Can't be a billboard. While you're driving on the street, you see a billboard. A billboard with no business behind it doesn't really attract the right people in my people might see it. Oh wow, okay, nice, good stuff. We're not going to sell anything. Even if you own the view board, you've got to put some stuff there. And which is why you need to understand content pillars and you also need to understand the offer bridge, the content offer bridge. Understand that the content pulls people closer. But the offer is what actually helps you monetize the knowledge that you're sharing or is what helps you reap the dividends of all of your hard work. And so you must be very particular about that. It's not just enough to grab attention. You must have an offer. What are you trying to do? First and foremost, define the kind of content. Am I going to drop educational stuff for entertaining stuff or motivational stuff, which is cute stuff. OK, show up is fine. In fact, I always advise that you show up first without asking for anything. So you must earn the trust of your audience. After a while, you've got to have an offer. Either you're selling a consulting service, either you're selling the products, or either you are influencing and leveraging your audience for another brand that is paying you for it. And so it helps you must treat your brand like a business. It's not just fun, fair. It takes a lot of money and costs a lot of money to pay for editing apps cost a lot of money to buy cameras cost a lot of money to get tripod stands cost a lot of money to assemble the team. And this is important, very important. And so you must pay a lot of attention to that and leads me to my penultimate point. Learn to track your metrics. Learn to track your metrics Learn to track your metrics just like you would a business. This is important. You know, a lot of creators don't care so much about their metrics. Don't get me wrong. They think the only metric available is followers. Oh, I care about my followers. I want to keep on having more followers. But beyond just more followers, you need to understand many more things like what's converting and what is not. He's understand things like what is being ignored. He's understand like what kinds of content lead to referrals, to DMS, to collaborations. Look, content creation is a business and you must treat it like such. You must be a student of your numbers, not just the number that you think matters the most, which is followers. In fact, I dare say that as you begin to grow more, as you build personal brands and show up on digital touch points, you will begin to realise that followers don't even count as much as you think they do. Because I've seen people who have 100,000 followers and I'm making crazier numbers than people who've got 2 million followers and none are converted. And so it depends why are they following me in the first base? Do they really know why they are here? You know something very funny as at the time of recording this video, I just dropped the, I just made a post not too, not too long about my wife, right? It was my wife's birthday and everything and people were going to comment like they were joking. They said, Oh my God, we didn't follow you for love. We followed you for business tips. We followed you for motivational talk. And I'm like, I like the fact that they know primarily what ioffer. I'm there to make their lives and their businesses better. I'm there to propel them towards attainment and I'm excited. OK. And so for you, you need to understand and define what are the metrics? What are my metrics? What kind of post do I make that elicit the best reaction from my audience? OK, what's leading to referrals? What's leading to collaborations? What's leading to DMS? You must track the metrics the same way you must understand your business is a bitter. The same way you must understand your cash flow. The same way you must your profit and your numbers. You need to do the same for your business. What's happening? Why are we not growing? Why was the month of May worse than the month of April? You need to understand this. You must define it. You must be intentional about it. That, my friend, is how you begin to scale a personal brand. Treat it like a business. And that leads me to the final point, which actually is invest in your brand like a business. Invest in your brand like a business This one, I think he's the main game changer. You know, recently I listened to an episode of the Diary of a CEO with Steve Bartlett where he interviewed the most followed YouTube in the world, Mr Beast. And Mr Beast was talking about how he's been able to build systems and structure around all that he puts out. He said stuff like he just shows up and they tell him what to do. Manners build an entire empire, According to him. He said he's had about he has about 300 people working on his team. And my jaw almost dropped. But really I wasn't surprised because I can relate. Personally, at the point of recording, I probably, I definitely have double digits number of people working just on my personal media team. I think, yeah, think we're about that number. I think about 10 plus, yeah, probably across double digits thereabouts. And for me, it's exciting because it's a team of people who show up every single time just to help us achieve some goals. Now, one of the best ways or one of the first steps to begin to grow your enterprise, particularly this thing you call the media business and a personal brand, is to begin to see it as something bigger than just yourself. Think of your personal brand this way. What used to be perhaps the media house in your day or the popular TV stations and all, is now your own personal brand and so treated like some big stuff. Are you aware that at the moment Mr Beast, for example, attracts more, more, I repeat, more viewers than the average television station on the continental level? The man's got about 100 million views per YouTube videos. I need you to tell me, apart from CNN, Al Jazeera, perhaps the BBC and a couple of other TV stations, how many get that much viewership? And this let's you know that the game has changed. And so you must treat your stuff like a business, invest in it like a brand. You know when I tell many creators sometimes get yourself an assistant, then get another assistant. Then don't assistant is tired. Get a videographer, get another videographer. Get this, get that. They go, Oh my God, with how much am I going to do this? And I smile. I say look, you need to learn to buy yourself extra comfort and extra skill by investing. Stop eating alone and expecting your business to grow. This is very important. Leverage. Leverage the skills of other people and their time to help grow the work the moment you can afford it. Sometimes it would mean that you'll be depriving yourself of some extra fun or some extra pleasure. But you will yield and reap the results and the dividends of every single thing you're sowing. And so your business needs a budget. For example, every single month. I'd advise that you're building your personal brand, particularly when you're showing up by consistently creating content. You must have a budget. There must be an ad budget. Yes, I said so. Enough of just waiting and focusing on maybe just the algorithm to take videos to the right place, which is good by the way. The algorithm can help and it's good stuff, but you can also pad it up OK with some sponsored adverts. This is very important. Also improve on your visuals. Sometimes the reason you're not getting the getting views is not because your videos are not full of gems, but it's because you're still using mediocre videography till this very moment. Sometimes upgrade your cameras, improve on stuff and that thing. Also, you must leverage our platforms. Look for all the possible platforms you can. For example, as you begin to build a personal brand, you might take on some speaking engagement which talks about positioning. Also, position yourself as a thought leader to the best possible way that you can and the best possible extent that you can. Just go look for collaborations, talk to people, do all of these things and then build systems and build themes. I have built teams. My team know what to do at a particular point in time. For example, I haven't operated a single YouTube video by myself since forever. The team handles that. They do it all by themselves. The ISID is perhaps responding to comments, which keeps me in touch with my community. But after recording this video is a different group of people who edit. I haven't edited a single video for YouTube by myself in years, and I never will probably in the future because we'll build a team around it. It might cost you a lot, but you need to start treating like a business. You need to, instead of eating your seeds, plant them. And planting your seeds will actually mean by investing in the best capable hands around you. Look around you. What can I bring on board that can help us get to the next level? That's how my friend. You treat your personal brand and that's how it stands the test of time. Treat it like a business and thank me later. But now, if you recall at the beginning of the video, I said that I do have a gift for you. Outro Yes, I've got a gift. Something worth its weight in gold. I've just told you how to treat your personal brand like a business. But what if I told you this is just the tip of the iceberg because I've got something much more all-encompassing that entails? Detailed plans around things like niching your brand, showing up consistently, how to frame your offer, how to build content players, how to build a strategy, and how to grow and build thought leadership across different platforms. Pretty much my playbook on how I built my personal brand to the top by becoming one of Africa's most sought after keynote speakers and taught leaders in Myspace Guys drum rolls. I've got a cost titled Personal Branding One O 1. How to build a name that makes you money. Speaking from experience having at least seven different streams of income flowing from my personal brand, I want to teach you how to do same in this course. I wouldn't call it a short course because it is detailed. Okay, I been able to take you through the ropes. The different models are designed to teach you what I know. All you have to do is kindly use the link in the description to grab your own copy. It's a self-paced course so you can take it anytime you want. You could do as you wish, but in all that you do, just ensure that you practise all that I've shared there because trust me, they are world class gems. And it is on that note that I want to bring an end to today's video. If today's video has been any bit sort of impactful to you, why not like this video to ensure that the algorithm pushes it to more people. And do not forget to click on the subscribe right button and do not forget to also turn on post notifications. So you'll be the very first person to know when next I drop a video. Thank you so much. And do not forget to share this with a friend or someone that you would love to also glean just as you have. See you in the next one. It's been mind scale with Oluchala to do.