The Key Components of an Epic Personal Brand
Personal branding is the gift that keeps on giving y’all.
Your personal brand is the balance between your professional and your personal life that the world gets to see.
It's the space in the middle of the Venn diagram. Your professional life is in one circle—your personal is in the other.
Your personal brand is the essence and vibe that lies in the middle (see that cute little arrow over there).
Why You Need a Personal Brand (Newsflash—You Already Have One)
Even if you don’t realize it, you for sure have a personal brand already. It’s what people think about you and say about you in your professional life.
And you can either be intentional about that and build your personal brand into something you want, or you can let everyone around you shape that brand.
That means your bosses, your coworkers, your business connections, your clients, your industry peers—they’re the ones who decide who you are, and they’re definitely not being intentional about it.
Listen y’all, this is so so critical for your career! This isn’t something that only matters to entrepreneurs. Your personal brand is made up of dozens of little elements that can affect how management sees you, how potential clients see you, and how potential employers see you.
You get to take it with you whether you're building a business of your own or working for someone else. It's something that changes and evolves as you change and evolve.
Your personal brand is more than just your social media profiles or your personal website. It is all about defining who you are and then adjusting all those pieces that the world sees so that they reflect the version of you that you want them to see.
Defining your personal brand allows you to approach your business world authentically and not bring that sales-y-ness we all loath—and that’s just because you're being YOU and bringing all your solutions to your tribe.
Consciously Shaping Your Personal Brand—A Step-by-Step Guide
To start the process of shaping your personal brand in a conscious way, you need to sit down, get some paper (or a Google doc), and walk yourself through some exercises that force you to evaluate who you are, what you do, why you do it, and why that matters.
And then you have to balance that with what you want to show the world. Even if, for example, you’re passionately political, you might want that to be much more subtle in the version of yourself that you show to the world.
You have to find that sweet spot between the business side of you and the personal side of you to succeed here.
And y’all, it’s easier than it sounds—here’s how you do it.
Your Passions
The very first thing you need to do is to start with your passions.
What drives you?
What makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning?
Are you passionate about everything you do for work, or are you only passionate about a portion of your work or an aspect of it?
What specifically are you passionate about?
And now, putting aside the work itself, where are you passionate about working in a geographical sense?
Where do you want to work in an ideal world? What city? What country? What kind of climate or landscape? What kind of resources will this place have?
For example, do you want to move to a big city because you love that lifestyle, or is there a specific city that’s where all the big players in your industry are? Or maybe there’s a city that has a lot of grants and programs to help you with your business?
Write all that down.
Got it?
Great!
Your People
Now think about who you want to work with—your clients, your coworkers, your boss, your mentors, your supporters, and your industry peers.
Who is your tribe? Where are they?
Write it down.
Your Priorities
Now we start combining things together—what are your personal and business priorities?
How can you combine your passions with your people to help you achieve your goals?
What do you want to accomplish in the next year? How about the next 5?
Write down your top 3 priorities.
Your Image
This one is literal—how you look, both in terms of actual photos of you and in terms of branding elements (like a logo and a color scheme that can be found on your website, your business cards, and your social media profiles).
Develop that image and level up y’all!
Don't just go for a headshot—bring your vibe alive with a lifestyle photo session.
Getting shots that feature a day in your life allows your potential clients or employers to see who you are before they even meet you.
It's like you get to skip a few steps because you have brought YOU to life in a digital format.
Your Mission Statement
Now it’s time to condense all this down into your personal mission statement.
This helps you decide how you can combine your passions, your people, and your priorities into a single statement that guides you in creating the other elements of your personal brand.
This will look very similar to actual mission statements from actual businesses. It’s a touchstone you can always turn to when you have to ask yourself things like “Should I take this opportunity?” or “Should I work with this client?” or “Should I leave behind what I know and make a big move?”
Stephen Covey wrote about the importance of a personal mission statement and provides awesome insights in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Here's a cool tool to help you generate that mission statement.
Now you can start building this thing out.
Map It Out and Make It Visual
Create a vision board and map it all out.
This may look different for different people, but essentially it's the idea of taking all of the personal brand components and putting it into one place that makes sense for you.
This includes your passions and your people and your priorities and your mission statement, but it might also include your social media profiles, your logo, your color scheme, etc.
This is where you can dive in and define what you look like.
Maybe you actually get a poster and do the old school crafty method.
Maybe you use a Pinterest board or just type up an outline in a Google Doc.
Or maybe you decide you want a little help—you can use our Personal Branding Workbook to help get that roadmap in order. Subscribe to our newsletter and be the first to access it.
However you decide to do it, the key is to bring this balanced piece of your Venn diagram to life.
Next Steps—Create a Content Plan
Now it’s time to put it all out there, but you need a plan first for all the content you’ll need to make this happen.
First, you’re going to want to update your social media profiles. You’ll want some of those day-in-the-life shots on there, maybe your logo, definitely your color scheme, and probably your mission statement.
You’ll want to do the same thing for your About page on your website.
If you don’t have a website, you probably need to get a website dedicated to your personal brand so that potential clients or employers can get a feel for who you are and what you’re about.
You’ll probably need to spend some time on print items too—business cards at the very least.
Basically, you need to figure out what tools you will use to tell people who you are and what you're all about.
You can get all the deets on building an incredible content plan (along with other epic branding tools) in our Personal Branding Toolkit included in our branding workbook.
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