Have you ever heard that you just need to be “authentic” in order to build a successful personal brand? It’s such an overused word in the industry that really tells people nothing.

In this blog post, we are covering how to build a personal brand in 2021 without the bullshit. I'm here to give you the exact strategies on how to build a personal brand that's also authentic to you, profitable and also strategic. I truly believe that when you are authentic, and you're also strategic, that's what makes a personal brand super profitable. 

There are six pieces that you need to build your profitable personal brand. All of these pieces and strategies come from my signature personal branding course STICKERS. These six pieces are the things that you can implement right now in order to build your personal brand because I'm not here to just tell you what you need and then walk away. I'm here to give you some strategies so you can actually walk away and start to build your profitable personal brand right after reading this.

Find your unique brilliance

I am a huge firm believer that every single person has their own unique brilliance that they can bring to whatever they want to do. 

As an example, if you're a personal brand, and you're wanting to become an influencer of some kind, you have your own unique brilliance that you can bring to these companies that you want to be an influencer for. Or if you want to be a coach, you have your own set of brilliance that is completely unique to you that you can bring to your clients. 

For me, part of my unique brilliance is the fact that I was in radio broadcasting for six years and built profitable audiences and raving fan audiences while I was in radio, and then that skill set transferred into my coaching business and now with my product-based business, Monarchy Lash Co.

So there are three different questions that you can ask yourself to bring to light what your unique brilliance is for you in your business and brand:

• What lights you up every single day and what makes you the happiest (whether if it’s in your business or personal life)?
• What are your unique skills that are in your tool belt?
• What character traits are you super proud of?

Becoming known for your results

I challenge you to start talking about client results every single day. So let's say that your ideal clients really want to feel like they're creating more time within their day, you can start talking about the clients that created more time in their day or they learned how to plan their schedule. Talk about it all of the time because then you're going to become known for that person that helps people create more time within their day.

The more times we repeat something and do something, the more we're going to be remembered for that. That's the main thing that I want you to take away from personal branding. In general, you have to be consistent. When you are consistent, you become known for that thing. 

 Expressing your brand visually

I am not a graphic designer by any means. But I do know what it takes to brand something visually.

If you do not have a logo and a full brand design from a professional at this point, take a deep breath, relax, and focus on these three things right now to better enhance your visual brand.

• Start with one main font and one sub font. Use these fonts in your Instagram Stories, sales pages, everything.

• Pick one color (if you get a hex code then that’s better). 
• Choose one emoji then use that one emoji all the damn time whether it's the purple heart or rocketship emoji, or whatever it is. 

Use the one main font, use the sub font, use one color and use one emoji consistently every single day. If you do all these three, then you're going to become known because people are going to have consistency with you then they're going to know what to expect on your Instagram Stories. 

The end result would be you’re going to become known for those things. A personal example is I’m known for the color purple. It was actually insane because people would take pictures in store of purple things, or they would send me makeup that was purple. But the main thing was I was inside their minds. 😉

You don't have to have a professional brand in order to become known and become memorable for your brand. 

Get your brand pillars in place

When businesses and brands are first starting out, not a lot of entrepreneurs define what their actual brand pillars are because they're so concerned with other things like growing their followers, signing clients, selling their offers, etc.

But if you don't have brand pillars, and people don't know, like and trust you, they are not on the same page as you and they are not invested in you and your brand, then they're not going to buy from you.

You need to build and know your brand, vision and purpose. All of these brand pillars that we're about to get into before we actually get the followers and the sales, because then they're going to be so aligned, and they're going to be loyal, raving audience members to you. 

So the four brand pillars that we cover within STICKERS that you need to have are your purpose, position, voice and values. 

• Purpose. It goes along with your WHY. What is the purpose of you starting this business and starting this brand?
• Position. How are you positioning yourself within the market? There's always going to be competitors and there's always going to be people that are already doing the same thing as you but how are you going to position yourself differently from every other person? Which obviously goes back to your unique brilliance. 
• Voice. So how do your brand and business speak? Are they more luxurious? Are they like the girl next door? Are they a bad bitch?
• Values. What do you specifically value as a brand and what is non-negotiable for you? For example with me and Monarchy Lash Co., our values are sustainability and eco-friendly. So if it's not sustainable and if it's not eco-friendly, we are not buying it and we're not going to sell it to our consumers. 

Sharing your story

These are two story prompts as to how to write your first brand story. 

• Think about the times that you created a miracle. Whether that was the time that you gave birth to your first child, or you gave birth to a business baby, or you were like a phoenix coming out of the ashes and you had $0 and then you made this amount of money (you don't need a homeless to millionaire story, I just want to get that out of the way). 

The times that you created a miracle are the best stories that you can possibly tell because they're so true to you. You don't need to pretend or heavily elaborate a story just to get a point across. For example, if your miracle was pressing publish on your Instagram business profile then some of your audience will probably resonate with that too because we've all felt that fear of clicking that button, posting our first story, just selling for the first time and it's going to resonate with more people when you're honest with yourself and with your own story.

• What are some experiences that have had a meaningful impact on your life (kind of relating back to the first as well)? One main point for creating your brand stories is talking from your scars and not your wounds. So something that would be a wound would be something that you're currently hurting with at this point or something that's a little emotional to you at this point. Versus you've gone through that and you've worked it out and you have a lesson from it. Now, that would be considered a scar, understand what your boundaries are. Maybe you aren't the type of person to speak and cry on your Instagram stories and share things as they're happening. And that's okay, too. When you have boundaries and what feels good to you, then just do that. But if you don't know what your boundaries are, ask yourself, “Is this something that is currently really hurting my heart right now?” Or “Is this something that I'm not comfortable having the world know?” If so, then you don't have to share it right now. And if it is something that you've already learned from and you're willing and comfortable to share it on your Instagram story or to your audience, then, by all means, do it, it's all based on you, there's no set rule. 

Brand content creation made effortlessly

The way that I do brand content creation is through content pillars (which is similar to our brand pillars). Anytime we're creating a piece of content, we can go back to our content pillars and think:

• Is this something that is actually on-brand to my business?
• Is this something that my ideal client will find valuable? Or will it resonate with them?

What you can do is to come up with a top five or six topics that your business or brand is going to talk about all the time. Maybe it's fashion advice, jewellery, recommendations, personal stories, and something else. Or it could be content creation, personal branding, selling, like something along those lines that are super broad topics that you talk about all the time. These topics light you up and are in your unique brilliance and align with everything we talked about above. Then underneath those main topics, create subtopics of each. 

So as an example if you're a mindset coach and you have imposter syndrome as one of your main topics, then a subtopic would be journaling prompts. The next one could be what imposter syndrome actually is. And then another one could be how to stop imposter syndrome just as an example. So then you have your main topic of subtopics. Then underneath those sub-topics, create headlines or just content ideas so you can go back to those and be like, “Okay, yes, top five ways to stop imposter syndrome as an example.” 

So to recap on how to build your personal brand in 2021 these are all of the things we cover within STICKERS, my personal branding course: your unique brilliance,  becoming known for your results, expressing your brand visually, the foundations of your brand, sharing your story and on-brand content creation made effortless.
If you find this helpful and would like to uplevel your personal brand even more this 2021, join STICKERS, it is your exact step-by-step course to creating a Profitable Personal Brand that positions you as an industry leader with a raving fan audience.