Personal Branding - Victor Cheng
Definition: What is a personal brand?
What are you known for, what people associate your name with?
Focus on value-added personal brand
Personal brand vs. reputation
Personal brand has a bigger size of audience (= reputation x media). Key to build your personal brand is knowing how to scale your reputation to large audience via media
Being famous vs. being infamous vs being indifferent-mous
well known for something positive/negative to you
Focus on your audience instead of yourself. Your Audience >You. Adding value to others. The more value you deliver to others, the more your audience wants to know about you.
Establish credibility -> adding value (Dont stop at the first part otherwise you appear bragging and indifferent-mous.) I am talking about myself in service to you.
Story to illustrate a point. Talk about yourself only when it is relevant and useful to THEM. If not, dont.
2. Concepts:
Employer-centric paradigm: Degrees from university, Employer prestige, Resume Job Title.
your employer has the power
your relationship with your employer is the key currency
Personal brand paradigm: size of the audience, qualify of audience, influence of audience and delivering value to audience (you think about your audience a lot). initiate build and deepen relationships with others by delivering value. Then leverage the relationship to get what you want. (Delivering value= convertible asset)
your personal brand has the power
your relationship with your audience (not employers) is the key currency
One to Many Media
Public Speaking, television, magazine, blog, email list, Social media posting, youtube channel, write a book, write a column in industry publication, podcast, hosting meet-up, participating in message board.
3. How to obtain value from a personal brand?
Exit the commodity labor pool and become a market of one. Your salary is the market clearing price between demand for those in your pool and supply. You want to become the market of one (Quasi-monopoly). e.g. we want xxx or we may not be hiring your company.
“Competition is for losers” - Peter Thiel
Grow your network of relationships
Linkedin, youtube channel, newsletter, blog
when you consistently deliver value to others, they want you in their network. People dont want to miss out on any future value you may deliver to them.
Get more people say “Yes” to you
because you have a track-record, pre-existing relationship with a history of benefit to them, you come highly recommended by someone they trust
Personal brand = have relationship with many people
when you consistently deliver values to your audience. they say yes to you for one of the two reasons:
as a thank you for previous value delivered
as a way to continue/further the relationship that has been very beneficial to them.
Trade access to your network
people want to reach your audience
Generate non-salary income
profile from a business, book royalties, and referral fees
Book proposal: business plan for how you (not publisher) will sell books. The publisher will check your platform (audience size, channels, and relationship between you and your audience)
4. Personal Branding Examples
Personal brand started from the industry (Build your personal brand that associated with your employer):
Seth Godin: BLogs on marketing. (Sethgodin.typepad.com). Monetization: Sell books
Robert Scoble: Former Microsoft Employee (Developer Relations) (www.scobleizer.com)
Matt Cutts: Google employee, work on google search engine algorithm. Personal brand: who is know to answer google algorithm questions. Monetization: bring reputation to the new company. Monetization: basically he is google. he cannot be fired.
Guy Kawasaki: former apple evangelist. Personal brand: never trun down interviews. Monetization: he gets better vc deals
Gary Vaynerchuk: Former Wine Store Employee, Unconventional Wine Critic on Youtube; CEP of Socail Media Agency. Personal Brand: make wine accessible to everyday person which was previously not. (Winelibrary.com); Be difference; Super Passionate-work your face off. Monetization: Consultancy
Personal brand started by Students
Ramit Sethi: Former Stanford Student, New York Times Bestselling Author. (www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/). Monetization: sell courses
Personal brand started by Hobbist
Ken Rockwell : Photographic Equipment Product Reviews. (www/kendockwell.com/tech/reviews) Monetization: referral fees. free products
Michelle Phan: Makeup Tutorials, Lancome sponsorship (youtube.com/user/michellephan) Monetization: product endorsement and sponsorship
Personal brand started by Business Owners
Kelly Starrett : Crossfit gym owner, physical therapist, expert in joint mobility. Monetization: Youtube
Paul Graham: VC, Y-Combinator Founder
Joel Spolsky: Blogs on Software Development; Startup Founder
Mark Manson: Former Dating Advice Coach; Bloggers, Book: the subtle art of not giving a f*ck. the branding is the how-to-not-give-a-f guy. Monetization: Book,
5. How to Develop a Personal Brand Strategy
5.1. Choose a target audience
Picking the right “Pond” (Audience) is the single most important decision you will make.
Niche selection criteria
Small enough that competition is low but big enough that worth your tinme
You know the market well or are willing to learn it
you have credentials, credibility, or affinity with the niche
Underserved market: dissatisfied or unable to achieve their goals with existing information providers.
Aligned with your long-term career goals.
Niche Selection Exercise (Venn Diagram of the following 4 areas plus the above niche selection criteria)
Make a list of all your personal and professional interests
List your personal or professional areas of relative competency
List the kinds of topics friends or colleagues ask for your advice on.
List your friends’ or colleagues’ answers to the following questions: “ Identify xxx’s single biggest gift or talent”
5.2. Select a problem to solve for your audience
Choose a point of focus within the niche
How to find problems worth solving
Encourage your target audience to email you with suggestions
Ask target audience “what is your goal this year? what’s getting in the way?”
Listen for complaints, confusion, and frustration (all evidence of demands)
5.3. Identify a market gap to fill
Google search for one hour but still cannot find what you need
All text but no videos
All english non in xxx language
Content too abstract, but lacking concrete applications
Generic content not tailored to a niche audience
Do an amazon search on your topic and check all the books
Written for industry insider, not outsider
Convert the “how to” of a topic but not the “ why”
Convert the “why” of a topic but not the “ how to”
multi-discipline books (cross industry ideas: product design + finance)
5.4 Conduct ongoing marketing experiment
Form hypothesis
conduct market experiment
assess results
refine hypothesis
5.5. Your audience comes first
Give what the audience what
Meet them down the road
The right mindset is to “ Be of Service” in order to build a personal brand
Module II
Overview of Execution
How to deliver value at 1-to-many level: You create content + deliver it through certain media
you decide the frequency you want to do it.
Always think in terms of audience, content, media (these 3 things, what you need to improve)
Content Ideas and Organization
Macro approach to create content
Learn to see your world in this way: where you are now, what is in the way/problem, how to get to the goal/future you. If you can see your world this way, you can see your audience’s world this way.
Create content under the solution curve. Deconstruct the solution into different parts
There are many information out there. It is useful to turn those information into digestable categories and structured knowledge. Structure has value.
Concepts get confusing when your audience does not understand a foundational concept. so (1) Know your audience - identify what they do/don’t know; identify what they think they know that is actually incorrect. Use metaphors to teach concepts.
Mindset = Perspective by which concepts and knowledge are interpreted
Process skills = how to. e.g. xx steps to choose a spouse; xx steps to growing sales, xx steps to getting into business school; provide a checklist. (how to receipt is for audience who do not know the process, checklist is for those who are familiar)
Micro approach to create content
Converting 1-to-1 content to 1-to-many
From implicit to explicit
implicit/intuitive: you know xyz is right because it feels right
Explicit: you know xyz is right because (1) decision-aking guidelines documents or procedure checklist
Write it down
Once you have explicit awareness of how you’re helping someone else 1-on-1, the next step is simply write is down. It does not matter what format. audio, video, typed notes, etc.
Help one person and let others watch
Choosing Media
Media Channel Options
Piggy back off other people’s audience: (1) online/email groups; other people’s blog; in-person groups. For in-person groups, key leverage point: be the organizer of the group. Give you a legitimate reason to conduct people at higher level than you and put you in the middle of it. then to executives you are the one, to your peers you are he guy. that is how you build the brand.
Harness traffic from top search engines: your blog, youtube, amazon
write google friendly blogs on your website (quality over quantity)
Think about what phrase people use in the google search
search google with that phrase
read every article on the first page
identify what is missing
write an aritcle that makes the entire first page of Google’ search results obsoltee.
title your article with the words you used in the google search phrase
Create youtube videos and similar as amazon ads same rule as above.
Other social media/podcast.
Relationship Maintenance: Your blog (repeat List, eMail List, Podcast, 1-on-1 contact list)
personal blog: get your repeat visitors. you have to own the domain name instead of through another platform. Goal: 25 “best in the world” articles on micro-topics within your area of focus.
email list: only opt-in emails. cross-post your email articles on your blog. Minimum frequency: 1/month; technology: mailchimp, aweber
Leverage the most ROI channel. Goal: Create Critical Mass in ONE Channel. When people see your name they know the content will be good.
Media format:
Q&A, text articles, video recordings, audio recordings, PDFs/charts (main core contents)
Social Media posts (some source to get traffic to something you own)
Personal Brand Blueprints
industry - Junior
piggyback off other people’s audience: online/eMail groups, in-person groups -> write on other people’s blog (audience acquisition)-> goal: have your own blog (relationship maintenance) & kindle short book
Industry - Senior Role
Piggyback off other people’s audience: be on other people’s website (authority) -> have your article/blog to show on google and amazon. Make people know who you are -> Your blog/emaillist and 1-on-1 , give speaches-> Create career security (millions people know your brand)
Consulting - Partner Track
In-person groups (Industry, key note speech, be on stage), have a book on amazon traffic (credibility) -> one-on-one in-person relationships. you dont need a lot audience, you need a few good ones.
Business Owner - Current and Aspiring
Piggyback off other people’s audience (all channels) & harness traffic from top search engines -> your blog(repeat visitors), email list, one-on-one meetings (personal contact List)
Practical Challenges
how to build a personal brand under challenge circumstances
how to fix a negative personal brand: change audience
how to maintain personal privacy: focus on the value-add part, not necessary private contents
how to build a personal brand as an introvert:focus on the value-add part, choose the media channel that you can draw attention to your ideas
what to do if you lack experience, credentials, or credibility : Don’t pretend to know it. Really devote yourself to the content you want to be an expert. 90 days is enough
what to do when colleagues have more experience:
are those colleagues willing to step up to serve the audience
areas that are overlooked by those colleagues
how to cross-over my brand from one domain to another: personal brand can be transferred. work experience cannot
how to avoid being pigeonholed
how to not threaten my boss
co-author the person & lift both of your brand together
they can take the big conference and you take the other ones.
Reference: caseinterview.com/personal-brand
