Your Personal Brand is Everything

How personal branding helped me get featured by Richard Branson and why you need to prioritize your personal brand

Want to get hired for that dream job? Want to start and grow a new venture? Want to take things to the next level?

Your personal brand is the answer.

I'm many things; a serial entrepreneur, a financial advisor, a surfer, a gearhead, a world traveler, a husband, a Dad, and the list goes on.

I love being a dad and like most dads I try to balance being the best dad I can while at the same time building amazing businesses. It's not easy.

Like most of you I look up to others that have done & gone where I'd like to go. It's no secret that Richard Branson is someone I look up to and respect. His success & balanced life fuel my fire every day. But equally important I have focused on developing my personal brand to be the glue holding all the things I am together while also being the fuel to my growth plan.

But, how do I use personal branding to put gas on this fire? This got me thinking, how has my personal brand has helped me grow exponentially and what can you do to leverage your personal brand.

Why should you care?

You may be wondering, what does my personal brand have to do with getting that dream job or growing my startup?

Well, it has everything to do with it. Remember, we are all humans and our personal brand is one of the ways we connect with other people.

Want that job? You'll have to talk to a person. Want to grow your business? You need to sell to other people. People are at the core of personal branding so it is crucial you lean into it.

4 Tips for using your Personal Brand

1) Know yourself. Personal Branding often times is a tough thing for us to define and wrap our minds around, but it doesn't have to be. Your personal brand is simply a reflection of who you are, what you value, what you do, and so on. So the first step is to get as clear as you can on this and your personal brand will simply flow. Also know that it will evolve over time as you grow and learn more about yourself.

2) Do your research. Who, more than anyone else, embodies how you feel and what you're trying to build? Start following people you think fit this profile and learn everything about them.

Follow them on social. Did they write a book? Buy & read it! Have they been on TV? Watch everything.

What happens when you do this? You figure out if they truly are someone that you respect and can learn from. Are they like you? Do you have shared commonalities with them? If you feel you have a kindred spirit in them then you know you're on to something. If you can say yes to these questions then go to step 2.

3) Give to receive AND get on their radar. Things started to get real for me when I cut my tie off and posted on LinkedIn and Twitter. I used my personal brand and Richard engaged with the post and left a comment!

The post went viral on LinkedIn. This is important for any of us but especially for those of us who don't have unlimited marketing budgets. I call this scrappy personal branding. Do things that stand out, that are fun, and don't be afraid to put a stake in the ground about something you believe. Engage with their posts. Engage with the posts of those that mention them and even have their ear. Show you are genuine and consistent, get your name on their radar on a regular basis.

4) Pay attention to what's going on and be consistently persistent. Flash in the pan events like my cut-the-tie post do happen but how do we keep the momentum going?

Pay attention and consistently & persistently go after opportunities. The next thing that happened for me was that I noticed Richard Branson was doing a LinkedIn Live event with Daniel Roth . Over 10,000 people had signed up for the event but I did not let that deter me.

When the event went live and it was time for some Q&A I was given the opportunity to speak with and ask Richard a question. I was so nervous! But, I was chosen out of thousands of people to ask my question on work-life balance. I can't prove it but I suspect that my continuous personal branding via content creation on LinkedIn helped make my name a familiar one that Dan choose when it was time.

Here's another example to further highlight this tip. Richard has a monthly LinkedIn Newsletter, Ask Richard, where he takes question from his followers and chooses one a month to answer and highlight. Well, he picked my question just recently and answered it.

There's nothing like getting recognition from someone you respect so much as to be mentioned and personally responded to.

But it also helped me grow my personal brand exponentially since Richard has almost 20 million followers. Him choosing to mention me and share my LinkedIn profile as part of his post is free marketing I could never pay for. What would something like this mean for you?

What your personal brand can do for you

Without prioritizing my personal brand there's no way I would have been featured by Richard Branson. Personal branding has also led me to a variety of opportunities that I firmly believe would not of materialized if I hadn't put so much energy into just being me. My personal brand has opened up opportunities that have the potential to help millions of people AND the kind of growth for my business most people only dream about.

Your personal brand is everything. It's your credibility. It's what people think & say about you when you're not there. It's how you make people feel. It precedes you. It will open up and nurture business & personal opportunities that paid ads and cold calling never will.

But it also takes time and means you have to be true to yourself. Connecting with Richard Branson didn't happen overnight, it took many months. Opening opportunities of a lifetime don't happen by accident, but by design. Your personal brand is core to all of it.

Your Personal Brand is your Key to whatever you want

My personal brand has opened up opportunities that have mind blowing potential for me, my family, and my businesses and other than my time cost me nothing. Your personal brand has the power to do the same.

Wondering where to start? Use the tips above. But first take a step back, enjoy a cup of tea, and identify what you truly want in life and who you truly are. Write them down. Then pursue them with a passion!

Stay tuned as I have something very big cooking that may just involve my mentor, Sir Richard Branson. But we'll leave that for another time....

For now I hope you've found my tips on personal branding insightful and that your motivated to double down on leveraging your own brand to grow and live your best life.

Sending positive vibes your way,

Derek