Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Personal Brand

What are your plans for your business? Where do you want to take it over the next five, 10, 20 years? Whether you have it all planned out or are still building the foundations, this ultimate guide to growing your personal brand will help you get set up for success, determine your goals, be more productive and build a team.

To get you started with thinking about growing your personal brand, listen to my top 12 tips for entrepreneurial success. This was the first episode of Youpreneur.FM I recorded when I relaunched the show in September and I shared a few lessons I've picked up along the way as an entrepreneur that have helped me get me to where I am today. You will deep dive into a number of these tips through the resources you read through this guide.

Another episode of Youpreneur.FM I highly recommend is How To Condition Yourself For Success with Carrie Green. This is a live recording of the keynote Carrie gave at the first Youpreneur Summit. She talks about becoming successful on purpose and how she envisioned herself speaking on the Youpreneur Summit stage and made it happen. Carrie’s talk will show you how to train your brain to make your dreams come true.

How to set goals to grow your business

If you want to grow your business, you need to set goals. These are not random ideas or nice-to-haves. Goal setting is about having a plan and taking action. There is no point in creating a goal if you do not know how to achieve it.

I walk you through my own personal goal-setting process in my article about how to set goals and chase them down. I do this every single year. If there is something you want to do, this will help you accomplish it by creating an action plan and taking action every day.

It’s easy to get distracted when you’re an entrepreneur. The world is moving fast, there’s new technology and you hear about all these great tools and new developments from other people. Suddenly you find yourself chasing after something which wasn’t on your radar a couple of days ago and you get off track. This article on how to recover from entrepreneur wanderlust by Ramona Rice-Grummell will help you focus on the most important thing in your business right now.

What’s holding you back from achieving your goals? Do you find yourself saying ‘no’ when you could have said ‘yes’ but told yourself you were too busy? Do you worry you’re not good enough? It’s time to tackle that self-talk. Youpreneur Clare Josa, who recently published her book on Ditching Imposter Syndrome, has written about how ignoring imposter syndrome can sabotage your business growth.

So how do you decide whether something that sounds like a good idea, really is? I had a great chat on the podcast with Yaro Starek about how to validate your ideas as a personal brand entrepreneur. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and adrenaline rush of a new idea.

But before you take a major gamble and put all of your time, resources and money on the line, you need to validate your idea. We talk about beta testing and when to ditch email in favour of a conversation.

It’s important to invest in your business, but you need to be sure you are choosing the right things. Take a look at these seven questions to be asked before investing in your business.

How being a personal brand entrepreneur grows your business

People sometimes ask me if being a personal brand entrepreneur limits your opportunities for growth. It doesn’t. You cannot outgrow yourself. Your personal brand enables you to develop an ecosystem around you, a range of products and services you can offer to people who love to work with you.

I explained why you need to focus more on being original in episode 332 of Youpreneur.FM. The world is full of copycats but you are an original. If you want to grow your business, being different is everything. You don’t need to copy someone else, you need to be you. There is only one of you and you have a unique combination of experience, knowledge and your personality to offer your community.

If you want a great example of someone who has built a personal brand business, then have a listen to this chat with Mark Schaefer. Mark reinvents himself every five years. In this interview he talks about micro-pivoting and how your niche is you and you need to bring your story into your personal brand.

Who are you, and are you bringing the best version of you into your business? Those might seem odd questions but if you think about it, we play a number of roles in our lives. Who shows up in your business is vital for your success.

Todd Herman helps people achieve their most ambitious goals. He helps them to discover their alter ego and teaches them how to be more resilient, more creative and more courageous. Hear how to unleash your alter ego effect and chase down your dreams. You don’t have to wear a Superman cape to do it.

You need to believe in yourself and your ability to achieve your goals. My best buddy Pat Flynn got a standing ovation when he spoke about why the world needs you at the inaugural Youpreneur Summit. There are many great value bombs in this speech about how you respond to situations, focusing on the people you seek to serve and building community. Tune in and enjoy.

Putting yourself out there as a brand means you have to be good at communicating – and that’s as much about listening as it is talking! Here are 6 top tips for communicating in your professional and personal life.

When your business is just you, it can get lonely. This article has tips on overcoming isolation as an entrepreneur.

How to spread your message to a wider audience

Let’s start giving you some key areas to look at as you grow the business of you. When you started your business, you will have considered branding. If you haven’t already, then you need to be looking at your branding in the light of being a personal brand entrepreneur.

Your reputation depends on visual branding. People make up their mind quickly and your branding is a key part of that. Here’s how to use your visual branding to grow your business. It’s a run down of what you need to do to make sure your visual branding is sending out the right messages to the people you want to serve.

Should you start a podcast or a vlog. Both are great vehicles for personal brand entrepreneurs, but which one will help you grow YOUR business? Here are a couple of resources to help you choose. Episode 361 of my podcast on vlogging vs podcasting and an article from Youpreneur Academy member Philip VanDusen on which is right for you.

If you want to go down the video route, then you need to listen to Amy Landino’s keynote from the Youpreneur Summit on how to start, grow, market and catapult your vlog to success. She talks about the three main types of content you need and how to build trust.

YouTube sensation Sunny Lenarduzzi came on the podcast to chat about how to use YouTube to grow your personal brand. She shared lots of value bombs during this conversation including how to spot what people are looking for video content on and using the ‘hot script formula’.

That’s a lot of great information if you’re looking to create new content, but what if you have an archive? You’ve spent a lot of time and effort creating content but your older articles might not be getting much traffic. Spend some time breathing new life into them and sharing them with your audience. I go into all the details in this article on how to refresh your content archive.

“Content is king” when it comes to online marketing and creating it is one of the biggest jobs you face when building your personal brand business online. However, people are creating TOO MUCH content and not marketing it the way they should. Remember: every piece of content you create needs to work extra hard for you!

Before we go any further, take a moment to watch Less Content, More Marketing. In this video, I share the Youpreneur content creation and marketing strategy (which we’ve refined over the years). It was a fundamental shift that gave us breathing room to produce the best content possible and market it properly. Check out the training and then give it a go.

Remember: less content, more marketing!

Whether you choose to blog, vlog or podcast, you need to be thinking beyond broadcasting. If you want to grow your business, you need to be building relationships. Thanks to the internet, you can get to know people from around the world. You may well never hear from the people whose lives you change through what you write or record, but going live on Facebook takes spreading your message to a different level.

Facebook Live enables you to talk to people in real time. Once you have gone live, what then? Amy Woods from Content 10x walks you through how to grow your personal brand by repurposing your Facebook Live videos. This article is packed with ways to make the most of this video content.

Bringing your community together

As you grow your audience, you will start to grow a community. You’re marketing like a magnet, attracting people who get your vibe. They will start to talk to other people who get you and what you’re about and realise they have similar interests. One of your roles as a personal brand entrepreneur is to bring these people together. This can lead to new things happening as people make connections and build relationships.

One of the ways you can build your community offline is with live events. People love to meet each other in real life and have a chat over coffee or a meal. Mark Schaefer came on my podcast after we both went to an event in Edinburgh and ended up hanging out. We had been talking online for ages before that.

An event brings your brand alive. It’s an opportunity for people to meet you, get more value from you, and more importantly, meet each other and share the experience. Here are 4 simple ways to ace your event branding.

Once you start building a community, you might consider creating a membership. This is a way to grow your business by providing some form of premium training/educational content alongside a community, which people pay a subscription to access. It can help you move away from trading your time for money.

If you’re thinking this could be something you would like to do, read how to decide if a membership is the right fit for your personal brand business. A membership is not passive income but if you invest in it and build it the right way, it can be a very rewarding way to generate recurring revenue.

You want to grow your business and stop trading time for money in order to create space in your life for other things you enjoy. Did you know that 73% of the global workforce doesn’t have enough time for personal-related activities? If you’re reading this and thinking you’re among that number, then you need to do something about it.

I had a great chat with my friend Dan Schawbel about why work-life balance is a myth and what it should be called. It’s a great conversation which will help you build relationships and grow your business so it benefits you and the people you work with.

How to make more time for you and your business

How do you make time for everything in your life and the goals you want to achieve? Every entrepreneur needs to make sure they are using their time productively. I’m not talking about working 24/7. I mean that you are using your time the right way, whether that’s working on your business, building relationships, spending time with your family or looking after yourself.

You only get 24 hours in a day. We can make more money, we can’t make more time. You have to be using it effectively. I’ve tested out a lot of different ways to get more done during my working hours. These are 7 ways to be more productive and achieve your goals.

I’ve got two great podcast interviews which are really going to help you with this. One with Michael Hyatt and the other with Dr John Demartini. There are so many things demanding our attention. How do you cut through and do the things that matter and grow your business? I chatted with Michael Hyatt about learning how to become free to focus.

If you believe you need to work all hours to achieve great things in your business, you need to listen to this episode. Then follow it up by listening to how to focus on your high priority actions. It will change how you plan your day.

Get systems and processes in place to help you get more done. This guide on saving time in your online business will help you get these set up. Tune in to this conversation with Greg Hickman about automation and keeping things simple. Growing your business doesn’t have to be complicated with lots of funnels.

There are plenty of tools out there to help you work more efficiently. If you’re looking for advice on running a virtual team, email marketing, video conferencing, and more, check out these top business tools for efficient entrepreneurs.

How to outsource to grow your business

Sooner or later, you will need help to grow your business. Perhaps there is a task you are struggling with and would like someone else to do, or you’ve got a project which needs specialist knowledge in a field you don’t have. You might be in demand and rather than turn down business, you would like to build a team.

You can deal with all of these problems by outsourcing. If this is the first time you’ve come across this term or you’re not sure how it works, read this guide explaining what outsourcing is and how to tell if you are ready to do it.

You might be thinking, ‘no-one else can do my work for me’. If so, read this article about how to shift your mindset from doing it all to building a team. Almost every entrepreneur I have come across has believed they have to do everything themselves, including me! You are doing work you don’t need to do, trust me.

What are you going to outsource first? I have a little exercise called 3 lists to freedom. I run through it in this article about how to figure out what to outsource to grow your business. Grab a sheet of paper and spend a few minutes working through it.

I shared a few tips on outsourcing particularly with virtual assistants on Youpreneur.FM so that you can get started with building your own team the right way. Listen to how to build the right team for business growth and start looking at the bigger picture. Outsourcing isn’t just about giving jobs you hate to someone else, it will help you create more freedom in your life and achieve new things in your business.

Which VA do you need in your business right now? This article gives you a run through of people who can help you achieve your goals and make your business run more smoothly. I had a chat with Emma Mills about how personal assistance has evolved. She ran her business solo and then discovered the power of delegation.

You might decide that rather than working with a freelancer or agency, you want to start employing people directly. Alison King has written a handy list of 10 things you should know when hiring your first employee.

Planning for the future – and the unexpected

Business is a changing world. You are planning for growth right now but your needs may change in the future. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the day to day of running your business. In this article, Bill Heestand explains why succession planning is vital for entrepreneurs.

Sometimes you need to alter how your business operates. Whether you’ve decided to go in a new direction, or you realise you could be delivering products, services or content in a totally different way, you shouldn’t be afraid to do this.

I chatted to the founder of Social Media Examiner, Mike Stelzner, about his video show The Journey and how he used data to transform the show and reach a bigger audience. Listen to knowing when it’s time to make BIG changes.

Then there are the times when your business changes unexpectedly. What happens when you have a business break-up? Jordan Harbinger knows. He came on the podcast to talk to me about how a personal brand survived a business break-up.

Tips for writing your business book – and making it a bestseller

A book is a great business card for any entrepreneur. It helps position you as an authority. However, it takes a lot of hard work. You need a clear plan for what your book is going to be about, the difference it will make and how it fits in with your business.

If writing a book is something you would like to do at some point, you will need to choose the subject. Which area of your expertise will you focus on? There are some key questions you need to answer which will help you decide what to write a book about.

Once you’ve settled on what you’re going to write about, you need to get it written. In this article I set out the strategy many writers use to write a book without it becoming a chore. If you’re staring at a blank computer screen, this will help you get the words out. You might be stuck trying to reach the finish line. Here are 13 hacks to help you finish your book.

When’s the best time to start marketing your book? While you’re writing it! Many people start figuring out how to sell their book after it is printed. But you can begin to attract interest and build a list of people eager to read your work from the early days of putting your book together.

Learn how to market your book while you’re still writing it. And while you’re planning your marketing, here’s how to make your book a bestseller and get reviews. For a deep dive on how to make this happen on Amazon, read the science to becoming a bestselling author.

Make time for personal growth if you want to grow your business

If you want to grow your business, you need to keep learning. It’s vital you invest time to develop your skills and knowledge. Read books, take courses, and go to events. Explore new ideas and meet new people. Listen to this episode of Youpreneur.FM on why personal brand influencers should never stop learning.

A useful skill for all personal brand entrepreneurs is public speaking. This not only gives you an opportunity to spread your message and position yourself as an expert, but can be an additional revenue stream. Most people do not ever want to step up on a stage. But if you can get over that, it’s a great way to raise your profile. This quick start guide will help you prepare for public speaking.

Growing your business involves stepping out of your comfort zone, being willing to meet more people and increase your knowledge. Investing in yourself, and others around you, will enable you to build long-term relationships and develop trust. This in turn will create new opportunities and enable you to develop a future-proof business with multiple income streams.

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