Want to step up your personal brand?

Here are my best secrets

👋, I’m Kimberly. I’ve been creating obsession-worthy brands for the past fifteen years. And now, I’m giving away my secrets every week in this newsletter.

As you all know, brands are my business.

Most of my work centers around branding as it relates to traditional companies—with physical or digital products being sold to a consumer.

But many of the lessons from company branding can also apply to personal brands.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk personal branding on LinkedIn Live with The Cru.

Here are all of my notes I wrote up to prep for the questions in our session—with some of my best personal branding secrets.

First off, what should a brand communicate?

A brand exists to inspire an action. And there are three things you need to communicate strongly to get people to act.

1. A Value: A crystal clear benefit
   What are you adding to my life?

2. An Aspiration: A hope for the future
   What do you want our world to look like?

3. An Emotion: A mental state
   What will you make me feel when I’m with you?

Why is it important to work on developing your personal brand?

One of my favorite quotes about branding is from branding legend Wally Olins. He said that “branding is belonging.”

The best brands give you a feeling similar to belonging to a tribe or a religion or a family. There’s a commonality that draws people in and keeps them engaged.

Developing your personal brand both helps you decide where you belong, and communicates to others that you should be part of their tribe.

Your personal brand is also your gateway to making all sorts of meaningful connections:

• Starting your own business

• Selling yourself and your ideas at work

• Establishing yourself as a thought leader, tastemaker, or influencer

• Attracting the kind of people you want in your life 

• Forming the best relationships

In your field of Corporate branding, you talk about creating an “obsession-worthy brand”. What does that entail? And how can those attributes translate to a personal brand?

An obsession-worthy brand is a brand that consumers get consumed by.

They’re SO into what you represent and what you do for them—that they want to follow you, interact with you, tell people about you, wear you on a t-shirt.

If you can nail this “obsession-worthy” factor, then who cares about the size of your ad budget? When your brand is “obsession-worthy,” your customers do the advertising for you.

So, the multi-million dollar question is… what makes a brand “obsession-worthy”? And in all my years of experience, across so many different industries, the answer is the same.

It comes down to the genuine and authentic passion of the teams who have either founded or are running the brand—and how this passion connects with the consumer through the brand’s expression.

I tell every potential founder that I’m working with—this is your brand, it’s your baby, it comes from you. You need to have a tremendous hand in shaping it, and you need to understand it well enough to guide its current creative and its evolution.

This is why my Branding Sprint approach is designed to be both (1) highly collaborative with the founding teams and (2) highly focused on understanding the consumer—to make that magic connection that will lead to obsession.

If you could note four golden rules of branding, what would they be?

Hmm, I had not thought about “Four Golden Rules of Branding” before this question… but now that I have, here they are!

1. Know thyself
   You have to be clear in your authentic reason for being and acting. And your reason can’t just be “I want to make money”.

2. Know thy competitors
   You have to be situationally aware. 

3. Know thy audience
   You have to understand your people.

4. Know what-eth you’re fighting against
   You need to have a nemesis—something in your sights that you’re always battling. Otherwise, you don’t have a plot that will keep people engaged with your story.

These four rules are are just as relevant for personal brands as company brands.

Let’s walk through the specific questions someone should consider when thinking about developing or refining their brand? What strategies should we use to identify the elements of our values and skills that we want to be known for?

For personal branding, I recommend a six part process.

1. Get clear on your values
   It is incredibly important for all brands today to have purpose. Sit down and make a list of all the things you want for yourself, your community, and the larger world. Another useful way to get to your values is to use “because” statements and fill in the blanks: I want to do [thing I’m working on] because [reasons I’m doing it].

2. Understand your audience
   Who do you want to appeal to with your personal brand? Be as specific as possible. Then, dig into their mindsets. What do these people value? What frustrates them? What motivates them?

3. Discover all the ways you’re different
   Look at the competitors in your space. If you’re working on your personal brand, this could be other people in your field of work or other people at your company. Then, list out every possible way you or what you’re doing is different from them—in a good way.

4. Do a S.W.O.T analysis
   What are your greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats?

5. Position yourself
   Using all of the ideas you’ve brainstormed above, fill in this sentence. For my audience, my personal brand is the type of brand that delivers these special benefits, because only my personal brand is different in this way.

6. Present yourself
   What are some brands that you personally like, that are not your competitors? Make a list of five of them. Then, sit down and look at their websites and social channels and answer the following questions: How does their imagery feel? How do their fonts feel? How do their color feel? Look for the similarities across all five brands. This is an easy way to start pinpointing your style, so if you want to work with a designer on your brand—you’ll be able to describe what appeals to you personally and why.

We know that our reputation and first impressions mean a lot. But what if someone is looking to switch up their brand (transition careers, evolve into a new life chapter), how can someone start to do that?

You can always rebrand yourself! Soft skills translate across so many different types of careers—it’s just about nailing your story and how you’re telling it.

Concentrate on that ah-ha transitional moment. That’s often the most interesting. When did you realize you wanted to make a big change, and what was your motivation?

You can also talk about what you loved about your previous career, and how that has carried over into what you’re trying to do now. It’s ok of the connection isn’t apples to apples.

Here’s an example I just made up:

I spent thirteen years working in construction. I loved working with my hands—and knowing that I was building something everyday. One day, we had just finished a house. I stepped back, and it looked amazing. I felt proud of the work. But I realized that I wasn’t happy following other people’s blueprints anymore. I hadn’t taken an art class since elementary school, but I started studying sculpture—and now I’m still working with my hands, I’m building… but I’m also expressing my creativity and making my own drawings.

Now, if someone has their brand solidified, what do they do next? How do you get yourself and your brand on the right platforms and in front of the right people?

• Get personal
  Have 1:1 conversations. DM people who you think might be interested in you and your content. BUT before you message people, make sure you’ve done your research. The number of canned messages I get on LinkedIn, where it’s super clear people have not really read who I am or what I do, is astounding. These kinds of communications are brand damaging, whether you’re an individual or a company. 

• Pick one platform to concentrate on
  Where is your audience most likely to be engaged with your topic, and where are your strengths personally? For example, don’t try and do a video platform like TikTok if you absolutely hate yourself on video. It needs to feel fun and natural and good to you to be interacting in the space. 

• Be a joiner
  Forums and threads are powerful. And getting in the right organizations can be key too. Is there is someplace in the world where your audience is already congregating and/or seeking information—and how can you place yourself there?

What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about developing a personal brand?

• Misconception #1: Branding yourself is being fake
  The word “branding” gets a bad rap—people think that it’s being inauthentic. But when done correctly, branding is a process that helps you understand yourself on a deeper level and ensure your authentic beliefs and skills are being communicated to the world in the best way.

• Misconception #2: You’ll look too ambitious
  In preparation for this interview, I asked my my newsletter readers what they wanted to know about personal branding. And I was surprised to hear that many of them, especially women, were concerned that promoting themselves would be “overdoing it” and that they would look “too ambitious.” To that, I say “Pleasepleaseplease, put that out of your headspace!” It’s good to be ambitious. And if you’re concerned about the tone, remember that your brand doesn’t need to bold and brash if that’s not who you are. Your personal brand is the best reflection of you. Part of your personal brand can be being humble, if that is part of your personality and a quality you value.

• Misconception #3: You don’t need to promote yourself if your work is good
  No one is going to promote you but you. It would be awesome if everyone could just get A+s and be 100% recognized for the work, but that’s not the world we live in. And the sooner you realize this, the better it will be for your career. You may luck out and find a fantastic mentor who has your back, but you can’t count on that person for everything.

What advice would you give to someone who is struggling to identify what their personal brand should look like? What steps can they take to gain clarity and confidence?

Ask other people! This is usually one of the most rewarding and eye opening exercise I do with my clients.

It can be hard to sit down and write a bunch of great stuff about yourself… or say you’re good at things (hello, imposter syndrome!). But when other people say it and point it out, that can bring you both confidence and clarity.

Can you share some examples of individuals with strong personal brands and why you place them on the list?

• Emily Weiss: She built the Glossier brand out of her beauty blog, which she built around her personal interest in what products people themselves loved. Her aesthetic, her tone, and her customer-centric, “democratizing-the-beauty-world” mission all line up in the best way.

• Rupi Kaur: This poet’s voice comes through in more that her powerful words. From her fashion to her illustrations to her photos (a mix of glamour, relatability, and nostalgia), Rupi’s POV is clear and distinctively her own.

• Petra Nemkova: I’m a bit biased, because I worked with Petra on her brand Ace of Air, but I can 100% say that Petra has one of the most kind and genuine hearts of anyone out there. Her value-driven commitments to sustainability and doing better for people and planet come across in absolutely everything she does, from her charity to the brands she works with and even the clothes her precious son wears.

That’s it from me for this week!

If you’d like to watch the full “Developing Your Personal Brand” Q&A session I did with The Cru on LinkedIn Live, here’s the link.

Check out past issues of the Brands That Get You newsletter here.

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About Me

I help early stage founders create the kind of brands that get customers so obsessed, they’ll do your advertising for you.

Based on my experience founding my own consumer brand, I developed The Branding Sprint—a uniquely collaborative, streamlined, and agile approach to brand creation.

Click here to learn more about The Branding Sprint, or schedule a call with me.