3 min read

Why You Need a Strong Personal Brand to Grow Your Business

Creating a personal brand is a topic that has been rising for many of my clients as they seek to find the balance between being a business owner and a human. That sweet spot between the two is known as your personal brand and understanding how to cultivate that in a way that grows your business isn't always easy. Something that is made truer by the fact that we often see a lot of mis-information when it comes to personal brand meaning. Knowing the sweet spot between how much to share about you personally VS as a business is actually the key to not just growing your business, but also attracting clients you love working with. So let's dive in...

Let's start with a personal branding definition:

According to Sprout Social, the personal branding meaning is:

Personal branding is the process of defining and promoting what you stand for as an individual. Your personal brand is a culmination of the experiences, skills and values that differentiate you.

I like to see this as why you do what you do, the uniquness you bring to it, how you came to that approach and why you are the one to deliver it. It's capturing both the essence of you and your service in a way that clearly conveys what a powerhouse combination they are.

Some personal branding examples:

So how does that actual look through the lens of creation? Essentially, it's creating a highlight of the following

What you value and how you weave that into your service
Your experiences related to the service
Your unique energy/embodiment and how that translates into service
How you embody your work
Beliefs that you hold and why you are so passionate about them
What you have struggled with/loved and how that has influenced your service
The journey you have taken and how that has led to the alchemy of your work

I dive into a whole topic of this in my signature Content That Connects course within the Natural Narratives module, which creates guidance on how to tell the stories of your service in a way that clients will resonate with. You can watch the first module of this course for FREE.

How to balance your personal brand with your business?

The question that then arrives is how to create balance within your human and personal brand. There seems to be a narrative circulating that sharing your struggles and all that you experience is the route to "authentic expression". This is an interesting debate and as we explore the depths of new ways of relating in business, there really is no "right" answer. Something that has been popping up for myself and clients, though, is that our desire to share the intimate details of our lives online is diminishing. I have a whole blog post on exploring how much to share in the name of authenticity, which you can read here.

The idea that we need to share everything online to connect with clients is not one I believe to be true. Of course, if that's your jam, then you do you! What is authentic for you is what will work and creating force around any kind of sharing is never going to land with the clients that are truly aligned for you. If not sharing the intimate details of your life is what is aligned for you, then as long as you are rooting into the examples above to express your personal brand, then you will still grow your business and connect with clients. Likewise, if you are someone that loves to share in depth, it's still important to be focusing on balancing the essence of you with the service you create.