4 Reasons Entrepreneurs Fail at Building a Personal Brand

Despite increasing interest in personal branding, many entrepreneurs give it a shot, don’t see the results they expect, and conclude that it’s simply not for them.

After hearing about personal brand failures from leaders around the globe, I’ve noted four main reasons entrepreneurs fail at building personal brands and suggested action steps to ensure it does not happen to you:

1. You put the cart before the horse.

What is the most common mistake I see? When an entrepreneur doesn’t do the deep work to uncover their personal brand before marketing it. So many entrepreneurs write LinkedIn content (or task someone to do it for them), launch podcasts, or go on speaker circuits before first conducting a brand discovery and strategy process. Though we would never do so for a business, somehow, we think that personal brand building starts with execution.

Lesson No. 1: Before you choose a platform and start executing, identify your unique positioning, how you want your brand to be perceived, your specific audience, and what you will share with your audience.

2. You misunderstood what personal branding is all about.

There are two main misconceptions about personal branding. The first is connecting personal branding to thought leadership. Let’s dispel that myth: Some personal brands are indeed predicated on it, but not all. The pressure of being a thought leader can easily overwhelm us and trigger impostor syndrome.

The second misconception is about tying a personal brand to what you do instead of who you are. This is a mistake because we are all so much more than what we do or the businesses we run.

Lesson No. 2: Let go of impostor syndrome and understand that you build equity in your personal brand throughout your life. Leverage the brand discovery process to uncover your unique angle that expresses who you truly are. Businesses come and go, but your brand positioning must remain constant. Yes, showcasing expertise gives you credibility, but zoom out and see your brand positioning through the lens of who you are.

3. You forgot the 80 percent rule.

Through the process of brand discovery, you identified that LinkedIn is the perfect social media platform to scale your visibility. You identified the person to write your LinkedIn content, and then you promptly turned into your own bottleneck. How? You began to overthink every word, every line, every takeaway. In your desire to make it “perfect” and not sound “fluffy,” you forgot that social media posts are consumed at lightning speed — readers don’t ponder every word. Entrepreneurs know the 80 percent rule of delegation: If you offload a task and someone does it 80 percent as well as you would, that’s not only good enough — it’s great! It frees you to focus on your zones of genius. Yet when it comes to delegating content creation, we tend to strive for perfection.

Lesson No. 3: A personal brand is about associations you create in people’s minds when they see or hear your name. This requires consistency, not perfection. If you applied lesson No.1, then your content will not fall below 80 percent of your quality standards. So, give your brand brief to your writer, then get out of their way.

4. You expected overnight success.

There is an art and science to optimizing performance as you market your brand on social media platforms and through thought leadership articles and public speaking. Many entrepreneurs give LinkedIn a shot or go on the podcast interviewee circuit, only to quit after six months. Personal branding is a marathon, not a sprint. You can only expect results after following best practices, learning, iterating, and giving it sufficient time. When you have achieved visibility, built brand portability, and created a platform for yourself, the ROI on your time will be unparalleled. It just takes time.

Lesson No. 4: If you outsource your personal brand marketing, trust the process and best practices communicated by your provider. Remember lesson No. 3. If you are doing it yourself (after all, not all tasks can be outsourced), then invest in learning and perfecting your craft. One of my key personal brand-building platforms is public speaking; it took years to get to that magic 80 percent mark before I could monetize my personal brand and continue to perfect my craft.

Put brand strategy before execution, let go of impostor syndrome, remember the 80 percent rule, and employ patience: That’s how you build a stand-out personal brand.

 Source: Incafrica.com

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