How to Build a Personal Brand (Full Course) – Transcript

00:00Right now, you're on one of two paths. Path one is the forgettable brand. You post content randomly, hoping that something's going to stick. People have no idea who you are or what you do, so they do not engage, and they definitely don't buy. Now, path number two is the intentional brand. This is where you own what people associate with you, and your content builds trust and moves people toward a decision. If you're on path number one right now, this course is

00:25going to get you onto path number two and save you years and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of mistakes. And if you have identified that you're on path number two, odds are you've probably hit a ceiling that you have not been able to break through. This course is going to help you smash through that ceiling and actually hit the scale that you've been wanting. This course is not just theory. It's built from real execution and my 16 years of experience in building brands online. So, here's what we're going to cover. Section one

00:53is branding. Section number two is going to be content strategy. Section number three is going to be building your team. And finally, in section four, we're going to talk about monetizing your brand. So, the first section is branding. And I think that we should start off with some definitions here so that we are on the same page and everything that we discuss moving forward is from the same understanding.

01:13I define branding as a pairing of things. I define good branding as an intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently and what you get from that is the byproduct which is brand. Brand is when the audience inherently associates those things together. Let's use the most classic example known to man. Nike and Michael Jordan. Nike entered the basketball market and they

01:38wanted to have their audience or customers associate them with athletic greatness. specifically within the basketball industry. So, what did they do? They intentionally paired themselves with greatness in basketball. Michael Jordan. I I can't think of another name that's more synonymous with victory, with winning, with greatness. Or take Gary Vaynerchuk in content. The man literally wrote a book called Crush It.

02:05I don't even remember when it came out. I think 2009. And he was talking about how people are going to make money talking about the Smurfs on YouTube. The man is synonymous with content and over time his actions done repetitively have led us to draw that association. He has intentionally paired himself with content among many other things. Or my absolute favorite that I always have to inject at any chance I get,

02:32Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson for many years in their marketing has intentionally paired themselves with freedom. And so what is the association that the customer base draws upon when they think of Harley-Davidson? Freedom. The open road, tearing off their suit and going out and hitting the road. And so ultimately what we are trying to do is think of what are the associations that we want our audience to inherently draw when they think of our name. And

02:59the beauty of this is it actually makes it operational for you. All you have to do is deliberately and intentionally pair yourself with the association that you want your audience to make. It takes all of the woo woo fluffy magic out of what brand is and it makes it something that you can actually do. Now, real quick, my team and I put a lot of effort into building out this course and a lot of accompanying worksheets and playbooks. So, please take advantage of them. What you're going to notice is at

03:27the bottom of the screen here, we're going to have little icons that tell you what sheet and how you can download it. I would highly encourage you, please download these sheets and follow along. Now that we know what brand and branding are, we need to define what your brand is. Now, your brand actually exists whether you define it or not. Your audience might be defining it for you. I would rather we be intentional and take

03:53control. The first step in defining your brand is defining your desired outcome. I like to work from the end goal and reverse engineer our way backwards. And so here is how I actually reverse engineer our desired outcome to today.

04:08It is called the brand journey framework. And it's just four simple questions, but I can't tell you how many people have told me how impactful this was and gave them the exact road map of how to go about building their brand. So question number one, again, like I said, we're starting from the end in mind and working our way back. So what is our desired outcome? What do we want to have happen? Question number two is, what do I have to be known for in order for that

04:35to happen? Question number three is, what do I have to do in order to be known for that? Unfortunately, building a brand isn't just about things that we say, it's about our actions. And so if we want to be known for something, in order to be known for it, we got to do the to be known for it. And then finally, the last question takes us to right now. What do I have to learn in order to do that? So if I'm going to do things in order to be known for

05:04something to then get my desired outcome, well, right now, I might not know how to do those things. And so this gives you day one exactly what to do. You need to learn these specific items and then you need to do those things and then you will become known for those things and then eventually the desired outcome occurs. If you have clarity on your outcome, this ensures that every decision you make along the way lines up with what you want to have happen. The

05:31majority of people that are building their brand online that are posting content, I promise you 99.9% of them have no idea what they're trying to accomplish with their content, with their brand. And so what they're doing is they're wandering aimlessly. There's an amazing example that I I love to share from Alice in Wonderland.

05:48There's a moment where Alice comes to a fork in the road. There's two different directions she can go. And the cat, Chester the cat, I believe is his name. And he's sitting in the tree and she says, "Which way should I go?" And he goes, "Well, where are you trying to end up?" And she says, "I don't know." And the cat responds with something so powerful. He says, "Well, then either way, we'll take you there. If you do not have a desired outcome that you are making your decisions off of, you're

06:14going to go somewhere, but it might not be the place that you want to be. Now, after you define your desired outcome, I would argue probably the most important part of defining your brand is defining your associations or the associations that you desire to have. Ask yourself, what do I want to be associated with?

06:32What do I want the audience to think of when they hear my name? Here's an example. Do you want your name to be tied to business, trustworthiness, or mental well-being? Everything you create should reinforce those associations. This is where intentionality in branding starts. Everything you create should reinforce those associations. This right here is where intentionality in branding starts. So, a very meta example here is that I am creating this course and the

07:00content that we're going to be putting out to intentionally pair Rston, my consulting firm, with value, with scaling brands, with understanding attention, with building brands that not only scale, but last and build trustworthiness within their community.

07:16This is literally what I'm doing. I'm putting together a massive course right now that is going to outline all of this and consistently pair myself with those attributes that I want you to draw upon when you hear about Rston Consulting.

07:32So, we're going to continue to create content like this talking about scaling your brand. We are intentionally pairing ourselves with the relevant thing scaling brands and we're going to do that consistently through our content.

07:45Now, we just went over what you want to be associated with. I would argue this next part is far more important and something that 99.9% of people completely ignore, which is what do you not want to be associated with? A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that brand is only about what you want to have happen. But a lot of what building a brand and a successful brand is, especially in today's saturated market where there's so many people online

08:13talking about the same subject matter as you, you can stand out by what you choose not to associate with. This is ultimately how you protect your brand. This is how you keep it from deliluding and being misinterpreted. Think of how many people you see online whose reputation probably has nothing to do with what they wanted or what their desire was. often times that is a byproduct of not being intentional with what they are not going to associate with. If you don't actively shape your associations, your audience is going to

08:41do it for you. Now, this next little example and explanation here is going to get a little technical. So, I'm actually going to read off of the screen to the right of the camera right now um so that I don't mess this up because I think it's really important and I want to make sure that we go through this exactly how I meant to. If we believe that branding is a pairing of things and that good branding is an intentional pairing of relevant things done consistently and

09:06that that then creates brand which is when the audience inherently associates those things together then we're on the same page of what brand and branding is. But what you'll notice is intentional is not a good or bad statement. Intentional doesn't mean right or good. Meaning, you could be intentional with pairing your brand, but with the wrong things done consistently. Unfortunately, what this

09:33ends up leading to is the audience drawing the association between your brand and those wrong things. Here's an example that I have to give a qualifier for. I have some pretty strong views and opinions on some of the online creators in the business education space. All love and respect to everyone. Everyone can do their own thing. This is Caleb Rston's individual opinion. Strongly believed, loosely held. There are some

09:58very scammy, sketchy in the online education space. They are untrustworthy and they make content trying to ladder up to selling some course online. If you choose to consistently appear in content with them, whether it's them inviting you on their podcast or you guys doing a collab video together, if you do that consistently, aka you intentionally pair

10:23yourself with the scam artist online, the untrustworthy character, the snake oil salesman, guess what happens if you do that consistently? Your audience will start to inherently associate you with that crowd. Is that good for trust? No, not at all. In fact, this is some of the biggest problems that you see with a lot of creators in the business education space right now. There are a lot of

10:50individuals that actually have a lot of value and a lot of good to add into the world and education and able to literally show people a whole new way to approach their business, their career. But the problem is is they go on all these podcasts with these individuals that I cannot trust. And by doing that enough times, I no longer feel that I can trust that individual.

11:12So, as much as you want to pair yourself with the right things, please, please be diligent about what you choose not to associate with. If you get a bad feeling in your gut, if you don't think that it's the right move, it's not worth the exposure. I'm going to open up the kimono here for a second.

11:31I have people right now, not a lot because I'm not that interesting, but I have a couple of people that have been asking me to come on to their podcast. And so far, I've said yes to everyone, but there are some individuals out there that I know will probably eventually reach out and ask me to come on the show. Now, if they have that kind of a brand, I will choose to not go on the show, even if it's the biggest audience that I could get in front of because