When I was a student, I was scandalized by the idea that people need to ‘advertise and sell themselves’ just like products. 

After all, what does a multi-faceted, complex human being have in common with a $2.99 box of cereals? Cereals can be cheap, extra-crispy or healthy, but people are never just one thing. In the words of Walt Whitman “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

It took me a while to realize that people who stand for many things, end up not standing for anything in particular. Imagine being asked to recommend a fin-tech professional. Would you recommend somebody who does fin-tech among 20 other things or somebody who only does fin-tech? I would assume the latter.

You might wonder why you need a personal brand when you already have a good job and salary. Truth is – jobs come and go, but your personal brand is an asset that is yours forever. We live in a world that is filled with opportunities – job offers, side hustles, invitations to conferences – and your personal brand allows you to tap into them. 

“The most powerful money-makers are individual brands.” — Naval Ravikant 

“It’s important to build a personal brand because it’s the only thing you’re going to have.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

“To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” – Tom Peters 

What exactly is a brand anyways? 

The concept of brand positioning was introduced by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. According to the marketing gurus of the 80s a brand is a ‘perception in the mind of the customer’. If we talk about personal brands we can simply say it’s what other people think about you. 

I believe every personal brand has a three components:

  1. The product is who you are – your skills, abilities, knowledge, education, experiences and personality. I call it the objective part because most of the aforementioned things can be measured with a diploma, test score or with the fact that you either know or don’t know how to do something.
  2. The perception is what people think of you – what’s your area of expertise, are you reliable or nice to be around. I call it the subjective part because people might underestimate you (‘I don’t think you know how this works…’) or overestimate you (‘I heard you’re an Excel wizard!’). However, as Al Ries pointed out ‘The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.’ It doesn’t matter who you are, it matters what other people think about you. 
  3. The message is what you say – by publishing research, writing articles, speaking at conferences. People can’t have a perception about you if they don’t know you exist, so the message aims to create the right perception in the minds of your audience. 

Hedgehog concept

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided people into two groups: foxes and hedgehogs, according to the ancient Greek parable of the Hedgehog and the Fox. He argued that the foxes pursue many goals at the same time and as a result, achieve very little. Hedgehogs, focus on a single goal, which they can realistically achieve.

In __Good to Great, Jim Collins further argued that in order to succeed you should identify the thing you do best. You need to make three separate assessments and your personal brand will be at the intersection of them:

  • Understand what you are truly passionate about.
  • Identify what you do better than anyone else.
  • Determine how you can generate income. 

Personal monopoly

Recently, I found out about ‘personal monopoly’ – a similar yet different approach to personal branding coined by David Perell. A personal monopoly is the unique intersection of your knowledge, personality, and skills that nobody else can compete with. It comes as no surprise that it is too at the intersection of three circles:

  • Unusual & Complementary Skills – identify unique skills that reinforce and amplify each other
  • Experiential – identify skills you gained through experience
  • Specific **– pick a very narrow niche, that you can own

Make no mistake…

If you ask me both concepts are equally good ways to define your personal brand. The difficult part is actually getting started. 

  • Perfect is the enemy of done. Defining your personal brand is no easy task, so don’t aim for perfection. It will take you multiple iterations over the course of many months (years?) to understand what is your unique set of skills. In the meanwhile, go with your best guess and listen for feedback from your audience.
  • Not communicating your brand. Having a personal website is a good start, but you need to publish, publish, publish to make people aware of you. A personal brand only exists in the mind of your audience, so if they don’t know about you – you don’t exist. Good news is that writing on the web and promoting on social media is practically free.
  • Being afraid to pick a niche. It can be scary to narrow down your personal brand because you will appeal to less people. However, without a defined niche you might appeal to no one. Brian Balfour said it best “Focus helps you be world class in a particular area vs ok in multiple areas.”