The Source of The Confusion
Everything you’ve tried to build a personal brand as left you feeling MORE confused. I know that’s frustrating. Here’s why:
Courses + Workshops
Are intentionally too generic. The person delivering them had a limited amount of time and a mixed group of people in the room. What tips and tricks they gave you were delivered with extra-wide brush strokes.
Their remit there was to simply create enough awareness to begin a sales process, or fit into the wider context of the day’s events.
Social Media Programs + Challenges
Are usually content-heavy. A bigger promise was made when you decided to go for this. Challenges often say so on the tin: “30 posts in 30 days”. Programmes go deeper but often just do more of the same: “Fix your content creation calendar forever”.
These are great quests to go on, but if you are not crystal clear on your identity and have backed up your position in your market, you end up with a whole lot of heavy-work lifting being done that is not necessarily going to work to grow your branding or your business.
DIY Branding
If you’ve ever tried to figure this all out on your own, you know it can end up creating 100 more tasks than you imagined.
What is the precise psychological impact of that colourway or font family anyway? Does that shape, or nod to that era, really make a difference to your bottom line? Feeling directionless after this kind of a pursuit is normal.
Brand Designers + Application Experts
Are all worth their weight in gold. In 90%+ of cases, they’re not set up to diagnose strategy problems.
This is like expecting a curtain expert to worry about the structural integrity of the walls and windows they are hanging the curtains on.
Branding Theory
Is often intensely thought provoking and alluring. And quality TED Talk or special podcast guest episode leaves you feeling more in-the-know. You enjoy wryly smiling along to their sage-like points and rhetorical questions.
But when is comes to sitting back at your desk in your day to day flow, those big ideas are too abstract to re-shape into actionable steps. So again, it gets deprioritised for your overbooked schedule.