Why You Need a Personal Brand

The idea of promoting yourself and your brand can seem a little off pudding to some people, especially where I live in the midwest. Others do not appreciate people promoting themselves. I have gone back and forth on the idea throughout my professional career and can see both sides of the argument.

Building a personal brand is about sharing your unique perspective, story, and specific knowledge with the world. Your brand is about your reputation and about what other’s say about you when you are not in the room. It’s about demonstrating what you do on a daily basis in your professional role, using your strengths to help other people, and give your perspective on the world.

I watched this video by Ryan Serhant about how he battles his Ego and it lends itself well to the idea of personal branding:

One quote that stood out to me from the video is “Self promotion is self preservation.” In the video Ryan talks about how when he was auditioning for Million Dollar Listing he wasn’t the top real estate agent in New York, but he was able to brand himself as one best and it helped him a role on the show.

Building a personal brand may seem uncool. You care more about how you look than how you perform. Or you may be too shy to build your brand and afraid to put yourself out there. You may think that you’re too good and don’t need to build one. This is called the “the disease of me” and all three need to be overcome on a personal level in order to build your personal brand.

if you are working in a highly competitive field, like real estate, building a personal brand can help you be seen as a leader in your industry so opportunities come to you. Maybe you are job searching and want to build a personal brand to demonstrate your expertise in an area to land more job interviews. Others could be working for a startup or building a side project and want to share with the world what they are working on.

Regardless of what your intention is, it’s important to build a personal brand so that future opportunities come to you. It will also help you develop some social capital early on your career that you can leverage in the future for career opportunities. You have a brand, whether you like it or not. Take control of your narrative and build a brand you would are proud of.