Day 9 of the 12-Day Personal Branding Challenge

7 Simple Ways To Overcome Your Fear Of Building A Personal Brand

By Georgia Kirke with guests Doug Bennett and David Howell

Does the thought of creating and building a personal brand get you excited at the opportunities it can create, or fill you with fear?

For many entrepreneurs, who are more accustomed to being behind the scenes, the thought of taking centre stage and becoming highly visible is petrifying, and met with a lot of resistance.

It’s not uncommon to feel this way but by holding back your high-value content you are doing your target audience, you and your business, a disservice. People need what you have and nobody can offer it exactly the way that you do.

With the right support you can overcome all fear around building a personal brand.

Common fears

From our experience at Write Business Results fear centres on the following areas:

• Fear of not understanding (or dislike of) social media platforms or technology.
• Belief that it’ll take up too much time.
• Concern that nobody will engage or like your content and you’ll feel humiliated.
• The thought that your message might not be special enough, that somebody is already doing something similar, or that you won’t find the right words to articulate it.

We’ve supported entrepreneurs like you who experience all of those fears, and the reality is that thinking about becoming highly visible is much harder than actually doing it. Once you begin to share, you and your content you gradually expand your comfort zone until you have developed a new normal. 

WBR joined Clubhouse at the start of the year and although it was a big deal then it’s now a regular part of what we do to share our message, and it’s exhilarating!

Stories from once reluctant brand builders!

Financial Adviser Doug Bennett, who has recently published his second book Think Simple Win Big, was initially apprehensive about putting himself out there.

Doug: “I even started a podcast this year, Goals Do Come True, and it’s been game-changing. I’ve been able to connect with amazing people from all over the world. The compound effect of you sharing your ideas, your successes and your failures is incredible. 

I was recently invited to present to the team of a large energy company. They had googled financial adviser to see who came up, and even though there are 27,000 financial advisers in the UK they chose me. Why? Perhaps because of my podcast and my book! Being visible opens doors.”

Although there’s a common belief that sharing expert content is time consuming, with the right support and direction it’s a valuable use of your time as Doug discovered.

Doug: “It has been a relatively straightforward journey for me. I can now use snippets from my podcasts and blogs and share them in other pieces of content, and I’ve got loads of videos that I can use over the course of time. Sometimes I record a podcast and when I use the content elsewhere I realise just how much really amazing stuff was in there.”

Reverse engineer the process

David Howell, business mentor and financial planner, is just about to publish his first book The Financial Game Changer (co-authored by John Kenny-Levick).

He has sound advice if you are hesitant about getting started.

David: “Start with the end in mind. What do you want to achieve? As we’ve been writing our book more ideas and opportunities have arisen and it’s as though all the buses have arrived at once! Opportunity will knock.

If you’ve got a message to share just go for it. When you’ve got the right support it’s just like having a chat with a couple of good friends.”

If you’re still questioning whether or not to become visible and build a personal brand David shared a quote from Benjamin Franklin which seems like the perfect summary:

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. 

In a nutshell

Overall, the advice from David and Doug includes:

1. Focus on the value you are adding to someone’s life.
2. Start with the end in mind.
3. Seek out the right support.
4. Make it easy for yourself (break it down and repurpose smaller pieces of content).
5. Remember the opportunities that you are opening up for you and your business.
6. The more you do it the easier it becomes.
7. Just do it!

10-second takeaway

Today’s challenge is for you to pop into the Facebook group and share with us your favourite action point from David and Doug. What will you do to go beyond your fear and build your personal brand?

Do you watch other people create outstanding business results and wonder how to create that for you and your business? A personal brand is a fantastic way to share your message, build your credibility and boost your bottom line. Why not schedule a brand and content strategy session and find out where you could take your business in 2022.