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Nowadays more than ever before, being a successful business owner is about making sure that your company name, identity, brand and even your personal brand (if you want to make it part of the attraction of doing business with you) can be found in every nook and cranny online. 

Just over a year ago I launched this blog.

How to build Your Own Brand

It wasn’t my first blog, but it was my first real step into personal branding. I knew and appreciated that a personal brand is something that's needed in today’s market, and did spend a bit of time on my branding throughout the few years prior, but never really focused on truly building my own unique brand online.

Since then I’ve landed opportunities for myself in the speaking industry, consulted and coached many amazing entrepreneurs, landed a book deal, started my third company and spent more than enough time replying to my readers to this blog every month.
And, I have to say – I freakin’ love it all..!!!

Why is an Online Brand So Important Today?

It took me a while to realize this, but building my brand has quite frankly turned out to be the best business move I’ve made in my entire career – and I don’t say that lightly, believe me.
In today’s business world people want to do business with other people more so than ever before! This is why it’s so important to focus on building a brand. Why? Because we trust people we know. We trust people that we have relationships with, and most of all – we like to do business with people we trust!

• Building a brand creates awareness of what we, as entrepreneurs and our business stand for.
• Building a brand gives us instant opportunities to create likability and to foster the growth of a fan base.
• Building a brand elevates our credibility, because we embrace being ‘out there’ for the world to find.
• Building a brand allows us to gain trust – the most important part of the ‘sales process’ – leading to more prospects, more customers and more profits!

Am I getting my point across? This is it people. The time has come for every entrepreneur to get serious about building an online brand (in case you’re not doing so already), so that we can enjoy the benefits of all these points, and more.

With this in mind I’m going to cut through all the fat and give you the bare essentials you need to get started with building your own online brand. I’m going to plot them out over 10-steps and based on the main reasons that I mentioned above, as the instigating factors for doing so in the first place!

Building Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is when people identify your brand to be yours under different conditions; whether they’re on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. The first step is making your brand memorable – and a blog is the perfect vehicle for doing that. So, let’s break that down a little.

Step #1) Have a Unique Blog Design

 The key to becoming memorable is making a good first impression and having a unique blog design can do just that. You’ve got to think of a mix between great design, and the ability to have your blog stand out from the rest. Although having a uniquely designed blog is not more important than your brand’s message, it still plays a big visual role.

Step #2) Get a Proper Logo Designed

 This doesn’t have to be overly fancy – I mean, look at mine… But, having something that symbolizes your brand’s image will help in building brand awareness and recognition. I’m all about discussion and relationship building, so I choose a semi-speech bubble style, with the focus on my brand colors.
Look at it – it’s simply brilliant!

Step #3) Think About Creating a Tagline

 Although I don’t personally have one (this’ll change soon), a tagline is a phrase that lets your visitors know exactly what you’re about the minute they visit your site. This works best when the tag line states a benefit. For example, my tag line might read: “I’ll Help You Build a Virtual Team to Create Massive Amounts of Freedom in Your Business and Life!”. If you already have a tagline, I’d love to hear it in the comment section below, along with a link to your site.
Now that we’ve looked at how to build awareness for our brand, lets zoom in on creating some likability for ourselves, shall we?

Building Brand Likability

After making it easy for people to recognize your brand, you need to work super hard at getting them to like you. The best way to do this in today's market is by connecting with your audience on a personal level. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather speak to a real person when calling a company than talking to a pre-recorded message. As new-age entrepreneurs if we want to be liked, we need to be personable.
The great thing is that you audience WANTS to be able to connect with you on a more personal level, and when they can do that, they’ll be more likely to do business with you. Here’s how you can continue to build your brand, and at the same time create some likability.

Step #4) Create an ‘About Me’ or ‘Start Here’ Page 

This page is the perfect place to speak a little about yourself, so that your visitors can get to know you better. Ideally, you want to put your audience first here. So try focusing on a few benefits as to why they should stick around on your site. You can then feel free to toot your own horn a little. Just be sure not to miss the opportunity of converting the casual visitor into an email subscriber and have an opt-in offer somewhere on the page.

Step #5) Add a Facebook ‘Like’ Box

Step #6) Add Links to Other Social Media Channels

Step #7) Publish Online Video & Podcasts 

Steps 5, 6 and 7 are all about being human. Here’s a scenario I think you’ll enjoy. Pretend there are two business experts. They both have blogs and they both put out really good content. But ‘Expert A’ also has a Facebook page, talks to you on Twitter and publishes video clips and podcast episodes regularly – while ‘Expert B’ does not. Which expert would you feel more comfortable calling up and hiring for consulting? If you picked ‘Expert A’ then you get where I’m going with this.

Online video and podcasts allow us to make very different personal connections with our audience. Seeing us ‘in the flesh’, or inserting us into their earlobes creates an immediate reaction that reading a blog post, or an eBook simply can’t.

Now that our likability is at an all-time high, its to to take this up a notch. It’s time to talk trust and credibility!

Building Your Brand’s Trust & Credibility

Now, you could be the coolest person on the planet, but that still doesn’t mean people are going to start throwing money at you. Your audience needs to trust you, before they will buy anything from you – as I said earlier, building trust is the single most important part of the ‘sales process’.

The sad thing is that this is where most people get stuck, because it’s the part that takes the most work.
Building trust in your brand is all about adding value to your community in the form of high-quality, extremely helpful, consumable (and shareable!) content. Let’s look at how you can use your platform (blog, YouTube channel, podcast) to build trust.

Step #8) Create Unique, Compelling Content

 As strange as it may seem, some of the most successful blog posts I’ve ever written have been very simple to put together. I simple answer questions. Provide solutions to problems, such as 101 task ideas to outsource to virtual assistants, or the importance of thinking like a business owner, not a blogger. Creating this type of compelling content needs to be the cornerstone of your brand. If you help people, affect change in their mindsets and the way they conduct themselves in some way, you will quickly become the go-to source in your niche online.

Step #9) Have a Unique Free (Opt-In) Offer

 While everything I’ve mentioned will help you boost your brand awareness and likability, the content should always be your main focus. Without great content, nothing else matters. Your audience will begin to trust you (and your brand) when they see that you’re out to HELP them. Having an insanely valuable piece of content to give away as an incentive to sign up for your email list is one of the fastest ways to build trust. There are still people using crappy material in an attempt to get email sign-ups. That’s not only damaging to your brand, that also destroy the relationship with your potential customer before it starts.

What I always suggest you do here is create something that you’d have no problems putting a price tag of at least $100 on. Then package it nicely and simply give it away for free – well, almost free… gotta get that email address!

In my case, I created a 7-Day video course that helps people get started with all the new media topics they need to inject into their business in todays ‘new economy’. So far, since going live I’ve had almost 8,000 people opt-in and get their hands on this highly actionable, helpful content.

Step #10) Be Yourself

 Before I launched this site, I blogged regularly (where I started building my personal brand) for about 2-years. I was always holding back. I was worried about what my corporate clients would think. I was worried about what strangers would think!!! It sucked. When I made the move over to this site I promised that I would be all me, all the time. I wasn’t going to hold back anymore. I wasn’t going to be someone, act like someone that wasn’t truly ME.

Being yourself is by far one of the most important parts of building your brand. Nobody can duplicate you! You are the only one of YOU out there, and you need to use that massive ‘edge’ to your all-out advantage in the battle for peoples eyeballs, trust, loyalty and business.

Now I’m Taking the Bull By the Horns!

For the last year or so, there hasn’t been a week that has gone by where I haven’t received a compliment on the way I have built my brand online. The look and feel of it. The way that I stand behind it, and my P2P (People-to-People) philosophy of creating a fan base and working with customers. The consistency in design across multiple online channels – here are screenshots of my Twitter and Facebook profiles.
I’ve relished every compliment that has come along of course. However, along with those compliments have come questions – a ton of ’em!

Up until recently I could cope with giving advice as and when questions and queries came through to me. However, with everything else that has happened for me, my businesses and my overall brand in the last 12-18 months, I simply don’t have the time to answer the 250+ emails, as well as all the tweets and FB messages I get on a daily basis, one by one. I try – believe me – but, it’s becoming harder and harder.

Get Serious  – Join My Branding Bootcamp!

Not so long ago I was chatting with a good friend of mine and he suggested I put together a quick course that people could run through in a relatively short space of time that would cover all the basics to building a brand online, as well as some more in-depth strategies and tips to take it to the next level, including making money from a brand. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to do it.

My ‘Branding Bootcamp’ covers everything that I mentioned briefly in this post (in a lot more detail), plus a whole lot more. The course learning is a mix of video, audio and written content which is all presented in a very easy-to-follow format and also includes some amazing bonuses, too.

If you’re serious about building a brand online, I’d love for you to check it out and hop on board – it’s exactly what I wished was around when I made the conscious effort to start building my own personal brand!

I’d love to answer any and all questions you’ve got on the subject of building an online brand, as well as hear from you on your branding success, too! Comment below.
Thanks for dropping by today!

Keys To Grow Your Business in 2016

If your child, young pet or garden wasn’t growing…what would you do?

1. Nothing
2. Hope they started to thrive without YOU making any changes
3. Ask yourself, “Am I adequately feeding and hydrating?”
4. Consult a pediatrician, veterinarian or expert gardener?

The alphabetized list makes the choices seem obvious.  You’d go with C & D and, yet, many business owners often choose A & B hoping for a miracle.  

In a public corporation, growth reflects and depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities of others.  But growth in your business is 100% under your control.  It reflects, to a large degree, the decisions you make and actions you take to generate growth.

6 Keys To Increased Growth

Working with small business owners has taught us that growth is a fairly predictable outcome assuming you utilize six (6) keys that foster it. If, however, you choose to ignore these 6 keys stagnation and decline are likely results.



Here are six (6) keys you can leverage to realize significant growth in your business in 2016:

1. YOU

The ultimate source of energy, leadership and direction for your business

2.  Opportunity Pipeline

The quantity and quality of prospects you’re attracting

3.  Average Case Size

What someone spends, on average, with you

4. Purchase Frequency

How often someone does business with you

5. Selling Efficiency

How quickly you can help someone make a decision to buy from you

6. Profit Margin

How much of each dollar remains with you after all costs have been covered
Growth . . . Begins With Y-O-U
Your business is alive with the energy you feed it.  Growth reflects that you’re feeding yourself and your business well.  When your business is easy for clients to consume, and they like it, they want more.  Therefore, you need to be well fed and growing to feed your clients well too!  If you’re seeing shrinking customers, profit margins, inspiration and support… take care of yourself first.  And take it from there.

Ditching the dichotomy between what’s going on in your personal and professional life may be the fastest way for you to accelerate growth in both areas.  

A Small Business Growth Success Case Study

One client, the owner of an independent automobile repair facility, asked, “How can I best grow my revenues and profit?” 
After learning what he was already doing to do that, he discovered his greatest opportunity for growth would come by focusing on 1 of the 6 keys mentioned above.  
To achieve truly significant growth in his business, he focused on growing revenues from each service he offered.
This made sense because he had a decent number of returning customers who were loyal to his business.
We began with one of his smaller offerings: “oil changes”. We started with his facts:

1. His customers drive, on average,15,000 miles / year.  
2. He changes their oil every 5,000 miles.  
3. He charges $35 for an oil change.  
4. He performed, on average, 3 oil changes per customer per year.
5. Oil changes alone generated $105 from each customer (3 X $35 = $105).

We suggested he advise his customers to change their oil every 3,000 miles rather than every 5,000 miles – a practice that is trending in popularity.  As a result, his customers are changing their oil, on average, not 3 but 5 times a year (15,000  miles / 3,000 miles = 5 oil changes).
Without increasing his fees, he’s now generating $175 per customer per year –– 5 oil changes X $35 = $175  
Finding a way to increase his customers purchase frequency produced a significant growth – 67% — in revenue for this one line item alone.
Significant improvement in any one area in your business that’s failing to thrive will generate significant growth.

Another Valuable Lesson Learned

At a practice development workshop, the instructor asked, “How many of you want to learn new ideas?”  
All of our hands went up.  
“How many of you want to learn how to generate more revenues?”
Again, all of our hands went up.  
“How many of you believe that learning new ideas will, alone, generate more revenues?
No hands went up!  
That instructor taught 2 important lessons.  First, there is a direct correlation between the prospects you’re seeing and the revenue you’re generating.  Second, to increase revenues, you need to see more people, see ‘better’ people (those that buy more from you).  
Ideally, you do both.
The instructor also said, ”If all you learn today is how to see TWICE as many people in the future as you are now, you’ll be making TWICE as much money!”.  
Technically that’s true but unlikely. It’s easier said than done.  A more realistic path to growth comes from consistent improvement in each of the 6 keys to growth cited above.  
Consider this . . . improving each key by only 5% produces a synergistic effect and an overall business growth rate of 28% annually –– as this chart demonstrates:

Growth Made SIMPLE

If you intend to grow your business in 2016, commit to leveraging each of the 6 keys cited above and develop a plan to use them to unlock your business growth potential.  
Remember –– modest changes, applied consistently and conscientiously, produce a synergy that will help you grow your business substantially in 2016.

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

1. Growth of you, personally and your business, financially is necessary for the benefit of both.
2. Factors that drive revenues and profit are readily known and 100% under your control.
3. Focused, conscientious action can improve any or all of the growth factors cited above.
4. A simple 5% improvement in each factor, achieved consistently, generates significant growth

1. Putting your own opinion to a fact. Unless you’re 100% certain – it’s not a fact, and you’re probably making it worse.

2. Waiting for something better to come along before you quit the thing you hate. This goes out to all the people stuck in dead end jobs, mismatched relationships, and boring social circles. Tomorrow never comes.
3. Not asking someone out because you think they are out of your league. Give them a chance to make that decision, not you.
4. Worrying about the traffic jam making you late for work, getting caught in the downpour without a jacket, or forgetting to get back to someone after you made a promise. Shit happens, get over it.
5. Thinking you’re more important than anyone else. You’re not. You’re just as important as everyone else.
6. Blaming other people when shit hits the fan. If it’s your own fault, admit it. If it’s not, then assume the person responsible is fully aware – they don’t need you pointing it out.
7. Forcing your religious beliefs onto another person. Well done – you’re a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Atheist/Jedi… whatever, do you want a medal?
8. Being afraid to spend money. You worked hard to earn it – so do something with it.
9. Waiting for a magical sum of money to appear. There is never enough – the sooner you realise this, the sooner you can start living.
10. Buying lottery tickets. See number 9.
11. Believing something to be true because you heard it from an authority. Do your own research. Form your own judgment. Trust your own instincts.
12. Ignoring your instincts. They’ll keep you alive.
13. Ignoring advice. Even if it seems misplaced – it probably comes from personal experience – which makes it completely relevant.
14. Refusing to watch a movie, read a book or buy a product just because it’s popular. One day, you’ll miss out on something amazing.
15. Looking too far into the future. It will never exist.
16. Trying to erase the past. It happened – accept it.
17. Ignoring the present moment. This shit is happening so pay attention.
18. Focusing too much on making a good impression. They will see the ‘you’ that they see – and there’s not a lot you can do about it. If you act with integrity, treat them with respect and look them in the eye – you’ve successfully played your part in their life story.
19. Allowing other people to write your story. Save that for when you’re dead.
20. Giving someone a lecture about a subject you know nothing about. People are remarkably good at sniffing out bullshit.
21. Treating your body like crap. It’s the only one you’ll ever use.
22. Treating other people like crap. See number 5.
23. Assuming someone is happy because they’re always smiling. Depression produces Oscar winning performances.
24. Blaming yourself for not realising something was wrong. You didn’t know because they didn’t want you to know. End of.
25. Suffering in silence. It’s not your fault. It’s an illness, and people give a shit. Let someone in – even if it’s one person – it could change your life.
26. Being scared of success. Fear is an essential part of life and expecting it to go away will always end in disappointment. Some of the world’s greatest entertainers get nervous before a performance. Some of the world’s greatest athletes are full of self-doubt as they face their opponent. Some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, innovators, and CEO’s question their own products the night before a big launch. Always be afraid – never stand still.
27. Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result. If something isn’t working then try something new.
28. Aiming for perfection and avoiding mistakes. The person who never made a mistake – never made anything.
29. Living your life vicariously through others. Great writers will always take you along for the ride, but learn the difference between inspiration and imaginary. The brain is easily fooled into thinking it was really there.
30. Reading ‘The Secret’. The universe is just as lazy as you are. Do yourself, and it, a favor by at least meeting it halfway. Sitting on your fat ass and wishing for a better life is the reason why you have a fat ass in the first place. Expect brain-rot to kick in next.
31. Being jealous. It ruins lives.
32. Believing there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’. Quit your whining, work harder, and meet the right people – all within your capability.
33. Feeling pressured into following the crowd. If you really don’t want to do something, then you have every right to say no.
34. Using silence as your preferred method of communication. If someone sends you a text, then you reply. If you have to let someone down, then tell them. If there is a date you cannot make, a deadline you cannot hit or an agreement you no longer wish to honour – then speak up.
35. Following the news. It’s negative, untrustworthy, and it will not enhance your life in any way, shape or form.
36. Getting involved in online arguments. You may as well be talking to yourself.
37. Choosing the easy option. Everything worth doing was worth the effort.
38. Giving up something you really want because it’s difficult. Everything you’ve ever done was difficult at some stage. As a small kid you learned how to read, write, and recall 26 random characters – in sequence. You reached fluency in one of the most challenging languages ever created. You went from the comfort and safety of your home to spending most of your days in an alien environment cooped up with 20 likeminded strangers. You dealt with ghosts in the night, monsters under the bed, and lived in a world of giants. Do you think your life is difficult? Your 5 year old self is mocking you right now. Man up.

39. Forgetting numbers 1 through to 38. Go back and find the one which resonates with you the most.