Building Your Personal Brand: A Step-by-Step Guide to Success

On Life and Business
With Jake Erickson
February 26, 2023
Read the online version here.

Everyone says to pick a niche and create an offer.

But what if you don’t know where to start?

You may not even have an offer to sell. And you don't know how to niche down.

Wouldn't it be great to have a coaching manual geared for beginners on how to start a personal brand in a streamlined way?

This is that exact guide.

At the end of reading this guide, you will learn how to:

1. Get started even if you don't know what to sell

2. How to figure out what you should sell

3. How to confirm what you are selling

4. How to stay consistent

Let's get started.

Productize Yourself

The BEST way to start a personal brand nowadays is to productize yourself.

That is to leverage your ability to solve your problems.

While you solve your problems, you can document as you go via content and create a guide you can sell to your previous self.

Why do you think I made this guide?

Your niche is you. The best products solve a problem that benefits a person's direct experience. When solving your own problems you are essentially doing this automatically.

For example, you're 10 pounds too heavy and want to lose weight:

Set yourself on a journey to lose 10 pounds. Learn everything you can about the topic, and you'll have formed a strategy. When the weight is off, you've solved your problem and can now package it into a quick 2-3 page guide that helps bring others like you to your outcome (losing 10 pounds).

As Naval says, “Find hobbies that make you rich, fit, and smarter.”

Now think of all the problems you want to solve in your life.

• Do you need to find a way to make an extra $1,000 a month?

• Do you need to find a way to add 5 pounds of muscle?

• Do you need help with dating or your marriage?

Some problems you break down into several sub-categories. These sub-categories will be other problems you can package up. For example, making an extra $1,000 monthly could require learning marketing or sales. You may need to know how to send direct messages or build a newsletter within marketing and sales.

The more problems you solve – the more you evolve into a new stage of development.

Each stage of development requires new problems to solve.

Stop thinking that the market is too saturated. Every time you evolve, you've effectively desaturated that market. For example, you can teach an introductory Psychology course to beginner students, but it would be unwise to teach an advanced one. As your competitors "advance" into new stages, it leaves new competitors that are still teaching the beginner level.

The creator economy will never become too saturated.

Again. You don't need to be an expert in anything.

You only need to be 1-2 steps ahead of people on the same journey as you. Imagine yourself as a student teaching your classmates the next chapter you've already read ahead on. Refrain from letting people in the world who are more advanced on a particular topic stop you from helping the ones who are a chapter or two behind you.

Find Your Voice

Your first task is to pick 3 broad interests you would want to get 10x better at.

• One interest that can make you more money.

• One that you are passionate about.

• One that you are curious about.

Why do we pick broad interests rather than niching down?

Because we don’t want to put ourselves in a box too soon, you can still talk about your niche, but you will get more eyes on your content as you figure out where you can focus your energy more precisely later.

If you’re struggling with your three topic areas, I get you. You will need to brainstorm. A powerful question you can ask is:

“What is an interest/topic/skill I want to be 10x better at that I would be passionate enough to talk about, write about, and send enough cold outreach to people that may need my help daily?”

For me, it was:

1. Online business

2. Money

3. Personal development

For you, it could be:

1. Health

2. Everything Outdoors

3. Entertainment (trending)

Here is a great article you can get some extra topic ideas from. Also, check out the book Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. He lays out in detail how to find your voice online and it is a great resource to get started.

Focus on mastering your particular subjects – do not focus on niching them down yet – only niche your content and products down to solve the specific problems for your audience.

Next, establish authority in the interest that can make you money FIRST. Only then can you work on your other interests. Break your interest down into the principles and fundamentals you need to learn.

For a broad interest such as online business the principles would be:

• Marketing and sales

• Offer creation

• Understanding traffic

For health, it could be:

• Calorie counting

• Strength training

• Fitness (broad topic)

Each interest has a vast amount of topics & sub-topics in its space. Your job is to attack your interest from all angles to create depth and authority. Then, as you break down your interest over time, you learn how to solve specific problems for yourself and others.

You also create processes from your ideas – fleshing out step-by-step actionable ways to accomplish desired outcomes.

Build an Offer

Many people are stumped by now.

They picked their topic area.

They’re excited.

But now they have to start writing.

Suppose you have a consistency problem. I want to tell you to start writing. Begin with 50 words per day. Writing provides clarity over time. So stick to it.

If you don’t have a writing habit by now, it’s not your fault. Instead, it’s because you’ve lacked clarity on WHY you should write a particular subject in the first place.

And it would help if you had a WHY because it's the only reason you'll do it.

You won't wake up one day with limitless energy building the business of your dreams and taking action without any clarity. Just think about everything you do daily – you do it for a reason. And you remain consistent in writing about a particular topic because you KNOW it will sell.

Your First Offer

Your first offer is going to be a service.

Start it as soon as possible. I recommend a FREE consulting service (rather than freelance work) that helps solve a specific problem in your topic area. But, of course, this problem has to have a real market. If you’re freelancing at the moment, offer a consulting service on the side.

Then, create a free guide proving your competence in the area of your expertise and plug your free consulting service.

And from here is where we start the brainstorming process.

We need to figure out what's going to sell. And the best way to figure out what will sell is to get good at validating products and services online through market research.

The best way to do market research is as follows:

Immersion

Get immersed in the environment you plan to sell in. Start reading, studying, and consuming content from your mentors.

Replication

Do you have the knowledge or skill to sell something similar to what someone else is making money with? Can you put your unique spin on what it is already selling?

Engage Online

Reply to others' content. Gauge how well your content is doing. Note down common questions that people ask and their problems.

Getting On 5-10 Free Calls

Just talk with people online. See if you can help them with anything. Do not overthink this.

Competitor Research

• Following mentors and studying their content.

• Understanding how your favorite books solve problems for their audiences.

• Studying funnels from your competitors. Joining their email lists, blog, watching their content.

Freebie

In online business, we call freebies lead magnets.

While writing out articles, newsletters, and threads – you are solving your life’s problems. Most of your information products (digital products, services, and lead magnets) are created by articles, newsletters, and threads. The results you want out of life should be documented step-by-step in your content.

While writing content, you should focus on creating a 2-3 page free guide on how you solved a specific problem.

Here are some ways you can create lead magnets that may give you some product ideas as well:

• Use this comprehensive article by Hubspot to learn more about lead magnets.

• Another one by Neil Patel.

Once you know what type of lead magnet (free guide) you want to create, you’re one step closer to starting the rest of your life.

Action Steps

1. Validate potential offers that solve a specific problem online through market research.

2. Create a free information product proving your competence in solving that particular problem.

3. Plug your FREE consulting service at the end of your information product and start writing, and DMing people about it daily.

4. Get on 5-10 calls with people and help them for FREE. Then get 3-5 testimonials.

It doesn’t matter how much of a beginner you are. People will be more than willing to pay to understand the basics. It happens all the time with online courses.

Think about mixed martial arts. Someone with a white belt for over a year will be much more advanced than someone starting the sport. People will be willing to take your advice ESPECIALLY since you’ve already carved the path for them.

The Start of the Rest of Your Life

You need to write more if you are still stuck on what products, funnels, or landing pages to study.

Writing provides clarity.

The longer you start writing about your topic areas, the more you will know about the big problems and products selling well.

Keep posting competence-proving content that solves your problems. People will read this content and it will help them. So you see, without the writing, you’re going nowhere.

Success is only achieved through consistent failure. You’re not going to be successful without it. Torch this into your mind.

Writing is the most fundamental skill at your disposal.

And the best way to start the rest of your life right is to develop a writing habit.

One of the most straightforward ways to develop a writing habit is to create a habit tracker. James Clear explains this concept so simple in his popular article here. If you’re a novice writer, Ship 30 for 30 is a great community to get into writing.

Other habits that will help your brand are daily engagement and inbound and outbound outreach. Get good at all these, and your business will grow as long as you remain consistent.

Upgrading Your Service

Once you help enough people, you’ll get a feel for what people need.

This is where you should create your landing page or website online. And after helping enough people, you will know how to create a process to help more people with similar problems. This is when you can turn your free consulting offer into a paid one.

When people pay for your service and you make them happy — 30% of them would instead return to a website they’ve already purchased from! So keep writing and beefing up your competence content. Plug your testimonials under your service. Get more advanced in your topic areas. Or pivot if need be.

Keep chasing your interests and curiosities.

Don’t be at the whim of having the market pick them for you!

Conclusion

Start now.

A great analogy would be to be the “online tutor” of algebra. Then:

• Read all about algebra.

• Write about the problems you plan to solve via content.

• Use the problems you solve and create a short guide PROVING your competence.

• Start a free consulting service. Plug it under your competence-proving content.

• Tutor 5-10 people by hopping on FREE calls.

• Out of those calls, learn about their goals and struggles. Get 3-5 testimonials.

• Continue writing. Beef up the competence content into a complete system and outline. 

• Turn your free service into a paid pack of 4 consulting calls charging $250-$500 using your new system and outline.

• Plug the 3-5 testimonials under your paid service on your website.

• Start studying advanced algebra. Or pivot into Chemistry. Rinse and repeat.

This is how you start a personal brand.

- Jake

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Want to learn how I built my Personal Brand online, check me out!

Want to work with me? Schedule a call!