How to Stand Out In the New Era of Personal Branding

Your personal brand is never going to stand out if all you do is copy your competitors. I've been building personal brands for over 17 years now. And in this video, I want to share with you the seven principles that I use to build personal brands that actually [music] stand out in a world where information is widely available and accessible.

Why do we still have problems? The reason why is because information does not mean implementation. Now obviously as a creator who is making content online you can't do implementation for your audience but what you can do is you can make the implementation of what you're teaching easier for your audience to execute.

This is what it means when people say things like make useful content. You're making it easier for your audience to take action. And you can actually accomplish this in many different ways.

But to make it as easy as possible for you to actually implement, I am going to cover just one of them today, which is pairing your content with a useful lead magnet. Now, before you leave the video, I mean like a actually useful lead magnet. The marketing world has, in my opinion, kind of ruined the term lead magnet.

So many people just put together some [ __ ] little checklist or even worse an AI summary of your video and that's the lead magnet that they're giving away. And because the marketing world has kind of destroyed and ruined this term of lead magnet moving forward in this video, I'm not going to refer to these as lead magnets. We're going to call them implementation tools.

An implementation tool is just something that we can pair with our content. Maybe it's a workbook, maybe it's an AI prompt, maybe it's some sort of worksheet, something that you can pair with the content, with what you are teaching in your video to make it easier for your audience to take what you are teaching and actually help them implement it into their life, into their business, into whatever you are wanting them to do. For this implementation tool that we are giving you in this video, we decided to go with a workbook.

This is the rston standing out workbook. And inside of this workbook, there's actually an exercise that helps you, this is so meta, it helps you develop your implementation tool. The link is in the description down below.

All you got to do is click, enter your email. I'm going to send it to you and you can download it there and actually start taking action on what I am teaching here. How meta, right?

It's literally what I am trying to teach you. And the fact that you have clicked the link and entered your email gives you proof and evidence that this is a valid way to build [clears throat] your leads list. This is how you get people that are not interested in just consuming what you have to say, but actually want to take action.

Those are the best clients in the world. And I just want you to know that this very approach is what has allowed us to generate over 90,000 leads for my business in the first 20 months of building my personal brand. One workbook that we did with my OG 6 and a half hour course that we released for free on YouTube, that one workbook has brought in over 45,000 leads.

Whoever is the most useful in your niche will always win. Now that we understand that we need to be or try to be the most useful in our niche, the problem that you might be facing is that you chose the wrong body of water to swim in within your niche. Most people never actually stand out because they chose the wrong body of water to compete in.

You have your ocean, your lake, your pond, and your puddle to choose from. And the last thing that you want to do [music] is pick an ocean of competition if you are still a minnow. Now, what the [ __ ] do I mean by calling you a minnow?

So, let's use an example named Brian. Okay, Brian is a 23-year-old dude who has recently had an incredible weight loss journey. Let's say Brian went from weighing 254 pounds to 197 in just nine months and he feels a lot better.

He has more energy. Uh he's feeling more confident about his body. It's just an overall better life experience for him.

Now, here is where the majority go wrong. See, Brian wants to build a personal brand and a business around helping people with their weight loss journey. But the problem is, given Brian's experience, do you think that he is going to be able to compete in the ocean of weight loss going up against people who have served hundreds if not thousands of clients on their weight loss journey?

The answer, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, is why? Because Brian doesn't have the credibility in his background to give him permission to compete with those individuals. What has Brian accomplished so far?

It's something really meaningful, but he's only accomplished it on himself. So, where I would recommend that Brian start is actually not in an ocean, but in a puddle, not even a pond. I want Brian in this scenario to start in a puddle.

I care about you, and so I have to give you some of the tough love that these other individuals that you're learning from are not willing to share with you. And so, what does it mean to tell Brian to start in a puddle? Well, knowing that Brian is a young man, maybe Brian needs to first start by serving and helping young men in their early 20s.

Maybe they're also busy with going to school. They're in college or work and he needs to help them lose 20 lbs in 6 to 9 months. Suddenly, when doing this, when chunking down, when working our way from the ocean to the lake to the pond to the puddle, now suddenly Brian does stand a chance.

Why? Because his credibility is what is determining the body of water that he is choosing to compete in. Take me for example.

I don't talk about brand. I don't even necessarily just talk about personal brand. I talk about personal brand for entrepreneurs and business owners.

And the reason why I have chosen to do that is because my credibility, my experience and expertise lends me the ability to compete in that pond right now. I don't necessarily have as much credibility when it comes to a brand overall, but the majority of my big W's and the things that people know me for is personal branding for entrepreneurs. And so that is why I chose to compete in the pond rather than jumping into the lake or the ocean.

Now it's time for you to choose your body of water that you compete in. But I want to actually make it easier for you to actually do this rather than just sit here and watch me talking about it. So my team made you a Rston standing out workbook.

Like I said earlier, it is completely free. If you click the link in the description down below, enter your email. We're going to send it to you so that you can download it and actually put this into place.

And you'll see that there is an exercise in there for choosing your body of water. You're going to start by labeling the ocean. Okay, this is the biggest body of water within your niche that you could compete in.

Then you're going to identify the lake, the pond, and the puddle. Then what we're going to do is we're just going to choose which one of these bodies of water our experience and expertise lends us the credibility to compete in. And here's the really cool thing about this strategy.

You can move up in the bodies of water. You could go from a puddle to a pond to a lake and to an ocean. That is what I plan on doing.

But I only plan on doing it when two things are true. One, my experience and expertise actually provides me the credibility to compete in this new body of water. And the second thing that you need to make sure that you have in place is content market fit.

If you have traction with the body of water or within the body of water that you're currently competing in, that is another good signal along with the first one that you are at the season or the stage where you can move up. Choosing the right body of water is a huge step in standing out. It puts you ahead of 99.

9% of all the other personal brands in your niche. But now that we've chosen the body of water that we actually stand a chance at competing in, we need to figure out what makes us different from all the other fishes swimming in this body of water. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that one of, if not the strongest way to stand out from your competition is saying something different than what everybody else is saying.

And I'm going to stop for a second because I got to ask you a rhetorical question here. Doesn't that sound [ __ ] obvious? It's so obvious.

Yet, so few of us are actually doing this. If everyone in your niche, everyone in the body of water that you chose to compete in is saying the same thing, do you really think that repeating that same regurgitated advice is going to cause you to stand out? The answer is no.

If everyone is saying things should be done X way and you're over here saying, "No, I actually believe that Y is the right approach here. " there is a much stronger chance that your personal brand is going to stand out in the crowded loud space that you are currently existing in. Now, the obvious call out that I have to give just to make sure nobody misunderstands this is your contrarian take, your contrarian belief, it needs to be something that you actually do believe.

This needs to be something that you want to be known for. Okay? Like you flatearthers out there, you're standing out, but not necessarily for the reason that you think you are.

Do you see my point here? We want to pick something that is different than what other people are saying, but it has to be core to who we are and what we actually believe. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to consistently stick with this contrarian belief.

The moment that anybody brings up any sort of push back on it, we're going to crumble and what we tried to build our personal brand on, the foundation we tried to establish will erode very quickly. One of our clients is a perfect example of this. She is brand new to YouTube and her and her team are absolutely killing it.

They've grown to 50,000 subscribers in about 10 months and her median view per video is around 32,000 views, but her top six videos are at least a 6x outlier. That means they did six times the performance of the average. If I'm doing really quick math, that means they are at least 180,000 views or more.

And what's very interesting about these top six videos is five out of the top six opens with a very clear and understandable contrarian take. She's taking something that the audience believes to be true and completely flipping it on its head. When I was trying to lose weight, I was doing 2 hours of sweaty cardio a [music] night.

But then I lost 55 lbs and I did it by doing less exercise, not more. >> The typical belief that exists out there around weight loss is I'm going to have to work out a ton. And she immediately provides a contrarian take on how she was able to lose 55 lbs.

And she did it by working out less, not more. I could give you example after example of different clients that we've done this with. One of our clients, we actually implemented the same exact approach, but instead of in their intro, it was on their packaging.

We had a very clear, contrarian take on their thumbnail, and to this day, it is their number one video on YouTube. So, clearly, this [ __ ] is working. But let's make it work for you.

Inside of your free Rston standing out workbook, there is a very simple yet wildly effective exercise to help you identify your contrarian beliefs. If you haven't clicked that link in the description, then you're not going to be able to implement this exercise. I'm not going to actually walk you through this one.

This is one that I want you to do on your own time. And so, if you don't have the workbook, you're not going to be able to. The way you get the workbook is you click the link in the description, enter your email, I'm going to send it to you, and you can download it and actually take action on what we're walking through in this video.

So, now we have something different to say. But the problem here is if nobody actually clicks on your video, nobody watches your content, how are they going to know that you have something different to say? Here you are wrapping your content in the exact same way as everyone else in the body of water that you chose to compete in, and you're wondering why you're not standing out.

I got a lot of love for you, so I'm going to give you some more tough love. Objectively speaking, I believe this is so [ __ ] clear and obvious when I say it out loud. Yet, it is the opposite of what the majority of personal brand strategists and the advice out there is telling you to do.

Notice how I'm injecting a little contrarian take in here. It's a little bit of a meta demonstration of how I like to roll. The majority of these strategists online would tell you that you need to use the same titles, thumbnails, and hooks as your competition.

But all this creates is a world of blue M&M's. And in a world of blue M&M's, I actually believe there's a lot more opportunity for the brown, the green, the yellow, the orange M&M's to actually stand out. Someone that we were working with last year had made a very large brand positioning pivot.

Okay. She rebranded herself from being known as a fitness coach to being a personal branding coach. And honestly, I think she did so in such an excellent way.

She literally embodies the idea of wrapping her content to stand out and she has some pretty wild hooks. >> You can't just throw raw dough in the oven and expect croissants to come out. >> What the It's fun.

It's a little unexpected. It's kind of quirky. But the most important part of this is that it's actually true to her.

It's [clears throat] her personality. That's how she communicates with her friends, with her clients, with people in her world. And like I mentioned earlier, one way that can be very effective in packaging or wrapping your content in a way that stands out is taking one of those contrarian beliefs that you identified in that previous exercise and actually utilizing this in let's say for example your YouTube packaging.

One of our amazing clients, Greg Levia, is an incredible example of this. Greg's top video on his channel, at least as of right now, is literally this to a tea. And this is a video that him and his creative director JJ absolutely destroyed.

And I want to be very clear, the big reason why the video did so well, the packaging and rapping helped. The main reason why content performs the way that it does is the actual meat inside of it. It's what Greg is saying.

He's talking about how everyone in the business space tells you to avoid saturated markets. You want to go find the white space rather than competing in a saturated market. And he actually has a wildly contrarian belief on this.

He believes that the best opportunities lie within a saturated market. But it's finding the white space within that saturated market. That's what he's done with Bloom Energy.

That's one of the many different product lines that they've launched with this methodology that has been so successful. So, in knowing that this was one of the contrarian takes that he shared, my content director Trevor had the idea, the brilliant idea of doing a thumbnail. And the copy on this thumbnail just said the words, "Don't be original.

" It is very clear and obvious that when JJ and the team cooked up this thumbnail and put it up and put it live into the testing, this is when the video really started taking off. There is a moment in the graph where you can see it goes from being a little bit more on the flat to a crazy spike up and to the right. Now, another way that you can wrap your content differently from your competitors is not to film in the exact same setup or environment that they are.

We don't need another creator with the red and blue light, the fake plant, and the bookshelf full of books that you've never actually read in the background. And I understand in the beginning, the way that we learn is we copy. But we need to quickly go from copying to making it our own.

A good homie of mine, Mark Brazil with Open Residency, this is a prime example. You can't scroll through your Instagram feed without seeing a podcast setup that is kind of copying in some version what Mark has created with Open Residency. My buddy Takim Moore has actually been doing this with some of his YouTube videos where he's literally filming them in the jungles of Australia.

It's [ __ ] epic and it's different than what a lot of people in his space are doing. But again, the most important thing here is that it's actually true to him. Taki loves being outdoors and in nature.

And so pairing this whole thing that he loves with content creation not only allows him to stand out, it also makes it more enjoyable as a process overall. Now this is a little bit more of a nuance or complex exercise and initiative. What we've decided to include here is rather than an exercise to walk you through this, it is a playbook that is outlining in a little bit more detail what we have covered here.

some of the best practices that we like to break and not utilize that everybody else is teaching and how we like to kind of just break the rules. But the key is in order to break the rules, you do need to understand them. And so I would encourage you to go through this playbook and use it as the filter, the lens that you are going to view how you wrap your content in the future through.

Now, the craziest thing in the world is you could get tons you could get millions of people to click on your content to watch your Instagram reel, but if you're just saying the same generic [ __ ] that everybody else is saying, well, honestly, you're not really standing out. [music] Generic advice, aka the majority of the content that you are unfortunately seeing online right now, is not going to help you stand out. Generic advice may get views, but the moment that that creator's content is no longer being serviced to their audience in the algorithm, those same people that were watching the content are no longer searching out their name.

Why? because they haven't done anything to differentiate themselves from the thousands, potentially millions of other creators that are saying the same [ __ ] What actually sets you apart from all the other fish in the puddle, pond, lake, or ocean that you have chosen is instead of sharing this generic [ __ ] that everybody else is regurgitating, you actually share your own lessons that you have learned through your successes and failures, aka your experience. Not just what you've read, not some podcast that you listen to, not the transcript from your favorite creators YouTube video.

I want you to take your lived experiences, the things that have worked, the things that have not worked and I want you to figure out what did you learn from that and how could your audience actually apply that to what they are doing. This is content that only you can make. This very approach is what is separating the top 1% of personal brands versus the rest of the 99%.

The top dogs are talking about what they've done because they've actually done something worth sharing. What we need to do is we need to develop what we call a credibility bank. Your credibility bank is where you can deposit your failures, your successes, your wins and losses paired with a lesson that you learned and how your audience can actually apply it to their life.

By doing this and utilizing your credibility bank, you're doing two things in your content. You are establishing credibility while you are actually teaching the audience what they need to do. One of our past clients actually has done this incredibly well.

She is openly sharing with her audience the behind the scenes of different cosmetic procedures, supplements, and routines that she has done or utilized. And she's not just sharing how they went. She is going a layer much deeper in sharing what they actually cost.

This is something that is traditionally more taboo or untalked about. and she has been absolutely crushing it and building such an incredibly in-depth and loyal audience within her YouTube and Instagram content. Now, this is something that we guide a lot of our Rston and Select members through a very robust version of this credibility bank.

But to actually make it a lot easier for you to implement in less time, we have a more simplified version of the credibility bank that we have included in your Rston standing out workbook. The link is in the description. And all you got to do is click that link, enter your email, we'll send it to you, you can download it and you can actually implement what we are sharing.

And so far in this video, a lot of what we have talked about for standing out are things that you need to do. But what we have not covered yet is the things that you need to not do. Now, picture this.

You're out with some friends for a happy hour. Everyone's ordering a round of drinks, but then it gets to one of your friends at the end, the last person, the fifth person. and instead of ordering a cocktail, they order a club soda with lime.

Stands out, right? Not because of the alcohol or lack of alcohol. It's because four people did one thing and one did something different.

Now, this is obviously a very simplified example, but the principle remains true. There is a lot that I have chosen to not do with my personal brand because it aligns with my values, with my morals, and with what I want to be known for and what I don't want to be known for. The cool thing about this is it also just happens to be a big reason why I believe the personal brand that we are building is actually standing out in what a lot of people would argue is a very saturated niche online.

I have done my darnest to be very intentional with who I do and do not pair myself with. And the reason why is because I know that over time these pairings done consistently over time creates associations. Aka the way that my audience views me changes based on the things or people that I choose to pair my brand with.

I've also been very intentional in deciding to not leverage utilizing the faces of people that I have worked for or worked with in our thumbnails on YouTube. I think you probably are aware of the fact that that would dramatically increase our exposure. More people would click on our videos, but it is something that I do not want to overlever because I understand that the people that I desire to work with are going to see that and not respect it.

And so that is why on our channel I have chosen to not utilize that tactic that the majority of people who occupy my role and are talking about what I talk about tend to do. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm saying it is a deliberate choice, a very intentional choice based on knowing what my outcome is that I desire and reverse engineering the actions that I need to take that move me closer to that outcome, not further away.

And the way that you can go about figuring out what you're not willing to do is actually quite simple. In your Rston standing out workbook, there is an exercise that we call your desired associations. And it's going to help you identify what you want your audience to associate with your personal brand.

And by doing that, it informs you what you need to consistently pair yourself with in order to make those associations occur between you and the thing that you want to be. associated with. Not only are you identifying the things that you do want to be associated with, you are also going to identify what do I not want to be associated with, which again is going to give you the understanding or the guidelines or really the the framework for you to think through of how you can make decisions of what you don't do.

Again, like I said at the top here, it's not just about what we do. Our personal brand builds in strength. It creates more trust and loyalty, not just from the actions we take, but the things that we decide not to do.

Now, expertise alone won't cut it. And why is that? Because everyone is copying your [ __ ] Your competition can take your expertise and regurgitate it right back to their audience.

And the question that a lot of people ask me is, "Doesn't that suck? " It's debatable. I choose to look at it as an honor rather than a frustration.

What is far more difficult to rip off than expertise is your humanity. The things that make you the human that you are, aka the person in the personal brand. And I know this happens, too.

I mean, there's plenty of people that rip off somebody's personality and who they are as a human. But let's be real, it is far more blatantly obvious and way less easy for these individuals to get away with. If everyone in your puddle, pond, lake, or ocean are just establishing and building their personal brand off their expertise, I see a white space for you to take your expertise and multiply it by your humanity.

And even deeper than this, while everyone else is building a one-dimensional personal brand that doesn't really build or generate much audience loyalty, you can actually be leveraging the relationship sphere utilizing an exercise that we like to call interest stacking. At a basic level, I believe that the relationships that we have in our life fall into different distances on the relationship sphere. An acquaintance, as an example, is going to be further out on the relationship sphere.

We probably have one thing in common with them. A friend is going to be a little bit closer. We probably have a couple of things in common.

Our best friend or maybe our romantic partner, we probably have a lot in common with them. I believe that you can develop closer proximity and more loyalty with your audience by utilizing this very principle that works in the real world in developing relationships in interest stacking with your audience. And the way that we do this is we need to identify the things outside of our expertise that make us human.

This is our values, our interests, our obsessions, our hobbies, the nonniche, non-expertise human inputs that make up who we are. In the content that we produce, a lot of times I reference my love for Harley-Davidson's metal or trash TV, among many other things. And what I notice is that stacked on top of my expertise causes a certain segment of our audience to have a deeper connection with the brand that we are creating.

The more interest that you can stack in your content, the more opportunities that you give your audience to connect with you on a deeper level. And lucky for you, inside of your Rollston standing out workbook, we actually have an exercise for you to identify these non-niche human inputs that you can stack with your audience. The next problem that you're going to run into is figuring out how do I continue standing out.

Click here to watch my video on how you can utilize these seven elements of world building to build a world that your audience never wants to leave.