2025 is going to be the year of our biggest Rebrand yet and we're starting with the personal brand something interesting happens when you have a strong personal brand the opportunities that are coming to you that you attract are different the people are different the money is different everything is different when your standards for yourself are up here and everybody else understands that I can tell you from my journey that my personal brand has actively changed my life from being able to have a sixf figer career this early on in my tech journey to being able
to build an audience of high quality engaged people who are interested in their intellectual and personal development public speaking gigs that has come from my personal brand people know what I stand for the type of energy that I'm bringing and that's what I want to talk about today how to build your personal brand in 2025 because it can seem quite confusing or what platform am I on what do I focus on how do I actually articulate what it is that I stand for that's what we're going to get into so we'll talk about things that
are more theoretical but there will be actual exercises to do throughout this video which you can either do as you go along or towards the end I want you to take action I don't want you to come away from this video thinking that was interesting but I still have done nothing no this is an action driven Channel baby so this actually talk about what a personal brand is and why it matters and actually to illustrate this I'm going to use some examples of people that all of us know or most of us know and the
first one is Rihanna what words come to your mind when you think about Rihanna perhaps bold maybe Fearless a boundary Pusher multifaceted this is a brand that has been cultivated over time and it's been very deliberate it's in her music it's in her fashion right it's even in her business when she launches something it is pushing the boundaries she launched a makeup line right not having been in the makeup industry and had one of the largest shade ranges of any other brand and what happens is when you now think Rihanna her associations are so strong
that the type of opportunities again that she attracts the type of companies that want to work with her the type of brands that reach out to her or that she crafts all form around this personal brand that she's built over time now think of someone like Steve Jobs the co-founder of Apple what words come to your mind perhaps Visionary perfectionist minimalist this was a man who wore the same outfit every day because he didn't even want to think about what to wear like he wanted that abstracted away I'm so locked into the vision to the
mission right to my craft that I don't even want to know about what I'm wearing now I'm just a girl so I actually still want to look cute and wear my outfit but you see the thing that I'm talking about here again when you see Steve Jobs when he entered the room when he was speaking there was an understanding about what you were going to get right the energy that was going to be exuded that this was a Visionary in front of you and it you know it was embedded in apple and the products that
he was producing and the kind of Aura around apple right the fact that they're selling a product that probably does very similar things to other products for double the price that is because of the brand and that brand extended from Steve Jobs and so hopefully it's becoming clear how the personal brand can help Elevate you and the opportunities that you have access to and the people that you have access to the brands that you have access to right allows you to stand out in a SE of people in a competition whether it be career competition
or business competition or content creation whatever it is you stand out you're visible because of your brand but you also have credibility because of what you you've been working on right and and the associations of your brand people trust you to an extent in whatever it is that you do and the brand is associated with like I trust that if Rihanna's going to launch something it's probably going to be something that's going to push the boundaries or at least attempt to push the boundaries do something new right something bold when Steve Jobs launched something you
had an idea that there would be a level of high craftsmanship in it right he would be very particular about the Aesthetics and about the user experience that that the vision would be there all the time but there's also the idea about the connections people make with you because when that brand is so clear people know what they can expect from you and that builds a bond a bond that you can then leverage later on so in summary what is a personal brand well it's not just what you do and it's not just what you
talk about it's how you talk about things right it's how you show up it's the energy that you bring it's how you make people feel it's the brands and the people that you associate with it's what you look like it's the impact you have on others and so to wrap up part one we're going to start off with a light exercise but it's really just to get you thinking about the people that you respect the people that you admire and that you may want to start to emulate to an extent right so list some of
your favorite celebrities or business people or even people in your personal life and the words that you associate with them and think about why that is why is it that you associate these characteristics with this individual so now let's move on to actually identifying your goals and your brand because we've spoken about other people and we understand you know why it matters but we have to go back to what it is that we're trying to achieve so that we understand how we can leverage our personal brand to get that to get to our end goals
but also to enjoy the journey as we're moving along it it's really important that you understand your high Lev Vision right what is the vision for your life right what type of individual do you want to be what type of individuals do you want to be around the opportunities you want to be around right and Link that to your brand so start off by stating what is it that you are trying to achieve do you have specific career and business goals right do you have specific artistic goals perhaps content creation goals right what is it
that you are envisioning for your life and it doesn't just have to be one thing but if you have just a few select high level goals then we can start to craft a brand that makes sense with that and here's the thing about a personal brand it doesn't have to be every single thing about you crammed into the brand that's not what this is right this isn't I'm a multifaceted person and so every single inch of me has to be present in a brand and every time somebody interacts with me they need to know that
I do this this this this this isn't what the brand is and this is why it's really important that you understand the vision because then it becomes tailored the brand becomes tailored to the vision and this is not to say that things don't evolve and that your brand doesn't evolve over time and start to you know be connected to new things evolution is a natural part of all things so because this requires a great deal of Interest inection and spending time with yourself the theory of this part is pretty short but there are quite a
few exercises that I encourage you to do in order to get thinking about your goals and your brand start by writing down some of your long-term High Lev goals right whether they're business personal related write these down now think of three to five words you want people to associate with you now I actually want you to think about a word to describe how you want people to feel when they interact with you so this may be different to those other ones because this could be something like inspired curious energized calm how do you want to
make people feel this is huge and then if you're a visual learner as much as we've written things down make a vision board of the things that you want associated with your personal brand right taking some of those words and inspiration and form a vision board something that you can look at this is your personal branding vision board now let's talk about building a person personal brand online now things are getting a little bit more practical again so we've done some introspection we're understanding what it is that we are trying to achieve and the brand
that we are trying to form but then how do you actually make that a reality and we're going to start off with the online component the internet has the ability to give you access to Millions if not billions of people right and your platforms are where people either one find you first maybe they find you on LinkedIn or Instagram so that will be their first encounter or it's an opportunity for people to solidify what they know about you if they've met you in person at a networking event or something of that nature either way your
online Persona is going to be very important so there's two primary elements to consider when thinking about personal branding online the first component regardless of the platform is going to be those immediate things like your profile picture the banner the bio these are things that people use to make a an instant decision about you as to whether they should even continue to dig deeper right and know more about you and the second are the long-term components this is the actual posting because obviously I can get a sense from you about your profile picture and your
bio but I haven't really formed the bondan that's going to come with the actual content whether it is you know written format or video content or photos right this is how we're going to form a bond and an understanding of your personal brand that stands the test of time but I do want to speak about the platforms that I think that you should be considering regardless of what it is you're trying to achieve now the first one is going to be LinkedIn and I know you've probably heard it already but please please please LinkedIn again
can change your life think about it logically there are millions of users on this platform many of which are from a corporate or business that sort of background which means if you have intentions of building a brand that will one day maybe need you know business investment or access to other Founders or you know professionals even in your career you should be on LinkedIn you should be building that brand on LinkedIn it's also where a lot of thought leadership happens because it has been branded in itself as the professional platform people who are attempting to
to Brand themselves as thought leaders are going to be here and so if you are trying to enter a space and it doesn't necessarily just have to be like highly corporate I see creators on the platform I see artists on the platform Founders on the platform please don't think that LinkedIn is just for you know I'm trying to climb the corporate ladder and engineering this goes way beyond that the brilliant thing about LinkedIn is it is formulated on the network right you post something somebody else sees it then you have access to their Network right
the network effect is a integral part of LinkedIn which is why it's so powerful we're not only building your brand but getting your brand out there into important spaces effectively now thinking about LinkedIn you may be like I'm not quite a fan of writing and you know what that's completely understandable it is not my first choice of um communication either however you don't just have to write long posts right there is now video features on LinkedIn which they are pushing but also you've always been able to use photos and carousels so you can break ideas
down right you can use pictures in fact it's very it's highly encouraged to use pictures along with your posts so there are multiple ways to get your vision across and your brand across on LinkedIn even articles perhaps you are somebody who likes written communication and you're really good at writing you know thoughtful pieces that get information cross in a succinct way articles are also there on LinkedIn so there are multiple mediums there are multiple ways for you to solidify your brand on LinkedIn it's not just one way now the second platform I'm going to talk
about that I think is going to be really really important in 2025 in your personal brand is YouTube now naturally I'm biased I've been on YouTube for quite a while but there are so many benefits to being on YouTube for starters it is the second largest search engine after Google so in terms of exposure and visibility yeah there aren't many other places that are going to give you this level of that but the great thing about YouTube is that people get to spend more time with you and if you are building a brand what you
want is people to have time with you enough time so they can understand you and again what you stand for what associations they make with you and the Beautiful Thing is because you have more time here you can combine things like storytelling and entertainment even in an educational video it is is's a versatile tool for building authority in whatever section it is that you are even vloggers like think about it like and the time that you spend with particular vloggers right and you will have words that you associate with them whether it be luxury or
fun or you know excitable they're building a brand around that for a particular reason on YouTube the other really beautiful thing about YouTube is that you can create one asset like a long form video and then use that across other platforms to again solidify your brand think about this I make a video perhaps it's 15 20 25 minutes long I have that asset but I also have the ability to cut that up into Clips if I wanted to right and disperse those across Instagram Tik Tok even LinkedIn now right but I also have the ability
to take some of those ideas into written format perhaps I have a Blog maybe on substack maybe I have a newsletter or maybe I make it into a tweet or maybe I make it into a LinkedIn post or from that one YouTube video that one idea that I created and crafted so again in terms of making a personal brand or solidifying a personal brand and making it as easy as possible this one asset turns into such into multiple assets that we can leverage towards our goal and thank you for coming to my TED talk about
why you should start a YouTube channel I'm joking but I'm actually not because I do think you should start a YouTube channel in 2025 if you haven't these two platforms I think are the ones that you should be investing the most time in in 2025 towards your personal brand that's not to say you can't be on Instagram and Tik Tok and Snapchat or whatever the the other brands are and platforms and in fact there is value to be gained on those and we can use some of our assets on these platforms but in terms of
where you should concentrate your efforts especially in a world where people are craving more connection with you LinkedIn and YouTube is a beautiful combination now a final platform to consider with your personal brand is your website a personal website now you don't have to have one but you also have a lot of freedom with the personal website right you can curate it however you want in order to get the message across right through the Imaging through carousels through embedded things like videos and so forth you have more control over it so whilst you don't benefit
from exposure and visibility like being on the platform you do have customization that's just the final thing I have all three of these I have LinkedIn I have YouTube and I have a personal website and I intend on optimizing each of these in 2025 so continuing with the theme of your online presence let's talk about content right CU I've spoken about platforms but you also spoke about the fact that long-term brand creation is reliant on the content that you're posting so how do you decide what to post well the very popular format is to use
content pillars for example if you're a health and wellness coach some of your content pillars may be around fitness routines nutrition tips and mental health so those are your content pillars those are the things that you are going to be writing about and actually you're fine when you start there is a lot of things that you can be talking about right based on your personal experience and then also if you get stuck we still have ai we still have chat GPT here we can start to use AI to get our branding aligned with our content
pillars what do I mean by this well you can feed chat information about you before you start asking about ideas for content right you can say here is my high level Vision my goals here is my personal brand in terms of the words that I associate with it in terms of the way I want people to feel now given these on my three content pillars provide me with a list of ideas for videos for LinkedIn posts and so let's take it back to that health and wellness coach right we know that our content PS are
going to be around Fitness they're going to be around nutrition and they're going to be around mental health and I'm going to give chat information about my brand perhaps my brand is holistic calm kind those are the words I want people to associate with me and my brand cuz that could be very different to a different type of coach that may be like hard-hitting Boot Camp style you know tough love they're both in health and fitness but they're very different energies they're very different brands even if their content pillars were the same you'd have a
very different experience with one than the other even in terms of the visualization and the Aesthetics that are associated with both if you went on one page you'd get a very different energy in terms of the photography even the sounds that are used all of these components tie together to give people an experience an experience of you that goes beyond just a list of tips and content so in terms of action steps cuz I know that I have gone quite in depth in this particular section but it matters it really does the first thing I
want you to do is think about those content pillars right and also still think about The Branding still think about the words you want people to associate with you and the feelings that you want but write down your content pillars things that you want to be talking about and start to brainstorm ideas around them use chat gbt if you would like in fact I advise even just dabbling in it even if you don't use the ideas sometimes just seeing the list Sparks new ideas in your brain that of happens to me if I'm using chat
I might not like exactly what it said but it's triggered something in my head and now I'm like actually not quite that but this links to something that I've been working on or something that I've you know looked into don't be afraid to also use those branding words in more visual tools so when you're looking for inspiration think about things like Pinterest and you can type in those words and see the type of visual associations that are turning up so once you do that I actually want you to take some action though in terms of
getting some content out there you don't have to do this right now but I would really like you before the new year starts to have your profile set up on LinkedIn and on YouTube if you're going to go down that route we'll start with LinkedIn because I think it has a lower barrier to entry than YouTube LinkedIn is simple enough to get set up right now and if you have one optimize it make sure that your profile picture your bio all of those things are aligned with what it is that you are trying to achieve
in 20125 with that vision and with that brand think about that so now what do we have well we have an understanding of why branding matters we have an idea about our visions and our brand and how we want people to feel and the associations we want people to make with us we understand the platforms that we should probably be focusing on and putting energy into if we want to further our goals and our brand in 2025 we have some content pillars things that we might start to talk about and we've also utilized chat GPT
in order to formulate an idea and the final thing I actually want you to do is think about how consistently you can post on these platforms don't commit to every day if you can't post every day it's better that you consistently show up once a week but every single week than you burn yourself out because I've done it before you post like five times then nobody sees you for 5 months think about the time that you have available to you but also how you can optimize that time now part four of this is building a
strong offline present taking your personal brand into real life in person now why does this even matter well I've spoken extensively about your online presence but that does not negate the importance of interactions that occur face to face right the feeling that people get when they meet you when they speak to you in person right when you are there in flesh that is very different and that has an extra layer to when you are building your personal brand now I did a whole video speaking about networking why it's important but also how to actually get
started and optimize your networking events that you're attending and so forth so I won't go into into too much depth but I do want you to start to think about how your personal brand that you have been thinking about continuously throughout this video throughout the exercises that you've done how you can take that brand into person in real life maybe it's the way you dress maybe it's about the things you talk about maybe it's you know how you're going to introduce yourself based on these branding things we've been speaking about right maybe it's even the
type of events you're going to go to the pictures that you want to be posting and taking at these events all of these things and so for this section after You' finished watching this video I want to encourage you to go ahead and watch that part of the it's part of the series The Rebrand and go and watch that video but I do still have some exercises for you to complete in order to again start taking action the first is that you're actually going to follow 10 people on LinkedIn in your industry now you're thinking
that seems more like a online presence kind of activity but the reason why you're going to do this is again linking back to the network effect people ask how do I know what events to go to how do people find events they find them through the network Once Upon a Time if that network was only the people that you know in person oh so and so I saw him the other day invited me to this event that's great and that's a beautiful thing to leverage but also use your online Network build that out so that
you know when events are happening in your industry in the areas that you want to be in the places that you want to be so start right now by following 10 people on LinkedIn in your industry doesn't matter if you know them or not the next thing you're going to do though is you're going to actually book in for at least one networking event in 2025 now if you can't find them through your feed use the LinkedIn feature in order to search for events in your area or go to Eventbrite those are your three options
leverage the network and things that are posted there actually search LinkedIn or search for Eventbrite if you also know of specific platforms that link to your industry leverage those two and try asking people ask people in your workplace or in your business or people that you already know what kind of events they're going to where they're going to be in 2025 and so that's it personal branding in 2025 now I know this was quite a long video but there is a lot to get through in terms of this and each of these again could have
been its own video but at a very high level I wanted to provide almost a a big picture view of the brand that you are crafting and how you're going to be able to do that from like introspection and ideation through to online and to offline and with networking and the other videos that I have on my channel that you can access I hope you're excited for 2025 check out these videos If you want to get more in depth information about any of these topics and I'll see you in the next video
