I can bet you

one thing, that in your life, you have progressed in many aspects due to connections. This is what I mean. Someone’s personal brand has been directly or indirectly responsible for some of your greatest achievements in life. We are all interconnected.

Increasingly, as already discussed, the world is more and more looking for solutions and not accolades. The world is looking for value and not a vibe. It is looking for people who care and not who know. You and I can only provide what this world is looking for through our personal brands.

What of Qualification and Competence?

It has been an unconscious law that has been operating for a while now, but this is being overtaken with events. The supply of competent and qualified people far exceeds the demand for the same. The personal brand is what makes you quantify what your competition is and helps you to find what your audience wants.

As such, it is important for each of us to start minding our personal brands and start living this world crafting it. This is because soon enough, consciously the world will only interact with those people that have valid personal brands. The following are the advantages of having a personal brand.

1. You Become The Go-To Person

If I wanted a graphics designer, I will not care about how many academic accolades they have. By the way, I have never even checked. All I care about is the value that they are adding to me. How did I know about them? It was their personal brand that did the trick.

Tell The World With Your Brand

If you have a personal brand, you are consciously and unconsciously telling the world that you have separated yourself for this. Consequently, the world responds. Someone said that when you show up with clarity, the world responds with clarity.

The world needs people who offer solutions, not people who are sitting pretty with qualifications. When you create a personal brand, people start looking at you and for you to offer solutions to their problems. Soon enough, they start telling others about your value add. Your personal brand causes them to recognize you as an authority in the area of your passion.

2. You Collaborate With Industry Leaders

When you have created a personal brand, industry leaders, especially those operating in your niche, will most definitely take note of your work. A personal brand will, of course, be laced with the passion you have in offering the value.

Passion is contagious, and those who are passionate know how to recognize men and women of their like. Soon enough, a major industry leader in your niche gains confidence enough to not only notice your work but also to collaborate with you.

Collaboration means that they are extending their audience to you to add value to them. And this is a big deal. It is probably very difficult to get an endorsement from an industry leader if you do not have a personal brand crafted. But when you do, the doors that were shut get opened.

3. You Stand Out From the Crowd

The world is noisy. I can tell you that. As already explained the supply and demand curve for people at work is no longer the way it used to be a few decades back. Today, there are very many people who are qualified. It is a personal brand however that will make you stand tall in that crowed of qualified people.

I am not saying that you should not be qualified. I am saying that in addition to the qualification that you have, you should build a personal brand. That is what is going to help you to stand out from the crowd and from the noise of the qualified.

4. Your Reach Grows Exponentially

Paradoxically, people normally think that when you niche down and carve out a personal brand, you are excluding potential customers from your reach. You are saying to them that you do not need them. Well, that’s exactly true.

However, you are also telling your customers that you have specialized for them, that you are dedicated to them, and that you have built your brand for them because you care for them. Something happens when you get focused. Your reach starts increasingly exponentially because of the respect that you have earned by branding yourself.

It is a lie that when you brand yourself you will lose the market. The opposite is however true.

5. You Multiply The Existing Value

Focus is a great thing. When you are focused you are more productive than when you are not. Frankly, there are millions of things in life that you could do. However, when it comes to your personal brand, there are just a few things in life that you must do.

When you find what those things are and you double in on them, your value starts increasing. You churn out more products and services of great quality. You build more versatile solutions because you are not spread too thin, but also because you are passionate about the few things that you are doing.

That’s what a personal brand delivers to you. It compels you to focus and become the best in what you are doing.

6. Your Potential Is Released

Of course, when you are focused on a personal brand, you are zeroing in on what matters to you. You are delving on your passion, your gifts, and your talents. You cannot possibly build a great personal brand that does not excavate your potential.

However, if you are not building your personal brand, chances are that you will not be focused enough to excavate your potential. You will probably be doing things that you were not called to do, things that you are not passionate about, and things that do not matter to you.

With a personal brand, it is different. Even if you are not getting paid initially, you are expending your potential. This quote is very instructive:

“Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort”.

~ Charles J. Givens

So, there you are. You need to start building a personal brand if you do not have one. There is so much to gain.