How to Build a Personal Brand That Actually Makes Money (5 Steps)
Dec 27, 2023
I had someone reach out to me recently who said:
“I have a big following but I’m not making any money…what am I doing wrong?”
I checked their website and socials and saw that this person was great at brand building, but missing some key puzzle pieces.
The attention they were getting was all sand just sifting through their fingers.
They were shooting their chance of making money in the foot.
There are 5 key steps to making money as a personal brand or creator.
You’ve got to bolt these on in a specific order so you can make money from the attention you get.
If you’ve ever bought a course from some dude who teaches:
“The 5 Steps to Get Clients From Instagram”
But you tried it and it didn’t work..
It’s because the dude left out a bunch of other really important stuff you should have done before you had any business getting on Instagram…
Today I’m going to put the puzzle together for you once and for all.
I’m going to share the 5 steps that allow me to earn six figures in my coaching/creator business.
Think of each step as a layer in your business that builds upon the next.
Step #1: Create Your 100M Dollar Offer
Imagine a store in the mall with nothing to sell, yet the owner was acting unsure of what he needed to do to improve the business.
That would be funny, right?
Many creators are doing just that. They don’t even have an offer — and they’re out taking a course about funnel building.
Don’t they realize that the offer is what goes IN the funnel?
If you want to build a personal brand that makes money, the first step is to have something to sell.
I labeled this step “100M Dollar Offer” because Alex Hormozi’s book 100M Offers will show you exactly how to create yours.
It does leave out some details like knowing who your offer is for and what it actually does.
I show you how to figure those things out in my book Nail Your Niche…
and it includes a crash course on the 100M Offers book so you can create your offer without reading the book.
You can get a free copy of my book (just cover shipping) at:
Let’s pretend you want to help dads lose weight, then you put together an offer to help them do just that. We will walk through the rest of the steps with this example in mind.
Now that you have something to sell, let’s move to step #2.
Step #2: Build Your Funnel
You might be thinking:
“Brian, you’ve said before that I don’t need a funnel!”
While that’s technically true, not using a funnel is missing out on one of the best sources of internet leverage around.
If you help dads lose weight, you could write a book about your method.
If you wanted a quicker solution, you could post a video on a page that was a case study from a dad you already helped lose weight.
You could ask people to opt-in with their email to watch the case study.
On the video page, you would ask them to apply for 1:1 coaching.
Then, you could create a follow up email sequence to push registrants back to the page, since not everyone will watch the video or apply on the first visit.
Your funnel would collect new emails — because you would pitch it in your content — just like I’m pitching my book funnels in this content.
Your funnel would warm people up to the idea of working with you — because they would watch the case study and see evidence that your method works.
Your funnel’s email sequence would follow up with people automatically so you didn’t have to do this manually.
You could build it once and it would work for you in your sleep.
While you could do all of this stuff manually, it’s not sustainable.
Leveraging a funnel — once you build your offer — makes a lot of sense.
Step #3: Prospect Follow Up
As people start to go through your funnel, some of them will apply to work with you or book a call.
You might have a 20% close rate on your calls.
For every 10 calls you do, you end up with 8 people out there blowing in the wind. They didn’t become a client.
What do you do now?
The worst thing you can do is just write them off — just peace out and move on.
These folks are the closest thing to money you have.
Follow up with them somewhere between once a week and once a month.
By the way, don’t send them a message saying:
“Hey, just checking to see if you wanna work together?”
That’s lame and desperate.
Instead, think about what they told you on the call.
What do they think their biggest challenge is?
How can you add more value to them, based on what you know?
To follow up, send them a piece of content you created. Explain why you are sending it to them, specifically.
For example:
“Hey, I just posted this video and thought of you. I think it would help you discover your ideal client.”
You can literally double your revenue by following up with the people who reached out to work with you. They are the warmest leads you have.
Once you have an offer, a funnel, and you’re following up, the next piece to bolt on is…
Step #4: Send Daily Emails
This is something I learned from Dan Henry recently, and I’m still not doing.
It’s on my priority list and I’ll be ramping up the volume of emails. I just want to make sure I can preserve the quality of the emails while doing so.
Next to the warm prospects we talked about in step #3, the people on your email list are the next “closest to the money”.
Not reaching out to them — at least a few times a week — is leaving money on the table.
An email might tell the story of when you were an overweight dad, trying all types of diets, and how nothing was working.
Another email might be about the biggest mistakes dads make when trying to lose weight.
These point to the funnel you built.
Now that we have a bulletproof system to squeeze all the juice out of the fruit we’re harvesting, it’s time to ramp things up.
Let’s move onto the final step…
Step #5: Ramp Up Your Content
Building your audience is so important.
Some people make six figures without anything else we’ve talked about — no offer, funnel, or email list — just because they have 1M Youtube subs.
They earn a good income from Adsense, sponsorship deals and affiliates. They could earn 5-10x more if they took the steps we’re talking about here.
Ramping up your content is where most of the work lies after you do steps #1-4.
But, content is a massive undertaking on its own.
There are a lot of content mistakes to avoid. I’m still learning about this area of business, it’s my biggest weakness.
Here are the 3 content commandments that I’ve learned to follow — that I think will help you the most:
Commandment #1: High quality
People pay with their time more than with their money. When someone gives you 1 unit of their time (say, to watch your YouTube video) and you don’t deliver value, they are less likely to reinvest time with you again.
I’m a big believer in quality first. Make every investment your audience makes in you a great one.
High quality content is what leads people to share your content — which is the main way to grow anyway.
If your content isn’t so good that it is sharable, you won’t have the leverage of other people helping you grow.
Commandment #2: 80% Broad, 20% Niche
This is something I learned from Dan Koe and am still working to implement. The idea is that all your content shouldn’t be about your niche.
Your offer isn’t what defines your business. It’s just how you monetize.
So if you were the coach helping dads lose weight, 20% of the time you’d make a video about your niche, like:
“The 5 Reasons Dads Struggle to Lose Weight”
The other 80% of your content would be higher level stuff, like:
“4 Principles of Personal Fulfillment”
“How I Balance Business and Fatherhood”
“The #1 Thing That Brings Me Inner Peace”
These are just examples. They’re not the content you should create.
The answer to this depends on your personal values and interests.
Making 80% of your content around your principles allows you to build a brand based around values, not a narrow niche.
It prevents you from being known only as “the guy who helps dads lose weight”, forcing you to make content about and deliver an offer on that one thing forever.
Commandment #3: One Platform
It’s not wise to try to grow on all platforms at once. This is like trying to keep 10 plates spinning simultaneously.
Instead, prioritize ONE platform and repurpose the content to other platforms.
Once you have a platform systemized and it’s growing, shift your focus to the next one.
There you have it, the five steps to making money with your personal brand.
One last thing before you go…
If you remember in step two, we talked about building your funnel.
If you sell a book inside of your funnel, it will boost the credibility of your brand a lot faster than a thrown-together lead magnet.
But, not just any book will do. You need to write a client-getting book.
I’ve written a book on exactly how to do this, called Get Clients With a Book.
You can grab it for FREE (just cover shipping) here:
I hope this has lined up the dominoes for you, so you can knock them down.
Brian
