Does The Perfect Personal Brand Exist?

I had an interesting question the other day and it went like this:

“Should I put things in my brand that could make it more appealing to my stakeholders,
even if they’re not as strong as other things I have to offer?”

It came at the part of my workshop where delegates, having spent time creating a list of who they are and what they offer, start paring those down to the strongest ones, which will end up in their personal brand. So essentially, I was being asked:

“Is it better to base my personal brand on what I think people want, or what I think I can best offer?”

What do you think the answer is?

Well, my answer was a firm, direct and emphatic “No”. Want to know why?

Because the perfect personal brand doesn’t exist.

There’s not a single brand that works for everybody. Even in the world of big consumer brands like Apple or Coca Cola, there are people who are fanatics of the brand – who wouldn’t countenance any other make of tech product or fizzy drink. But for every one of those, there is another person who severely dislikes the brand – who wouldn’t countenance buying them if they were the only option on the shelf.

Those companies spend millions of dollars every year marketing and advertising their wares to gain more customers – but no amount of budget will ever get them 100% buy-in.

Your personal brand is no different

Just like Apple and Coca Cola, you can’t create a brand that everybody will like.

Even if you went around canvassing the opinions of every one of your stakeholders, asking what would appeal most to them, you’d likely end up with such an array of opinions (with some of them possibly in direct contradiction) that you’d be a confused mess.

Instead, the only way to preserve your sanity is to listen to one person and one person alone: YOU.

(I said the perfect brand didn’t exist, but I do believe in the existence of the perfect approach to working out your personal brand…and this is it.)

It ain’t all razzmatazz

Sometimes I get push back on this viewpoint from people who think the strongest elements they could put into their brand are a bit run-of-the-mill – and therefore less appealing. But you can’t predict what will or won’t appeal to people; one person’s run-of-the-mill is another person’s top notch.

For instance, you may think beans on toast is too basic and a Michelin starred dish is what’s going to appeal to your audience. But remember just how many people love beans on toast (a recent figure said 2.5 million cans are sold each day in the UK), precisely because it’s basic, they know they’ll like it and they can have it again and again with absolute consistency.

If you believe it’s a great brand, they’ll believe it’s a great brand

What’s important is to have total confidence in whatever brand you’re selling – be it comfort food or fine dining – and you can only do that if you build your brand on the strongest elements of who you are and what you offer…not the weaker ones you’ve told yourself should be in there. Because the closest you’ll get to a perfect personal brand is offering people the best version of what you’ve already got.