When I hosted the Marketing Yourself Masterclass earlier this month (replay here), I asked everyone to answer this question in the chat box:

  • What’s the hardest thing about marketing yourself?

The answers included:

  • Knowing the difference between marketing my brand vs marketing myself
  • Having a well defined product and knowing how to execute it
  • Getting over the fear
  • The sheer scope of learning all those marketing skills and tools needed to build an online presence.
  • it feels like bragging
  • knowing what to say about myself….
  • How to find the time for marketing – it seems to be a full-time job
  • I’m trying to service clients & write content but feel I’m failing at both
  • I don’t know what about me is worth marketing
  • How personal should I get in telling my story?

Do you resonate with any of these challenges?

These are the questions my book Marketing Yourself was written to answer. (If you don’t have my book yet, you can buy it here.)

Your personality is part of your branding. Keep your business brand separate from your personal brand only if your business can be separated from you. If it can’t, then turn up the dial!

For many experts and entrepreneurs, it’s your personality that makes you stand out. Hiding who you are is like leading with your weakest side first. Sure, you can do your thing, but so can other people. The secret sauce, the special magic that you bring to everything is…you.

“There is no brand as powerful as your name.” – Dr Alan Weiss

There is a strange fascination that happens when people share their personality. It can be repulsive, for people who don’t share your opinions, and think poorly about your secrets. I talked about this last week (at the 46-minute mark in the Masterclass linked above) and how you can calibrate how many secrets to share according to your own tolerance for risk.

In my experience, working with experts and entrepreneurs for the past 12+ years, I find that people often err too far on the side of caution, and hide more of themselves than they should.

Coaxing the friendly, unique sides out of yourself is an easy shortcut to supercharge your marketing.

If your business can deliver or operate without you, then you can keep your business brand separate, if that makes you feel more comfortable – but you will forfeit the brand equity in your personal name.

Keeping a personal brand protects your earned reputation for all time. If you pivot from project to project (like I did with Danger Man, Father Fitness, Pura Vida MultiMedia, and Wellness Website Design) your own personal brand is the throughline in all of your pivots.

I think it’s good to have both a personal brand and a business brand.

My personal blog at CaelanHuntress.com showcases a lot of my writing, and my adventures, and a few things I plan to always do – like being a keynote speaker and a business coach. No matter my professional positioning, I plan to do both of these things indefinitely. People don’t hire Stellar Platforms for these services, they hire Caelan Huntress.

But I developed Stellar Platforms because seeing the entire system from end-to-end – this is the part that I’m good at. All my previous projects just helped me turn from step to step to get here.

And in the future, who knows? I might pivot again, but my personal brand will come with me.

What about you?

How do you feel about your personal and business branding? Hit reply and tell me what you think, or, you can apply for a free, no-obligation discovery call to have a brainstorming session with me.