6 Personal Branding Rules to Being Popular and Profitable

One of the things that frustrates me to no end is when entrepreneurs strive too hard to build a personal brand or become an influencer before they work on building a company. We go into business to be profitable and make lives better. Yet, that is somehow getting lost in our Kardashian-worshipping world where what you appear to be is more than what you actually are.

We’ve turned being an influencer into a job title that people are starting to love and revere. We’ve also taken a process that used to happen organically and turned it into a rigid, formal process with a set of rules to follow. Whole conferences are built around meeting and mingling with online stars. But, you know what?

Outside of those conferences, you can meet a lot these influencers working at restaurants and other non-influencer jobs to make ends meet -- that's because the majority of online stars are flat broke.


Followers do not equal financial stability.

When you have a large following, you should be able to build a profitable company, but you need a solid business model behind the glitz. If you want to do make up reviews, find a way to get sponsorships, build an email list and cash checks as soon as possible. If you want to make bank with your YouTube comedy channel, make sure people can buy bonus content from you -- don't just give it all away for free.

There are a million different ways to monetize what you love to do. Just be sure that you offer amazing value to your followers if you want them to open their wallets for you. Here are six tips to being profitable and popular:

1. Be loud and opinionated

Some people just can’t over-tweet or make too many videos. Their audiences are huge, and people pay attention every time they open their mouths. Even if you don't love everything a loud person says, you have no choice but to listen. They invite conflict and debate and don't care whether you like them.

2. Teach

The best way to help elevate yourself is to elevate those around you.

Give until hurts. Teach everything you know. Teach your secrets. Walk people step-by-step through what you do and how you do it. Make your failures just as public as your successes. Use every lesson in your life as good advice.

Remember: Nobody listens to the silent expert.

3. Break all the rules

Productive people are too busy knocking over barriers to help their audience to waste time on rules. They don’t have time to ask whether they are doing it the “proper” way or not. One of the worst things you can do is look at somebody else’s rule list and apply it to your marketing. No two people or companies are the same. Determine what your mission is and goals are. Then make up your rules along the way.

4. Have no shame

Sometimes, people are afraid to share their knowledge because they don’t want to seem arrogant. They might not want to making a scene over a controversial topic. But, if you don’t speak up on your expertise, people will turn to the guy who does.

I stopped being embarrassed a long time ago. I know I am going to look like a fool part of the time. I am going to make mistakes. That said, I’d much rather come crashing through the wall than cower in the corner when it comes to being an expert in my field.

5. Monetize, baby

If a large online following always equated to money, the world would be full of instant millionaires. This is definitely an area of business where the 80/20 rule applies. 80% of the money online is being made by 20% of the people. How do you start the revenue flowing? How do you take 10,000 YouTube subscribers and make it rain money? Get them off YouTube ASAP and over onto your email list. Then, give them something to buy. Make something cheap for people that don’t have much money and make something else expensive for people that love you and have $1000 burning a hole in their pockets. As soon as you see your traffic and online following start to grow, develop products to make their lives better.

6. Own your platform

One of the most important pieces of internet advice I give out: Do not build your empire on rented land. The bitter reality about social media that most people seem to forget is that you don’t own your social media information. You don’t own any of your followers. I’ve seen Facebook fan pages with 50,000 followers get shut down with no explanation and no recourse.

What ever happened to all those Vine stars?

Please be sure you are building your own website and your own email list. You can even go as far as building your own social media site with tools like Buddypress. But, start building your empire on your land today. I tell people to always imagine how their business would look if one or all of their social media sites disappeared tomorrow. If that would dramatically affect the flow of new business coming into your door, then you have work to do.

Branding is something we all have to do. Let most of it happen naturally.

Your brand is a reflection of your personality. Don’t fake it. Work on being completely yourself and totally transparent and your following will happen naturally.

3 Tricks to Marketing Unsexy Products: Tips from Industry leaders in SAAS

When you are solving a "big" problem, or have developed a product which is trending -- VR, AR or machine learning, to name a few -- then creating a buzz around your company is easy. However, if you are part of the other 90 percent who are selling an "unsexy" product which solves "small but essential problems" for specific consumers, you will need to think outside the box about how to get people hot under the collar about what you have to offer.

Just because your product isn’t shiny and exciting doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. A cashless payments portal, accounting software or ecommerce tool could help mom-and pop business owners dramatically boost sales, improve customer service and streamline day-to-day business. But while I wouldn’t go as far as calling these product "grudge purchases" -- like getting new tires or re-roofing your house -- people are unlikely to post a Facebook or Twitter comment boasting about their SaaS investment, as they might with a car, house or hoverboard.


To help those businesses that have Saas products, I spoke to various experts about the best ways to market an unsexy product.

1. Understand the problem you are solving

The first step in being able to convince consumers that you have created something important, is truly understanding why your product is important for different users. Once you truly understand the problem you are solving, you can clearly express this to potential users in a language they understand.

Matt Hodges, senior director of marketing at Intercom, suggests leaning on the "jobs to be done" theory to clarify why consumers choose to use your product to solve a problem.To really add value to consumers, you need to look at what jobs your company is completing for them, and get to the root of why they choose your product above others for that specific task. This will then provide the value proposition to express to them in marketing campaigns.

“Rather than building a better version of what already exists, take the time to truly understand the problem and then build a solution based on that. This will help you really resonate with buyers,” said Matt Hodges. “You have to unpack problem before you try to solve it. Really understanding the market and customer pain points first, will then help development and also market placement.”

This can be done by hiring researchers. Another means of gaining feedback from customers about product is through conducting interviews via phone or online.

“I personally conducted more than 200 interviews with potential consumers trying to understand the problem,” says Ardi Iranmanesh, co-founder of Affinio. “Rather than putting words into their mouths, we tried to figure out how customers explains their own problem. What keywords do they use to describe the pain points? We then use these exact words when we describe our company and how we can help them.”

By truly understanding the root problem you are solving for consumers, you can then use this information in all of your marketing and communication, speaking to them in real terms about real differences you can make to their lives.

2. Speak to users in a language they understand

Once you understand who is using your product, and the difference it can make to users’ lives, you can then focus on conveying your message to these people in a clear and concise manner.

Instead of focusing on the technology which enables you to solve a problem, focus on the problem being solved.

“I am a big believer in no bull and no fluff. You shouldn’t try to dress your product to be better than it is,” says Hodges. “Use simple language to describe features, which is completely free of buzzwords. Explain to the user in simple terms which they understand the value which the product can bring to them.”

If your target audience are small business owners, the chances are that they are already constantly having to learn new skills to manage a business in the modern digital age. They shouldn’t have to read a dummies guide to programming to understand how your SaaS tool can make their lives easier.

Tobias Lütke, founder and CEO of Shopify argues, “It is your job to take a ball of technology and make it accessible. SMB owners are incredibly smart and hard working, and people underestimate the amount of skills which they need nowadays. All of our founders used to be merchants. We acknowledge that it’s hard and don’t pretend it’s not. We just take a big amount of complexity and reduce it.”

Knowing your target user, having a real knowledge of their average day and the challenges and strains which they face, allows you to speak to them on a more personal level.

Mike McDerment CEO and founder of Freshbooks states: “It is important to explain value using units of measurements which really resonate with busy people. Instead of spinning their heads with industry buzzwords, explain to them how your tool could free up two extra hours per day of free time. That’s time to watch a movie with their partner, take their kids swimming, or sit down at the dinner table with their family.”

3. Create a buzz around your whole company rather than just your product

Just because your product itself might not have the "wow’ factor," doesn’t mean that you cannot make your company interesting to the general public. It is your product which users pay for, but it is your dream, mission and values that they are buying into.

Offer your community a behind-the-scenes look at the company. Rather than only sharing information related to your product, create stories which convey your aims and values, and share the journey which you and your team have taken to arrive at this point.

“Human beings are hardwired to retain information through stories and pass it on. If you can tell a story, the retention rate will be higher and will be passed on faster and further,” says McDerment. “You need to make yourself interesting at all costs. Create novel and quirky stories to grab eyeballs, and then share them with the media and on social channels.”

At FreshBooks, McDerment and his team have created a number of stories which portray their central values. From making every new employee spend their first month in customer service, sending employees on blind dates to improve communication, hanging hangover kits on doors after conference events, to running free shuttles from the airport to conferences just to make the experience easier for attendees, the company creates experiences which share the fact they hold customer service at the company’s core.

However, Jamie Petten, director of marketing for L-SPARK warns "Flashy stunts create a good moment, but it’s just a moment. What will really be impactful and memorable is building a community and sharing quality stories about what your company is and has been doing on its journey.”

When it comes to gaining media coverage, you have a much better chance of being covered in a leading publication sharing business advice, founder stories, interesting insights about company culture or tips for how to improve processes and workflow, than you do if you focus on your product.

Instead of trying to wow a general audience with fluff and flair, experts state that it is best to hyper-target specific audiences with content which resonates with them. Ben Yoskovitz, co-founder of Highline Beta says: “It's about finding the people who find your product sexy. Highlight who these people are and then sell your mission to them in a clear manner.”

When it comes to marketing functional but not particularly exciting products, there is no point trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes with buzzwords and sparkle; the trick lies in truly grasping the root of the problem you solve for different users, and then explaining the value to them in language they understand.