Episode 31 – Having This Differentiator Makes Your Business Unique – Guaranteed!

Introduction    00:00:03    Marketing, explosive growth, and revolutionary secrets that can catapult your business to new heights. You’re now listening to The Underground Marketer Podcast with your host Tudor Dumitrescu, the one podcast devoted to showing new businesses how to market themselves for high growth.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:00:24    Welcome to the underground marketer. This is the place where we deliver the real truth about marketing and explore big ideas that can help new businesses thrive and grow into big ones. I’m your host Tudor. And today we’re going to talk about personal branding and how you can approach it in a way that’s effective. And that will help you build a personal brand as quickly as possible. So, first of all, who is most interested in building a personal brand? I would say that in all businesses where your image or your person is going to be a key selling point, you would want to have a personal brand. So for example, if you are starting a YouTube channel, for example, in that case, showing your face on the channel can add personality to it and it can make it a lot more engaging, and overall it can add value.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:01:16    So it’s very important to build a personal brand in that case. However, let’s say that you are starting an e-commerce business and you’re going to sell air conditioning units. Let’s say if that’s the case, building a personal brand, really, isn’t something you should worry very much about because your personality is not going to be important as a selling point, right? People are going to care that they get air conditioning units from you that work that performance. You tell them that they will. And so on. They don’t really care so much about your personality. So always think about when you’re contemplating a personal brand, don’t just do it because everybody’s doing it, do it because it makes sense for your business, you know, and all of that is going to depend on what your customers expect. And if it can add value to them, you know, if your personality can add value to them, then by all means you should go down that route.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:02:12    And of course, if you’re in an industry like a YouTube channel where you have tons of competitors and all of them showcase their personality and so on, then in that case, you should lean very heavily towards starting a personal brand. Because if you don’t, you’re going to have a very hard time competing with all the other people. This doesn’t mean that you can do it. It’s just a lot more difficult than it’s probably worth it to look into a different business opportunity. This is another thing that many people don’t think deeply enough about, and that’s considering a business that’s a good fit for them, you know, for your personality, let’s say that you, you don’t really like talking with customers and so on. Then probably a service business is not going to be the best fit for you because you’re going to end up spending a lot of time meeting customers a lot of time, outreaching to customers on sales calls, and so on.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:03:06    And on the other hand, if you’re very extroverted and you thinking about starting, let’s say drop shipping business, where you don’t really interact with anyone, that’s probably not a good fit for you either. So, um, it’s very important that you start the right business for you. And if that business does require a personal brand, then you need to be able to do it. And that’s what I’m going to share with you today. So what are the keys to building a personal brand? Well, a personal brand is nothing else but being known to provide value about a certain topic or a certain range of topics by a group of people that basically whatever YouTube star achieves the influencers on Instagram and so on, they’re all building personal brands and who they are as people is very important to the brand. It’s essential to the brand, basically when you have the difference between a personal brand, and let’s say a non-person brand is that the personal brand cannot exist without the person behind it.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:04:10    That’s why it’s very difficult to sell a personal brand. It’s almost impossible. You know, if Joe Rogan wanted to sell his radio show, basically his podcasting and the works that he does, he would have great difficulty doing it. And the same for pretty much any Instagram influencer or YouTube star and so on because people follow them for who they are to a large degree. So if you put another face on the same YouTube channel, it’s not going to be the same thing and it’s not going to work. People are not going to love it as much as they do with that person on it. So, um, that’s something to consider about personal brands. How do you get started with a personal brand? Well, it all comes back to the value that you can deliver and doing that consistently and in a unique way that stands out.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:05:02    You know, if, when you try to build a personal brand, you’re doing what everybody else does, you’re not going to succeed. You know, because especially when it comes to personality and character, these things, if you don’t stand out, if you’re not unique, if you don’t have something that, you know, makes people stop and pay attention to you, then you’re going to have a very difficult time and you can be a very smart person. You can provide a lot of value, can know everything about your topic and so on. But if you don’t have that magic ingredient, let’s say that behind your personality. And that really draws people to you going to have a hard time. Of course, this doesn’t mean that if you’re an introvert, for example, you can build a personal brand, not at all. What matters is that you fit 

with your audience, you know, whatever your audience would like to see, they can find you.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:05:57    And if that’s the case, then you can build a personal, for example, if you create a personal brand, let’s say for people who want to get into freelance web development, a lot of people are going to be on more on the introverted side. So if you’re an introvert who is successful at it, then it’s going to be a lot more meaningful to them. You know, rather than seeing a guy who is extroverted has no problem talking with people and so on making it as a freelancer, you know, that’s, that’s obviously not as entertaining and it’s not as useful for many of them. So, um, whatever the value that you provide to your audience is it has to be there and it has to be unique. And that’s a big difference, you know, from a personal brand to a non-personal brand. Because with non-personal brands, in many industries, you can get away with just providing massive value.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:06:55    And it doesn’t really have to be super unique to succeed. A lot of people these days, they’re opening all sorts of local service businesses. And they’re successful, even though they are, they have competitors. There are other people in the market, but it’s not crowded enough. Right? And they don’t need to stand out. It’s sufficient to just raise their hands and to be a player there and they can make money and they can grow their business like that for now. So if you’re in a market like that, it’s not as important, especially with non-personal brands, but with a personal brand, your uniqueness is actually the key ingredient. And that’s what most people don’t realize. And most people think that opening a personal brand or becoming an influencer and whatnot is easy, but that’s actually not the case. I actually think that becoming an influencer or building a personal brand is one of the hardest things to do at the moment because everybody’s trying to do it. 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:07:56    You know, it’s a very crowded field. And again, it’s something that you either have, or you don’t, it has to be part of your personality. You know, that you’re going to share with people and that people are going to like, and want to see more of, if you don’t have that ingredient, it’s very hard to manufacture it and, you know, try to put it out and make it work because it’s not who you are. So being authentic is the key here. Whether it’s going to work out for you or not, that’s a different thing. But I think that your best bet is if you’re authentic and if you do your own thing, if you do, you, you know, you have your best chances at actually becoming successful when it comes to building a personal brand and being liked by people. And if you do it this way, you also maximize your chances of actually enjoying it.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:08:46    You know, because with a personal brand, it’s, it’s, again, it’s not something you can sell. It’s not something you can get rid of. You know, if you don’t like it, and if you’re going to quit, then it’s pretty much game over. You know, there is no selling the business. There’s nothing you can do. You just close the doors, never post a video again, whatever it is, whatever your means of content are. And that’s it. And you’ve pretty much basically spent all your time doing something and you have no reward at the end of it. So it’s very important that you pick something that you like. So authenticity, you know, after uniqueness, I would say is the most important factor when it comes to building a successful personal brand. The other factor to consider here is that when it comes to authenticity, it’s good to be authentic obviously, and you should do it.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:09:39    But as I said, it, it has to come from within you. And it has to be something that people actually resonate with. Many people don’t, unfortunately, don’t have it, you know? And there is no sure way to know unless you actually try it. And you try to build a personal brand and you, you’re not getting any traction and it’s not working, but you’re being authentic. You’re doing things that are of value to people. And if, while you’re doing that, you don’t manage to find your audience and find your tribe. Then probably it’s not the right business model for you. And you should consider something that’s alternative and something that’s different. And there’s no reason to be sorry about that. A lot of people think, as I said before, that personal brands are easy, but they’re, they’re not, you know, it’s, it’s one of the hardest things you can do nowadays is build a personal brand.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:10:34    In my honest opinion, you have much better chances with a non-personal brand. And in my opinion, you also have a lot more potential to scale independently of yourself. You can basically remove yourself from the business, which you can’t with a personal brand. The other thing, the third thing that I will say here with regards to being successful with personal brands is to choose a medium for your content that showcases your personality. And obviously, this can differ from product to product. So for example, if you’re a writer and other writers are going to be interested in what you’re putting out, you know, maybe you teaching other people how to become writers themselves. If that’s the case, then obviously they want to see your writing because that’s what they’re interested in. You know, that’s the key to who they are. They obviously like writing, probably like reading.

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:11:32    So they want to see that. But at the same time, they also want to get to know you, you know, so it’s, it’s very important to combine the two types of content in that case. On the other hand, if you are, for example, somebody who tries to teach people how to play the violin, for example, probably video is going to be the best, right? Because you’re going to showcase people. You can showcase to people how you do it. They can see you play. You can show them things. They can hear you. It has all the qualities that are required for it. And at the same time, probably taking that video content that you have and transforming it into written content is not going to be very effective. It’s not going to, it’s going to be a lot more difficult for you to showcase your personality and your uniqueness that way.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:12:18    And you absolutely don’t want that. You know, you want to choose a medium that will actually help you to make you unique and to build your personal brand. The fourth point here, and this one is very important, is that the medium that you choose should not be ideally if at all possible, very crowded. So there’s really two options here. Either your medium, the way that you put out your content is not super crowded yet. You know, so that’s how a lot of new influencers made it big when Tik TOK came out, right? Because it wasn’t crowded yet. People hadn’t already built personal brands on there. So there was empty space for them to take over and basically colonize and build their tribes. Now that is a lot more difficult. So, um, either you go for something that’s a newer medium, or you go for something that’s very unique in terms of the niche that you’re addressing.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:13:20    You know, if you have a very unique niche and you have few competitors in there, then you have a much higher chance of building a personal brand. If you choose a very competitive niche, you know, like in the very broad niche, you know, the broader the is basically the more likely it is that you’re going to have a lot of competition. So for example, if you choose a niche like men’s fashion and you’re going to compete with guys, like I forgot his name, I think I’ll find him maybe on YouTube and guys like that who have millions of subscribers. They already pretty much took over those fields. You’re going to have a very, very hard time building your personal brand. And it’s not because of you. It’s just because it’s incredibly difficult to stand out. And, you know, unless by some miracle you really have a personality that is super different from everything that is out there, you’re not gonna be able to make it.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:14:24    And it’s unfortunate, but it’s just the way it is. Uh, being first in marketing helps, you know, that’s, that’s what both of those last points that I made revolve around it’s being first, you know, the people who are first to a new platform or first to a new niche to whatever it is, they’re going to be able to build it there. And it’s going to be a lot harder for people who come after that to build, because that audience, the people who are interested, they already have a number one in their mind. You know, the fashion guy is this guy for most people. It’s very hard to take over that place. And it’s something that not many people take into account it’s much easier in my opinion, for a non-personal brand to compete and beat out another non-personal brand who was in its space first, then the other way around, you know, I don’t think in fact that I’ve ever seen that happen, maybe I’ve seen it happen in a situation.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:15:24    Actually, I have seen it happen in a few situations where a personal brand was built around a personal trainer. And then there was a big scandal without a guide. And either his business was shut down or he lost a lot of reputation. If something like that happens, then yeah, you can go in and you can find some empty space and you can make it work. But unless something like that happens, it’s massively difficult to build it from the ground up. Now, after I’ve covered these big points. And I think that for many people, if they’re honest with themselves, these big points are not going to recommend that they start a personal brand again, unless they really have something special to share with the world and other businesses, probably going to be a better idea for them. But nevertheless, if you decide to go ahead with a personal brand, you’re going to need to put out your content consistently there, and the content should be unique.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:16:24    You know, things that people have a hard time finding elsewhere, but at the same time, also things that are highly useful, you know, if you can discover those topics that people are very interested in, but they can’t really find a lot of help about then that’s what you should focus on, you know, because that’s ultimately what people want from you and what your audience is going to reward you for. If you speak on topics, this is a mistake that many people who are trying to build personal brands too, you know, they see Gary, if he made a video about, uh, I dunno, Facebook ads and they go and make a video about Facebook ads. It’s not going to work like that. You know, you can’t copy what other people do because then you’re fighting over their audience. And I mean, the, the audience who’s watching Gary V for Facebook ads, they already know Gary V and you’re a nobody to them.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:17:16    You know, you can’t compete like that. So you have to find topics that are of high interest. And at the same time, they’re not well addressed. And people can’t really find information about them. So if you’re providing new information on a topic that’s of high interest, then that’s going to generate a lot of attention and that’s going to enable you to build your tribe. Now, the, of course, the biggest challenge is how do you find things that are of high importance? And, but at the same time, you can really find information about them. Well, the best thing is, if you are the expert here, you know, and this is where it actually pays to be part of the people that you’re trying to help. You know? So for example, if you are a violin player yourself, and you’ve retired from playing violin and you now want to build a personal brand, helping other people, tutoring other people, whatever it is, it’s very useful.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:18:14    If you already know from firsthand experience, what sort of information there is and what people can find, you can research, you know, what people can find out there. And you know what people have questions with generally. So you can build your content around that. And if you do that, and if you have the expertise to start with, then it’s going to be a lot easier because I mean, what’s the alternative, the alternative that most people and many people who, who are trying unsuccessfully to start personal brands is that they pick a topic, say Bitcoin, and then they go out there and they research the top 10 articles on Bitcoin that they find when they search about it on Google or whatever it is, all that information is already known. So the value of that information, because it’s known, is almost zero. It’s none. It’s nothing, but if a piece of information is easy to get to it’s valueless.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:19:10    So if you want to build a personal brand here, you need to bring out new pieces of information that people don’t already know. And this is actually, what’s going to differentiate you. If you look at the big people who already have big personal brands and you really listen to them, and this is one, actually one of the faults that I find most often in people who are already famous is that they keep saying the same things. You know, nothing ever changes. You look at what they said five years ago and compare it to what they’re saying today. It’s mostly the same things. They don’t really have new content. They just have different ways of saying the same thing. And I think that that’s a problem, you know, and that’s a space where new people and new influencers and new persons interested in building personal brands can come in and can find content that’s of high interest and not yet properly addressed and provide new information to people that they cannot find online yet.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:20:09    And that’s very important. As I said, if you can find a piece of information online and Google is getting better and better every day, you know, it helping you actually locate what you’re searching for, then that information is not very valuable anymore. And it’s, it’s just the fact, you know, it’s, it’s basically part of the law of supply and demand of economics. So the supply, if the information is easy to find these infinite almost, you know, so the value of that information is nothing. Whereas in the past, let’s say before the internet to find information, you had to go to a library, you know, so a library could charge you fees, for example, to be there. And it would make sense because that information was sparse. There was no way for you to click a button and find that information. And it’s the same thing here.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:20:57    If the information that you’re providing as a personal brand is cars, then people are going to find a lot of value in it and they’re going to be attracted to it. Of course, it must also be information that’s relevant, you know, because maybe you can, you have the expertise to speak about a subject that very few people do, but there’s not much interest in need. Right? And if that’s the case, then again, you’re going to have a hard time and you’re going to struggle because you just don’t have a market. And it’s very important to have a market pretty much, regardless of what business you’re building. So that’s pretty much what I wanted to say in today’s episode about personal branding to summarize briefly, I think that your uniqueness and your personality are key to building a personal brand. So if you don’t have a unique differentiator in those categories, it’s going to be very difficult for you.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:21:53    I think that it’s also important to choose mediums of releasing content that showcases your personality and that fit with your audience. It’s important for you to provide you content and that people search for, you know, but they cannot find so if people search for it, but they cannot find it in, you can provide them with that content and that information. That’s going to be very valuable. It’s going to help you stand out and it’s going to make it work for you. Another point that I want you to remember is that if a new social media platform or whatever comes out and before it truly blows up, if you can establish yourself as an influencer there, you’re probably going to have very good chances of building a big personal brand. So those are the top points for today. Thank you for listening in and as usual, stay tuned for the next episode. And until next time, keep growing your businesses and providing massive value to the world. Remember you are the reason why we’re all growing richer. Our freedoms are expanding and we’ll all live in greater prosperity. Till next time.