Can I be an introvert and have a Personal Brand?
Is a Personal Brand social media, selling and yelling, power poses and influencers? No, non, όχι, 不, nein.
Even if you’d rather wrestle a crocodile than show up on Tik Tok, creating your ‘Personal Brand’ is the perfect way to reach your audience.
Do you feel that push and pull of being an introvert: you want or need attention (clients and customers) but fear holds you back? You know that visibility is the most important currency of business, but invisibility feels so much safer.
How do you build trust in your products, services and the promise these hold, be persuasive and honour that need to withdraw and protect?
When you ask questions about people’s problems, issues and how you can help, social anxiety, small talk paralysis and fear of the networking event can significantly diminish.
Knowing your value and offer helps take the sting or pressure off showing up in person or on social media. When you know your Brand, your ideal client, your solution, you also know that not everyone is your audience.
Here are 5 ways that a Personal Brand can help get us out from under the doona, and talk with confidence to potential clients and leads and, my promise that no crocodiles will be wrestled:
1. Venn: The Social Anxiety busting Diagram
A Personal Brand is the promise that you’ll use your unique skills, values and expertise to solve problems. It’s your unique solution, and defining, knowing, understanding and living this expertise makes your Brand strong. It’s an introvert’s road map.
There’s safety here: you know your skills, you ask questions that reveal if there is a problem you can solve, and the overlap is where this intersection works.
2. Break free the bunny in the headlights
One way to overcome performance or social anxiety is to stick to your Value Proposition. When this is clear, its easy for your customers to trust you’re the person for them. It speaks for you when you don’t want to speak yourself.
A simple XYZ Value Proposition equation is:
I help X type of person or business with Y type of problem achieve Z result
Talking to people about their problems is essential for understanding your customer and blows away the introversion
You can then create content and talking points around the transformation you deliver.
Contrast their current problem state, with the problem free future you can get them to.
Contrasting helps people focus on what you do and the future you can create for them through your specific branded solution
3. The confidence booster
Is self consciousness your kryptonite?
When you’re self conscious, your body uses coping mechanisms to keep us safe. However, this creates more anxiety and introversion as it alerts the brain that it’s “not safe just to be me”.
Knowing your well-defined Personal Brand can help you quiet the internal saboteur who’s job is to keep you small and ‘safe’. For me, she’s always asking: do you measure up? Are you clever enough, young, good-haired and clear-skinned enough?
The solution is to become a better friend to yourself and recognise the motive of self consciousness – it’s there to keep you in a safe comfort zone. Learning how to intervene so it doesn’t dominate or become negative is a super power.
When I’m confident in what I offer and my unique value, and who I help, I stand tall and feel grounded. I’ve got talking points, content silos, and it’s easier to keep on script. The more I can do this, the more confident I become, and the less I retreat into the small space of contraction and self-consciousness.
3. Accentuate the positive
Don’t let that one comment derail you. Come back to your perfectly formed Personal Brand and let the loonies loon – they’re not your audience.
Ask clients and customers for testimonials. Allow others to remind you how wonderful you are. Online reviews are a signal to google you’re worth recommending and ranking – send a reminder to people to add their praises to your site, LinkedIn and Google My Business
5. Personal life preserver
Personal information is not Personal Brand.
Your brand is you, so your experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness are key, but your labrador’s first play date or challenging food behaviours don’t need to be part of the story.
When you think about yourself as the brand you present to the world, you understand it’s not personal, it’s personal brand.
This is the beauty of brand building. You’re creating an offer, service, business, thought leadership from the most familiar, easy, efficient and instinctive.
BUILD YOUR BRAND.
SHARE VALUE.
SELL YOUR SERVICE.
I can help even the most introverted build a Personal Brand.
If you want to build impact and grow a business, I’ll get you online and on your way