Yo Reader,

I'm gonna piss some people off by saying this, but 90% of the personal branding gurus on LinkedIn have no idea wtf they're talking about.

They're telling you to post consistently and be authentic so people get to know you. And those things definitely build familiarity, but there's a difference between people knowing who you are and people thinking you're the one for them. But they're not giving you the missing piece to make that happen.

Like, there's people out there getting huge impressions and engagement on each LinkedIn post, but barely any leads (and the ones they do get, aren't great).

That's cause just showing up doesn't really give people a reason to pick you over anyone else. To do that, a personal brand needs 3 things:

1. They have to own a belief
2. They need to have an approach rather than a deliverable
3. They need to be specific about the problem they solve

I was going to cover all 3 of these things in this email, but holy crap it was getting long. So I'll cover the "owning a belief" bit in this email, and do the other 2 next week.

Wtf is "owning a belief"

Owning a belief is when you believe something, feel something, know something, that the mainstream is wrong on. The stuff your competitors do that's making a worse outcome for their clients. The "standard" that does sweet FA.

It's the stuff that no one else seems to want to address, but your prospective clients are definitely feeling it.

So when you DO point it out, your ideal client goes "that's exactly what I've been feeling, but haven't been able to put into words."

It gets attention, and takes you from being another person they know, to someone that has a professional view they mesh with.

Sounds epic, why doesn't everyone do this?

Cause it's hard and scary.

You need to take a stand on something, and for it to work best, it needs to be something that a lot of people in your industry won't agree with. That'll make them argue with you. I don't mind an argument normally, but you won't always be right.

With 99% of advice, the caveat is "it depends" - cause it does. If you try say the advice without factoring in all the things that influence the advice, you're naturally gonna be wrong sometimes. So rather than say something that could leave them open to attack, people hedge.

They tone the message down so it's vague enough that people can't really argue, it's the "it depends" version of their belief. And while that's definitely safer, no one's gonna give a shit.

If you want to have a message that gets people saying "YES!" - you need to have the courage to accept people saying "NO!" too.

Side note: it's also why you see so many influencer types with huge audience post advice that's not really correct. They're sharing their belief, and the right people (for them) are agreeing with it. It also means their comments get people chiming in with why they're wrong too.

Like I said, it's hard and scary.

An example

I have a belief that looking professional makes you a commodity. That's cause even the most entry level scrub can look professional with a 7 word ChatGPT prompt, and that's who you're going to be compared against. If you take that approach, you'll end up competing on price and not really getting the quality leads you want.

But claiming "you're losing leads because you're too professional" is scary. Come on, you know everyone's gonna tear that shit apart. And they're right to, cause for some people, it's totally the wrong advice.

So, to keep it safe, I say shit like "you need to tailor your approach to the audience" - which is technically correct, but dude I yawned just typing it out. It makes me sound like everyone else in my space, so why would anyone listen?

If I embrace what I believe instead, and push that message out, yes I'll get some haters popping up. But there'll also be people who've been posting on LinkedIn for the past year, who've had plenty of visibility on their posts, but have gotten no leads - and those people will have a light bulb go off above their head and think I'm absolutely amazing.

So what should you do

Well, assuming there's a service you offer (and you're good at it), you probably have some opinions about mainstream advice, or what other people in your industry do, and how it's resulting in a worse outcome for your ideal clients.

You need to spend some time coming up with this stuff, cause it's going to be the basis of your belief. It might be one core idea, or you might come up with a whole list of things that are wrong.

Disclaimer: this isn't a 5 minute exercise. This is the kind of thing that you'll sit with for a while, brainstorming, leaving to marinate, coming back to and revisiting. And you will probably evolve it, over and over as time goes on. I know that my views are continually evolving, partly because of the market changing over time, but also because I'm always growing and evolving and improving too.

Oh, and do not ask AI to figure this out for you. Believe it or not, a tool that just spits out the average of everything it's read is not going to help you come up with anything unique no matter what prompt you use, sorry.

But once you have some views, start posting about them. Share them, put them into the world.

You might get some hate from it, and that's okay. We expect it. We're repelling the bad and (hopefully) attracting people who've already failed with the "bad" advice and are open to hearing your view. That's what's going to get them to start seeing you as an option.

Next week, I'll run through the second part that'll do a bit more to take you from an option, to the option.

Cowabunga,
Nick Gulic