You’re different. You feel called to more. You’re driven by a deep desire to lead an unconventional life, backed by a business of your own creation that leaves a positive mark on this world. But, despite being the powerhouse you are, there’s still part of you that’s been holding back from taking your business to the next level with clarity, confidence, and style.

You might be feeling embarrassed about your brand, confused about how to communicate what you do, or overwhelmed by the decisions you’re making in your business – I get it. But here’s the thing… you didn’t come this far to just stop here, did you? 

It’s TIME to align all of what you do and who you are into a powerful brand that gives you the confidence and clarity you need to go all the way in your business! One thing I’ve learned from investing in, and upleveling my own brand over the years, is that when I upgrade my brand, it has a way of powerfully upgrading my energy and mindset too, giving me the courage and confidence to leap forward in ways that felt unimaginable before.

Let’s back up a second for some important clarification.

Building a personal brand for service-based entrepreneurs is wildly different than building a product-based business. Your personal brand is based completely on YOU – your values, vision, style, personality, mission, and so much more. Your personal brand is the promise of an experience that shows up wherever you go. This experience is delivered through everything your business does, and becomes how the world sees and gets to know you. Essentially, as a service-based coach or healer, your ideal clients’ experience with your brand is their impression of YOU – your personality, how they feel when they’re around you, what you do and how you do it, what it’s like to work with you, what you sound like and even how you dress. 

When you choose to invest time and/or money into upleveling your brand, you’re saying a big bold YES to:

• Feeling unstoppable! You’ll be ready to confidently pursue next level opportunities, like speaking on larger stages, approaching the media for interviews, and partnering with well-known industry names.
• Attracting higher-paying clients who see your value and are more than willing to pay you what you’re worth.
• Making a bigger impact. When people “get” you, they’ll want to follow you and join your programs. You’ll be able to share your message with a global audience and see your impact unfold before your eyes.
• Receiving more referrals because your colleagues see you as a credible resource.
• Saving time because now everything in your business won’t rely on you. Your team will have a system in place showing them how to correctly implement your brand across your biz.
• Launching your new book or program with assurance knowing you’ll look the part when all of that new traffic comes your direction.
• Feeling totally aligned and at home in your business now that the incredible wisdom and experience you’ve gained over the years is finally reflected on the outside.

But before you can get into all of those incredible outcomes, you have to take the time to build your personal brand with the right foundational elements in place. This blog post breaks down the 6 simple steps to help you build your personal brand the right way. 

1. Clarify Your Brand Personality 

A good place to start when it comes to branding your service-based business is with a personality assessment! Even though you may feel like you have a good grip on your personality, you likely haven’t considered it through a branding lens. Most of us are incredibly multi-faceted and have countless things we believe in and parts of our personalities at play – and it can be hard to reign it in and communicate it through a cohesive brand. 

I've created a brand personality assessment you can use to help clarify who you are as the face of your brand: the Brand Archetypes Quiz. This free tool will help you hone in one your brand personality through the lens of the 12 Jungian archetypes. Archetypes, although we may not realize it, are at the core of how we view the world and understand the people around us. Using archetypes to guide your branding, will help you build a business that's aligned with your truth and help your potential clients come to know, like and trust you faster because you fit within their framework of understanding the world.

Think about any personal brand you resonate with. I’m willing to bet they share their values, aka, beliefs that they stand for, and you align with those values. Your audience and potential clients want to connect with people and brands who share a similar set of values as them. So, defining and sharing your brand values is another important part of personal branding. To help you get started on defining your brand values, check out this blog post, How to Increase Sales by Knowing and Sharing Your Brand Values. 

The reason we start with you as the face of your personal brand is because an authentic brand can only grow from your truth. Branding is not about changing who you are, it’s about amplifying who you are! You want your clients and community to love the real you – and that includes what you believe in, what you stand for, what you value and even what you refuse to tolerate.

2. Identify Your Ideal Client

It’s no mistake that identifying your ideal client comes AFTER clarifying who you are as the face of your brand. This way, you won't compromise your truth or values trying to morph yourself into what you think other people want. Instead, you'll build a brand that attracts the best clients EVER because they'll value you for YOU.

Identifying your ideal client encompasses more than just knowing where they live and how much money they make. Creating an ideal client profile allows you to speak to the hearts and souls of the people you WANT to work with, and have them actually see your value and want to pay you for it!

Once you’ve identified some important information about your ideal client like how they identify themselves, what they desire, what their biggest challenges are, and what they value, then it’s time to consider how you come into play into their lives through your business. Do you inspire your audience to change the world, or does it hit closer to home and make someone want to transform their own life?

We are driven by feelings. So if you want your potential clients to engage with your brand, follow you on social media and remember you as the go-to expert who can solve their problem, in addition to communicating attributes, you've got to paint a clear (and tangible) picture of how working with you will make them feel – and it has to relate to what they are feeling now and what they want to feel once they’ve worked with you.

3. Find Your Brand Voice

Let’s take this one step further. Beyond knowing what you’re going to say, you also need to know how you plan to say it in a way that authentically resonates with both you and your ideal clients. 

Your brand voice includes everything your audience will read or hear from your brand – including your business name, title, tagline, social posts, website copy, personal bio, elevator pitch, brand story, and more. Your brand voice is the expression of your personality, beliefs and values through your written and spoken word. 

Your personality is what influences your brand’s tone of voice – the temperament behind your words. Your brand’s tone of voice might be edgy, playful, practical, nurturing, soothing, formal, or intense, just to name a few examples. When you have a personal brand, your brand becomes a direct reflection of your personality. So, discovering your own personality and tone of voice is going to make creating your brand voice much easier. 

If you’d like to learn more about discovering your brand voice, here’s a blog post that takes it deeper: How to Find Your Brand Voice.

4. Design Your Brand Visuals

I’ve seen countless women entrepreneurs try to start with their visual brands and end up feeling frustrated and discouraged. All successful visual brands are built on the foundations we outlined above – this ensures your brand is authentic to who you are and the experience you provide, and that it will truly speak to your ideal clients on a deeper level.

Not only that, but it’s important to address that a visual brand is so much more than what most people think it is. It’s not just a logo! Your visual brand includes your colors, fonts, typography, patterns and textures, brand photos, mood board, brand book, collateral, and your logos, secondary logos, and submarks. 

With these things, you’ll be well prepared to rock those first impressions with your audience and wow them with a robust visual identity package that’s strategically designed to ensure everything you show up with is professional, authentic, and consistent. If you want to take designing your visual brand into way more depth, check out my blog post, 10 Visual Branding Must-Haves for Service-Based Entrepreneurs.

5. Create Your Offers

Believe it or not, your offers are a major part of your personal brand. This is what ultimately creates the brand experience of working with you, and directly impacts how your clients feel and what they achieve through your programs, products and services. 

Your offers can take many forms – including done for you services, done with you services, memberships, courses, masterminds, VIP days, or almost anything else you can think of! It can be a great strategy to have 2-3 offers at different price points for your potential clients to choose from, such as a private coaching program, group coaching program, and online course. 

How to express your brand through your offers:

If you’re wondering how to tie your brand into your offers to create the experience you want to become known for, the first step is to think about working with you in terms of how you’re being instead of what you’re doing. 

For example, how do you show up for new clients? What’s their onboarding experience like? How do you lead group calls or show up on video to teach your courses? If you have a Facebook group or online community, how do you engage with members there?

The next step is to consider your actual offers and how they align with your brand. 

For example, does your brand value introspective work that takes clients deep into their experience? If so, you may want to offer a year-long private, or group coaching program to create the space for their transformation to unfold. If your style is more laser-focused to produce fast and powerful results, consider offering VIP days. And if your brand values community and collaboration, consider offering a mastermind or membership.

6. Grow Your Audience

The final step in building your personal brand is showing it to the world and reaching your ideal clients through marketing! Because your clients work very closely with you as a service-based personal brand, most of them will need to get a sense of who you are, what your personality is like, and what you stand for before they feel confident investing their time and money into working with you.

Once you’ve built your brand, you HAVE to be willing to show up and be the face of your brand. Otherwise… you’re wasting a lot of time and money. If you aren’t going to show up and let people really get to know you, then your audience won’t be able to form a basic connection with you, let alone like or trust you enough to invest in your programs or services. 

This is often one of the harder steps for female entrepreneurs to implement in building their personal brands, especially if they’re introverted (I get it, I’m an introvert too). But, you have to break through your discomfort and step into that role as the face of your brand to truly be successful with your marketing efforts and your business as a whole.

While marketing can take on many forms, the best marketing for service-based entrepreneurs is high-touch, high-value activities that allow your audience to get to know you and allow you to build relationships with your community.

Examples of this type of marketing are public speaking, live video, networking (online and in-person), webinars and challenges, podcasting, and of course, social media (when done strategically and consistently). 

Social media marketing, when done well, is a great way to build authentic connections and genuine community with your audience. The conversations you start online can lead to friendships and other opportunities for your business down the road, as well as give potential clients a glimpse into what it’s like to work with you, and consistently inspire them to want to work with you. 

Social media content marketing is an excellent way to give potential clients a glimpse into your world and help establish the Know, Like and Trust factors they need to say YES to hiring you for your services. 

 I’m a major proponent for staying consistent with high-touch, high-value marketing efforts, which is exactly what social media marketing allows you to do. To learn a little more about creating consistent social media content and overcoming some of the most common barriers of marketing your business on social media, read this blog post, STAND OUT Online: The Key to Creating Consistent Social Media Content that Helps Your Ideal Clients Find You!

Building your personal brand is no small feat. Whether you're just getting started in your business or have been an entrepreneur for a while, each day there's more and more that we have to learn, understand, and excel at. And if you're ready to just throw it all out the window and go live in a cabin in the woods as a vegetable farmer instead... I hear you. BUT, it doesn't have to be that way.

  I’m here to support you in creating a purposeful, archetypal brand that makes money AND makes a difference. Explore how we can work together here.