the lie of personal branding

Jan 27, 2024 9:30 am

Personal Updates

Hey ,

A couple of updates from me:

I just took up a challenge to build a product in public throughout February. I will be tweeting about it daily. Follow me on X.
I'm going to be creating a simple tool to help people with multiple skills and interests find their unique niche.
More information will be available in the coming days. Let's get to today's Report.

Quick Summary

Personal Niche Mastery: Today's report emphasises the importance of creating a unique, uncopyable brand through Personal Niche Mastery, leveraging your unique interests, ideas, and intelligence. It highlights my journey in various fields and stresses the alignment of personal brand elements like WIT, WISDOM, WHY, and WOW with evolving interests for true mastery.
Gaming Analogy for Business Levels: I compare growth to playing a game, emphasising the importance of recognising your current level and progressively mastering each stage. This approach to personal niche mastery is likened to levelling up in a game, underscoring the importance of gradual growth and deep learning.
Estimated Reading Time: Approximately 5-7 minutes

Personal Niche Mastery: How to Turn Your Ideas, Interests and Intelligence into a Unique, Uncopyable Brand

Let's be honest: None of us has a singular interest. We are all obsessed with many things in different areas of our lives.

Last week, I shared with you what has worked for myself and others about building a personal brand.

But that was just stage 1.

In the underworld of personal branding, there is a deeper, more profound level: Personal Niche Mastery

This is about you creating a brand that no one else in the entire world can copy or steal - super focused on your interests, ideas and intelligence.

My journey is a new living testament to this philosophy.

I began to teach blogging back in 2014, at a time when we were used to blogs that carried gist and gossip about other people.

Some people hopped on the bandwagon and started talking about blogging too, specifically using content from my book, "Blog with Excellence," because I created a new narrative for blogging.

Then I pivoted to podcasting in 2015, and in 2017, people began to use my course materials to organise classes for others.

One particular guy had a class where he was quoting me verbatim. Students in his class who knew me were forwarding the notes to me. (Years later, I learned to license my intelligence, but that's for another time.)

In 2018, I launched another interest of mine, Fear Mastery, and yet again, it repeated itself.

I created the market for others to follow.

All through this time, I didn’t know I was onto something that I had only begun to understand in 2020 as Personal Niche Mastery - a sort of category design.

Recall from last week's Report that if you can get the CLARIFY component of your personal brand right, it gives you the room to grow and pivot.

Exactly!

Initially, I worked on this, and my core message was “move from potential to productive performance” because I thought activating productivity through coaching was my thing.

I even got my girlfriend as at then to do the voiceover for my podcast saying those words 🙈

Then it became... "courage to lead your life and business in the direction that matters to you" (thanks to Jeff Brown of Read to Lead Podcast for guiding me through this) - and yes, this exactly matches my brand Audacity2Lead as at then.

Does it still match today?

You bet!

If you want to lead with more influence, you have to be able to resolve fear and activate courage so you can move forward.

That opened my mind to two other interests of mine - psychology and neuroscience and I dove in.

As an aside, in 2006, my pastor at our local church told me psychology was “the wisdom of men that contradicted the wisdom of God.” LOL!

Anyway, what I began to uncover was that each step in any direction I headed with my brand was a foundational stone in building my uncopyable personal niche.

This entire journey was more than a collection of titles or knowledge.

It was about depth, mastery, and aligning my WIT, WISDOM, WHY, and WOW.

These elements, the core compass of my personal brand, synced perfectly with my evolving interests.

This alignment is the crux of Personal Niche Mastery.

I know the prevalent advice in today's business world is to "find a niche."

I beg to differ.

It's not about finding; it's about creating.

It's about realising that your personal brand is the promise you're leading others towards.

And yes, niche is just a marketing buzzword. It has nothing to do with real humans, who have real lives, real interests, and real ideas.

Your personal niche is the game where you're the only player.

Think about games for a minute.

If you’ve ever played a game, any game, you will know that all games have LIVES and are in LEVELS.

Before you think I’m a gamer, the only game I know how to play well is Super Mario 🤣 because I didn’t grow up in a rich household.

But I’m currently playing some other games with my daughter through Apple Arcade.

Anyway, you need a life to play a game, and if you run out of lives, you’re dead.

It’s game over!

And when you still have life, you progress in the game from level to level.

For example, in the car race game, I never paid attention to the levels until I mistakenly won first place in a particular round, and then I saw it tick that I was now qualified to play the next round.

So even though we’ve been playing this game for the last few weeks, we were stuck on just one level without any awareness.

In business, this is like helping those coming after you.

Stop trying to get level 10 results while you are level 1.

Just like in gaming, in the journey to your personal niche mastery, it's crucial to recognise where you stand.

You might be at 'Level 1', mastering the basics, or maybe you're advancing to 'Level 10', handling some complex stuff.

Each level you overcome builds your skills, capacity, and knowledge.

So, remember, it’s okay to be at 'Level 1' in your business right now.

What is important is playing the game, learning at each stage, and steadily moving up.

After all, every expert was once a beginner, figuring out how to jump over the first set of obstacles in their own Super Mario game.

It's all about levelling up at your own pace, without skipping the essential stages of growth.

Just like you can't jump from World 1 to World 8 in Super Mario without mastering each level, you can't shortcut your way to expertise.

Enjoy this journey, deepen your thinking capabilities, and you'll be racking up those professional 'high scores' in no time.

And maybe your daughter too will shout, "Daddy, we won!"

I'd love to get your response to today's newsletter. Reply and tell me your favourite part.