I have seen people make the same costly personal branding mistakes over and over again and yes, I made some of these mistakes as well when I was starting out and it has cost me a lot. So please, don’t read and still continue in your error. If you are on this table, get off the table before I shatter it.
Mistake #1: Trying to be more than one thing at the beginning
You are trying to be more than one thing because you are multi-passionate, multi-gifted, and multi-talented. So, you want to be the relationship coach, business coach, life coach, and sex coach. You are trying to be everything. But you need to grow up first before growing wide.
Trust me when I say this. You should be a big fish in your small ocean, instead of spreading yourself thin in a large open space. Let people know you for one thing per time. For 6 months, be that one thing. For 1 year, be that one thing. Don’t try to be everything to everybody.
For me, I began teaching data sharing, then I moved on to business coaching. Today, I do result coaching and life coaching for coaches and speakers. And even at that, I am don’t promote all my services to everybody. Some people can swear that I am a sales coach but you will not see me promoting sales coaching on Instagram.
If you are confused, just choose one niche, any one. Start working on it and stay in that space for now. As you go along, you will gain clarity. If you don’t love it, no problem. You can change and improve on it as time goes on. If you don’t like what you are doing, you can change it next time. But first, please grow up before you try to go wide.
Mistake #2: Trying to sell to everybody
This is exhausting. Besides, everybody cannot buy from you. You have to know who has the problem that your solution can solve. Who needs your solution? What is their demography and psychography?
Demography refers to attributes like their age, location, gender, marital status, how many kids they have, etc.
Psychography considers how they think. What pain points they have, what they are frustrated about, etc.
Personally, my ideal customers are women within the ages of 37-47 because these are the critical stages in a woman’s life. She is approaching 40, thinking of her purpose. She is done with child bearing and now wants to find herself. She is already doing well in her business or job but now, she is looking for more.
These are the people that I have been called to serve, so I am not trying to be one thing to everyone. I am called for women who are good trying to become great. They are the ones I am targeting.
Don’t make this personal branding mistake of trying to sell to everybody. If you want to serve women, what kind of women? What are their pain points? Have one person in mind so that when creating your communication material, you know who exactly you are talking to.
Mistake #3: Not Having Products
I see lots of ‘passion-preneurs’. They post on social media, they advocate for child rights, women rights, against domestic abuse but there is no way anyone can exchange money with them. This is the most costly of the personal branding mistakes because you are literally leaving money on the table. Provide a means for people to do business with you, even if it is one hour of consultation.
It doesn’t have to be expensive. Start with an ebook, a very low end one that you could sell for 2k, 3k… anything around 5-10 dollars. Just make sure you have one thing that people can easily pay for.
A good place to start is to create a product around questions that people ask you the most. When I started, people were always asking me as a business coach, what business they should start. Guess what? I created a book, titled: What Business Do I Start? and I sold it for 5 dollars and people paid for it. So, when people come into my DM asking me, “Coach Temi, what business do you think I should do?” I don’t even talk too much, I say, “Oh, I have a book with the same title.” I give them the link to buy the book and they pay for it. You can do the same.
Are you making any of these 3 rookie personal branding mistakes? Leave a comment below sharing what they are and how you’ll use the information in this post to fix your mistakes.