🥳 Hey, Kasey here! Welcome to this week’s 🏔High Growth Founders🏔 newsletter.
You are a High Growth Founder if you are a builder, creator, or project starter who embraces life’s challenges to extract the growth insights and lessons within them. This newsletter is all about helping you grow as a person, a leader, and a Founder.
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In This Issue:
Growth Insight: 7 Ways a Personal Brand Builds You and Your Business
Growth Resource of the Week: Learn to create a daily writing habit, hone your niche, and connect with others on a similar journey.
High Growth Founders Episode of the last 2 Weeks:
Self-awareness is a badass superpower
Manuj Aggarwal | AI to Grow Revenue
Growth Insight: 7 Ways a Personal Brand Builds You and Your Business
Building a personal brand can improve your life — both personally and professionally — in more ways than you realize.
First off: What do I mean by "building a personal brand?"
Everyone has a personal brand. It's what you're known for. But most people don't put any intention into what they're known for or who knows them.
Building a personal brand means thinking about how you want to be known, who you want to know you, and then making it happen.
7 Ways a Personal Brand Builds You and Your Business
#1. You build connections
Everyone thinks personal branding is about attention.
It's really about connection and relationships. Some of my closest, dearest friends have come from my efforts to build a personal brand and creating content on social media. Even people I’ve never met in person have become friends that I rely on through good and bad.
I’ve built friendships from some of the randomest digital interactions.
As a founder, your personal brand can open doors that transform your business by building relationships with investors, partners and customers; by building trust with your target audience; and build influence in your industry.
With a little intention and effort, you can make social media a truly social enterprise.
#2. You build confidence
Putting yourself out there is scary, but courage becomes part of who you are when you do it consistently.
I’ve seen this time and again with myself and with clients. People who were originally terrified to put content out online, start doing it and realize that it’s not that bad. As they continue to test and experiment, to get vulnerable and take risks, they get bolder, stronger, and just a little more badass.
It’s not about suddenly getting all kinds of external validation and having that push you forward, it’s about facing your fears and realizing, “I got this!”
#3. You build opportunity
Between putting yourself out there and building a network, you will start to have more opportunities come your way — almost magically.
From my personal brand alone — meaning from people either connecting with me via social media or seeing my content and reaching out — I’ve made at least $500k through consulting gigs, paid speaking, and opportunities I never thought were possible.
My most recent, 6-figure day job, my freelancing and consulting gigs with Gwen Stefani’s GXVE brand, creating courses on Maven and Authoritative (coming soon!), and a ton of other speaking gigs, jobs, and consulting contracts, all came from my personal brand. This stuff is lucrative! Even when you’re not a big-time creator.
You can’t even imagine the opportunities waiting for you.
#4. You build discipline
Being a creator builds discipline that pays dividends in all aspects of your life.
Discipline and consistency are the skills that will set you apart in life. And if you’re not an athlete who has a ton of experience putting in the reps at the gym or running the drills with your team, learning this discipline can be extremely challenging. Building your personal brand and learning to master the consistency that it takes will be one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.
Once you’ve developed discipline in one area of your life, it becomes much easier to apply it to others — your health, fitness, career, or even relationships.
#5. You build meaning and purpose
As you share more of yourself with the world, you'll start to see the ways you can help others and that is seriously motivating.
Research has proven that having a sense of purpose makes you less stressed, more resilient and more motivated in your life. It’s genuinely the secret weapon in achieving more and being happier — no matter what else is going on in your life.
And let me tell you, when you post something on social media and get that first message of someone saying “Thank you. That meant so much to me,” you will be hooked. You’ll realize that you can help other people just by sharing your story. And everything you do will take on a new sense of meaning. A new purpose that adds fuel to your motivation.
#6. You build clarity
When you challenge yourself to start creating content and sharing your thoughts with the world, you inevitably force yourself to get clear on what matters enough to you that you want to talk about it on a regular basis. Over time, as opportunities come your way and you become more aware of where you can take this brand you’re building, you will notice what excites you and what feels ‘meh.’ Your priorities start to take shape in a way that adds direction to your life.
As you create your brand, you will, in a sense, be creating yourself too.
#7. You build your creativity
I believe that humans are born creators and builders. By committing to creating something on a regular basis, you will light that creative spark within you and creation will flow more naturally. Ideation and creation are skills — ones we often aren’t taught to build and strengthen, but this process of building your brand and putting yourself out there, will be the ultimate in creative skill development.
You will see over time that what once felt like a slog will soon flow naturally and with inspiration.
But these are not the things people talk about when they share the benefits of building a personal brand. They talk about the more surface-level concepts of finding clients or getting jobs. And yes, that’s part of it too, but I promise you, the things that keep you going, will be these deeper rewards, the ones that don’t just help your career but help you.
Help you be a better person.
Help you live a more authentic life.
Help you create more impact in your world.
And help you grow and evolve into the person and leader you know you could be.
Yes, that sounds like a lot. But I promise you it’s true.
Growth Resource:
I’ve been a little sporadic with my newsletter in the last month — but for two very good reasons.
I broke my leg and had surgery. Ugh.
I have been undergoing Ship 30 for 30 the program designed to help you develop a consistent writing habit, define your niche, and evolve as a digital writer.
Ship 30 for 30 has been a transformative experience and I’m only halfway through. I’ve leveled up my writing, learned a ton of tips and tricks to deliver more effective content, and made amazing connections.
The whole program is incredibly detailed and thorough and well worth the $500 expense.
I highly recommend joining — or at least signing up for the wait list before their next cohort.
HGF Episodes of the Week:
Why Self-Awareness is a Badass Super Power
Self-awareness is THE secret to growth. If you don’t know where you’re struggling, you cannot figure out how to improve.
This means that your best investment as a growth-minded human — and leader — is in becoming more aware.
In this episode, I break down why this is so damn important and the simple approaches you can take to get there.
Listen now. Website | Apple | Spotify
Interview with Manuj Aggarwal | Using AI to Grow Revenue
Holy moly, this conversation…
Manuj is a brilliant founder who has built an accelerator that helps startups build a revenue engine.
During this whole conversation he shares actionable knowledge about how startups can better leverage technology to build and scale their revenue.
Listen now. Website | Apple | Spotify
If you learned something from this issue, share it with your network
As always, I appreciate you reading. Let me know if there’s ever anything i can do to help you grow.
In love and growth,
Kasey