Rebranding Yourself as a Person or as a Business

Natalie Theo

Skye, this is your Happy Birthday message question. What have you found to be one great tip, or bit of advice or resource when you have gone on a path to rebrand yourself as a person or as a business?

Skye Khilji

That's a really interesting question. When it comes to rebranding, I think a big mistake a lot of people make is they think that your brand is about the colors, the logo, the look and feel. But actually you are your personal brand. And the big shout out to Rajesh Nagjee, my mentor when I was in Dubai.

We actually taught our entire two day workshop on personal branding in Dubai and the big thing that we found is that personal brand is not what you think it is. It's actually about your reputation. So when you you first enter a community, what happens is you're judged based on what you say, and what you do.

So if you say you do something and you don't follow through, it hurts your brand. If you do follow through, it helps your brand. And what happens over time you build a reputation, a reputation for someone that does stuff or reputation for just being a talker. So the personal brand is really, firstly about your reputation, based on what you say and what you do.

Beyond that, it's how do you actually engage with people. So a lot of people, their personal brands can be completely just about them. And that's what we would call an apathy grant. That doesn't really work because the most important person in everybody's life is themself.

So there's a good saying that I love that everybody walks around wanting to feel important. So imagine that everybody you meet has a sign on their head saying make me feel important, and there's a lot of wisdom in there.

So if our brand is based on being all about me, and trying to impress you with all of the things I've done and how I'm so much better than you, it's gonna turn you off and you're not going to want to engage with me. The brands that do well are rooted in empathy.

Those brands focus on the customer, or the client or the prospect and they don't focus just on selling, they focus on serving. So it's really about how can your brand demonstrate empathy, that you understand that person that you're similar to that person?

So that's the first thing and that can really come across in the language that you use. It can come across in the branding and the colors that you use and the images. But I think most importantly, it comes down to who is that individual that is the face of that brand?

And do you resonate with them? You know, anything that I did in free the wage slave or any of my businesses, it worked on a superficial level when I had the branding looking right, and the value proposition but what really worked was when people met me and they could see that I was authentic, that I live the values of the brand that, you know, my company Profit Partnerships was the first pay on results marketing agency in London.

And it was complete Win/Win proposition, we made sure that we do the campaign, we'd even pay for the campaign for the client. And when it was successful, we took a percentage of the sales, complete Win win, but it sounds kind of sleazy.

It sounds like, I'm not sure about that, until I met the client, and they could see that actually, I do have their best interests at heart. So the brand really has to be authentic. It has to resonate with who you are, you can't have a brand that's not congruent with who you are as an individual.

So I would really tell you to just focus on that and actually put yourself and your personality front and center of the brand. It's an old saying, but it's true people buy from people. So put yourself front and center and be completely authentic with who you are.

And you'll attract a tribe that resonates with you. Doing it the other way where you're trying to impress people where it's all about you where you Trying to make an offer and get people interested but it's not congruent, they'll feel that and they won't stick. And it's really just not a path to building something with longevity.

So I hope that answers your question, Natalie.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode! Got feedback for us? Send me a message on the contact form or via Instagram.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave an honest review for The Free The Wage Slave Podcast on iTunes.

Ratings and reviews help us spread our message to a bigger audience - Help us change the lives of frustrated 9 to 5ers around the world!