The 4 Personal Brand Stages

“Visibility is the currency you get from your personal brand.”

With that currency, a world of opportunities opens as you build your authority and trust with your audience.

So, how do you measure the stages of your brand? You measure this by the size and engagement of your audience. This will be different for everyone and depend on the industry as well. The main point is that you want to work to progress into the public eye by offering useful information in a compelling manner. Your style will develop over time. Don’t focus on being perfect; just focus on being authentic and helping others.

All you need to do is keep at it and not quit when you find out you don’t have 100,000 followers after 30 days of posting. You must stay realistic and realize that others have been in your shoes. The ones that made it did not quit. They focused on helping others, which eventually broke through for them.

Some brands, especially ones in crowded markets, take longer to get going because they need to break through to the audience and start to steal audience share from competitors. While you break through, you need to maintain the frequency and quality of your posts, not just to the actual audience but also to trigger the platform algorithm so that it shows your content to a wider audience.

So, let’s take a look at the several personal brand stages over time:

Start by building trust and authority by helping others. What questions did you or others have about your industry or topic of expertise? Even if you think the answer is simple or “everyone” knows, you’d be surprised. Just take your knowledge and experience and answer the questions. You can say something like, “Hey, when I was starting, I didn’t understand “x” about our industry.”

If people give you grief about talking about basic topics, tell them you’re helping people who are just starting out or that people recently asked you the same question, so you thought you’d answered it for others.

Initial ROI: Social media reach. Reach is the number of people the platform shows your content to. You need a lot of reach to build a lot of followers, so this is the first ROI of your new brand-building journey. Remember you need to maintain an effective frequency of 3 times a week and post across multiple social media platforms.

The next step is to start incorporating personal details to humanize your brand. In addition, start an outreach or engagement with others in your industry. Another step is to look at what your competition is doing, how people react to them, and what subject matter resonates with the competition’s audience. How can you take this research and build upon it without being a copycat?  In fact, you can actively target individuals or companies you want to get in front of and raise awareness. This is when you need to start watching the metrics: reach, engagement, DMs, and initial followers.

Initial ROI: Increased reach, audience momentum, and greater engagement. Direct outreach for jobs or business opportunities, networking offers, and lead generation.

I’m not suggesting that you be overly confrontational or inflammatory, but if you’ve reached this stage, it’s time to push into the competitors in your industry or brand. You can begin to engage others constructively, maybe even disagree or question their conclusions based on your own expertise and experience. This is an excellent time to invite discussion with others/competitors on a YouTube interview. Remember, seeing and hearing you is much more powerful than just reading your words and seeing your picture. At this stage, I would expect you to have a YouTube channel where you discuss major topics or your thoughts so others can see them. Remember, the fastest way to build “Know-Like-Trust” is for others to see and hear you answer their burning questions. Expanding this to include others in the industry for a lively discussion is good for both brands.

Initial ROI: Accelerated visibility, increased industry recognition, job offers, and consulting offers.

While pitching to journalists and podcasts is a whole other world, at this stage, with the number of followers and the audience you have, it’s time to get on the radar of influential podcasts and journalists that cover your industry or topic of expertise. While I won’t go into pitching for earned media here, know that the acceleration factor for placing you on the right podcasts or the right article can be a huge boost, and it adds ‘social proof” to your brand as it can be touted and demonstrate on your social media and website.

In addition, you might find that there is enough interest to pitch yourself to be a speaker at an industry event. Initially, I would expect these to be free speaking engagements, but they still have a ton of value to your brand. This is especially true if you can get someone to film you giving the speech or panel discussion.

Initial ROI: Rapid audience growth, accessing multiple audiences, and increased reputation.

The type of brand you want will determine its speed of visibility. There are roughly six types of brands, and only a few are right for the executive brand.

In this type of brand, the individual leverages other people’s expertise to try to gain notoriety and become the curator of great information. They don’t steal others’ expertise; they try summarizing and reporting on it, maybe giving their spin or thoughts. They may even interview others and share the interview with their audience.

This type of brand can be challenging to monetize, but you can get an ROI by making a name for yourself, and if you focus on a particular industry or topic, you can grow an audience.

This type of brand usually revolves around a particular skill or trade that an individual has, like a cook, makeup artist, car mechanic, or even a fitness trainer. They want to offer tutorials to show off their particular skill. They can grow a wide and diverse audience interested in their skills or wants to learn how to do it themselves.

Depending on the individual’s charisma, they can build a global audience fairly quickly and have the opportunity to monetize their brand through business opportunities and sponsorships.

Similar to the “Educator Brand” is the journey brand. You have an end goal, and, like a diary, you have people follow along on your journey, kind of like watching over your shoulder as you do things. Maybe it’s a weight loss journey, building a house in the woods, or traveling someplace exotic. Anything that will take time and you’re learning or experiencing it as you go along is an example of the Journey Brand.

This is usually a long-term, almost step-by-step, exploration of a process the individual went on or is currently going through. Nearly anything that is a long-term process can become a journey brand. You might see critiques of products you found along the way, reviews of books you found helpful or not, and individuals you can interview who impact your journey. Think of it as a multi-episode TV show where your audience watches and follows along as you progress. Depending on the story and the brand’s charisma, the ROI could easily be an increase in visibility, which could be monetized through sponsorship or product reviews.

This type of brand tends to be more aspirational or even religious in nature. The individual “helps” others by sharing feel-good quotes and stories of puppy dogs and cute cats. Maybe a daily or hourly affirmation. Many people need/want this, and it can bring audiences to you, but rarely much in terms of ROI and monetization. There does not tend to be a particular target market except for people who crave or need their Dr. Feel Good, so it’s hard to really tap into the ROI of this brand unless it’s simply visibility with the possibility of evolving it into something more like a sponsored podcast or interview show. There is a lot of competition, and finding material is as simple as spending 5 minutes on ChatGPT, so the barrier to entry is very low.

The most successful brands in this space (and I’m looking at you, OnlyFans) are cute, sassy, or nearly naked. They are the evolution of the original Influencers from years ago and usually focus on sex or just being sexy while lamenting about pop culture, music, or other entertainers. This brand takes a certain type of individual who is not afraid to “let it all hang out” and self-promote the heck out of themselves and their “show.”

Depending on the individual and how far they are willing to go, they can build visibility very quickly. This visibility can sometimes be turned into sponsorship or monetized in other ways, including but not limited to breaking into the entertainment industry in general.

Micro-Influencers

One note: we call a group within this brand micro-influencers. They tend to focus on a few key topics and want to help a narrow audience. They might offer advice or product reviews or provide space for others to discuss or share their experiences. These tend to be less “cute and sassy or nearly naked.” While there are examples of micro-influencers growing to the point where they command a large audience, it very much depends on the topic, the size of the market, and the individual’s charisma to build a massive audience. Hence, it is far more difficult than the young, pretty, and nearly naked influencer’s roadmap.

Here is something that most people do not think about. The social media platforms and Google, or more precisely, their algorithms, are the gatekeepers standing between you and your audience. If the algorithms don’t understand who your target audience is, they tend to “spray and pray” your content, trying to track who engages with your content to define your target audience. It can sometimes take up to a year or more to go this route, depending on the industry, topic of expertise, and even the number of competitors trying to access that audience.

If you take the time to package yourself in a way that the algorithms can understand and can clearly associate you with an audience, then you make the whole process much easier. Hence, you need to create indexable content that the machines can use to understand the topics to associate with you. The easiest way to do this is to create SEOed content/blogs and publish them on your own website with direct links to your social media profiles.

Secondly, depending on your topic of expertise, you might trigger Google’s last three protective algorithmic updates, like YMYL and EATT.

Does this mean that you should write like a robot? No! You still have a human audience that you will need to entice and engage with your content to help them.

Don’t forget that you are creating content for at least two audiences, the machines and people, especially at the outset of working on your brand. The reason is that you need to ensure you are “indexed” or essentially packaged so that the machines understand which keywords or topics to associate with you. A lot of this is based on how the content you create is SEOed correctly–machines are the gatekeepers between you and your audience.

So, if you don’t figure out what your audience wants and only create content about what you want to talk about, your personal brand is pretty much doomed.

The next question becomes, “How do you know when you’re ready to monetize your brand?”

The answer is different for every person’s brand. When you reach a tipping point, you will know that your audience is large enough and engaged with you to the point that when you make an “ask,” like “read my blog,” “follow me,” “watch my video,” etc., the majority of your audience will follow your request.

So, once you’ve spent some time and effort building a decent-sized audience and you’ve seen the ROI of your brand, whether it is more industry recognition, career opportunities, business opportunities, or even leads for your business, it is time to start thinking about how to add a strategy to monetize your brand and move to the next level.

The first question you might ask is how big an audience you need. The answer depends on the overall size of your target audience and how much of that audience you attract. This can take some time, but with the right strategy and effort, you should start seeing the ROI within 3 to 6 months.

As your followers/audience continues to build, you can start thinking about how to monetize your personal brand.

Some of the typical ways people might monetize their brand are the following:

1. Paid Board Seats
2. Write a Short E-Book
3. Paid Speaking Engagements
4. Become a Paid Industry Influencer
5. Leverage Your Podcast for Sponsorship
6. Webinars
7. YouTube Channel Monetization
8. Secure Startup Funding
9. Consulting Opportunities
10. Investment Opportunities
11. Book Promotion / Book Deals

Not all of these are created equal; some can be harder to implement. These can be broken down into three categories of monetization: easy, intermediate, and advanced.

1: Easy

• Paid board or advisory seats
• Paid speaking engagements

2: Intermediate

• Consulting or advisory services
• Amazon e-books or Self-publishing
• Webinar or Workshop

3: Advanced

• YouTube monetization
• Authorship: write a book on your expertise and experience
• Create a podcast and sell sponsorship
• Become an industry Influencer

Here are some more details about the different monetization options and what you can expect.

Create board profiles and engage with networks and board recruiters to find suitable board positions. We will substitute efforts directed at securing your podcast guesting in favor of pitching and working to secure board seats.

Revenue: The median salary for board members in the United States is $74,121, but compensation ranges between $57,137 and $91,538.

Recently, we’ve found that the bookers are pressing for even more information to secure speaking engagements. To increase the probability of securing a larger speaking engagement to meet your goals, you will need to produce additional materials beyond just your “pitch. We find that retooling your personal website to highlight your speaking engagements is beneficial. In addition, you will want to create a speakers’ reel for yourself. Choose the top five topics you wish to speak on; then, create five videos of 3 to 5 minutes on each topic to create an interesting montage of your speeches. Of course, if you have a video of you speaking on stage, you should incorporate it. Other things that need to be a part of your pitch and your speaker’s package are:

1. The title of your speech
2. The major points of your speech
3. The run time of your speech
4. If you need any presentation tools (screens, laptops, handouts, etc.)
5. Will you allow Q&A after you complete the talk?
6. Will the speech be recorded, and do you have rights to the recording? (This is important, and people forget it all the time!)

Revenue: Initially, it makes sense to offer to do a few talks without compensation. It’s just the reality as you prove you can handle a speech on stage. This is especially true if you can get the recording of you speaking to add to your speaker’s package or reel.

Once you’ve completed a few free speaking engagements, you are in the perfect position to ask for a speaker fee. Brand-new speakers might earn $500–$5000 for a talk, and experts who have written a book or are already well-known in their field can make $20,000+ per event.

Estimated Fees: $150 to $500/HR

Create a landing page on your website and promote your services directly and via social media. Be willing to tweak your offer and offer free initial consultations to get things rolling. In addition, you will need to create specific landing pages on your personal website promoting your benefits and skills.

Leveraging Amazon e-books is very profitable and allows you to add “Author” to your resume. The sweet spot is under 30 pages, with a price point below $10. You should leverage your most popular blogs already written with additional content and design. This will need additional ghostwriting, editing, and design work to prepare the book for self-publishing. In addition, you will need to promote the book through social media before launch and coordinate testimonials to leverage the Amazon algorithm within the first 24 hours of launch.

Revenue: 30% or 70% royalty rate for eBook authors

Another option is to create an independent webinar or workshop and then promote it across multiple channels. You can create your webinar and invite a select group to participate. Of course, you’ll record this and do a bit of post-production for the webinar. Now, you can offer the webinar regularly and collect the fees.

Yes, there will be an additional promotional/ad fee unless your audience is very large, so factor that into your plan. The good news is that these prerecorded webinars can run virtually by themselves, and you can tweak and expand upon them when you like. We suggest creating a 1-hour webinar to begin with and gauge the audience’s reaction.

Revenue: $40 to $250/attendee. The average revenue of webinars in 2023 was $1,000 to $3000+. A webinar can be distributed multiple times.

You’ll see that one of the options involves exploiting or leveraging your videos. Videos have an immense impact; as shown in the graph below, these are extremely powerful. Therefore, you can take advantage of your growing video subscribers and monetize your viewership. Please see the graphic below.

Be prepared to record 3 to 5 videos per month to provide enough content for you to promote.

Revenue: It varies. To be eligible to monetize your YouTube channel, you need 4,000 hours of watch time and 1,000 subscribers.

While you can leverage your content through blogs and articles, sometimes you want to create a complete book and then shop the book towards literary agents. This will require more significant input and time from you, but utilizing the ghostwriters and copy editors could minimize the impact on you. You already have a good deal of data on what your audience wants and reacts to based on social media and blog syndication. Utilize that to decide the topic of your first book.

Revenue: Advance + 5% to 18% of royalties

While this is not an exhaustive list, the above options give you some idea of how to monetize your brand and the potential revenue you can receive.

If done correctly, you will move through the various personal brand stages over time, providing growing benefits as you progress through different levels until you feel you can monetize your brand.  Brands build momentum as they grow, gaining greater audience share and attracting different audiences.

The greatest mistake you can make when building your brand is assuming you can jump in and engage your audience just as the top dogs do. So, take a look at the influencers and “known” people in your industry or market and realize that they spent time, effort, and money building a personal brand that they could start monetizing and elevate even further. There is no magic bullet for reaching that level.

The last thing to remember is that you will be judged on your brand as business and technology progress. It’s not whether or not you have a brand; you do. It’s whether that brand is helping you or hurting you. So, before you even start thinking about how you’re going to monetize your brand, it might be a good idea to consider where you’ll be if you don’t improve your brand at all.