Along this journey of being a personal branding videographer, I discovered some key points that are helping me with a healthy mindset. I'm calling it the Trinity of an authentic personal brand because it involves three equally important points that cannot exist without the other. These are self-awareness, being true to yourself, and being authentic with your audience. I also wanted to call a Trinity mostly because I can get to insert Trinity from the matrix on this blog post.
The trinity is very important because it will carry you through the difficult times of building a personal brand. It will never leave you astray and dare I say it. You just might have a little fun along the way. It all starts with the first and the most important part of the trinity.
Self Awareness
I practice meditation, listen to relaxing music in the mourning, and write on my journal. I know my reasons for building my brand. However, when I began my journey learning about the business I had a huge chip on my shoulder. I was pursuing building a business for all the wrong reasons and it zapped all the joy of the process. I was not alone.
A study approved by the UC Berkeley Institutional Review Board and published in the journal of Small Business Economics found:
“Mental health differences directly or indirectly affected 72% of the entrepreneurs including those with a personal mental health history (49%) and family mental health history among the asymptomatic entrepreneurs (23%). ”
We all know running a business is challenging, but it can be 10 times more challenging if we approach it with the wrong mindset. I had this huge chip on my shoulder that I thought was helping me and giving me fuel, but in actuality, it was sucking the air out of my lungs and making me miserable. I thought that my anxieties would all go away when “I made it”. Ironically achieving my goals was also not making me any happier. Also, I have worked with and got to known incredibly successful people that were still unhappy. This was all a huge wake-up call. It gave me clarity. Since I am also fascinated with all things psychology and human behavior I began to see things from a different point of view. Now I live more in the moment. Work has become more playful. I no longer focus as much on the obsession of having ultra-specific guidelines. I have my metrics, but they are in place to keep the fun going. I am aware of what drives me and it's precisely my self-awareness that has allowed me to approach things with less anxiety and a lot more curiosity and play. It all started with self-awareness.
Start by digging deep into yourself identifying what are your emotional needs and making sure they are you are not forcing your business to fill those needs. Your personal brand may be an extension of your identity but it's not your identity and it would be dangerous if you made it that way. If I needed to fold and call it quits with Trust Visuals I would be OK. Trust Visuals is just an expression of who I am and who I am is always with me. My Identity is not attached to Trust Visuals.
Self-awareness to an extent comes naturally to me, but still, I had to go through painful experiences just to reflect and grow as a person. If you have difficulty in being self-aware I recommend asking yourself why like a child. You know the drill. Ask yourself why and when you come up with the answer ask yourself why again for each answer you come up with until either you unearth your true feeling or motivations or until you get stuck and you need to ask for help.
Keeping a journal also helps, meditation, theraphy, exercise, etc. Use all or any of the tools that may help you identify an emotional need that you're forcing your business to fill when you can in actuality fulfill outside your business. Having this type of clarity and self-awareness will help immensely with...
Being True to yourself.
The second part of our trinity. Your personal brand will shine the more it reflects the real you. That is where the magic happens. Jordan Harbinger had a podcast under the art of charm which was a dating website. Jordan brought his unique point of view and focused more on bringing on guests and discussing topics on mindset and self-development and it eventually evolved on more varied topics. Unfortunately, he got fired from the Art of charm. Fortunately, the avid listeners of the podcast including myself followed him to his own podcast show, The Jordan Harbinger Show where he is successful more than ever and it's a great case study that if you are true to yourself and your ideals it will show up in your work and no matter what you do your fans will follow you., more on this shortly. Well maybe not all fans will follow, but you won't start from 0. You will still have your connections and the relationships you developed that may help you with your next venture.
However more importantly you will have yourself. The skills and habits you developed coupled with your ideals will always be with you. Some of those traits that make-up your identity will evolve as we all change. The most important thing is to keep the pulse by practicing self-awareness and following your gut. That's how you keep true to yourself.
The mistake I see being made and note that I have done this mistake as well. Is projecting a false image of yourself. This is the great disconnect that will be the source of unhappiness. This is when people make the mistake on following vanity metrics. Chasing the likes, the views, the subscribers, the fame, It's a clear signal of seeking external validation. Being true to yourself is all about using internal validation as your anchor. The concept of fake it till you make it may have started with good intentions, but I think the name of the concept it's is own fatal flaw because it has given ammo to all these people who are lying to themselves by projecting a false image. It's the same fatal flaw as positive affirmations.
Canadian researcher Dr. Joanne Wood and her team at the University of Waterloo published a study in the Journal of Psychological Science. They concluded that "repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, such as individuals with high self-esteem, but backfire for the very people who need them the most."
This is why The Fake it till you make it mantra in my humble opinion has done us a huge disservice. It has created a huge disconnect in reality. To use myself as an example I cannot even claim that I'm an “entrepreneur”. At the moment I am a part-time freelancer shooting personal branding videos and working a normal 9 to 5 job. I know in theory what will it take for me to be an entrepreneur and I'm building my own personal brand to get up to the point. But I'm not there yet. I'm learning and practicing the skills to get to that point. That will give me confidence over time to speak my truth and it will resonate more with my fans. Now talking about my craft of the process of creativity making videos... That I can talk all day long. Also, I may not have a media empire but I can talk about my journey of trying to build one. Now that is a recommended path that other entrepreneurs like Tom Bilyeu recommend. He already made Quest Nutrition a billion-dollar health nutrition food company. He left Quest Nutrition to build his media company Impact Theory to change people's mindset for the better. His long term plan is to become as big as Disney. He is not there yet... but he is sharing his journey on his podcast Impact Theory. He has stated that he wants to take people out of the matrix. (My second Matrix reference and I even didn't plan it).
In a nutshell, this is how you stay true to yourself while working on a personal brand. You may already be true to yourself. If that's the case congratulations. If not try to find out where lies the disconnect. A therapist or a trusted friend can help you with this. Also, make sure that...
Being true to your audience
The third and final part of the trinity. This is how and why it all ties together. Without self-awareness and without being true to yourself you won't be able to be completely true with your audience. This does not mean you are lying to them. You may have the best intentions but if you are not self-aware and not being true to yourself. How will you know if your message is resonating with your audience? If there is a disconnect between the messaging on your personal brand and your audience you may not get far, or you may get far, but you will be miserable. The other option is that you may be a psychopath, but let's not go in that route shall we?
Authenticity is what audiences crave today. In a world where there is a glut of mass media where everyone is competing for attention with clickbait, fake it till you make it stories and Facebook ads of fake entrepreneurs with there rented Lamborghini's and mansions; selling you the secrete of passive income. Authenticity is the oasis with drinkable freshwater in a desert. You will stand out and resonate with the people who are like you and will like you. Get it? Isn't that what we want in the first place? Food for thought.
Being true to your audience requires vulnerability. If that word scares you than you have your work cut out for you and I would argue that you won't get that far in your personal branding without it. I'm not a psychologist. I love reading about it. I love reading about human behavior and go often to a therapist just as I take my car to a mechanic for fine-tuning.. However, ultimately I can't help you with that. I can tell you that vulnerability is a requirement for a personal brand. I'm not advocating to let it all out there. There is a fine line that requires self-awareness that dictates where to draw the line. I know that line for myself. You must identify yours. But vulnerability and being genuine goes hand in hand in personal branding. At least that is my take on it. I'll let you know in another blog post if I find evidence for the contrary. Casey Neistat is a famous Youtube blogger. I enjoyed watching his videos. They are full of life, fun, creative, but most of all very genuine even in moments where the audience was not fully aware of what was happening behind the scenes. We found out once Casey revealed them on his Youtube episodes. In a nutshell, his whole career has been an exercise of reexamining himself and his motives and staying true to his identity at the moment he pressed record on his camera. He got millions of views, he was able to sell his start-up company Beme for $25 million, but as time went by he got more self-awareness and began to adjust his life to the point where he changed his life completely. We saw all that in real-time. It was a major arc spanning years. He evolved and always shared his thoughts and struggles. Below an example of him being vulnerable in one of his videos when he left his company Beme.
It's a perfect case on practicing vulnerability. Did he got blasted by certain people? Of course, he did. That is always the risk with all relationships. Again, it's funny that we don't see that this is what we are trying to do. We are trying to build a relationship with our audience, our fans. Yet we put all these blocks that hinder the spark that will ignite the relationship in the first place. Think of the word relationship and what's supposed to mean. Doesn't a relationship require vulnerability? This is what a personal brand is all about! If you are not ready for this then I recommend doing another type of business model that does not require building a personal brand. Like e-commerce or something. I'm not a life coach. I'm a filmmaker, telling stories is what I do. However, we can all agree that at the very core of stories is the very essence of humanity. The closer we get to that essence using as a guide authenticity the deeper connections we make and the more life will be fulfilling.
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