Personal Brand vs. Niche: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] I quit building a social media account and I started focusing on building a personal brand instead. And the reason why this is important is because I don't think a lot of people understand the difference between building a social media account versus building a personal brand.

[00:15] You can absolutely grow your social media account by staying within a niche and sharing information within a specific category. A lot of people have done it. But if you don't build a personal brand in the process and have people be invested in you as a person, the moment that you start talking about something else or the moment that you pivot into something else, you are going to lose a lot of people because you haven't built that type of loyalty.

[00:37] And I personally think it's unrealistic to think that as a creator, you're going to be talking about the same thing for decades. That's just not how the human experience works. And what's really unique about this profession of being a content creator is that it's very tied to you personally.

[00:52] And as a human being, you're naturally going to have a change in values. You're going to have a change in life stage. You being a single person creating content might look really different when you actually start a family. It also comes with just getting more experience and learning more about yourself as a human being.

[01:08] And knowing this, it's natural for you to want to pivot your content at some point. But what will make it easier for you to do that pivot or for you to actually retain the audience that you have

[01:20] is if you actually start laying the foundation of building a personal brand. I kind of relate it back to friendships, right? Like, let's say you have friends where you only talk business with and that's the only thing you have in common.

[01:33] The moment that they decide not to do a business anymore or maybe you don't decide to do a business anymore, you basically lose touch with that friend. I personally have a lot of acquaintances in my life where I've lost touch because there was literally, like, one interest that we had in common

[01:47] And it was just like a really one-dimensional friendship. But the types of friendships that I have found to be the most long-lasting is when we have multiple things that we have in common, not just business, but maybe our love for animals,

[01:59] or we have the same sense of humor, or we both love fashion, and we both love beauty, or we both are in relationships, and we like talking about relationships, right? When there are multiple layers to that relationship, it will last longer than those relationships

[02:12] that are just built off of one interest. And so using that example, it also applies to the relationships that you have on social media and the accounts that you follow as well. If their account is solely focused on delivering information about a specific niche or category, the moment that they change up or they switch up, you are more likely to unfollow and unsubscribe because you actually don't know them as a person.

[02:33] And that is because that creator has made the mistake of not building their personal brand. Now, I asked Chassie PT to explain to me what a personal brand is, and I want to read it to you. A personal brand is a unique combination of skills, experiences, values, and personality that you project onto the world.

[02:50] Your personal brand is the story that you tell about yourself, which includes your professional expertise, but also your passion, your values, and the way that you interact with others. Building a personal brand involves strategically attracting like-minded individuals or clients and to stand out in your field.

[03:08] And so when I hear that description, I think about a few things. First thing I think about is how a lot of us, we're very focused on the professional expertise part. We're constantly just focused on delivering information because we feel like the only

[03:20] value that we can provide on our accounts is by offering information. In my case I used to share a lot of how frameworks tactics strategies I not not saying that you shouldn be doing that What I am saying is that if you only do that you basically just building a one relationship

[03:37] And that's not how healthy relationships work. Or that's not how successful relationships work. Not only this, I also think that when you're solely delivering information, that might have worked five years ago. But now with AI, with chat ECT, information is a commodity.

[03:51] Like, people can find how-to content, frameworks anywhere, but what's becoming rarer and rarer is storytelling, is being invested in someone's personal life, is connection.

[04:03] That's something that AI can't necessarily give just yet. AI can't tell personal stories that will make you feel like, oh my gosh, I went through that exact same thing, and now I feel really invested in this person or in this character.

[04:16] And so back then, if you asked me five years ago, yes, finding a niche and sticking to the niche will make you successful. But if you ask me now with how the industry is and how technology has evolved, I actually think that human connection and relationships is becoming more and more rare.

[04:30] And it's actually what people are trying to find. And so if you are still stuck with only doing content in your niche, I think that you will get left behind either by technology or by the fact that you are going to change as a

[04:43] person and when you pivot or when you try to pivot, you're not going to retain most of your audience. The second thing too is when Cassie PT explained that building a personal brand is also for you to strategically attract like-minded people. And I really resonate with that because

[04:58] before I would always post about how-tos, frameworks, strategies, tactics, and I didn't necessarily share a lot of my values or my interests or my passions outside of work. But there were times where I would attract people that would be interested in my services, but

[05:11] they wouldn't necessarily be a 100% fit. And so I feel like for those of you who are entrepreneurs, maybe you're a service provider, I think you can relate where technically on paper, someone checks all the boxes, but there's

[05:23] something off about the vibe. Like you just know that you're not going to get along with this person. And so if you want to avoid those situations, it's really important for you to showcase more of you and your personality in order to attract like-minded people.

[05:36] Because people liking your how-tos or people liking your information is simply just not enough. And personally, if you want to have a really harmonious relationship with social media, you want it to be fun being a creator, you want to be in love with the community you're

[05:50] building, it is very important to build a community of like-minded people, of people that you can see yourself being friends with, of people that you can be totally down to meet in person in real life and like totally vibe and hang out and chill.

[06:03] Those are like the best relationships that you can build online. But if you're a creator and you're solely focusing on delivering information and you're building an audience of people that you don't actually really like or enjoy being around, then it really impacts your mental health. And if you start resenting the job, you start hating

[06:19] being a creator because you don't like your audience. So if you got to this point in the video, you're probably like, okay, great. I get it. I need to build a personal brand. How exactly do I do that? Well, I can tell you what I'm doing. Okay. I would say that I am in my character

[06:31] building era right now. And the reason why I say character building is because I've been reading fiction books lately and I noticed that most of the fiction books that were recommended to me are always in a series. So you've got the Magnolia Park series,

[06:43] the ACOTAR series, the Empyrean series, the Harry Potter series, and I noticed that what makes those books really successful are the characters. It's the character building and the world building that happens within those books Each book may have a different story but the reason why people keep reading the books within those series is because of the characters

[07:04] And the only way that I can get invested in the characters is me knowing more about their past, why they do the things that they do, what their personal life is beyond just the storyline, how did they grow to be the person they are, what thoughts do they have. That's what makes a good

[07:20] character, right? And it takes time to build. And so me thinking about the best practices of fiction books, I started applying that to my social media. So on my social media, I will still talk about content creation, like this video is about content creation. But specifically on my Instagram, I

[07:36] started to really share different things that have nothing to do with social media. So I want to give you six very specific examples of how I've been able to character build and world build within my social media account. First one is I posted this Bulgarian split squat video.

[07:56] And the reason why I posted that was because I genuinely thought it was hilarious. Me and Leon laughed about that video for so long. And rather than posting it on my stories where it would expire, I decided to post it on my feed because I want to show people that this is my sense of humor.

[08:11] And I also want to show people that I am new to the fitness game. And I want to attract people who are also interested in fitness. And to my surprise, that video actually went viral. And to this day, months later, people still tag me in Bulgarian split squat videos

[08:25] or they will DM me and say, I just started Bulgarian split squat and I thought of you. And what it's showing me is that my presence is expanding. My footprint is expanding beyond social media. And there are things that are happening

[08:37] in people's daily lives where they automatically think of me because I posted that content. Another example is this video right here where me and my fiance, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend, we just did the give me the money challenge, and we pranked my dad.

[08:52] Give me my money. And I decided to post it on my Instagram because I thought it was hilarious too. But I also feel like in an indirect way, it's showing people that this is what I value.

[09:06] I value time with family. This is a glimpse of what it's like hanging out with my family. We are very humor-focused. We have a lot of fun. and it was really cool because in the comment section people loved it but also a lot of people

[09:18] can relate to having fun with your family. Next example is my newsletter, The Creator Journal. This is where I write a lot of stories that happen in my life but I also share the feelings and the

[09:30] emotions around it and my newsletter is very well received by a lot of people because they can relate to a lot of the emotions that I've gone through and also a lot of the lessons that I've learned And so I'm building an emotional connection with my readers.

[09:44] And through these stories, I'm also showing people what my values and thought processes are. Other examples of things that I've done is I shared posts about my beauty routine, period talk. I've shared more about like my fashion sense because these are all things that I personally am interested in.

[10:01] And the goal of doing this is to have fun, but also to attract people that I would want to be friends with and that I would actually want to grab coffee with. For example, back then there would be people that want to grab coffee with me, but if I'm

[10:15] being honest, I don't necessarily want to have coffee with someone where all they talk about is business and social media and content. I talk about that enough And so for me my goal is to actually be able to show my audience like hey I have interests outside of social media

[10:33] I actually really like fashion. I like beauty. I like health. And so by putting that out there and people understanding, oh, like, the door is open to talk about these things, now I feel like I'm actually forming friendships and the conversations that are happening in my DMs are a lot more interesting.

[10:50] before doing this all my dms would just be about people asking me for social media advice and I was very burnt out from that to the point where I almost resented it but now because I've showcased

[11:02] like different aspects of me my dms are a really fun place to be in I have girls asking me about my lash routine I have girls asking me about how to track their cycles I have people asking me for

[11:14] the length to the clothes that I'm wearing. And so it's just adding more dimension and diversity to my social media experience. And that's what has made content creation and building a community

[11:26] much more enjoyable than before. Last example, I think this is the most important example with an actual tangible result of how this is a good thing. And that is before, whenever I drank bubble tea,

[11:38] I would post it on my stories. And it wasn't intentional. It's just that I love drinking bubble tea a lot. Like I was obsessed and addicted to bubble tea. And the crazy thing is, is that years later, I decided to start a new business. And I asked my audience to guess what business

[11:52] they think I started. And to my surprise, when I looked at the results, most people guessed that I started a bubble tea company or a milk tea company. And they were right. And so me starting Super

[12:06] Boba, which is my new business, were so effortless and so easy to transition into. Nobody in my audience was surprised, and if anything, everyone was super excited about it. But that's because years ago, I had already planted the seed, unintentionally, that I love bubble tea. I drink

[12:23] it all the time. This isn't to say that you need to share things that you don't want to share. What I am trying to say is that there is value and there is merit in sharing more of the things that you genuinely enjoy outside of work.

[12:35] Because there is going to be a day where you decide that the niche that you're in isn't serving you anymore and you want to make a pivot. And it's going to be a lot easier to do that when people are invested in you as a character. Very similar to the example I shared,

[12:48] the reason why people keep reading books within a series, even though each book has a very different story, very similar to you, how every season of your life is going to have a new chapter, is going to have a new story. The reason why people keep reading is because they're invested in the characters.

[13:02] And so it's really important in this dream as a creator to build your character, not just your niche and not just your social media account. And again, I genuinely believe that the creators who understand the importance of a personal brand sooner rather than later and are able to build up their characters, build up their world, they're going to be able to survive the AI technology boom, whatever it looks like in the future.

[13:25] And they're also going to be able to future-proof their personal brand so that they can earn more and sustain this career in the longer term and be able to pivot into any industry or any tangent that they like that is a better reflection of who they are in that moment.

[13:38] But anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you want to learn more of the things that I'm learning when it comes to being a creator and starting businesses, then make sure you subscribe to The Creator Journal. It's free. This is where I really share the in-depth behind the scenes of what it's really like being a creator.

[13:53] As always, thank you so much for watching, and I will catch you in the next one. Bye, guys.