The Art of Crafting an Irresistible Personal Brand

Some people leave a lasting impression on the places they’ve been.

The thought of being there, seeing what they saw, and sharing the same experiences makes you feel something powerful.

Stephen Ambrose spent two decades studying the Lewis and Clark expedition. He and his wife traveled the same route the expedition took. At the beginning of their trip, his wife said “walking in Lewis’s footsteps makes my feet tingle.”

Every year 2.1 million people, from all over the world, follow in Jesus’s footsteps walking down the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. At the 5th station, people observe where Jesus put his hands on the wall as he carried the cross. 

Graceland, Elvis Presley's home and final resting place gets 600,000 people a year. People come to see where the artist lived and recorded his music.

How do some people cultivate such an attractive presence?

Your personal brand image

I like to compare our personal life to startups, and how a business would make their presence known?

Through a well-crafted brand.

We all have our own individual personal brands. Every interaction is an infusion of our brand image. In the marketplace, a brand image makes or breaks your product. Your personal brand image determines your relationships with other people.

In You Belong With Me, Taylor Swift illustrates this point when she says, “but she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts. She's Cheer Captain, and I'm on the bleachers.”

Different brand images will appeal to different people.

A brand image is 90% of what you sell in business. The same is true for building an attractive presence. Studies have shown that people make up a judgment about you within a 1/10th of a second of meeting you.² In this time, people aren’t understanding anything about you, they’re making a determination based on your image.

It pays to have a brand image associated with good qualities.

Cultivate a becoming style

Most of the struggle with your brand image is trying to find something that aligns with your core values. When you find something that works for you, meaning it attracts the right people, keep developing it.

Your reputation is built on one quality.

The best brand images have a becoming style. They have the right individuality mixed with a sense of future development. A becoming style pulls people in by creating a mirror to tap into their own personality.

A becoming style allows people to see a reflection of themselves in your brand.

When Steve Jobs was recruiting John Sculley to be the CEO of Apple they spent a lot of time together. Sculley said at one point that he saw himself in the young Jobs. That made him want to mold Jobs into someone great.

This is the most important thing for any artist. If you’re able to create an image where people see themselves in you then you're able to sell your art. Andy Warhol was painting Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Soho Warehouse when he taught him this important lesson.

The most important thing for an artist isn’t selling the art, it’s selling yourself.

You have to become an interesting person. The parties you go to, the people you hang out with, the photos you take, and what you publish online all create the character you sell. A becoming style fascinates people enough to give you attention that also draws attention to your art.

Building a brand that evolves

David Oglivy says business is like a sweeping radar, constantly hitting new prospects as they come into the growing market. A becoming style is the embodiment of development. A sweeping radar that constantly brings in growth as you move into new places.

The challenge with a becoming style is keeping it. Here’s 3 principles that help with maintaining a becoming style:

1. Stick to the brand voice

Different and new isn’t always the best option. You never want to stray too far from what you consider your voice. Your voice has distinct qualities. Some voices may be simple, declarative, or clean.

Over time different styles may grow on you but if you lose your brand voice everything else is lost with it. Deviate too far and the quality of your brand waivers. People want consistency above all else. 

Your voice is used to set the tone.

2. Represent challenges

Richard Branson holds 7 world records. Since he was a kid, he loved to take on challenges. Never backing down from one. While doing a ballooning challenge across the world it crash landed in the Algerian desert.

Branson admitted immediately after, that despite risking his life, he would make another attempt. The challenge was irresistible. By then it had become buried deep inside.

Richard Branson attributes his brand to all the challenges overcome. He said “Both the series of balloon flights and the numerous Virgin companies I have set up form a seamless series of challenges which I can date from my childhood.”⁶

Each one built upon each other becoming more complex as he and his companies scaled.

3. Layer texture

A well-built brand is textured. 

There are layers to great brands that elicit emotional responses. An aura surrounds them. 

Something subtle forms because the brand has been paid into. A brand prism is what causes all the layers to accumulate making it feel extremely personal. Brands never maximize profits or revenue for a business. A personal brand never maximized the invaluable parts of life. But brands do help people develop a deep relationship with you because of the layers of texture contained in it.