Are you reluctant to build your personal brand? It’s not your fault. The advice people share about the process is confusing enough to stop you from trying anything. I’ll share with you the process I’m following to move forward. I call it, building your tree of influence.
How I see personal branding (building your tree of influence)
In Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon described a process he calls climbing your family tree.
- Find sample-worthy creators and study everything you can about them.
- Find 3 creators that they loved and learn everything you can about them.
- Repeat as much as you can.
The process is worth sampling.
It starts with a creator. In the book, the influences are branches.
I, on the other hand, see them as roots. I see this process as uncovering the root of your inspiration.
It’s a process that allows you to visualize the network of people that you draw from to nourish your ideas. You get to see who influenced those who influenced you. It’s a genealogy tree of sample-worthy individuals.
Each one of them created something, the fruit of their labor. Their fruit planted a seed in your mind. You fed off it to grow.
As you grow, so does your curiosity, which leads your interests to branch off in different fields, industries, and markets.
Whatever you create in those branches are the fruits of your labor.
Then, the cycle continues. That’s how I see it.
Your influences are your roots.
You, the creator, are the trunk.
Your interests are the branches.
Your products are the fruits.
Why is it crucial to see personal branding as building your tree?
It’s a healthier perspective than you have to be known for one thing. Thinking that you must be known for a singular thing is damaging because it makes you feel like you must deny yourself, your experiences, and your influences so you can fit in this box.
The worst thing you can do is put off doing anything for months or even years because you don’t know if you’re making the right decision.
You don’t really have a say in what you’re known for. You can tell people your name all you want, but that doesn’t mean that’s how they’ll save your name in their phones, in their minds, or in their hearts.
The healthy approach is to produce fruits in whatever branch they’ll grow. Some will be bad, others will be good. How others perceive them is up to them. All you can do is keep growing. A tree with one branch and a single fruit seems really sad.
Don’t be afraid to let your interest branch off in new places.
Thinking that you need to be known for a single thing is focusing on the wrong thing. Focus on creating and building a system to get feedback instead.
But you need to be known for one thing!
Does that advice really apply to you?
If you’re known in many fields and plan on going mainstream, that’s sound advice. However, if you’re starting out, that’ll hurt you.
Don’t pay attention to year ten problems when you’re not even done with year one.
If you go through the trouble of studying your roots, you’ll be surprised to find out where your inspirations started. They got feedback from the market and pivoted away from what did not work.
They explored and created a lot before they got the masses to care or even acknowledge them.
If you study your influences, you’ll discover they grew their own tree. That tree had multiple branches. Eventually, one branch bore fruit to the work that planted a seed in you and influenced you to grow yourself.
How do you grow a personal brand? Grow your own tree unapologetically.
What should you do to grow your personal brand?
Don’t obsess about exhibiting the perfect thing.
If you feel that you need to be perfect to be worthy of love, you had shitty people in your life that made you feel like you were less than for not making them look good. Going through years of this cycle made you jump to the wrong conclusion.
The truth is, you don’t love people because they’re perfect. You love them because they’re flawed.
Finding out what someone is capable of while being deeply flawed is why you like people. It’s why you’re curious about them. They’re imperfect in a way that’s appealing to you. They’re pleasantly refreshing compared to what you’ve gotten used to. They know you’re not perfect either. Yet, they love you because you have a similar effect on them.
I’m sure that the way to build your brand is to be comfortable to be flawed in public while still getting results.
How can you start to build your tree of influence?
Find sample-worthy ideas to build on what inspires you to create. Build a collection of sample-worthy ideas. Download the sample-worthy Notion template to do that. It’s a tool to help you quickly capture what inspires you and build your collection.
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