The Danger Of Building A Personal Brand

Over the past few years my business has grown and so has this thing called my personal brand. Today I am being asked to coach and mentor business owners around the world, speak on larger stages, and keynote conferences. All of this stuff is pretty cool and very humbling.

But I started to wonder…are there dangers to building a personal brand? The answer, in short... YES! But what are they?

I recently sat down with Gary Vaynerchuk to talk about this question. His answers were, as always, incredibly insightful.

Ken: So as my brand has grown and as we have developed a kind of a, a global awareness, now we have clients all over the world that use us. The opportunities for me to speak and take bigger stages is occurring more often.

And so looking at growing the business further, I realized and recognized very quickly that every time we document those, moments, every time we film those moments, that then turns into more content. But it's not necessarily content directed at the brand. It's content around my brand, my personal brand. So, in looking at growing the brand further, we're trying to figure out should we leverage the opportunities of me speaking on more stages and of me coaching or working with other companies because… it's, it's interesting the questions that I was asked a year ago, year and a half ago where, Hey, how do I write effective ad copy? Now the question is, can you tell me again how you grew a business to from zero to seven figure business in like less than two years?

Gary: Do you always answer I listen to Gary Vee?

Ken: I do Gary, you know that!

Gary: I know you do, that's why I'm making that joke.

Ken: But you know, it's funny, I had this really surreal moment in the Nashville airport. I was speaking at a conference and this guy comes running up to me and I shared that I sent you an email about it.

Gary: I remember.

Ken: I said, this guy came running up to me and he like, can I get, can you sign my book? And I'm like, sure. And he said, your book changed my life. I'm like, how? Because I, was kind of in the mindset of Ben.

Gary: I get it! On the receiving end.

Ken: Right. And… but now that's happened a few times and I'm like

Gary: The answer is both…to your question is both.

Ken: Okay.

Gary: …to your question.

Ken: Both.

Gary: Of course.

Ken: So it's okay to, to diversify in terms of the company

Gary: Do you have any partners?

Ken: My filmmaker today is my business partner. When you said get an ops guy, my video guy couldn't be here today. So Brandon came along.

Gary: Yep.

Ken: So he is a blessing to my business, that came directly from my conversation with you two years ago.

Gary: I remember, I remember. So financially you share, you share the business?

Ken: Yes.

Gary: That's the only vulnerability. The only vulnerability to building a personal brand as a top of the funnel is who are the other stakeholders who fear that you're getting disproportionate leverage and can leave and they're the commodity.

Ken: I don't think Brandon has an issue with that.

Gary: Well, I can't speak for Brandon, but I can promise you the answer. That's, that's the answer to the question. The only reason anybody on earth should not build personal brand at scale is because somebody else who has financial vested interest subconsciously or consciously doesn't like it. Nothing else should stop anybody. Okay? Because it brings business in. It's top of the funnel.

Ken: And by the way, your strength, LinkedIn strategy, Holy shit, listen, and it's not even just weekdays.

Gary: Brother. I know. Listen, listen, I’m… Eventually people are gonna understand like I'm really great at what I do and I'm very quite unusual for giving it away for at scale. And then if you want to deeply more contextual shooting, there's things like VaynerMedia, there's four D, there's other things, but like it's going to be like that forever.

By the way, if there was documenting and video and YouTube when I was 22 I would already be there because I would've done the same thing and everybody would have gotten email and e-commerce and search and YouTube, like you would have seen me make a YouTube video four months after YouTube came out and said, this is gonna be the biggest thing. And then we'd be sitting here and be like, how the fuck did he know that?

Ken: Yeah. Based on, based on what you've been preaching with the LinkedIn strategy, I've been doing that aggressively and I'll see on an average day, 150 to 300 new followers. I'll see on a weekend, 2000 new followers.

Gary: I get it!

Ken: And I posted…

Gary: LinkedIn is Facebook.

Ken: It's crazy!

Gary: 2012.

Ken: It’s crazy…but solid platform.

Gary: I’ve said it a billion times. Some people were like, nobody's doing it. Very few people are doing anything about it.

What's ironic is my advice actually leads to my own downfall. If everybody listened to me and made content, then the organic reach would go down because it's just supply and demand. Right. That's how much I know people don't do anything.

I'm literally giving advice every single day. That is that my own detriment.