The Question Nobody Can Answer

Every branding guide eventually asks the same question, then moves on as though you already know the answer.

Every branding guide eventually asks the same question:

What do you want to be known for?

Then the plan moves on as though you already know the answer.

I didn’t.

My honest response was, “Hell if I know.”

Rich? Maybe a wealthy old woman who helped tons of people without anyone knowing it was her?

That was about as far as I got.

People Are Trying to Build a Way Out

People are trying to build personal brands because they need income.

They need enough money to leave a horrendous marriage. They need a car, an apartment, groceries, electricity, savings, or some hope of retiring before they are 90.

Exchanging time for money no longer covers a normal life for a lot of people.

Meanwhile, everyone has social media. Everyone sees the extreme claims.

Someone went from having $80 in the bank to making $45,000 a month in three months. Someone handed over a social media account and suddenly had a thriving business. Someone built a personal brand and changed their entire financial future.

That kind of money is relax money. It is stop-panicking money. It is retirement money. It is life money.

Of course people want to know if they can do it too.

They are ready to offer something useful. They want to add value. They genuinely have no clue where to start.

Every Step Contains Another Question

Branding experts explain the steps.

Choose your niche. Define your audience. Find the gap. Decide what makes you different. Determine what you want to be known for.

Each step contains another question.

I once watched an expert tell a woman how to find the gap in her niche. He told her to study the top creators and make two columns. In one column, write down everything they all talk about. In the other, write down the questions they leave unanswered and the ideas she could contribute that they don’t.

That is valuable research.

It also requires her to understand her own experience, point of view, abilities, and what she can credibly contribute.

Those answers are difficult to find when you are standing inside your own life trying to look at yourself from the outside.

Ten people who know you could probably describe your strengths in seconds. You have lived with those strengths for so long that they feel ordinary.

The Personal Brand Is the Person

A personal brand is the person.

It is their strengths, passions, experiences, personality, convictions, perspective, and lessons learned. It includes the things they have survived, the subjects they cannot stop thinking about, and the ways they naturally help other people.

When someone creates a brand that has no harmony with who they are, everything goes against the grain.

The ideas stop. Content becomes painful. Communicating with the audience feels forced. The brand becomes harder to develop and almost impossible to continue.

Eventually, they quit or start over.

A Real Place to Begin

The Signal Profile was created for this exact starting point.

It begins with nine carefully selected questions and analyzes the patterns running through someone’s answers.

The completed Profile gives them three possible niche directions, their Signal Archetype, their Signal Strength, a content format that fits how they communicate, three content pillars with specific post ideas, a possible monetization path, their current blind spot, one clear first move, and visual direction for the brand.

The final direction stays theirs to choose.

They leave with real possibilities they can evaluate and begin building from.

You may have no idea what you want to be known for yet. That is a completely reasonable place to begin.

The answer is already somewhere inside the life you have lived.

The Signal Profile helps you see it.

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