Lesson 5

“I never lose. I either win or learn” – Nelson Mandela

Humans hate uncertainty and the unknown so much so that we would rather have a mediocre explanation than none at all. The same goes with failure, we would rather stay in our comfort zone and achieve nothing more than mediocre results then have a chance of failure. In the past, failure meant death.

But…

Don’t worry too much about coming out with the optimal version of your personal brand on day one. It takes time to figure out what you want to share and what you don’t.  

You also have to quickly decide what kind of time commitment and comfort thresholds you have.  This may change over time, be flexible!

While posting something online may be backed up in various cloud storage via big tech, most people will forget in a matter of weeks what you have posted. People can be fickle and capricious – they are easily distracted. It always amazes us how quickly people can forget major happenings throughout their life.  

Meaning: Even large impactful events easily get forgotten by the masses, so don’t worry about your life events, especially your social media, being remembered by any more than a few small circles of acquaintances.

The only sure thing in life is change, and if you aren’t busy growing you are busy dying.  

You can reinvent yourself as many times as you want – and that’s alright!

In the worst cases, you can always delete your online profile and start again with a different angle (rebrand), there are no rules!

Well, unless of course, you are ‘de-platformed’ for posting overly controversial material which we don’t recommend unless you are going deep down a political/ideological angle. However, we recommend putting out less polarizing content and in general a positive message for all – more on this part in the last lesson.

Certain topics such as politics, or any other extreme ideology aren’t encouraged. 

Polarizing topics will limit ½ your potential audience from day one, as that is roughly how a lot of those major subjects boil down to it when you play out the numbers. How about potentially having a 50% larger audience by avoiding a few topics? Appealing! 

Slight digression, but thought it worth mentioning. 

Rebranding is as simple as starting to post different kinds of pictures and different styles of captions and see if that resonates with more people.

The number of times you can reinvent yourself is limited only to your imagination. 

A personal brand is a lifelong project that constantly evolves and changes. Even the experts who build or enhance the biggest brands in the business know that there are no hard-set rules for creating a personal brand.

A/B testing can be helpful as well if you really want to maximize your results when it comes to engagement, see what works best for you. (The video accompanying this lesson will further explain the concept of a/b testing.)

At times you may feel that you might benefit from a change in your username and maybe even handle/ID in more extreme cases. Just remember the stronger the rebrand and restart, the higher your chances are of losing any momentum that you have built up until this point. The same goes if you are banned or blacklisted from using a specific platform.  

When you have something that starts to resonate with people, then it doesn’t matter as much when you start or how many times you “fail” and start over; once you get it right the results you are seeking will materialize a lot faster. 

Even if it takes some time to figure out what your true message is, once you do discover it –  your results will speak for themselves with a higher level of overlap and interaction with your audience and when we use the term audience we mean: friends, family, acquaintances, new leads warm or cold, anyone following your story.

Enjoy the process and see where it takes you…

It may help to set ‘internal’ goals for this kind of endeavor, as improving your social brand online can be as simple as upgrading a few profile pictures, removing or censoring old topics, and deleting pictures you don’t want people to see. Alternatively, your goals may be growing an Instagram or YouTube channel, and then in some cases, you may even seek to monetize those accounts via ads or brand shoutouts.

When it comes to romance, you may seek to just have slightly upgraded pictures on dating sites, or it could mean having professional pictures done with a photographer (we have helped with both). The more time and effort spent on revealing yourself online, you will be that much quicker to ‘fail’ (gain experience) and move on to someone who is more tailored to have a lasting relationship with you. 

Time is of the essence!

Matching with someone through an optimized dating profile allows you to find out that much quicker if you are compatible with someone. The more revealing you are, the more it will help speed up the screening process for both of you.

You’ll never achieve the best branding until you fail a couple of times while pushing past your comfort zone. The very best branding always comes from repeated trial and error, mistakes and failures, and not from instant perfection. Get busy testing! 

Action Steps:

• Try Experimenting With A/B Testing, try posting a certain angle and if that works take notes and tweak if that doesn’t work, figure out why and come back with a refreshed approach – the number of times you can ‘a/b’ test is unlimited! Get busy

• Remind yourself that nobody gets it right on the first time, and use negative or lack of feedback as all positive – you are finding out all the ways that don’t work – just reframe it internally.

• Set up Internal goals – make your goals internal, rather than external so that it is more about you hitting your ‘action steps’ than the external results, a lot of luck plays into external results at times, don’t judge yourself solely on that or you will easily feel like you ‘failed’ to achieve your goals, even though you were hitting your internal goals/targets you set out for yourself.