Lesson to this lesson is called how to build your personal brand, and it will show you how you can
start building your personal reputation.
This lesson is important because without a personal brand, you were just another person in the crowd,
especially as a freelancer.
So you need to put yourself out there.
Getting on physical and digital stages can help you begin to shape the way people view you.
So a stage doesn't have to just be a physical stage like this one here.
It can also be on Upwork.
It can also be on social media.
It's however you communicate with people.
That's how you begin to build your personal brand.
But now let's dig deeper into what your personal brand really is.
On a basic level, it's how you promote yourself.
It's not like a company has a logo and a branding package in different colors.
It's more about what skills you provide, how you promote yourself to the world.
It's your unique skills and experience, it's the combination of the two.
And it's also your personality.
That's what the world sees.
It sees the combination of all of those things.
It's also how you make others feel.
So I like to look at personal branding as telling the story of your life and how it reflects your behavior,
your spoken word, your unspoken word and your attitudes.
Everything you do makes people feel a certain way.
So every single action you take, everything you put out there in the world, every communication you
have that all contributes to how other people feel and that.
Is how you make other people feel.
So you start to build a reputation.
For example, if you're a very positive person and every time someone talks with you, they leave feeling
more optimistic.
They're going to remember that your personal brand is one of positivity.
On the other hand, let's say someone has a really good sense of humor, and every time you talk with
them, you're always cracking up, laughing.
You're going to remember they made you feel.
Happy and they made you laugh.
That is what you were going to remember.
You might not remember the exact jokes that were said.
You might not remember every single conversation, but you always remember how people make you feel.
So that is another big contributor of your personal brand.
It's also what differentiates you from the competition when you're building a personal brand and you
begin to do this well, you can start to tie your personal brand in with your freelance business in
ways that agencies and big corporations can never do.
That's why being a freelancer gives you so much freedom.
It gives you the ability to be agile and to separate yourself, especially as you go to build your personal
brand.
So your personal brand overall is the image other people see of you.
So this can be from your reputation.
This can be from how the media portrays you, let's say, or how social media makes you look or how
your colleagues make you look.
So remember, it's not just what you put out there, it's also your entire reputation and what other
people see you as.
So make the decision to build your brand.
You need to make the decision to build your brand or else it will never get off the ground.
You can either ignore it.
And let it develop organically or chaotically beyond your control, or you can help shape your personal
brand and you can depicted as the person you truly want to be.
Next, it's time to start optimizing your social media profiles, so even if it's not on Upwork or not
on a professional website like LinkedIn, still treat every single platform like a potential client
can see you there.
So go through all of your social media feeds, delete anything you wouldn't want a future client to
see.
Make all your photos professional and everything else.
If you want to save the memory, just save it.
But you need to get that offline and optimize your social media profiles so you can build the strongest
personal brand possible.
Then once you've done that, it's then time to build your marketing statement.
So your marketing statement is going to go in your biography of your Instagram, your Facebook.
It's going to go in your Upwork profile everywhere online that people can read a biography of you are
a bio section that is where your marketing statement will lie.
So this is what it looks like.
It looks very simple.
Boil down it's I help blank do blank.
And what this does is it separates you and it starts to build that personal brand because you're telling
people who you help and what you do.
So let me break it down how I do it.
I look at it as I help my target market provide the skill I provide, so for me, I help aspiring and
existing online entrepreneurs build a highly profitable freelance business.
So that's all of you listening to this right now, either an aspiring or an existing online entrepreneur.
And what do I do?
I help you build a profitable freelance business.
So look at how you can apply this for yourself.
Make sure to always use the words I help, because that immediately starts to build a personal brand
that you were there to deliver value.
You're not saying that you sell a service or that you do this.
You're saying who you help and you tell them what you can help them with.
So now you understand how you can start to build your personal brand as a freelancer.