257 | Stop Building a Personal Brand. Build a Client Magnet

Your personal brand is a trap. If you have been posting personal brand content in an effort to get more clients to your coaching or consulting business, you know how much it sucks. When all of that work on your personal brand leads to no clients, no reach, and no ROI. But today I'm gonna completely revolutionize your understanding of how personal brands are successfully built. Once you see this shift, building your personal brand is gonna get way easier and your content will finally start driving real sales. You'll build an insane network of legendary people, you'll stop struggling to sell your offers, and yes, you will be seen as the go-to in your niche. My name is Kev Michael, and this is Grow the Show, the podcast for coaches and consultants who want their podcast to send them clients who already trust them and easily buy. Over the last eight years, I've personally helped more than 500 business owners grow their personal brands and generate real revenue from their shows. And after thousands of conversations with coaches and consultants like you, I can tell you that the way you're thinking about a personal brand is what's tripping you up. So today, I'm gonna show you what actually builds a personal brand and what'll fill your calendar with ideal clients who buy your stuff. Okay, so I got on a coaching call recently with a brand new member of the Grow the Show Academy, and we're gonna call her S. So S is a coach who's been podcasting for four years. She has gotten over a million downloads on her podcast. And she's gotten some YouTube subscribers too, but not as many as she thinks she could. And she's confused because she's got a system, she's got a team, she's got multiple coaching offers on paper, she's crushing it. But privately, she's totally stuck. She's not turning her podcast listeners into coaching clients and her YouTube is not growing at all and she cannot figure out why. I pulled up her podcast and her YouTube channel and I could see immediately what was holding her back. Now what's funny about this is that her podcast on Spotify was doing great. She's gotten over a million downloads and most of her clients have come from her audio podcast. Her YouTube on the other hand was not growing and not bringing her any clients, which is weird because it was pretty much the same content as what was on Spotify. So what was the difference? The difference is that her YouTube was centered around her personal brand, her podcast on Spotify, which featured the same content was not. And again, what's funny about that is when I asked her, okay, I said, what is the offer that you want to sell to? What is the offer that you want people to buy? She said that it's an offer about self love. I said, okay, cool. So what of your content so far has driven sales to your self love offer? She said, my podcast, I said, interesting. And your YouTube hasn't, she said no. And I said, that's interesting. Spotify is bringing you clients. Can you tell me a little bit more about the people who buy your coaching from Spotify? What do they say when they buy? They say, I love your show. I love what you're about. You're the expert I want to learn from you. And I'm like, hmm, that's funny. That's what people want to have happen when they want to grow their personal brand. They want to have authority. They want to have influence. They want people to trust them in advance. So why is it that this person's personal branded YouTube channel was not making that happen while the Spotify version of the same content was making that happen? Well, you could probably see where I'm going with this. Her podcast was not branded around her personal brand. Her podcast is not called the S show. Remember, S is her name, let's say your name is Sarah. Her podcast is not the Sarah show. Her podcast is branded around self-love. And it's basically very obvious in the name and the description of the podcast that if you listen to this podcast, you're going to learn how to develop self-love, which is what her offer helps people do. She is a coach that helps people with self-love. And here's the key. When I looked at her YouTube channel, there was only a little bit that said, this is about self-love because when I looked at her banner and her profile photo and her name, it was Sarah last name, right? And it was a picture of her. And then her YouTube banner, it was a fancy headshot of her looking real cool. It had a number of TEDx appearances. It had a picture of her book. It had her name. And then it had like three bullets. Now, what's funny is the third bullet was actually about self-love. The problem with her YouTube channel went even further because she had all of these videos and this one was about personal growth. This one was about meditation. This one was about relationships and this one might have been like a vlog. And so when you look at this YouTube channel, what is this YouTube channel about? Sarah, what is the problem that Sarah is looking to solve by growing her personal brand? The problem that she's looking to solve is nobody knows Sarah. If she is setting out to grow her personal brand because not enough people know and trust her, those people who don't know and trust her, why would they consume content that's about her? Because basically when a complete stranger comes across a personal branded YouTube channel, what they see is this channel is all about this total stranger that I have never heard of before talking about a bunch of random things. So she's not getting views. She's not getting subscribers. And this YouTube channel is not working, which is frustrating because video is more difficult and more expensive to produce than audio. So why is it that her Spotify version of essentially the same content has grown, has gotten a million downloads and has brought her clients to her coaching business? Not enough, she wants more, but it's brought some. Well, it's because the podcast feed is not branded around her. So when you see her Spotify channel, it's branded around self-love. And it's not, you know, her personal show is not called the self-love podcast, but again, we're anonymizing this just to maintain Sarah's privacy. But when you see the description on Spotify, it says like helping you love yourself where her description on YouTube says, Sarah is a multiple best selling blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. And when you look at her episodes on Spotify, it's self-love 101, self-love meditation, how to use self-love to land your soulmate. Now, let's think about who Sarah's ideal customer is. If she is selling self-love coaching, then her ideal customer is going to be someone who needs help with self-love. Now, if that person is shown this podcast, do you think they're going to be interested in it? Do you think they're going to subscribe to it? Yes, if that person who really, really want self-love content sees this YouTube channel and has never heard of Sarah before, what do you think they're going to do? Do you think they're going to know that this video about growth and this video about meditation and this video about relationships and this vlog and this channel that's about this total stranger who's clearly trying to look professional and cool? Do you think that that person's going to know that this channel's going to help them with self-love? No, even though it's written here, it's really hidden in the banner. It says self-love down here, but it says relationships and growth up here. So it's like how on earth is this person going to know this channel's going to solve my problems? What actually happens and the mistake that everybody's making with their personal branded channels is number one, if the channel is branded around the stranger, anybody who doesn't already know you is not going to care about it. And furthermore, if your channel has a bunch of topics in the packaging, because remember, all these videos are versions of these podcast episodes. It's just their repackaged around other topics because Sarah wants to show in her personal brand that she can talk about lots of stuff. But the problem is this person, number one, isn't maybe not interested in meditation. Doesn't know Sarah, so they're not interested in a vlog. Might not even be thinking about personal growth and might not yet understand that the way that they're going to find their soulmate is by loving themselves better. This person's like, I want to love myself more. They see this and their conclusion is, this is not for me. They see this and their conclusion is, this is for me and here's the kicker. Here's the really thing that you got to understand. Even if there's one video on this YouTube channel that says, oh, this is about self love. This person who wants help with self love is not going to look at that YouTube channel and say, oh, cool, I'm interested in that. So I might be interested in this whole channel because what we think is, well, let me put out a bunch of topics. I'll put out videos about growth and relationships and self love and my own personal life and someone who's interested in self love will see this and they'll be like, cool, I'm interested in this channel. But that's not actually what happens. What they see is this. They see all this stuff that they're not interested in and they're like, oh, I'm only interested in 25% of this channel. Therefore, I'm not interested in this channel. It's not for me, okay? So if you're somebody who's been putting out content on YouTube or your podcast or even on social media around your personal brand and you're thinking about it this way, this is why your personal brand is not growing because essentially in this day and age and content, people follow content based on what they're interested in, okay? Now, it used to be up until about 2021. It used to be that people followed content based on who made the content. That's when social media was built around what's called the social graph. And if you remember those days, if you logged into a social media platform or YouTube or anything for the first time, the channel would be empty and it would say, who do you want to follow? And when you logged into that platform, the stuff that you saw was based off of the people that you followed. It was your friends. It might have been a couple of celebrities, but you saw everything that they posted. So you as the consumer of content followed people and then you saw all of the stuff that they published. Regardless of whether or not you were interested in it, you saw stuff based on the social graph based on who you followed. This is when you would basically, you could build a personal brand, you know, you still needed to get people to want to follow your stuff. But if someone saw a piece of content that they liked that was from you, they'd be like, ah, cool, let me follow that person. TikTok changed all of this and turned everything on its head. TikTok took social media and said, instead of showing people content based off of who they follow, we're going to show them content based off of what they are interested in. So now this is you. You now don't see content based off of who you're following. You see content based off of what you're interested in. Okay. So you see content just based off of topics and then you see the creators who are publishing content around those topics. So this is what it looked like before 2020. This is what it looked like before, like 2020, 2022. This is what it looks like now. It's the interest graph, okay? So while you will be able to go out and find people who are putting out personal brand content now, and you know, there's content that is all over the place, yes, you'll be able to find some examples, but most of those people built those personal brands in the old era. Nowadays, what builds brands and what grows your content really fast, when you ruthlessly focus on one topic per channel, this is the key. So you can still be somebody who has a personal brand that talks about tons of different things. Let's say you're interested in self love and relationships and growth, right? So you can still talk about all these things, but if you want complete strangers to tune in and subscribe to you and ultimately buy your stuff, you need to have a separate channel for each of these topics. Why is that? That's because the algorithms today are optimized to show people content based on interests, okay? So that's what they're optimizing for. So when you're publishing content to a channel, the algorithm is saying, what is the topic of this channel? The algorithm is not smart enough to be like, okay, this one video was about self love, and then, so let me show that to all the people who are interested in self love. And the next video is about relationships. Let me show that to the people who are interested in relationships. The algorithm is not smart. The algorithm puts each channel of yours into one topic bucket. And as you consistently publish stuff that's packaged around that topic and it keeps showing that topic to the people who are interested in it, the algorithm's like, okay, cool. I know what this is. I know what interest this channel is about. So I'll show it to the people who are interested in that interest. So that means for you, if you want to have a multi topic personal brand, you have to have multiple channels. And so if you are a coach or consultant who's looking to get more clients from content, you start with this. What promise does my offer make? Then from there, you make it so that your podcast and your YouTube channel exclusively publishes content that keeps that one singular promise. When you do this, two things happen. Number one, the algorithm of that channel of that feed gets really good at understanding who to show the content too because you're so consistent around every single episode being about one specific promise. So in this case, Sarah's Spotify algorithm knows cold to show her episodes to people who are interested in self love and every single episode that she publishes reinforces that with the algorithm and the algorithm starts showing her content to more and more people who, by the way, are going to be interested in her offer because there's a straight line between why am I listening to this podcast and why am I going to pay this person? Whereas Sarah's YouTube channel just can't place who to show her content too because last week, she published a meditation. And YouTube's like, oh, okay, cool. People who are interested in meditations like this video. But then the next week, she talked about personal growth. And while you think, you're like, yeah, well, I mean, my content is for people who are interested in all of these things. The problem is that then diagram doesn't overlap nearly as much as you think. And so while you are interested in all of these different topics, you are among the only people who are interested in all of them together. And that's the problem when you make a personal branded content is that your content is only for people who are interested in all of the overlap. So if I had a truly personal branded YouTube channel that was about everything that I was interested in, that YouTube channel would cover marketing. It would cover baseball. It would cover electronic dance music. It would cover acapella music and coral music and barbershop quartet singing. It would cover the Philadelphia Eagles. It would cover the New York Mets. Who on this planet is interested in all of those things? I can name two people, me and my girlfriend. That's it. I've been random and actually here long enough. Here's what you need to take away from this. If you are trying to grow a personal brand so that you can grow your coach or consultant business, take a look at the content that you're putting out. Number one, is it branded around you? So if a total stranger looks at it, are there going to be like, oh, this channel's about this person I've never heard of? Or is it branded around a promise where you say, if you follow me, this is what you're going to be able to do. If it's the latter, you're in good shape. And at that point, your job on that channel is to just hammer home that promise and that topic. And by doing so, the algorithm is going to start to show you to more of your target client and customer. Those people are going to be interested in your content because they're going to see themselves in the content instead of you. And you are going to find a much easier time making money from your personal brand because people are going to want to buy your stuff. So if you take away anything from this piece, it should be this. Stop making your personal brand about you. Make it about them. What's funny about that is when you make your personal brand about them, they make it about you. Totally counterintuitive and slightly backwards. The more you make your personal brand about you, the more nobody's going to care about it. The more you make your personal brand about what you can do for them, the more they will make everything about you. Grow your audience, give you authority, give you influence, buy your stuff, make you money, all the stuff that you want. If you want to help doing this for your own show, so it brings you high ticket clients to your coaching or consulting business, consider joining us in the Grow the Show Academy. That is where Sarah brought this problem to me and I gave her this coaching. And that's where I've created tons of resources to help you get this right, including step-by-step course material, regular Q&A calls with me, and AI chatbots that are fully trained on successful client-getting shows that can help you with every step in the process. So if that sounds interesting and you want to join us in the community and make it way easier for you to grow your coaching and consulting business by growing your podcast, the link to join is in the description. I'll see you there. And if not, totally cool, be sure to subscribe so you can see the next video about how to grow your podcast so you can grow your business.