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Weekly tips & techniques to help you build your personal brand on LinkedIn

Scaling a Profitable Personal Brand🚀💰

Nov 16, 2023

About two years ago, my personal brand agency ran into a bit of a challenge -- we weren’t receiving responses from a few of our clients when requesting approval for their content. Clients told us they had to pump the brakes to keep up with the amount of new business their personal branding initiatives created.

Now I know that sounds like "champagne brand problems," but the reality is there are very real challenges when it comes to smoothly scaling your personal brand.

The challenge when you build a successful brand...

Simply put and very commonly heard, if you’re not defining and building your personal brand, someone else will; this goes for all professionals, not just business owners. Those who intentionally work on their personal brand will enjoy better job opportunities, higher customer loyalty, increased confidence, and ultimately, leverage and ownership of their career and pursuits. (Read 15 Reasons Why Every Executive Should Build Their Personal Brand Right Now to learn more benefits.)

Once you commit to personal branding, though, you’ll likely start to experience the conundrum many businesses face: scaling operations to meet market demands and new client requests.

It’s as exciting as it is challenging — being in demand — and it comes with its own set of issues. After all, you’re only one person; how can you possibly keep up with hundreds of clients and potential clients?

For me, it all started with the business model and the processes created to support that model.

Defining your business model

As someone who started building a personal brand on LinkedIn in 2015, the most impactful thing that helped me scale was getting clear in my business model.

I started as a branding consultant on the platform and quickly realized that unless I built a knowledge/digital product, course, or community that customers could consume independently or I built and empowered a team to consult and help clients, my business would likely plateau and I wouldn’t be able to scale.

Of course, there is always option number three, which is to keep raising your rates as a solo consultant, but you’ll inevitably be limited by the great equalizer -- the number of hours in the day.

In this way, I found consulting to be an unviable business model for what I wanted from my business.

Two Models Emerge

Model One: The Product Method

When my brand started to become more in demand, and I was bumping up against time constraints, I decided to produce an online course about scaling your personal brand on LinkedIn; I had created a replicable, six-part methodology that I taught my clients to use on the platform to drive business, speaking opportunities, and awareness rather quickly. The results were real, and clients kept saying, “You need to open this up to the masses.”

So I developed an online course with about 30 videos and started selling it. Knowledge products can take place in other forms as well. Many of our clients develop other knowledge products such as books and keynote talks.

What I learned in creating an online course is this, though: you have to keep producing and producing content to fuel a steady stream of leads, and product launches can be exhausting. (Sure, the product will exist in perpetuity, but the real cash comes in when you launch and create scarcity, so people are compelled to buy.)

So, if you choose this method to convert your brand awareness into income, just know you need to remain a content machine to keep the money coming in.

You’ll also want to hire a small support team. For me, I enrolled the help of a virtual assistant and a “community manager.” When you sell to hundreds of people, inevitably, FAQ’s come up, and you’ll need someone to help with that.

Model Two: Building Out a Team

A few years after I built out the Influence Academy, my LinkedIn personal branding training course, I received inquiries from executives graduating the program who said, “This is such great stuff, but I don’t have time to implement every day. Can you just do it for me?”

I would brush it off, flattered, but when the tenth one inquired, like any great entrepreneur, I realized there was an opportunity, and to be quite honest, I missed having a team around me. Sure, my VA and community manager were great, but ultimately I wanted more partnership and a community of people to create together.

So I created Brandwise Media, a personal branding agency that helped build engaged social followings for authors and executives.

Of course, there are also challenges with this type of business model. You need to hire people who share the same values and knowledge as you do, so when you transfer your brand followers over to your team, they are supported with the same level of care and expertise as they would be if you worked with them. In this way, I’m so glad I developed an online course first before creating an agency. The course served as part of the fundamental training each of our team members went through and a patentable process that ensures consistency in the customer experience.

Margins tend to be lower with this model. Digital products can yield high margins due to their lower production costs. However, securing talented people often comes with a higher price tag.

Choosing Your Path

Ultimately, after trying both models, I phased out the agency and returned to a product, coaching, and community model. Realizing my heart was in content creation and education was a hard but necessary decision for me, ultimately leading to more satisfaction and higher profits.

That’s not to say it will be the same for you. Regardless of the direction you pursue, know that if you seriously commit to building a personal brand and doing it right, an avalanche of opportunities will come your way.

Start thinking about the end game of your personal brand **now**, which will help better equip you for when that does happen and give you clarity and purpose when doing so.

Recap

Building a strong personal brand is like opening a door to fantastic job opportunities, sparking customer loyalty, and boosting your confidence - just to name a few of the perks!
There are two primary models for scaling a personal brand
Both models have their strengths and drawbacks, and the choice between them depends largely on what your goals and preferences are
Regardless of the path chosen, committing to the process of building a personal brand can be a fulfilling journey growth and success

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