How to build a profitable personal brand (in just 30 days)

I'm going to show you step by step how to build a profitable personal brand in just 30 days. Even if you're a complete beginner, starting from zero.

See, most people spend years trying to figure out personal branding. They might be posting consistently, getting more views, and getting more subscribers, but their bank balance barely moves. The truth is, building a brand that attracts your ideal customers isn't as complicated as people make it out to be. And it certainly doesn't need to take that long. You just need the right blueprint.

By the way, if you're new here, hi. My name is Tika and through building my own personal brand, I was able to quit my corporate job, make money online, and design a life of freedom doing work that I love. And now I help creators and founders do the same.

If you wanted a summary of everything in this video, as well as even more detailed breakdowns of the concepts that I cover, then you can actually download my free personal branding playbook. I'll be continually updating this document as I go. Link is in the description.

So, first we got to identify your business backbone. This is going to be the foundation of everything. What so many creators get wrong is that they don't think about the end goal. They just think like, okay, I want to make a personal brand. Let me just make content and then figure it out as I go. And that is exactly why you see so many creators out there with massive audiences, 100, 200k subscribers who are still struggling to pay rent.

So, what we want to do is to really think about like, okay, ultimately, where do I want this channel to go? How am I going to make this financially stable? What exactly is the monetization engine behind my channel? Whatever your business ends up being, i.e. this is going to be who you're trying to help, what transformation you're trying to help them achieve, and how you're going to help them get from point A to point B, that is going to affect your entire content strategy because you're going to be making content to help those people.

This is probably the biggest mistake that I made with my own channel. So, I started posting content on YouTube with just this vague awareness that yeah, you can make money online through a personal brand and you can monetize your content. But truthfully, I had zero plan, zero clue, zero strategy. And I just thought, okay, let me just start making content and then figure it out as I go. Big mistake.

Now, I do acknowledge that in some ways it was good that I didn't delay making content until I had a solid business idea in my head. Because what it meant was I had a year and a half's worth of experience in terms of building my skills with video making and building an audience to over 30,000 subscribers. So, I don't regret that. However, earlier this year was when I decided to niche switch to ultimately create the business that I've always wanted to create and I needed to really shift my content to attract the right people. I realized that my passion was really in personal branding, how to become a creator, entrepreneur, and online business. And so, that was what I started talking about.

And you see, when you're niche switching, it's fine when you have 500 subscribers and you're still new to the content game because, you know, you haven't built as much of an audience. Like, there's not a baseline expectation of you to be putting out a certain type of content. And so, there's very little risk in doing that. However, it is very different if you have already built a following of 30,000 subscribers. That niche switch is a lot scarier and a lot more difficult to navigate. And so because I didn't think about what I wanted my business to ultimately be, I had put myself in that very sticky situation. And that's why I want this to be a cautionary tale for you.

So if you're just starting out with your personal branding journey or you're still kind of like new to the game, then as soon as possible, just make sure you have your business backbone solid. So let's get into how you would exactly identify what your business backbone should be. I'm going to mention a few questions here, sort of like prompts if you will for you to think about. And by the way, this is all going to be in the personal branding playbook, so you can kind of like go through that as you're following along with this video.

So firstly, you want to think about what are your monetizable skills? What are you good at? What transformations have you personally gone through? What problems have you solved for yourself? And out of all of those monetizable skills, you want to identify the one that has the best business potential. And I do have something called a clarity filter in the notion guide. And so you can sort of sip through ideas and rank which ones would have the best business potential. Ultimately, we want to distill your business down into a one-line offer, which is: I help who with what problem by offering solution so that they can transformation.

Part two is the content cheat code. There's really only two parts to this. One is where are you posting and secondly, what are you posting? So let's break these down.

Part 2a is where are you posting? For anyone looking to build a business on social media, this is the exact strategy that you need. And this is something that I like to call the creator CEO stack. So firstly, you need long-form content, short-form content, and newsletter. And the reason why is because each of these has a very specific role in your business.

With long-form content, such as YouTube and podcast, this is essentially how you're going to create that deeper connection and trust with your audience because they're spending so much time with you. And with short-form content, you know, this is your IG reels, TikTok, LinkedIn, X posts. This increases your surface area for discoverability. And this is how you will attract people into your ecosystem and basically make people aware that you exist. And with newsletters, this is part of your sales funnel. So essentially, that mailing list that you collect, you own those contact details. Because the thing is, when you're posting on all these social media platforms like Instagram or YouTube, you don't actually own your audience. And so like, if the platform were to go bust tomorrow, then you would completely lose all of your followers, all of your contacts, and your business would just cease to exist. Whereas if you had collected a mailing list, have a newsletter, then you are not at risk of that because you own those email addresses.

Think of your mailing list as like the connective tissue between your content and your business backbone. Because your content is where you bring people into your ecosystem and then your mailing list is where you plug in all of your offers and let people know of what you're selling. That is exactly how you convert viewers into paying clients.

Daniel Priestley, who is this Australian entrepreneur, wildly successful, and who has written a whole bunch of bestselling books, he coined this term called the 7-Eleven rule. And it basically explains how people go from being strangers to buyers. People need about seven hours of meaningful interaction with you, 11 separate touch points, and to see you in four different places. So, four different contexts. So, let's say someone watches you on YouTube. They're also subscribed to your mailing list and reading your newsletter articles. They've seen you on a podcast somewhere and they've also consumed your Instagram reels. Then all of those hours, all of those touch points, they all stack up. That is exactly how you go from being just another creator to someone they know, like, and trust enough to buy from you.

Now, there are a ton of social media platforms that you can choose from. But as someone who is a solopreneur, if you don't have a big team, you know, it's not feasible to be posting on every single one without going insane anyway. And so, you want to be strategic about which platform you're choosing to post content on. Your primary consideration as a business owner should be where does your target avatar naturally hang out already in the online space. Where does your ICP like to consume their content? And then that is the platform that you should be prioritizing.

For long-form, this is my genuine belief and this is also something that I've heard time and time again from other successful entrepreneurs is that as a business owner, you definitely want to be posting on YouTube. And the reason is because there is no other platform out there that will allow you to build that deep level of connection and trust with your audience. That's because when people click on your YouTube video, they have an intent to spend time with you. And it can be as long as 10, 20, 30 minutes, sometimes even like an hour plus. With IG reels, they're only really spending 30 to 60 seconds with you per video. And that's not nearly enough for you to build that same level of connection that YouTube can.

So, to go back to Daniel Priestley's 7-Eleven-4 rule, you need about 7 hours of contact time in order to build enough trust for that audience member to buy from you. Let's say you only posted Instagram reels. And let's assume that each reel is like 60 seconds long. Then, in order to stack up to that 7 hours contact time, you would need to post 420 reels before that person trusts you enough to buy from you. Whereas with YouTube, let's assume that one video is like 20 minutes long. Then they'd only need to consume 21 videos from you in order to build that same level of trust. Just the ROI in terms of the connection you build versus like how much time and effort you have to input into making YouTube videos is so much more compared to other platforms.

The other massive advantage with YouTube is that it's basically the hub of social media. Everyone from every sort of like category or niche or demographic is hanging out on YouTube. Whereas with other platforms, they tend to be more biased or lean more towards a specific demographic. So for example, with TikTok, you know, that's more targeting the Gen Z younger generation. And then with LinkedIn, it's obviously targeting more like business professionals and businesses.

If you're really struggling with this, I do have a ChatGPT prompt inside the personal branding playbook, which link is in the description below. And basically, I'm going to read it out here. So you're telling it, "Hey, I'm a creator wanting to start my own business on the back end of my social media channel. This is my business idea." And just plug in the details of your business and I'm trying to help, you know, this demographic or this target avatar to achieve this transformation. And then based on where people in my niche like to hang out and consume content in the online space, give a detailed recommendation of which platforms I should be posting content in and give an explanation as to why."

So, in part 2b, we're going to be answering the question, what are you posting? Here, I wanted to introduce a concept called steal like an artist. Basically, the way that we learn is through copying others that have done it before us. Looking at examples of successful people that have done the thing that we want to do and just like observing, you know, how are they doing it and learning from what they're doing.

So, what this looks like in a practical sense is you want to do a bit of market research in your niche and in your space. So see what successful creators are within your niche and see what topics they're talking about, which videos are doing well and really resonating with people, how are they exactly making their content, and just like do a deep dive study into at least maybe like five or six creators to then like gain some inspiration for what sort of content you should be making as well.

And the thing is, I don't want you guys to get this twisted. It's not copying. We don't want to copy people like word for word and completely like steal the exact title, thumbnail, and video content. What I recommend people to do and the way that you want to think about it is you want to sort of like take those video topics or those video titles and treat them as like an essay prompt. So what I tend to do is like, I'll see a video concept that does really well. Use that title as an essay prompt. I don't even click on their video. I don't watch it because I don't want to be influenced by the points that they're making. I want it to be uniquely my own. And so I will just like flesh out the entire script based on that one-liner. And that's where I'll weave in, you know, my specific examples, my unique perspective on the topic. And that is essentially how you steal like an artist instead of being like a copycat.

And by the way, you don't want to be copying videos that did well like 5 years ago. You want to make sure it's as relevant as possible to today. So ideally, you want to be looking at videos that have popped off in the last 6 months or that have been released more recently. And then that's how you know that this topic is in demand or people are interested in searching for this information.

Even with aesthetics and thumbnails, I would say it really pays to also steal like an artist and to really study like how are people doing their thumbnail styles in your niche. And the reason is because like people have an expectation already based on what your thumbnail looks like and your thumbnail and the aesthetic will attract a certain type of audience to you. So let's take a random example. Let's say you are a female fitness influencer who also does like, you know, more lifestyle, healthy girl, it girl lifestyle vlogs. You'll notice that female influencers will have a very specific style when it comes to their thumbnails. So it's more like brighter colors, maybe more like softer, pastel colors, more pinks, more beiges. And they tend to have a lot of like collage style thumbnails. And often, you know, they will have them wearing their active wear and then maybe like pictures of like healthy food or like them working out at the gym and like you kind of can see what I mean here. And when people see that thumbnail, they immediately know what to expect and then they can rule out immediately whether, okay, I'm the right target audience or I'm not the right target audience for this specific video. And with self-improvement creators, you can see a lot of them doing like, you know, a still of their talking head and they're just looking at the camera. It's very minimalist. You've got just like text underneath their chin and there's not much else going on.

Generally, when ideating for content, you want to be thinking about these two questions. Number one is, what problems are my target avatar facing and how can I solve it for them? Let's say you're in the productivity niche and your video title is "You're Not Lazy: Three Reasons Why You're Procrastinating and How to Fix That." So, the problem here that you're solving is they're procrastinating and they're feeling lazy. And then you're telling them that, hey, I've got the solution here for you.

The second question you want to ask is, what dream outcome does my target audience long for and how can I get them closer to that outcome? Let's say you're in fitness. Your video title could be something like, "How to Get Shredded for Summer in 90 Days." So the dream transformation here is that, you know, they want to be shredded. They want to look good for summer and then you're telling them, hey, I can help you get there. If you're in the business niche, a video topic could be something like, "Three Easy Steps to Earning Your First 10k Month as a Solopreneur." And so the dream transformation or dream outcome here that you're helping them with is earning their first $10,000 month.

So now the final part is we want to figure out how do you actually get people to care about what you're selling. How are you going to stand out in your niche so that you then become the obvious choice for someone to buy from you. That's exactly where your secret sauce is going to come in. And I'm going to take you through three very simple but very powerful prompts to help you uncover that.

So first prompt is, what are your values and beliefs? So for example, with me, one of my beliefs that I talk about a lot on my channel is that I don't think a corporate job is the vehicle to achieving financial freedom. For that, you need to really build something of your own that you can then infinitely scale. And the reason is because your income as an employee is capped at whatever your company or employer thinks that you're worth. Whereas with an online business, your earning potential is essentially limitless. Another thing I like to talk about a lot is that you shouldn't waste time on penny pinching your way into financial freedom, like just focusing on the saving and budgeting aspect of money. But you should rather just like use that time and that bandwidth to learn the skills of how to make more money, how to generate your own income because that is ultimately is what is going to get you to financial freedom. In fact, I have a whole notion page on this where I list out all of my values and my beliefs, and it's a really powerful reminder for anchoring my content. And I would highly recommend for you guys to do this too.

Prompt number two is, what is your overarching story? What is the main reason for why your brand exists? What was the painful problem that you experienced and that you had to figure out how to solve in order to make your life better? What was the journey that you went through to get to where you are now? So my overarching story and the reason for why my channel exists is that I was one of those people that ticked all the boxes. So got the grades in school, went to uni, got this fancy, you know, corporate banking job afterwards, and then realized after ticking all of those boxes and working so hard to achieve those goals, I was so deeply unhappy and unfulfilled in my job. I felt burnt out and stuck. I just wanted to do work that was meaningful, that I love, be in an environment where I didn't need to ask for permission to take a break or go on a holiday. So then I quit my corporate job last year and then I booked a one-way flight to Australia under a working holiday visa. Over there, I ended up working part-time, just two to three days a week at a gym in order to earn living expenses so that I wouldn't dip into my savings whilst I built my channel and my business up. And then within a couple months of me starting that online business was when I went from zero to earning triple what I used to earn in my corporate job. And that's essentially like my origin story. And now my mission is I want to help others to achieve the same.

Prompt number three is, what are people typically saying or how are other creators showing up in your niche that you have contrarian views about? If there's one question that's really going to uncover your secret sauce for you, it's going to be this one. So it's super key. For example, lots of creator coaches or social media gurus like to optimize for virality. Just like getting a ton of views and then going viral and just like having as many subscribers as possible. Whereas where you could stand out in the personal branding space is I actually don't optimize for virality. I optimize for trust. And so like I don't care about gaining you the most number of subscribers or views. I care about gaining you quality viewers and building you a quality audience that deeply resonates with what you're talking about and who will eventually trust you enough to buy your offers.

Another example is if you're in the fitness space, you see a ton of people just like prioritizing weight loss and just being your skinniest and smallest self. Whereas like where you could stand out could be, oh, listen, I don't care about aesthetics whatsoever. My focus is allowing you to be your strongest self to help you be functional or flexible and just like live an overall healthy life.

So with my niche in the online business space, obviously you've got all those entrepreneur bros that are kind of like shouting at you and saying like, you got to hustle harder, you're not working hard enough, you're not grinding. And I think a lot of people are really sick of that. And so where I sort of differentiate myself in the space is I present business education in like a more calming and approachable way and it makes it way more accessible for people, especially those that don't quite resonate with like the hustle grind, you know, bro culture. Kind of like where a comfort creator meets business education.

So, I hope that helped you guys trying to build a personal brand. And like I mentioned, I do have the personal branding playbook that you can grab in the description below to walk you through all of that and basically like fleshes out everything that I mentioned in this video. Okay guys, take care and see you in the next.