Personal Brand does more for you than you know

Quick overview of what's in this edition.

1. Life Update

2. Unfair Advantages of Having a Personal Brand

3. How it helps me get and retain Agency Clients

4. Evergreen content ideas.

Life Update.

This past week felt amazing. I did the most amount of focused deep work I have ever done for this amount of time (2 weeks).

Every single day was:

1. Wake up.

2. Have the “makers” or “managers” day planned.

3. Have coffee while reading a book.

4. Deep work blocks of either just alone tasks or team and client calls.

5. Do this until 5.30pm.

6. Go train from 6-9. Jiu Jitsu and weights.

7. Come back, and start work by 10.30 again.

8. Work until 2-3am.

It’s not like I haven’t done this kind of schedule before. I have.

This time, I had more leverage to build, more team members, more client churn, and overall more responsibility on my shoulders.

I consciously didn’t let myself out of the zone. And the aim was just one thing:

I know this feeling, I have had it a few times before.

Staring at the ceiling right before going to bed. Deep breaths, looking back at the entire day.

And feeling pumped. Pumped for the future, because instead of being in the delusion that “I should have achieved all the goals I want today”, its

“I know I did everything I could today, to make sure I get there”.

Genuinely, that feeling is magical. Before, I wasn’t patient, I wanted everything that moment, and because of that, the next day went worse. In almost all cases.

I had this realization out of nowhere, I didn’t self reflect, didn’t journal, yet, got this feeling that I have to be patient and put in the work, it’ll all make sense in the grand scheme.

Not just with work, with jiu jitsu, and other things in my personal life. It showed up everywhere.

I was grateful, and you know what, HAPPY!

Writing this at 1am on 14th September, Saturday, while I’m at my relative’s place having a fifa night.

I know I worked hard, and since I am with family, I am not constantly worried about work.

Genuinely practicing: When I work, I work. When I’m done. I’m done.

Although you can say I’m working while having the fifa night, and, writing this weekly newsletter isn’t work. I have the most fun writing it.

So, now that you know more than I tell almost anyone I know about my feelings, let’s move on to the topic of the newsletter.

PS. I finished writing this on Saturday night. Actually 1.15am Sunday 15 Sep.

Unfair Advantages of a Personal Brand

Ever since I built my brands, things have changed significantly.

People treat me differently. Its not like I’m this special person, just that I have figured out this one skill.

Personally, if I meet someone new, and I get asked about my IG, I don’t give either of my 2 accounts upfront. (Have a separate personal one).

Yet, the amount of opportunities I get from this account alone is insane.

Being able to do meetups. Getting TEDx invites (6-7 so far, I’ve done one last year). Got invited to IITB and IITD for 2 years straight, BITS Pilani too.

Got invited to Istanbul earlier this year for an E-com summit, and got invited by the same summit to Dubai for December. (I could not go to either, work is higher priority right now, next year will be about actual travels).

Building my agency, workshops, etc. Getting invited to other big and credible programs to host sessions, and being connected to industry leaders.

These are some of the ones, still less than half of what I get offered.

I wanted to get to this point, and I just saw what people could get, and experiencing even more is surreal.

When you create your own brand, you earn all of the things that comes with it.

People give you respect instantly, and, you can get more chances than usual to prove your worth. Which is looked over by most people.

You jump the queue in most cases too. Let’s say you’re a service provider,

Your approach gets first response, you get treated with respect, even if your work might not be better than others, you get first dibs.

This alone, gives you enough opportunity to do higher leverage and higher paying work.

Over time, the compounding is more than the ones who don’t have a brand.

You build your brand → You get better chances → You improve your craft → You use the proof of work to gain more credibility → You use that credibility to scale your brand even further.

Once you really understand this, your life will change. 100%.

Before going on to the next part, let me break down one important point. Probably the biggest issue I see with people who create content.

3 main cases:

1. People who overthink, and never post.

2. People who remain level headed, post content, and improve along the way.

3. The delusional bunch, that posts content, and think too high of themselves.

Typically the pathway is 1→ 3→ 2.

Most new creators, overrate their own quality of content. And a lot of times, it’s not even their fault.

They have bad taste and bad consumption habits. The content you consume, subconsciously set limits for what “good” content actually is.

And with this, even though they create content, the quality is clearly not good enough. Which then ends up lowering the content quality.

If you’re a new creator, look at your favorite accounts and then think to yourself, with the quality you’re putting out, do you realistically see yourself posting content like them in the future?

Send your answers by replying to this email, I’ll keep it secret.

How my brand helps get and retain agency clients.

About 80% of client acquisition for my agency Metro Media House is through Whysaksham.

This is my process:

Lead Gen → Send 15-20 personalized DMs every day → I get a reply → Appointment booked → Discovery Call where Whysaksham is often brought up by the prospect during the first 5 mins → Book Closing Call → Get Paid and start the actual work.

Often times, the biggest thing that this personal brand has earned me is this statement I hear from my prospects:

“I usually don’t talk to people for this service, but your stuff feels different and I trust you and how you show up”

Hands down, the biggest compliment I get on calls. And with this, the respect I earn from them is even more.

When you have a personal brand, where you are consistently putting out your own views, your life updates, BTS and good content; your clients respect you even more.

I often have my clients praise something I said in my stories, or my videos and that gives me confidence.

I get to have better confidence with what I say and do. Which usually ends up doing great for people I work with.

Overall, a personal brand, where your clients can actually see what you are up to as a founder/owner, the personalized feedback loops are awesome. And often times, you can get opportunities outside of your service as well.

I had this idea of having my clients and prospects follow the MMH account, that nurtures the prospects by itself.

I have several people who constantly comment and engage with the content there, and message me about how those videos actually helped them.

Makes it easy to keep track and book more calls later down the line.

Here’s what you can do (Legit the biggest content strategy I implement on MMH and for my clients too):

1. Note down your prospect’s customer journey.

2. List down the stages your prospects and clients go through from scratch to their ideal goal.

3. List down each step and go to Chat GPT.

4. Ask GPT to tell you about problems they face while being at every stage.

5. Now those are content ideas and you can create micro solutions for each problem.

6. Align those with the ongoing trends on Instagram, and you kill 2 birds with one stone.

7. You reach more people, and help people facing that particular problem.

8. Which ends up nurturing them to lower their barrier of buying from you.

Now implement this, and don’t tell me I gatekeep stuff.

When you post content that helps your clients, you get chances to nurture them, and follow up, or send your videos to them to let them know that they can get something valuable from it.

Genuinely a hack in the system.

Anyone can do it. Here’s how:

Alright, here’s the sauce. But first, you can’t create good content if you have nothing of value going on outside of it.

Be it sports, hobbies, job, occupation, startup, or anything you’re pursuing outside of your brand. That drives the idea and substance behind your content.

So, if you want to create a brand yourself that helps build credibility, and acts as proof of work when you reach out for potential opportunities, here’s a small guide to sorting out your content journey.

Best part, you can keep on doing these videos for 5-6 months and your ideas won’t ever run out.

Some evergreen content ideas for founder led brands:

1. Founding story videos:
   Whenever you start anything new in your pursuit of something, tell a story.
   Tell a story about what made it start, the mindset breakthroughs, the external reasons. All of it.
   
   Keep the overall script within 1 minute. I know most IG gurus will tell you to keep it short, yet, this video will lose it’s essence if it’s not covering all aspects of it.
   Here’s a simple structure you can follow:
   
   Express an emotion or a controversial statement → How that made you start your pursuit → Initial struggles → First win → Why it happened → Now what’s your plan for the future.
    

2. Ongoing series of chasing something.
   Poorboy coffee is one of the best latest case studies of this idea. The owner of the coffee shop started a series on IG narrating his journey of making $100k per month with his business.
   
   And within 50 videos, he’s grown to over 50k followers. And now testing a lot of new stuff there.
   Here’s the framework for you:
   
   Set an ambitious goal with your pursuit → Mention that goal in the first 5 seconds of the video → Mention the reason why you’re doing it → And give a concise recap of your journey until the point of making the video.
   
   Keep the video within 40 seconds. Make it look seriously good.
    

3. Biggest wins and failures:
   This one is pretty self explanatory. Here the aim is to make a connection with your followers.
   
   We get connected to the main characters of movies because we see their struggles vividly, all put together in a short timeframe and then making their big break.
   
   Here’s the simple video framework:
   A big statement (keep the idea “grande” or “controversial”, make it sound and look big) → Describe the situation during that phase vividly → Give a list based value part or go deep with just one point → Have a takeaway at the end.
   

4. Tools and systems:
   Simple yet highly engaging. People love getting free stuff.
   Here’s the video framework:
   
   X tools/hacks etc. to get you from Y to Z → List based solution of 3-5 points → Simple CTA to engage.
   

5. Ideal audience problems, related to yours followed by a story to prove it.
   The content system mentioned in the last section, of metromediahouse account, this is it.
   Follow that framework, and create a video that follows any of the above 4 frameworks + Attach a personal story to it.

Try these out. If you can be on pace with what’s going on, on IG and create these with good quality and copywriting, you will create a strong brand. No exceptions to it.

Resources of the week.

1. BTS of a week in my life on YouTube. (Second one already being filmed)

2. If you are a service provider, wanting to build a personal brand so you can get high-paying clients and build your presence, you can join Expert Creator Blueprint.