The Importance of Authenticity When Building Your Personal Brand

I am a big believer that the more authentic you are the more clients you attract,

Being “authentic” when it comes to your personal brand means remaining true to yourself. It doesn’t mean creating a picture of someone who does not exist and that you or your client or customers cannot possibly attain in real life.

I want you to be inspired to stand out as the “real” you and I want you to let your audience get to know, like and trust YOU and not some idealised version of you. This is extremely important to the success and longevity of your personal brand, as well as your sanity and mental wellbeing. It should feel good for both yourself and your audience and allow you to build genuine connections and form meaningful relationships.

In the words of the mighty Oprah “The greatest gift you can give yourself is the permission to be yourself. Your authenticity is what will make you stand out in a crowded world.”

I want to urge you to embrace your uniqueness and let it become your superpower. You may not feel as if you are unique or have anything out of the ordinary to offer to the world right now. However, I am going to make it my mission through the pages of this book to help you to identify and embrace your uniqueness and build a personal brand that feels 100% authentic and aligned to you.

For as Walt Disney once said “The more you are like yourself, the less you are like everyone else which makes you unique.”

When you build a personal brand that is not authentic, it does not feel good and moreover will often lead to you attracting the wrong people. You will have noticed that in the introduction to this book I talked about helping you to “attract the clients that you will love to work with.” By not being the “real you” you will find that you attract the wrong people who you therefore do not enjoy working with.

If you have been thinking that to build a personal brand you will have to become someone else then I want to tell you that you do not. I invite you to fully embrace how amazing and unique you are and promise you that you can build a personal brand and have a wildly successful business just by being yourself. How amazing is that! Yes there may be things that at the beginning may feel slightly uncomfortable to you and visibility blocks to overcome, but by staying true to yourself and maintaining your authenticity the journey will be less bumpy and much more satisfying. People will buy into you BECAUSE of who you are not despite it.

I was massively inspired by something that actress Melissa McCarthy had to say on this subject. In her words “I’ve never felt I needed to change. I’ve always thought if you want somebody different, pick somebody else.” I would love you to embody this quote going forward. If people do not like you for you then they are simply not your people- and that is okay. Some people are meant for you and some people are not. When we embrace this the act of building our personal brand and becoming more visible in our market place becomes so much easier.