This question comes up a lot. Naturally, I work with entrepreneurs and business leaders who are looking to further and develop their business. However, I think that this question is flawed. To build a personal brand, your focus cannot be on generating more leads and sales into your business.

If you want to build a strong personal brand which attracts, inspires and draws people towards you, you need to realize that being focused on leads is one of the easiest ways to fail. Building a personal brand is about identifying and serving an audience that you can help. It’s about teaching and building and developing them through your knowledge and expertise and, ultimately, doing what you love.

Obviously, this does happen to often be profitable. It would be unrealistic for me to sit here and say that you aren’t going to get more leads and sales, because if you are building a personal brand, you are identifying an audience who need you and will want to follow what you do and say. Establishing yourself as an expert in what you do, and talking and establishing conversations as a result of this to generate leads, is obviously going to come through your personal brand. However, it has to be about more than that for you to enjoy it, and succeed. It’s very easy, when you see online figures using personal branding as a marketing tool, to lose sight of what it really is. If you want to use your personal brand to make hundreds of sales in a ‘just one day’,  you’re going up the wrong path. Because this is about being a leader in your industry, and to establish yourself as such, it will take a lot of work. Something you will not want to do if you aren’t passionate about your vision, values and mission.

With this in mind, I wanted to identify with you the four main ways that personal branding will realistically positively impact your business.

1) It helps you to establish yourself as a leader in your market, which will generate more opportunities.

2) It helps you to build relationships and connect with potential clients in a way which is more personal, as they feel like they know you before actually meeting (through consuming your content).

3) You will build a network as a result of having a personal brand - not just through leads but by connecting with other people, potential partners.

4) It enables you to get to know your audience and customers in a different way - often, we feel that we understand our whole audience just from a little bit of information, however, interactions with content is an invaluable way of gaining insight into what resonates. You’ll often find that the things people are interested in and motivated by, are actually far different to what you originally thought.

These are the four key reasons that building a personal brand will positively impact your business. However, it’s vital to remember that a strong personal brand is not about the brand itself as much as it’s about the audience you want to serve. If you’re not in the position at the moment to want to focus on giving back, having an impact and establishing yourself as a leader in what you do, then I’d argue that personal branding probably isn’t for you. Building a brand isn’t something that happens over night, it isn’t easy. It takes consistent growth, however, if you are determined, willing, accountable and ready to serve your audience, then the positive impact on a personal brand is unstoppable.