One of the most important considerations as you're developing your personal brand is understanding the
difference between developing a personal brand in a very crowded or competitive space versus a very
niche space.
So, for example, entertainment is arguably the single most competitive industry.
So that's where you see a lot of investment put into personal brands.
The reason for this is because when you're selling entertainment, you're competing with essentially
anything.
So if you decide to entertain people with a YouTube video, well, somebody doesn't need to watch your
YouTube video.
They could walk their dog, they could read a book, they could play PlayStation, they could do a sport.
So almost everything is a competition in the entertainment industry.
And that means that there is a lot of effort put into branding, into awareness to break through.
And nowhere is this more true than when you're appealing to broad market entertainment.
So you're trying to entertain families and people of various demographics.
But some of you that are developing personal brands are not going to be selling entertainment and you're
not going to be in super competitive industries.
So in cases like that, your brand is actually less important.
So brand becomes more important.
Generally speaking, in competitive spaces, particularly when things are perceived as being the same
as more or less commodities, and that tends to happen in more competitive, crowded markets.
Things start to look more like commodities.
Now, when you're in a niche space, what your marketing relies on is less on the branding, more on
the strategy.
So the strategy is having a particular value customer value proposition in a particular target customer
group.
So that that's the main aspect of strategy that I'm talking about.
So, for example, being a specialized consultant for specific situations, for example, dual citizens,
so dual citizens of the United States and Canada, they have particular tax needs.
So in a case like that, by presenting yourself as a specialist in dual citizen tax returns, the strategy
itself is what is going to make you successful?
Your branding is a secondary consideration.
Why?
Because it's less crowded, it's less competitive, and your competence has more value than the brand
itself.
Now, the other thing with the entertainment industry is that the brand itself creates a lot of values.
There's a lot of psychological components to the value creation process that's less true in other situations.
Like I mentioned, with tax returns, while the brand, your personal brand does add value, the fact
that you're a specialist and the functional value overrides that to a certain extent.
So when you're selling something like a business to business service as a consultant, for example,
or an adviser, often you're dealing with very large contracts.
So you might be selling contracts for fifty thousand dollars.
You don't need to appeal to a lot of people.
You don't need a large audience.
You're dealing with tiny niche markets.
So in situations like that, I would say that it's not as important that you take a very bold identity
when we're talking about things like fashion and we're talking about identifiers that really stand out
from the crowd.
And that's because by making yourself less competitive in a less competitive space, you don't need
to rely on these gimmicks to stand out because you're going to be one of the few suppliers that actually
has that narrow specialization.