personal brand update, finally getting going

Summary

back in episode 96 I told you I was finally going to start building a personal brand. for a long time I thought personal branding was a vanity play. I have run successful businesses without one. but the market shifted. people want to see the human behind the company before they’ll trust the company.

the q3 plan, in plain language:

1. a videographer comes to the house once a month. it’s already on the calendar. paying someone to show up forces me to actually prep instead of whipping out the iPhone whenever.

2. a video editor on retainer for short-form. somebody we’ve worked with before, remote, fast turnaround.

3. publish on instagram, boost the reels, retarget anyone who engages with a newsletter signup ad. the newsletter becomes the front door to the podcast and everything else.

I’m not throwing massive money at this. probably under two grand a month all in. I want to see if it works before I scale it. and I’m not telling you to copy me yet. I have no specific product to sell off the personal brand. for your business you should be sharper, more niche, with a clear call to action. for me, this is the documentation. I’ll come back and tell you what worked and what didn’t.

Transcript

introduction to personal brand growth strategies

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. All right, so what am I doing to continue to try and grow a personal brand and why does it matter to you? This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. So if you go all the way back in time to episode 96, which was actually not that far or not that long ago, not that far to scroll back if you want to listen to it, I talked about what I was doing to start to try and grow my personal brand.

So just a quick recap. I think growing a personal brand, I used to think of it more of a vanity play. Like the only people who wanted to do this were incredibly vain, right? Because I have successful businesses without a personal brand. But I think over time, as you can kind of see how the market is shifting, it’s important to, if you’re going to run businesses with any kind of public reputation, you have to have your reputation out there as well.

reflections on previous branding thoughts and current perspective

It doesn’t mean you can’t also have a brand, Instagram, a brand, Facebook, but I think the person behind the companies does matter. People are interested in your personal life or at least your content, and they want to see that it exists and that you’re doing things publicly so they can trust you. It goes back to the know, like, and trust.

So for me, this is a bigger strategic move, something I want to do slowly in the background. Still not my main focus, a part-time to a part-time to a part-time job for me. And who knows, that might scale up over time. If you do go back to episode 96, quick highlight for you if you don’t want to go back and listen to it is I was just making sure I’m sticking to a no-fail publishing calendar.

I hired some people, hired a guy to make sure the podcast publishing was a lot easier, took a ton of time out of my weekly schedule. Also hired someone to backlog blog posts on Jerred.com for SEO purposes. And that was the bulk of it, getting ready for Q3. I kept saying, hey, things are going to kick off in Q3, Q3.

strategic hiring: videographer and video editor

And that is true. So things are finally starting to kick off. It’s now Q3 of 2024 at the time of recording this. And so what have I done or what’s the plan? Because it’s Q3 just started. But what am I doing? What’s the plan? Well, a couple more hires in place. I hired a videographer who’s going to come over to my house once a month.

And I already have it on the schedule. Every month, this guy’s coming over with his camera and we’re going to record content. I did this for two reasons. I have shot plenty of iPhone video just myself. But hiring him to come on a schedule is accountability for me. Because since I am busy running businesses and doing other things, it can be very easy to not try hard on my content.

Just like, all right, let’s open the iPhone and shoot something. Let’s just whip out the microphone and record something. And while I do like to put prep into the content, I’ll put more prep if I’m paying for a video guy to come over and film my content and the content is just going to be better. So it’s two things.

the importance of quality and accountability in content creation

Like the content will actually be better quality, but also it’s accountability for me to make sure I’m prepared and ready for when the videographer is coming. Second person, I hired a video editor. Yes, they could be one and the same, but I hired a video editor who we’ve worked with in the past and does a really good job on short form social media stuff.

So one’s local and one is remote. And so that’s what I’ve done so far, putting those people in place to make sure I’m staying on top of my content. Started posting on Instagram stories again. And now what’s the plan from here? Because this is just starting to get things kicked up. Where’s the actual growth?

Well, just publishing regularly will increase some organic traffic. I’ve also boosted about six different reels from my Instagram profile. This is in order to gain more followers. And then what I’m also going to do is anybody who interacts with my Instagram profile, I’m going to retarget with, and this is through advertising, retarget with an ad to sign up for my newsletter.

initiatives for boosting online engagement and newsletter subscriptions

And once they sign up for the newsletter, they also are going to be introduced to the podcast and kind of get indoctrinated into what I do, how I do it, my content, all those kind of things. And I tell you this really just to start giving you ideas because look, you’re busy, I’m busy. I don’t have time to just sit around on Instagram all day or create content all day.

I have to have this in like very bucketed windows and time set aside, time slots for these things to get it done and then forget about it. Get it published, get it scheduled. I don’t want to sit around here and check Instagram 15 times, see if anybody liked it or whatever. I don’t want to sit down once a week or every other week and look like, hey, how’s engagement?

What content do people like, not like? I can make adjustments. But ultimately, all Instagram for me is not, hey, let’s grow Instagram to grow Instagram because it’s cool. It’s let’s grow Instagram because the more people who engage and interact builds this sphere, this larger audience that I can reach out to.

the overarching goal for q3 and the role of advertising in brand growth

Then I’ll do paid advertising to these people who engage. Facebook makes this very easy. People engage and I’m going to target them with signing up for the newsletter, which is going to get them to listen to the podcast. And so this is the way you should be thinking if you want to do these kind of things.

It’s what I’ve done to grow brands without it being me personally, right? These are some of the strategies I’ve implemented. So I’m pretty confident it’s going to work. But the hardest part for me now is making sure I stay on top of the content and making sure that I’m actually publishing. And that’s the goal of Q3 here.

I’ve got everything in place. I got the people. I got the team. I’m just going to plow through and make sure I stay consistent. And overall, to be honest, it sounds like I’m just throwing money at this thing. And to be honest, I kind of am. I have a videographer. I have an editor. I’m putting money behind advertising to do boost.

future updates and potential changes in social media strategies

But all of these things are relatively inexpensive. I’m not even spending above probably two grand a month on all of those things, right? So it’s money, but it’s not significant money. It’s not like crazy ad spending money. And the reason I’m kind of staying in this low-key realm right now is I want to see how people react and I want to see if this is an actual viable growth strategy, but I still have nothing to sell anybody, right?

I’m just growing the personal brand kind of as an experiment, see if I can grow the podcast, see if I can grow the Instagram account, see if I can grow the newsletter, and let’s see where things go. But I have a lot of different companies. My content is more geared towards, you know, mindset, killing comfort, fitness stuff, some business stuff.

But it’s like, what do you sell if you’re doing all these different things? And that’s not necessarily where I’m going right now. And so if you look at any of my profiles, you can just search Jerred Moon or whatever, I wouldn’t necessarily mimic anything I’m doing because I’ll come back to the podcast and tell you what’s working really well, what’s not working at all, especially as I dive deeper and I learn more things.

final thoughts on strategic brand growth and long-term goals

But I’m going very, very broad and very general. And I wouldn’t recommend that for most business owners who are looking to scale a specific business or a specific brand. I would stay very focused on your niche and, you know, making sure you have calls to action to get people to buy from you. That’s just not where I’m at right now.

What I’m trying to do is just grow the brand overall and see what the response is. See if I, you know, if I can get everything to get lifted up, podcast, newsletter, Instagram by implementing these strategies. And that’s it. That’s the main goal for Q3 is to get some advertising in here, keep to the process, keep to the schedule.

And then I’ll probably come back in, you know, a couple of weeks, a couple of months and update you all on like actual numbers because right now it’s just like, hey, here’s the plan for Q3. And if you’re not following me on Instagram, you can follow me. Search for Jerred Moon. I’m at EO3 underscore fit if you want to look specifically.

Long story there. That was my Instagram handle back in the day. I just tried changing my username, then it booted me off of Instagram verified. Now I can’t get verified again, screwed up all sorts of stuff. So I think I might end up keeping the same username even though I wanted to switch it to just my name.

I screwed a bunch of stuff up. So that’s another lesson learned, learning a lot in this process. But ultimately I think the biggest thing to take away is there has to be a strategy behind what you’re doing. And when I pay attention to other people on Instagram who are talking about growing a following or something like that, they’re talking about algorithms, they’re talking about going viral, they’re talking about just being consistent.

And I agree with some of those things, but I don’t think that’s what you should be chasing. And I’m talking about long term strategy here. Don’t become, you know, addicted to the algorithm or the hearts or the likes. Having a personal brand, in my opinion, is about just being out there. It doesn’t mean you have to have a million Instagram followers like to have a personal brand.

It’s the fact that it exists is all that really matters. And so when you do encounter people who want to do business with you, they can look you up and you don’t have a ghost town of an Instagram profile. And so I think, because it doesn’t take a lot of customers to build a business, and I think that’s where most people miss.

Most people think, you know, if you think my goal is getting to a million Instagram followers, it truly isn’t. It’s just growing and building a personal brand so it exists and then maintaining it. And then how can I maintain that with minimal effort? That’s the goal. But I’m going to have to try hard in the process to get there, and that’s what I’m documenting because I know a lot of you out there, you’re busy, you’re busy like me, you’re running your business.

You know, you don’t have time to sit around and just be on Instagram all day or create content all day. And neither do I, I promise you, I don’t. And so I want to talk about how this can be built, how you can grow these things. So I’ve implemented a lot of strategies there. One thing I’m thinking about doing is putting these all in video format, putting it somewhere in like a community base for a better human business.

I’d love feedback to anyone who’s interested in something like that. I’m also going to send it out in the newsletter soon. If putting these strategies in video format, almost like trainings, would not cost anything, would be free in some sort of community. If you think that’s a good idea, let me know.

Respond to one of the newsletters I send out every Thursday, and I would love to hear back from you if you think that’s something that you want to be a part of. But I will wait to hear back from the community on this one, from anybody out there. They’re listening. But here’s the big takeaway. If you want to grow, if you want to grow your brand, your following, your personal brand, whatever it is, you can’t just chase one like you have to be strategic.

You have to have a bigger strategic vision, a bigger strategic goal. And to do that, you have to try harder.