How to Stand Out Online (Free Personal Branding Course w/ Workbook)

The problem isn't that you don't know how to stand out. The problem is that you are so busy worrying about what everyone else is doing, that you haven't taken a good look in the mirror to realize just how unique and magnetic you already are. And that is why I decided to create this course. I'm Kat, founder of Magnetic Brand Co, and for eleven years I've been working with small business owners, professionals, and creatives to help them get known for their unique brilliance, get paid to do the work that most lights them up, and to get valued for who they actually are as human beings. And if you're anything like my clients, you are probably feeling a little depressed about how impossible it feels to stand out in today's market. But here's the thing. We're in a global trust crisis. We're all feeling jaded and on high alert because we've been sold to for so long, and we have never been more starved for connection, for authenticity, and for humanity. In other words, the people who are going to succeed moving forward are the ones who are going to lead with their humanity. And that is why it has never been a more important time to build a personal brand, one that actually leads with who you are. And that is what this course is all about. So before we dive into the actual work, because trust me, there is a lot that we've got to get through. Here's a quick agenda so you know what to expect. I'm going to give you a big picture view of this personal branding thing. I've got so many exercises to help you uncover what makes you unmistakably magnetic and undeniably unique. AKA, these are going to be the five facets of your onlyness factor. And I've got an entire month's work for you to do to action. All of the things that you've been excavating during this course. Also, because I can't help myself, I made resources. They are completely free. You'll find links to them under this video. An unfair advantage is a unique edge that competitors cannot easily copy, buy or replicate. And I created this course to give you just that because there are actually two ways to approach personal branding outside in and inside out. And the vast majority of people choose to do it from the outside in, which is what leads to forgettable vanilla personal brands. Because when you approach personal branding from the outside in, what you're really trying to do is engineer your differentiation. You're trying so hard to follow what other people are saying to do. You're looking at competitors and deliberately trying to do things differently. You're trying to jump on trends. It's like everything outside you is influencing your decisions. And what you're also trying to do is anticipate what will appeal to the outside world. Regardless of how you feel about it. You're like, okay, well, if TikTok's where I need to be, well then I better jump on board the TikTok train. I like to call this approach Franken branding because you just end up with so many different things going on. There is no cohesive strategy. You are getting completely overwhelmed and no one really knows what you're about at the end of the day. And frank and branding is exhausting. It leads to so much doubt and comparisonitis because you're so focused on what everyone else is doing. And it's also very unsustainable because you often end up committing to things that you just can't stick with. And the biggest issue in all of this is it's missing the key ingredient, which is you, your magnetism. And so you're still struggling to stand out and be remembered even though you're working so hard. Now, not everyone approaches it this way. You may be someone who's incredibly discerning and strategic. So rather than frank in branding, you have been looking for one proven roadmap. You want to minimize the guesswork and get it right the first time. And so you're hoping that you can tick personal branding off your checklist as if it's this one and done project. So you either find some expert to hand you a roadmap, or maybe you go to AI and you're like, just tell me exactly what to do and I'm going to do it. I call this fill in the blank branding. It can lead to a very polished and professional exterior, but once again it lacks X factor. It's forgettable because you haven't really done that deep work to figure out what is it that actually makes you magnetic, and can you actually color outside the lines in some way, instead of just doing personal branding the way everyone else is doing it? The biggest issue with personal branding approached from the outside in, is that it only focuses on one of five sources of personal magnetism, which is material magnetism, basically like how your brand looks on the outside. But when you approach branding from the inside out, we are making sure that every single facet of you, from your natural gifts and strengths to your ideas, your unique perspectives, your energy and essence, your way of expressing yourself and moving about the world all gets fed into your personal brand packaging, and it becomes the natural expression of who you are. You are differentiated by default a category of one. And here's how it really works in the most simple way possible. We start with you. We are going to figure out who exactly you are, and then that is going to get factored in to your actual strategy, which you are going to put into practice through experimentation and expression, which is going to lead to more clarity, more confidence, more skill, more self-awareness. In other words, that embodiment piece gets even deeper meaning you can now refine your strategy, make it even more effective, which is going to make your expression even more powerful and more magnetic, and so on. Basically, the more you do this work, the more magnetic you become, the more unique you become, the more you stand out. It is a gift that keeps on giving. So to anchor in this difference, I want you to see that Outside In is about trying to build a personal brand as if it's some structure that is separate from you, whereas Inside Out is about becoming the most magnetic version of you, and then figuring out how to best express that into the world. Now, this process of becoming magnetic is something I like to see as a journey that we can approach in phases, so we know what to be doing at each stage of that journey. And it's really important to understand that for every phase that we're focusing on in the outside world, all of this expression, the building, the strategy, there is all of this inner work, this invisible work, that is the thing that makes all the difference, because the thing is the true source of your magnetism and your onlyness factor comes from within. It comes from these things that only you know originally. And the job of personal branding is finding a way to express it in the outside world. But we can't express anything until we first excavated all of this gold. And so that is where the entire focus really of this course today is going to be about. So let's zoom in and take a quick look at the five facets of your onlyness factor. So the first one is your spirit. So this is just who you are. Really think personality, essence, energy, vibe, your story are the things that have shaped who you are today. Your strengths are the things that you're really good at, both personally, because like, it's important to know how you are going to best express yourself and approach personal branding, but also in relation to what you want to be known for. We've then got your stance. So this is about your opinions, your ideology, your values, the way you see the world and doing work here is really the difference between those online experts that are very generic and true thought leaders. And then we have style. So this is how you actually express yourself visually, verbally, physically, and style is what makes you so recognizable. It's really where so much of this work comes together, because it's really about how other people are experiencing you. And like I said, we are going to dive into all five of these in a lot of detail throughout the course with tons of exercises for each one. So just know I'm going to explain them in more detail very soon. One extra thing that I want you to remember is that I didn't choose a diamond shape just because it's cute, even though it is. Diamonds are formed through immense heat and pressure. In other words, so much of what makes you unique and magnetic and valuable is the stuff that was hard earned, the stuff that you had to go through, the adversity, the challenges, all of that is what makes you so unique today. It's not just what you were born with, it's what has shaped you over the years. Diamonds also represent strength and clarity and beauty. No two diamonds are exactly the same, but also how they're cut determines how the light is reflected through them. And so what I want you to imagine is that, okay, you are already a diamond. You're already valuable. You're already gorgeous, okay? Completely unique. However, this process that we're working on together and the process of personal branding is about you choosing how you want to be cut and polished, how you want that light to shine out. In other words, how you want to be positioned, how you want people to perceive you. You get to shape that narrative. You get to choose all of these things. And that is where personal branding is so powerful, because you no longer have other people deciding who you are. You're like, no, no, no, this is who I am. And here is what I want you to know about me. Something to keep in mind is that when we're doing this work on the five facets, it can feel initially like you've got all of these balls that you're juggling. Okay, cool. So I know this about myself and this about myself, and it can be really difficult to see how that they all come together. It can feel like a lot and feel a little impossible and daunting. But through that process that I was talking about, of going deeper into self-awareness and then putting it into practice, into your strategy and then expressing it. It starts to come together and it gets eventually to the point where you no longer feel like you're trying so hard to express these things, and they're just kind of inherent. Now we're about to dive in to the actual work part of this course. And a fair warning you could easily fill an entire notebook with the exercises that I'm going to be giving you. So if you haven't already, I'm going to suggest you hit pause, grab yourself a notebook, set up a dedicated Google Doc, a notion page, whatever, because I don't want you to lose all this gold that we're working on, especially since the content prompts that I give you at the end will require you to circle back to a lot of your answers, because you're basically going to be finding ways to put them into practice. Let's dive into the first facet of your onlyness factor, which is your spirit. So like I said, your spirit is your energy. It's your personality, your presence, your essence, your vibe, the way you walk, you talk, you remote, you express without actually thinking about it, without trying. So this isn't about strategy. Like, I want you to imagine this as your inner magnetism. Like this. this source of magnetism that's just always beaming out. And it's the thing that draws people to you before you even open your mouth. The real key, the doorway to tapping into your spirit and making sure that it is fully shining through in your personal brand, in your content, etc. it's all about self awareness. We have got some really great exercises that we're going to dive into to help with this, but I also want you to know that spirit is one of the trickiest things, because we usually grow up and are conditioned to shove away aspects of ourselves that are not particularly convenient to the outside world. Like we are basically told, you know what? You should probably just like not let people know these things about yourself and you should be a little bit more socially acceptable. And we grow up wearing masks to keep ourselves safe and appreciated. At least we think it's what's going to allow us to be more valued and all of that. But what makes you truly valuable and interesting and magnetic is the real stuff. The stuff that's probably quirky could be seen as weird to some people, and it is a whole process of realizing that you've got all these things inside you that haven't been shared, really understand what they are, to integrate them and to then to become safe enough to even share them with the world. So I'm just a word of warning that as you uncover these things, it's not going to be some switch that you just flick on and it's like, oh, suddenly I can magically show all these aspects of myself like it is a process, but you do not need to go from zero to one hundred with this. Every single time you do one of these exercises in this course, you are going to get another step closer to having integrated it and finding ways to express the real you with the world. So with no further ado, let's dive into exercise one. So this exercise is going to happen in three little parts. So the first thing I'm going to want you to do is have a think about like the ten people in your inner circle. They could be clients, colleagues, friends, family. I want you to send out a text message to them. Let them know you're doing some market research or a personal branding course. Doesn't matter. And just ask them if they could describe you in three words, as in three individual keywords, not like three word sentence. Once you've collected all of their answers, you're going to circle the ones that you agree with. And then I want you to highlight the ones that like make you feel the nicest where you're like, oh, well, thanks, because this is going to give us a clue as to like the way that you do actually want to be perceived. Part two of this exercise is I want you to list ten people who you look up to or respect. Now, these can be people that you know personally, but could be influencers, thought leaders, celebrities. It doesn't really matter. I just want you to write them all down. And next to each of their names, you are going to describe them in three key words like, what are the three traits that come to mind? You know, for instance, these could be like bold, courageous, unapologetic, caring, compassionate, etc. once you have got all of those written down, you're going to circle the ones that were repeated. So of this list, you're probably going to find that you use the same words to describe a bunch of these people. So you're going to circle those, and then you're going to highlight the ones that were repeated the most. What were the overlaps? Because the thing is, when we look up to other people, the qualities and the traits that we really admire in others, they generally are just reflecting things that are in us that we may not have fully acknowledged in us yet, and that we just need to embody more. So once you've done this exercise, I want you to choose the top three keywords and save them somewhere, because you are going to be referring back to these. Now the next exercise is going to add a little texture to this, because the three words on their own, you might be like, okay, what do I do with this? This exercise can be done with your natal chart. So if you're someone who's into astrology and you know how to pull your natal chart, then pull it up. But you don't need to. This exercise is about using the elements, the four elements to better understand how other people experience you. The kind of flavor and energy of what it is that you're expressing. Because it's like, for instance, someone can be compassionate in a really fiery way, and they could also be compassionate in a watery way or an earthy way. Okay. So if you have your natal chart handy, what you're going to do is just count how many planets you have in each of the signs based by element like so. For instance, if you have three planets in Aries, we already know you're quite fiery if you don't have your natal chart. And again, you don't need it, you are going to do this by feel. So I want you to read through each of the elements. For instance, fire is passion, impulse, willpower, action, heat, adventure, transformation can screenshot this obviously and have a think about it later on. But what are the two elements that you feel like you most lead with. Now, this is not to say that you only are these two elements. Of course, like we all have a combination of all four elements in us, but we're looking for the two main ones, a heads up that sometimes it feels like those two elements can contradict each other. Like so for instance, I am very fiery and also very watery, and it's like, how do they go together? Aren't they opposites? But I've got this fun little thing on screen so that you can see that when we combine two elements, it actually creates a new kind of an element. For instance, fire and water creates steam, which is like passion meets emotion, desire, intensity, and transformation. So you can just have a play and go, like, how does that feel to you? Can you see how your elements play together? You don't need to take this literally. This is just a an angle for you to consider things through. But it's really important to understand that we are all walking contradictions. It's actually one of the things that makes us most interesting and magnetic. It's why we are so unique. If everyone was just one thing, All fire or just all earth would be really boring. And one of the things that's helped me the most with my own personal branding, but also something that I now use with my clients that's given me this fast track to understanding them and has made it easier for me to hold up a clean mirror to them and help them understand themselves. I use all three of these systems for self-awareness. Astrology, which I find is best for understanding your personality and your motivation for life. Human design, I find, is most helpful as like an operating manual for alignment. It can tell us so much about how we're built to lead, how other people experience us and our energy levels, and our natural way of getting into creative flow. Like it's about our mechanics. And then finally, the gene keys is what I personally use for understanding our shadows and our gifts. Particularly helpful at understanding where we self-sabotage, where we might have visibility wounds, like what's really holding us back from stepping into our full, authentic expression. And these are huge systems on their own. I do have two offerings, Magnetic by Design and Mythic Journey. If that's something that you want, like personalized support with. But otherwise, I just recommend that you pick a system and just start getting a little bit curious about it if you feel called to. But I just want you to understand that, especially when it comes to spirit, that this work of like, of understanding ourselves, of integrating all aspects of ourselves and accepting ourselves, it's a lifelong journey. So it's not a matter of waiting until you understand yourself enough to start showing up and building a personal brand. Okay. Like if, if there are questions you can't answer yet and you're struggling to sum up who you are in a, in an elevator pitch, this is the process. I'll remind you, we're always going to do a little bit more work on going deep within and going, who actually am I? What do I want to express? What do I want to be known for? Well, then apply what we know in our strategy and then we're going to start experimenting and expressing it, and it'll deliver more clarity as we go. Let's now dive into our second facet, which is strengths. So your strengths are everything from your natural abilities to your developed skills and really how you do what you do and all the ways that you impact the people that you work for or with. Knowing your strengths is important for two reasons. First is that you want to be able to highlight them and actually get known for them. Obviously, this is how you're going to position yourself as someone valuable, worth hiring or working with. But this is also so that we can build your strategy around it, because there is just no point in forcing yourself to commit to some sort of output. For instance, maybe long form blogging when you do not enjoy writing, and you would much rather just sit and talk to a camera. So we're going to begin our contemplations with the most obvious areas that we can look for our strengths. But then we're going to keep getting deeper and more nuanced as we go, because a lot of people will just stop at the really surface level stuff. But if we can get into some of that nitty gritty, this is where you're going to really be able to differentiate yourself. So some of these obvious things I want you to think about. Yes, sure. Formal qualifications or certifications. I want you to think about everything that you do in your current role or any roles that you've really enjoyed and excelled at. Like really take the time to break down all the different things that you do really well, everything that you do to run your business or manage your passion project hard or technical skills, specific softwares or tools that you're really good at using, anything else that you would put on a CV and think about anything that you would struggle to outsource where you're like, oh, no one can do this as well as I do it. We're going to now get into the natural gifts, like the less obvious stuff. So what have you done since you were a kid? Like just things that you've always just been drawn towards, whether that's drawing or building things or fixing things. What do people always ask you for help with? Like, what are they actually come to you for when they're struggling? Anything that you took to naturally, like things where you're like, oh, I just like started doing it one day and I never really had any training. Soft skills, like problem solving, leadership, empathy, strategic thinking, the compliments that you brush off. I'm sure there are things that you filter out where people are like, oh, you're so good at that. And you're like, oh yeah, but it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. Write it down and then think intuition, instincts, creativity, things that are harder to make tangible or harder to measure. But it doesn't matter because trust me, it's all a part of this big picture. What is the biggest compliment that someone could give you? What do you love doing so much? You would actually probably do it for free if you didn't need to pay rent. What's the biggest compliment someone could give your work? The best outcome, or the way they felt as a result of it? What do others think you make look easy? If you were to win an award, what would it be for? I also want you to review if you are someone who collects testimonials from clients, or you've ever had written reviews from colleagues or bosses. Look for repeating themes of the ways they describe you. Ask your inner circle who know today you like. What do you think I'm good at? Try and find common threads in all the jobs that you've had and then moving forward, I want you to start tracking and saving feedback that you receive. Like somewhere you're going to remember it because it's just there's often so much gold there, but we just move so fast through life that we just don't take a moment to actually clock it and internalize it. Part two of this is really important because it's all well and good to know that you're good at all these different things. But what if half of it is something that you're good at but you don't actually enjoy? Like, I am a really good copywriter. I was a copywriter before I became a personal branding coach. I don't enjoy copywriting, and for a really long time there, I was only sharing the testimonials that I was receiving from my copywriting, but I didn't want to get any more copywriting clients. I wanted to move in another direction. So. So we don't want to be highlighting anything that you actually hate doing. And we've got to be careful that like, if there are some money making skills that you've had, like things that you've been paid for up until now, but that you don't want to be doing anymore, that you want to retire, then we need to filter these things out when it comes to your personal brand, because the point of a personal brand is to really to be calling in more of what you actually want. It's to help you to step into a future version of your career. It's not actually just meant to reflect the past. So we're going to borrow a framework from Gay Hendricks. His book, The Big Leap, which I highly recommend. It's the Zone of Genius framework. There is this grid here where we've got high level of skill and low level of skill, and then things that bring you energy and then drain your energy, and you're going to put down all of those things that you've been listing. We're going to actually group them by one of these. You might just even want to put a letter next to each of the things on your list. Like you don't have to literally draw this grid, but basically your genius zone is something that you're incredibly good at, but also it energizes you. You just love doing it. It's really easy to get the genius Zone confused with the Excellence Zone and also to get trapped here. So for me, copywriting was my excellence zone. I had really high skills because I just done it for so many years, and because of all the training I had, it drained my energy though it still does even when I'm doing it for myself. So I have to be really clear for myself. I'm like, hang on, what is draining me? Because as long as we're drained, we are not magnetic. Like we are not going to be calling in more opportunities and we're going to keep, we're going to keep calling in the wrong opportunities. And so everything that falls in this genius zone, this is what we want to highlight. This is what we're going to talk about in our content. This is what's going to be in our LinkedIn profile in any assets and copy around the internet. So this is your next assignment. It shouldn't take you too long. And don't worry if your genius zone feels really short. It should be because these are the things that you are going to master the most. And it's where we can then get a lot deeper into talking about it in lots of different ways. Like I actually think it's easier if you have a narrow genius zone. The more things you're incredibly good at and you're passionate about, the more confusing personal branding can become. Now, one other thing I'm going to give you, and this is optional. You can always skip ahead. This whole thing is is chaptered for this reason. But human design, like I was saying, is one of the systems that I love for better understanding my gifts, but also my clients gifts because it can show us our natural strengths in a way that just is nice and unbiased. Because it's not a personality test. It's not like the cliftonstrengths assessment where it's still based on your own judgment. It is just going to tell you it's going to be the same regardless because it's based on when you were born. So if you want to do this exercise and you've never pulled a human design chart before, go and find the hum Des app on your phone. I mean, there's so many places you can get a free chart. I just really like this one and hum des dot com if you want to pull your profile up totally for free. So the thing that you're going to be looking for in your profile are your centers. There are nine centers in human design. They're sort of like based on the chakra system, but it's nine instead of seven. And you're going to look at which areas you have defined and which are undefined. So when you've got them defined, which means they're going to be colored in, they're not always these colors. They can be different colors, but you'll just you'll see the difference between the colored and uncolored. This I want you to see as brand new energy. This is the energy that you have consistent access to and that you're always sending out into the world. I find that the energy that we have here often, though, is the energy that is most helpful for us to fuel our own strategies. So this is my chart. I know I've got these things that I can always rely on. So I'm going to make sure my strategy is based around these things because as you'll see, the ones that are open aren't as reliable. So think about these are the skills and strengths that you naturally have for yourself and that people are going to kind of just know about you. Like they'll take that for granted. The undefined or open centers are where you are like a receiving dish for the world. So you receive, process and amplify other people's energy. This is a place that you can be very magnetic. I mean, you're always magnetic here, but when we're undefined or open, this is where we've been the most susceptible to conditioning. We often don't trust ourselves in these areas. It's where we can have a lot of shadows, a lot of the places where we self-sabotage. Our personal brands come from our open centers, so it does require a bit of work here. But once we've done this work to decondition and we actually trust ourselves, we know our own energy so well, and we know the difference between our energy and other people's energy. This becomes where we are so gifted at helping others. We tend to be the most wise in these areas, and it's where we hold space for other people to come and work through their stuff with us. So for instance, like with me, with my open head, people come to me in confusion and overwhelm, and I can hold space to help process their ideas and send them back to them and have them make more sense. Okay, so that's just one little example. So you're going to look for your defined and open centers, and you are probably going to want to screenshot this as a little bit of a cheat code. So basically every single one of the centers has got different gifts that are associated with it. Now, you should know that there are also shadows and challenges associated with each of these as well. You can always look them up. Just do a Google search. But you know, for instance, the throat center is about influence, leadership, expression, communication, and storytelling. The the will center is about ambition and determination, courage, recognizing value. So every single area has gifts and shadows. Now you have access to all of these. My point with this exercise is for you to determine the difference between the things that you consistently have access to, and where you are consistent as a person. The places where it's open. You might notice that depending on who you're around, your energy in this area can change. It's a little bit different each day. It might ebb and flow. One day it shows up one way, another day it's it's a different way. Okay. Knowing this about yourself is so powerful. It's you knowing how you're available to other people to help them, and you're knowing what's going to make it easier for you to build your personal brand because you're not trying to force consistency where you don't have any. Okay. I hope that makes sense. Again, I'm scratching the surface here, but I have found that this is one of the most helpful places to start when it comes to personal branding. Okay. So we have covered spirit so far and your strengths, and we are only just heating up. Like we have got so much more to dive into. But I just wanted to say that if you are finding this course valuable so far, would you please consider giving this video a like to help YouTube get it out to more of the right people. Like, I really want this to help as many people as possible. And if you want more like this, of course, please give me a subscribe so that you get notified of more courses and juicy stuff that I share in future online. Facet number three is your story. This is your background and everything that got you here. It's like all of the events that you've gone through, the decisions that you've made, it's also the influences that shaped you. Like all of the other people who have played a part in helping you become who you are today. It's the challenges that you've overcome. It's the triumphs you've experienced. It's your background. It's your heritage. It's your timeline. There's so much here. I love working on story, and it's really important to understand that your story on its own is already one of a kind. Of course, however, it's obviously not always on display. Like not everyone is going to know every single thing about you. And also developing actual brand stories in the traditional sense, like those kind of like signature stories that you tell that you become known for. That's its own thing. Okay, so this is like phase two of this work is like, first of all, let's just excavate all of your story. Then we start figuring out which are the ones that need to be told. Keeping in mind that what aspects of our story we tell is completely related to the context, to the particular audience that we're speaking to. So we're one really like, funny, brilliant story you have is perfect for this audience. This other audience might be like, ah, I don't get it. So right now we're just going general, we're just going to really focus on finding the gold in the mud. And then in time, you're going to wash away the mud as you refine your story and you practice sharing it, which is going to make it more and more sticky, aka memorable. These prompts are really deep. Okay, so I'm not expecting you to sit down and do all of these right now. I'm suggesting you work through them in coming weeks. Maybe you do one prompt a day for the next couple of weeks. Okay, so here are some of the questions. What did you want to be when you grow up and why? Like try and add a little bit of extra detail to that one. What brought you joy as a kid? What activities did you get lost in? What seemed to be harder for you than the average person? Like, was there a particular area? Like, why does everyone else seem to just like, get this thing and like figure this thing out? And I'm still here struggling? And then on the flip side, what came most easily to you compared to everybody else? What are the three brightest highlights of your life in general? What are you most proud of achieving professionally? What are the three lowest moments of your life? What are three potentially painful? Because aren't the best lessons always painful that you learned professionally? What were the key factors that led to you doing what you do today? Now, this is a I want you to spend some serious time on this one. I want you to think, what were the big changes and decision points and shakeups in your life that led you to doing this could be to do with like you being forced to move house. It could have been like a relationship breakup. It could have been like something happened in your industry. Like maybe you lost a job or maybe you discovered this thing. And what we're looking is like some ways of like finding these little milestones that create like a red thread that would help us explain how you got to where you are today. Keeping in mind this is the unedited version. So just fill a couple of pages if you can, and you'll be refining it later on. If you were to publish a memoir tomorrow, what might it be called now? Exercise two is relatively straightforward. I don't want you to skip this one, though, because there is going to be some prompts in that workbook that I give you that will need these answers. Okay, so I want you to do a quick brainstorm of all the things that influenced you so that are invisibly woven into the tapestry of your story. So I want you to list mentors, teachers, major events that were going on throughout your lifetime. What were the big movies, books, music, celebrities that influenced you? Any particular thought leaders or historical figures that really inspired you? Mythological figures or stories like is there a goddess or like, was there a myth that you were like, oh, once I heard that, you know, it really changed how I see myself. Fairy tales or folktales, religion or philosophies. See if you can jot down at least one from every category because again, you will need this later on. But we're going to move on now to Onlyness. Facet number four, which is your stance, the thing that separates generic supposed experts from genuine thought leaders. Your stance is about how you see the world, what you care about, what you believe in or stand for, like think values and principles. It's your definition of right versus wrong. It's your unique perspective, the you tinted glasses. And this is one of the biggest factors of differentiation because like, you can have a whole bunch of people who are good at really similar things, who are all lovely, and maybe they're all very compassionate and caring and whatever, and they all give themselves the same title. And yet once you learn their opinions and perspectives, you realize, wow, okay, I really resonate with you and I do not resonate with you. Okay, so these create huge connection points with our audience. It also creates polarization to make sure that we scare away people who are not for us. We are going to work through some questions that I literally give to all of my clients, regardless of their profession, regardless of whether they're employed or own their own business. I want you to know that if you are someone who also is creating content in order to land clients to like directly make money from that, like as in treat content as marketing, then there is going to be a second step to this exercise that you're going to want to do, which is really about understanding your ideal audience and their point of view, because we need to make sure that we're able to build the bridge between you and them, but we're not going to cover that part in this. Or of course, we just go for forever before we dive into the prompts, because this is where we can start to get how, oh my gosh, there's so many ideas. I'm overwhelmed. How am I going to make this real? Etc.. Let's get on the same page here. I want you to imagine that every idea that you're coming up with in these exercises, even with all of the ones in your story section, they're just seeds, okay? They are tiny, they're lacking form, and it's up to you to plant them and to water them and to watch over them and to allow them to grow. How do we do that? One, we are going to collect and work on them with intention. And this is easier if you utilize a personal knowledge management system. We don't have time to dive into that in today's course. So comment p m if you want me to do a video on that in the future. But basically, a personal knowledge management system is like a central hub for all your ideas for working those ideas, developing them. It is not the same as just a content hub. It's like the more foundational thing. Thought leadership one hundred and one. The second thing we're going to do is we're going to share our ideas regularly publish, publish, publish. Because the more we publish them, the more we get feedback, the more we refine them. We get better at explaining our ideas, making them more concise and also more unique. Everything, especially in this stance facet, but also story. It's developed over time and that can be the most frustrating thing is you want to have it all figured out and just be like, okay, these are my core values and this is my story and this is that it's dynamic. It's always going to be changing. It's a moving target. Okay, so go easy on yourself. And we're just going to start with what we've got. So what pisses you off and or breaks your heart about the industry that you work in, the system you want to change, or how you see people being treated related to this? What do you actually stand for and against? Like, what is the change you're here to make. What is the opposite of that? So like, if you're for people reclaiming their authority and thinking for themselves, taking responsibility for their lives, then you know the opposite of that. What you're standing against is people who train people to be dependent on them and to outsource their authority. For instance, what do you want to be known or remembered for? Bonus like brownie points if and it's totally optional though, but can you attach a measurable impact metric to this as well? So when you're saying, oh, what do I stand for? What's the change I want to make? Could you make it measurable? So I, I want to help this number of people achieve blah by this date, or I want to reduce this thing happening by this amount or raise this much money to help this particular organization or community. One reason we do this is for us because it gives us a cause worth fighting for, and it helps us overcome a lot of resistance when we're getting very self-conscious and and feeling quite, oh my gosh, it's all too difficult. It's like, no, wait, I'm not just doing this for me. I'm doing it for a reason. But the other thing is like, people love, you know, there's the reason Simon Sinek's book start with why is so popular. It's like people do buy in on other people's whys. And so when you have a cause that you stand for and other people recognize that and they're like, yes, I agree. There's resonance that's created there. More questions. So if you are able to share some wisdom with a younger version of you, what are all the things that you would say? I love this exercise. I find it really fun. Maybe I'm weird, but maybe you are to pull out a piece of paper and see if you could just keep each point to a line. So if you could feel a piece of paper with all the things that you would say to past you, like the wisdom that you would share, they're like, oh, you should know this about yourself. You should know this about the world. Whatever. What are your spiciest opinions, the things that you would come out and say if you weren't worried about people being offended or you needing to look nice And again, this is like, maybe this is a me thing, but it's a recovering people pleaser. There is so much that I have filtered myself from saying in the past, because I'm like, oh, I don't want people to like, be offended. But it's like, well, if I'm dialing down my opinions, I'm also dialing down my magnetism, dialing down my onlyness factor. Like I'm missing out on the opportunity for people to really take notice and also for people to be like, oh, not for me. Like we want that filtration process to happen. And then this final one, if you could become a permission slip for others, like a certain way of living being achieving, what would it be like? I would be a permission slip for people to just actually go after the thing they want to go after and stop judging themselves for whether it is worthy or good enough or whatever enough, and just trust that I am meant to do what feels good to me. You know, that's, that's what I mean by permission slip. Now, what I want you to do for exercise number two is you are going to jot down the names of at least five people whose content you consume most regularly, and then try and answer the prompts. You'll probably want to actually pull up their content for some of these. So why do you love their content? What do they stand for? Like, do you know, like, if you can't answer all of these, that's totally fine. Like this is more like detective work that we're doing. Okay? This is to kind of like reflect some things back to us. What do they stand against? How obvious are their opinions? Like, would you even be able to say what, what things that they feel strongly about? Do you know what their core why is like, do they have a mission? Do they have they ever shared their reason for doing what they do today? How would you describe them to a friend in as few words as possible? And then this is like a really important one because okay, for context, like stance, one of the toughest things is for us to boldly share our opinions online, knowing that people will disagree with them. Okay. It's, it's terrifying. And a lot of us avoid it because we just. We don't want to deal with any of the the fallout from that. And we can also get so caught up in trying to be appealing and trying to get people to agree with us that, yeah, we we distort our message. I want you to see if you can find a polarizing piece of content that each of these people has shared at some point. And I want you to read the comments. I want you to see in real time how divided people can be, how these this person can be extremely popular, have so many fans, so many people that agree with them, and then also people who come in and believe the complete opposite. It is important for us to really normalize that and to prepare our nervous systems for that, because doing personal branding really well means you are going to be disagreed with by, by some people. It's not just about showing up and, and being appealing. It's about being real. It's about being you. We are now onto Onlyness facet number five. While our spirit is inherent, who you are, your personality. It just is. Our style is how we express it. And in the case of personal branding, it's how we choose to express it. Like this is where we are really shaping how people see us and your style. So your expression, your visual language, colors and fonts, tone of voice, packaging, visuals, like it's often what we think of in terms of branding. But I also want you to understand that my way of speaking with you right now, like that's style. It's not just my logo that you happen to see. It's not just the fonts that I've chosen, it's how I'm choosing to show up on camera, and it's the way I express myself. Your style becomes more unmistakable the more time and intention and practice you put into it. Okay? Because we have to develop our skills, our communication skills, our content creation skills over time, because that is going to make it easier for us to translate who we are on the inside into the outside world. And the most frustrating thing at the beginning of our journey is when there seems to be this giant gap between who you really are and how you're actually able to express yourself. It's like the inside doesn't match the outside. And that's where a lot of people just like get frustrated and give up, or they start trying to outsource their, like, they hire the copywriter, they hire a social media person, they buy lots of templates, they hire someone to do their branding. And it doesn't work because they've still bypassed the process of even figuring out who they are and how that gets expressed. And then they kind of just have someone else pretending to be them. And it's not magnetic and it's not unique and it's not authentic. There's still a disconnect, all of this to say, style and being able to express it is an ongoing process. And yet I've got some hacks for you that are beginner friendly and yet fundamentals that we don't grow out of. Okay. So I want you to pull out your notebook and you're going to make three lists. The first one is your obsessions. So these are the things that you just love and you can't live without. That could be everything from like your favorite stores, your favorite food. It could be that you always need to have a couple of beverages on your desk at all times. For me, it would be like bubble baths, books, tarot decks, chips, and guacamole. Like I've got all of these different things. So you're just going to list all of these things. Don't worry about filtering them right now. If you're like, why? Don't ask why. Okay? Don't start with why. Just write them down. Trust me. We'll get to these later. The next thing you're going to write down are your you isms. So these are your quirks, your habits, your default expressions. So do you have any, like for instance, particular habits where you say a certain thing all the time? Like a go to kind of style of humor. Do you have a thing where it's like you have to do something at a certain time of day? Is there are you like a little bit OCD? And it's like, okay, you have to organize your socks by color or, I don't know, there is so many different things. What are the things where people go, oh my gosh, that's so you. If a friend was to mimic you. Okay. To pretend to be you in a skit. What things would they do or say? How would they speak to make it really clear that it's you that they're imitating? The final thing are visual signatures. And so this is just potentials. What I want you to have a think about is what are some things that could be consistent visual clues that it's you that people are seeing. So for instance, like wardrobe, I, I love wearing green. That's something that I do quite regularly. I also love lightning bolts, so I might feature lightning bolts always. We're thinking props. Are you someone who loves always having a beverage in hand? Like, do you have like a cute little keep cup that might always be shown? What about backdrop? If you are filming videos like what's something that might be in the backdrop? What could be some potential visual clues? So like think of your favorite colors, symbols, just things that you always have on hand. That might be something you could intentionally be featuring in your content. Okay, now things get really fun. So a mood board is a way that we can start to become our own brand strategist and find ways of bringing aspects of our self together in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. It kind of helps us externalize ourselves a little bit, like get some separation and go, okay, but what are all these aspects of me and how do they come together? Now it's important to know that this is not the same as brand guidelines. Okay? This is the step that comes before we make those kinds of decisions. So this is not us locking in your colors and your fonts. This is us creating like a beautiful little visual representation of who you are. At least the aspects of you that you actually want to potentially share with the world. And I made a template for you. The link is under the video. You will need a free Canva login to be able to access it. But that's it. You will see my example in there as well, just for inspiration. But basically what I've done is create you a checklist. So I want you to treat it as like a treasure hunt. So for instance, like I'll just give you a couple of examples and then you can go and do this yourself. But I want you to find at least two images that represent those elements that you chose for yourself. I want two textures or prints that you love. Three things that we'd find in your dream office. You can put in some quotes or lines from your favorite poems or songs. I want you to put in the keywords that people use to describe you. What are those three words that you ended up with? And then try and find an object, a symbol, or an image for each one of them. So find a way of visually representing it. There is more on that list. Again, you don't have to have every single one of these. And you can also add other random things. It's totally fine. I want you to have fun with this. Just know that once it's finished, it does look great as a desktop wallpaper. I've saved mine because I'm obsessed. Like I had a little bit too much fun creating the example for you. And I've also given you a list of places to search for images that aren't Canva, because it can be very limiting. I want you to spend some time with this. Have fun with it. This can be something you come back to every couple of months, and you might want to add a little bit more to it, but I want you to make sure it's fleshed out to the point where you're like, yeah, there's so much of me in here. The point is, it should give you a way of reminding you like a clean mirror for you to go, oh, that's right, I'm really interesting, full of all these really fun contradictions, like, and that is a great thing. So have fun with this. Woo! Okay, we need to take a breath now because we've worked through the five facets and you have a lot of exercises that you're probably going to keep drilling into in the coming weeks. And like I said, it's probably going to feel like you have all these ideas and these things going on out here and you're like, how am I actually going to pull them together? And so we're going to do this in a couple of ways. So I want to return us quickly to the journey that is becoming magnetic and really grounded in a practical example of how our brand comes together and evolves over time, if or intentional about this process. And then we're going to round things up with your workbook of epic prompts that are going to allow you to try these things out in the wild. So I have given you a taste of phase zero today, which is where we're doing all the excavating and ideating. In phase one, you're going to be focusing on minimum viable magnetism. Okay? You're going to figure out what is the bare minimum based on your unique goals for your personal brand that you need to begin your journey and start showing up. What I mean by that is like for a lot of my clients during phase one, what we're looking at doing is getting some visual brand guidelines, creative confines for what visuals you're going to use, set up a couple of templates that just allows you to start sharing content. For some clients, it might involve like a basic website or even just like a notion page or even a scheduling link, because we know that that's part of the goal is they want to drive traffic to their website or book calls. For some other people, it might be more about putting together the first draft or the next draft of their LinkedIn profile. But the point of phase one is I want you showing up and sharing as much as possible, kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall. Like you've got all these ideas, start putting them out there and really building up the habit of publishing. Make it your new normal. Because trust me, there is so much resistance that we have to overcome during phase one. This is where most of the mindset stuff comes up. It's where we become really inconsistent. We start to doubt ourselves. We immediately start looking for fill in the blank things and, you know, templates and ways that can stop us feeling so insecure. But the thing is, the only way that we get through this resistance is just keep on going. And we cannot focus on perfection during this phase. And it's a really, it sounds weird, but unstrategic phase, it's strategic, but not in the way you expect it to be strategic. This is not about having it all perfectly together. This is a phase of experimentation that is going to lead to so much more clarity of how you are best going to position yourself in phase two. You are going to have more built in momentum, more confidence, less friction, because you are building some skills, you're building habits. It doesn't feel as difficult as it used to, and you're going to create more capacity to bring that creativity into your process. You're going to find more ways to be able to really lean into your onlyness factor, where in phase one, it's like just hitting publish on posts can feel really overwhelming. Like it just feels like so much work to even publish one thing. Once you're over that, then it's like, hang on, how can I bring more me into this content? And so you probably will be developing more of a visual language. Like you're going to introduce more textures and shapes and maybe like creating more aesthetics for your images. You might upgrade your templates, you're going to have the chance to really refine how you're showing up on camera. And I recommend in phase one and phase two that you stick with DIY ING your brand unless you have money to burn, because it's really important to understand how much clarity that you're going to gain throughout this process. Taking action in this way literally changes you. Like I showed you with that triangle, it's like the more you show up, the more you figure out who you are, the more you really embody those aspects of you. Then it feeds into your strategy and so on. So who you are in phase one versus phase three is quite different. Meaning if you were to pay someone to do a brand for you in phase one, it would end up being a totally different brand to what you would get in phase three. And to make my point, I'm gonna pull back the curtain and show you what my brand looked like in phase one versus phase three. So these examples are three years apart. So in twenty twenty, I was just the first brand that I came up with, the personal branding project. Everything was done myself, so I picked the fonts. I think this was actually iteration two. So it was even a little bit more in phase two, but basically I just picked some colors, design my own logo, got some really simple photos and that was the brand. Fast forward three years and you can see that I. So I got a professional brand and then I dyed my website still. But you can see the evolution like. So we've gone from pastels and just looking very like, okay, very nice, very like quiet till colors are so much bolder. We've got the graffiti icons and the paint splashes. I knew exactly how I wanted to show up at this point, which is why it was so easy and effortless to actually get that brand done. There was no point in me paying someone to do that brand design for me back in the beginning, because I was just figuring it out from scratch. And yes, this is a business brand. I realized like I was using a business name, but it was always a personal brand based business. So I just wanted to give you this as a word of warning to be like, if you want to speed through the process and pay for branding, just know it can end up being such a waste of money because before long, like fast forward twelve months, you'll already be like, I hate it. I went for it too soon. I now know what I actually need. And then you pay for it again. I've just seen it happen too many times because really, in phase three, this is where we are crystallizing your personal brand. So this is when it becomes safer to outsource to experts like you actually know who you are. You really putting your flag in the ground. You're like, yeah, I know my messaging. I know where I'm heading with this. I know what my goals are. And it's just so much easier to pull that all together. You will likely have like sort of spread out a lot during phase two, where all the experimentation and being creative means you can look at your feed and be like, oh, it's not cohesive. I'm all over the place. What am I even doing? But that's perfect. That was the process of you discovering who you are and how you want to express. Then what you do is trim like you streamline it again and go, cool, I'm picking this lane. Your self-knowledge is so much deeper in phase three, but so is your knowledge of your audience. So like, it's so much easier for you to really tighten up your, your messaging and your positioning. And you may want to lean into a really specific title at this point, or, or you may realize that you actually do need a business brand alongside your personal brand to create a more robust container for what it is you're doing. Because so often this, this journey that we go on of like thought leadership and personal branding leads us to realizing, oh, I do actually want to launch this thing or go all in on this thing that used to just be a side hustle. Phase three is also really about focusing on thought leadership and amplifying your impact. So at this point, you're ready to build these assets that are like long form evergreen pieces of content that really talk about your philosophy, your frameworks, like your differentiation now has authority behind it. And you may be ready to do like a signature talk and, you know, start being available for a sort of more scaled visibility opportunities. It's an exciting phase. But as you can see, it's earned like, because we've done the work of laying those foundations as we work up to phase three. And as we're doing it, we're doing that deep inner work that makes sure we're ready to hold whatever phase three brings us. I'm sharing all of this with you because I really want to set the expectations. I want you to be able to trust this process, to be patient with yourself, and to not think that you're way behind. If you're feeling like things are just messy and all over the place. Like I truly believe the mess is the pathway through. And so many like sort of gurus, personal branding gurus, like present personal branding is something where you fill out a workbook, you get a photo shoot and voila, you have a brand. But I don't believe that's the reality. Not true. Embodied magnetic personal branding, where it's like, you know exactly who you are and you can unapologetically show up and share that with the world. You don't get that through a workbook. You get that from doing the reps, from putting yourself out there, repeating your message and working through the fears and the resistance and the doubt as you're doing that, because it really, it takes time, practice, and intention to really tap into your magnetism and become unmistakable. And so speaking of practice, It's time for us to start really internalizing and expressing everything that you have uncovered so far. So as I mentioned, I've got a workbook for you and it's full of prompts. Most of them are specific to you creating content because it's just the best way for us to develop our brands in public. But I want to be really clear when I say that your magnetism is twenty percent, if that what you say and eighty percent how you express it. And so these prompts aren't these like hyper strategic marketing and sales oriented content. That's a whole different thing. Okay. That's not actually personal branding. That's just marketing and sales. These prompts that I've given you are about integrating these five facets of your onlyness factor, and they're about generating genuine magnetism and creating connection with people who are going to resonate with you, which in the age of AI is non-negotiable. Everyone's calling out AI slop, so we don't need you to get more perfect and more strategic and more like fill in the blank. We need you to get bold and courageous and creative, and to dare to be a little imperfect and messy as you figure this out. So with that said, I'll give you a super quick tour of the workbook, but you can find it linked under the video. But basically we've got the five sections. So for each one of these five facets, you have got three practical prompts to help you bring more of that facet into your personal brand. For instance, your strengths. I want you to demonstrate your ability in real time, like find a way to create a piece of content that allows you to demonstrate your process of troubleshooting something or applying your work in real time, whether it's like mapping a strategy, reviewing a piece of content, editing an image. I mean, all of these kinds of things are going to require your creative contribution to figure out how to do it for yourself. We've got three for story stance style, and then we've got this epic grab bag. So ten content prompts that are going to bring multiple facets together with twenty five prompts. Let's say you post five times a week. There's five weeks of content. Okay, so we have covered so much today. I've given you a lot to think about and work on. But before we wrap up, I want us to first just take a breath and do a little recap as we ground it all in. And then I also have a few extra pieces of wisdom that I want to leave you with. So a reminder that we have covered the big picture so you can see where you're going. I'm hoping at this point you you have an idea of what phase you're at in the personal branding process. And you can remember what I said about what the focus is during that point in time, so that you can really focus on what is important and not get caught up in trying to be somewhere that you're not, which just creates overwhelm and confusion with your strategy. We know that there is inner work and outer work that is involved, and what we've been doing today is valuable inner work that just so many people skip over. So this already just just working through these exercises is going to give you an unfair advantage. You know what those five facets of your onlyness factor are? So at this point, if you're like, I don't have anything unique to share, I'm not interesting. I'm not fascinating. I call BS, I say, you haven't been paying attention. Okay. You are so interesting, so unique, so fascinating. And you are magnetic when you allow yourself to lean on these things that are just inherently your own. But the more you do these exercises, the more you're going to have that reflected back to you. And the thing is, if people don't value you yet for all of these things that you have to offer, my question is always like, well, have you allowed them to? How often are you sharing these things with the world, or are you expecting to be able to sell a secret? As long as you don't share any of your brilliance with the world, you're never going to be valued for your brilliance. So it's your call right now. And then finally, you know how you're going to be integrating and expressing all of these things because you've got that workbook as well. And speaking of workbook, If you are sharing any pieces of content that are inspired by this course, tag me and I'll reshare it because I would love to see what you are creating, and maybe I'll do a follow up video and feature some of these as well. Like I love to be able to cheer you on. So please @iamkatelizabeth on Instagram. If you share a video on YouTube, let me know in the comments. And then finally, these are the big three that I want you to walk away with. Commit this to memory. Write them down. Thing one you were born magnetic. You just forgot. Okay. If you're not feeling magnetic, if you feel forgettable, invisible, or whatever it is because you were raised to forget about how incredible you are. Because we are raised to all just basically become the same. Very few of us are brought up in a way that really encourages us to lean into our weirdness, our uniqueness. And so much of this process of personal branding is about unbecoming who we're not finding ways to take off masks that we realize are just not authentic to us, and allow the real version of us to shine. And that is the whole process. Speaking of thing number two, personal branding as in the kind that actually changes your life. Not that this like fake personal branding or it's like, yeah, you have a nice looking profile, but like nothing else in your life changes. It is an ongoing process and not a destination. So it's time to stop treating it like something that you just need to achieve and then you're done. If you are serious about this, you are committing to the long game. You are committing to more visibility, to being vulnerable and courageous and experimental. And it is challenging but so rewarding. And then thing three developing a magnetic personal brand isn't easy. Okay, if it was, everyone would have one. It is really difficult to read the label from inside the bottle. Okay, I've given you exercises that will hopefully allow you to do this, but if you are struggling to see what makes you valuable and unique, it's because it is. It's so much more difficult when we do this for ourselves. Okay, I struggle, I have to try and coach myself through this all the time and it's not easy. Also, just know that personal branding, like I said, means becoming more visible. And of course it's going to bring up fears. And I just, I don't believe that there is a person on the planet that doesn't have some aspect of fear around being seen, being accepted for who they are. Like, it's a really scary thing to show the real you to the world. So if you are feeling overwhelmed, if you're like, I've been trying to do this, everyone makes it seem easy. And it's just like, it doesn't feel that way. Trust me, you're means you're doing it the right way if it doesn't feel easy. And also, I'm here to help. If you're like completely overwhelmed and you know that you don't want to be going through this alone. So I work with people regularly, helping them commit to thought leadership journeys, helping them with visibility, with their messaging, with launching new things like committing to going all in on a business and finally bringing their passion project and making it their actual sort of like life purpose. I do all of that kind of work. I won't go into details now. I'll just include some links under this video with how we could work together if you would like my support. But regardless of whether our paths cross again in the future, I am wishing you all the very best. I know you can do this. I know you have so much to offer and hopefully now it is a lot clearer what those things actually are. Thank you. If you're still watching to the end, I would love to hear from you. Leave me a comment. Tell me how you found this course and please share it with a friend who you think might benefit from it as well. But thank you again. Cheering you on and I will see you on the other side.