8 Ways to Jumpstart Your Personal Brand

Welcome to this week’s PBB. You’re joining 16,593 others curious about building a thoughtful online voice in 2021. If you want these articles sent straight to your inbox, subscribe here. P.S. I’ve added a new job board at the end of the newsletter. Email me (hello@joelhansen.com) if you wanna feature a role in the next one. Let’s dive in:

This week’s set up: 

🆘 Problem: You wanna build a thoughtful personal brand but don’t know where to start or the communities to hangout

💡 Solution: Check out these 8 places and you’ll be well on your way

🗺 Next play: Browse through the resources below and identify which ones would be the best to explore

What Shapes Our Life:

Jim Rohn was famously quoted saying “You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” 🕒

And whether you fully agree with this or not, I think there is merit to his words. Our life trajectory is a sum of the people, places, and projects we spend time with. To change our life, we have to change one of those 3 things.

Take your last couple decades for instance. Who were the key influencers in the way you approached life?

In our families, it’s our parents. 👪

In school, it’s our friends/teachers. 🏫

In university, it’s our professors/roomates. 👨‍💻

In work, it’s our colleagues/boss/team. 💼

I believe this same model for people applies to the same framework for learning.

If this is true, let's take a minute to flip Jim's quote to defining our career trajectory by the average of the top 5 things you consume. 

There’s nothing wrong with the one-off Netflix show, YouTube rabbit hole, or Reddit meme. But if it’s consuming 5+ hours in your day, you’re gonna run into trouble. 📺

We are products of how we spend our time.

The people we hangout with and the resources we consume play a leading role in that equation. I share this concept because this is what kickstarted my itch to share a list of helpful resources that have shaped my perspective on building a thoughtful personal brand. 

So, here's a list of newsletters, books, and people I follow that have had the biggest impact on my marketing journey:

My Top 8 Resources For Personal Branding:

1. The Hustle Newsletter and Trends Group

Imagine tech business news for the average millennial. Provided in a way you would explain it to your friend. That's the Hustle newsletter.

The daily emails are free, in-depth, and well-positioned. I love to reference it every morning for current events.

In The Hustle’s own words:

“It’s simple. We make it easy for you to make smart business decisions fast."

"You see, there’s a massive amount of information that you, our dear reader, do not have access to. Whether you’re too busy, don’t know the right people, don’t know where to look – whatever. It’s our mission to unlock that information and give it to you in an easy to consume format.”

In addition to the newsletter that’s read by well over 1.5 million people a day, The Hustle also runs Trends, a premium research arm and private community. Trends is a group of 10,000 entrepreneurs that share and get feedback on ideas. I genuinely love being part of the Trends community and get access to a private Facebook group and podcast network.

Use this code to get $100 off your Trends sign-up fee, or click the image below.

💡 What I’ve learned: Everyone is curious and excited to get feedback on their ideas. I’ve learned that if you’re a startup entrepreneur that’s really young or if you’re a super successful million CEO, everyone has good ideas and good things to share.

It’s cool to be part of a community where people frame their ideas, spot opportunities, and jump on trends that can make for really exciting outcomes. Seeing how the value of content and writing ideas is really a muscle and seeing their content each day has inspired me to get more in the habit of sharing what I know and refining my thoughts.

2. Ann Handley’s book, Everybody Writes

This is the go-to book for those who are writers and those who want to be writers… because no matter what we do, we all need to communicate.

We are all writers in 2021.

This book was really formative for me as I began my content creation journey, and it gave me writing tips, grammar tips, and formatting details in an easy-to-read, fun guidebook.

(Pro-Tip: Ann also has a bi-weekly newsletter called… Total ANNARCHY.)

💡What I’ve learned: I love her concept of “The Ugly First Draft.” I now understand that perfection is the enemy of progress and we only get better at writing by re-writing. By getting that much quicker to our first draft we’re that much more likely to make an idea happen.

3. Indie Hackers Community

Indie Hackers is an online community of, well, indie hackers:

The founders, brothers Courtland and Channing Allen, built a community of 75,000+ indie creators that are focused on building small-to-large-sized internet businesses that sustain themselves. There are a lot of great newsletters/forums on there people can learn from. 

💡What I’ve learned: Every idea has a trail of testing. Any knockout success has 100+ trials. Check out what I’m up to on Indie Hackers. I’ve been learning a lot about the validation of start-up ideas and how it’s best to build and test in public.

4. The 100 True Fans Concept by Li Jin

Li Jin’s writing on 100 true fans is foundational for all creatives. She builds on the old idea of 1000 true fans, but adds some modifications for our current reality. 

If you have 100 people that buy into your idea, you’re well ahead on the way to creating a sustainable product or service. 

She writes on the forefront of the creator economy, and coined the term:

“the passion economy.”

This is definitely a newsletter to keep an eye on. The other reason you might wanna follow her work: Li just launched a VC fund called Altelier Ventures focused on investing in the Creator Economy and supporting Gen Z creatives.

💡What I’ve learned: How fast tech and storytelling is shaping the democratization of funding good ideas, and there’s never been a better time to start something.

5. The Nathan Barry Show

Nathan is the founder of ConvertKit, an email marketing company that serves creatives (like newsletter writers): “ConvertKit powers the audiences for creators like Gretchen Rubin, Chris Guillebeau, Pat Flynn, Tim Ferriss, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Tim McGraw.”

He also writes a blog and hosts a podcast called Nathan Barry Show. Here’s an interview he did with Ann Handley, who I mentioned above.

💡What I’ve learned: Nathan’s taught me about the wholesome connection that a creator and their community should have with each other. It’s not a quick transaction, but instead a couple-decade decision you’re making to invest into sharing your knowledge with someone.

6. Stand Out, by Dorie Clark

Dorie is one of the first people I followed on the topic of thought leadership, personal branding, and creating multiple income streams. 

Named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, Dorie was also recognized as the #1 Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. She currently teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School.

Her book Stand Out shows what it means to have an online presence and how to grow an online presence. 

💡What I’ve learned: Dorie’s taught me about the power of creativity and trust being at the core of avoiding burnout. Two quotes that resonate with me from her writing are: 

1: "Stress hinders creative thinking and leads to burnout, learn to manage it well."

2: "For any business idea to be meaningful, trust is the essential ingredient."

7. Reid Hoffman (Masters of Scale & Thought Leadership Content)

Reid is the co-founder behind LinkedIn. He’s a great person to follow and reference to see where he envisions the future of communication, positioning, and thought leadership.

His book, written alongside Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, “teaches managers how to recruit, manage, and retain the entrepreneurial employees your business needs to succeed in the networked age.”

As a creative side project starter, this was a REALLY helpful book for me to envision how to handle a 9-5 job and invest in mini side-projects before leaving to do my own thing. In the book, Reid talks about how to visualize the future of work, entrepreneurship, and the creator economy.

I’d recommend this book for anyone that wants a look into the future of hiring or joining a team that’s based around creative work.

Reid also hosts a podcast called Masters of Scale with power names like Mark Cuban, Tyra Banks, and Richard Branson sharing their advice.

💡What I’ve learned: His book helped me define a healthy structure between my 9-5 work and creative side projects. His podcasts continually open up new ideas for me to consider in the startup world. And his content introduces new leaders that I should be keeping an eye on. 

8. Tim Ferriss

Tim’s a legendary guy.

He’s a Fortune 40 under 40, an author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers, and is an early-stage technology investor/advisor (Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ others).

One of his books, Tribe of Mentors, is jam-packed with advice from many world-class innovators.

You can also check out his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has over 200 million downloads.

💡What I’ve learned: Interviewing people is the best way to build relationships, learn from experts, and share your takeaways with a community. All it takes is being curious and coming up with great questions. It’s actually what inspired me to get my start with creating content on LinkedIn.

To Close:

You’re the average of the 5 people who spend the most time with but you’re also the average of the 5 things you spend the most time on....

So what’s it gonna be? How are you gonna invest your time? 

Hopefully this list gives you some templates for understanding the future of thought leadership and personal branding.

ACTION BYTES 📲

1. Honestly evaluate your time. Are you happy with the top 5 things you spend time on?
2. Choose a resource you’re going to learn from/about this week. Doesn’t have to be from this list, but just pick one.
3. Make it a goal to read/listen/join for 1 hour this week.

🥁 NEW ADDITION… Say Hello to our Job Board! 🥁

I’ve decided to open up a job board to connect those of you that are looking to promote great roles with those of you that are looking to accept them. Check back each week for new roles in marketing, communications, or tech. Want to feature your job in the next newsletter? Email hello@joelhansen.com for details.

💼 Featured Roles

• Amazon's looking for a Marketing & Comms Manager (Vancouver/Toronto) | Contact Cameron Myers
• Kit and Ace's searching for a Social Media Content Specialist (Vancouver) | Contact Irfana Dadani
• Smart and Savvy's hunting for a VP of Marketing (Enterprise Software) | Contact James Bustard
• Enchant is looking for a Director of Marketing (Remote) | Contact Michelle Nowaki
• Overstory Media wants 20+ writers/editors across Canada | Contact Farhan Mohamed
• CubicFarm is hiring a Marketing Director | Contact Edoardo De Martin
• Dapper Labs is hunting for a Head of Product Marketing | Contact David Feldman

💼 Want to request a job feature? Email hello@joelhansen.com for details.

Thanks for reading today's deep dive. If any ideas sparked, drop me a note here! I love hearing about new things that are going on.

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 Stay outta’ trouble and catch you next week.

✌🏻 Joel

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