Direct Selling Success

Chapter 13 Building Your Personal Leadership Brand

Note: This is the first of the five bonus chapters. If you’re just starting out in the business, please skip this chapter, along with the next four (Chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17) for now, and jump to Chapter 18. Come back and look at these chapters two years from now when they will be much more relevant to you.

The entire concept of personal branding is kind of a recent development in the culture. In the past, personal branding wasn’t even a recognized term, even though some individuals did create brands. Elvis, JFK, Marilyn Monroe, and many others most certainly cultivated certain images and became iconic individuals. But we didn’t view the public’s perception of these figures as branding at the time. We simply thought they were famous people and branding applied only to companies and certain products.

Today, personal branding is a phenomenon.

There are 13-year-olds chatting with each other about their brand on Instagram. Seriously. So this phenomenon does impact our profession. And has become part of the equation in terms of building a large, successful team, both for key company executives and field leaders.

(And this is another issue that some short-sighted companies or leaders might not like. They don’t want their leaders developing a brand or following, because they fear that leader could leave in the future, causing their team to follow them. But this is fear-based thinking. And doesn’t reflect the actual situation today.) ...