Personal Branding: Building a Unique Million-Dollar Business from Scratch

So it really, you know, I just felt like I had felt called, you know, to kind of step into more personal leadership.

But even though I had been online, you know, had a website, had a digital presence, you know, my own, my company, since like 2008, 2009, still this whole space of kind of personal brands, thought leadership.

online business was really this kind of like foreign Wild West world.

So it really was a couple of years of just deep learning, investment, exploration, really trying to figure out what my lane was in this new chapter for the business that I felt called to and, you know, tried some different avenues, but ultimately found myself really coming back to the core of the brand space.

I just had been in a different part of the brand space, part of more institutional and i just really my own journey of discovering my own leadership wanting to empower other people with that make it less hard and less expensive to figure it all out no

that's great so in order to empower other people like how would you have that conversation like i have these conversations all the time with friends and they're we're catching up and they're like man i really like what you're doing i wish i could do that i just don't know what i would do Is there a way to pull that out of people?

life experience, professional experience.

I think there's a lot of noise out there in the online space.

And just generally, you know, you have to just be one thing, you know, pick the one thing that you are going to focus on and just build everything around that.

But I personally, I think everything that I've built and how we've defined ourselves, you know, in the brand space is actually honoring the complexity.

And so kind of taking away that pressure to to be like, I have to just pick the one thing that I'm going to focus on.

Like I'm going to be, you know, just a health coach or I'm going to be, you know, just focus on telling people how to fix their cars up nice, whatever that thing is.

But really we can have a lot of facets to us.

And I think that is what really magnetizes people are drawn to the complexity and you never know what's going to connect with people.

And it might just be one facet of you, but that could, you know, help you attract the people that you're meant to work with so that's kind of one

yeah no i like that i always say you know i didn't know what i wanted to do i just knew i wanted to do something on my own so it's kind of to me it was just taking the first step of hey i'm just going to start here i'm

such a believer in action exactly

yeah right you can plan to the nth degree and uh and maybe that's a fault you know in the military you're taught to plan everything plan plan plan um but nothing goes according to plan so you got to take action at some point and and that's what i see so yeah starting with something you never know where it leads like i never grew up thinking um i was going to be uh you know an insurance agent and and have a big insurance business or something like that right but one thing leads to another and you find your your desire and your passion and you start to pursue that like life leaves clues i think

Exactly.

And I think that when we are putting ourselves out there and just trying, then I think we get information and kind of that clarity develops so much faster versus just kind of sitting on the sidelines kind of waiting for inspiration to drop from the sky.

And one more thing that I'll say that I think for me was pretty important early on in my journey was that I didn't put all the pressure on myself.

making all the money from the thing right out of the gate.

You know, I mean, I had pretty minimal expenses right after college, you know, like rents, like minimal expenses, right? So it was easier to, you know, cover things.

But I think Just letting myself take the time that I needed to, to nurture and let the work and the craft unfold and kind of figure out, practice what I was doing while I knew that I could cover my expenses.

So for someone, you know, a little bit more in our life stage, keeping that job, but really doing this, you know, on the side, developing it.