How to build a personal brand
You know when you have finally developed a successful personal brand when someone else introduces you as an expert, instead of having to introduce yourself as one. Getting to that point can be quicker than you think IF you set out with the right strategy.
First, you need to become comfortable being in front of people. You can become an expert just through writing articles and blogs, but someone will not connect with you properly until they hear you speak or meet you in person. Everyone thinks confidence is something people just have. The reality is that confident people are just people who have learnt how to pretend to be confident. No-one ever stands up in front of a group of people for the first time and just feels naturally at ease. No-one records their first video and thinks “gosh, that was a piece of cake.” Confidence is something you learn through practice, not something you just have.
I guarantee you that if you dread the idea of recording a video of yourself now, then by the time you’ve made your tenth video you will at least be able to do it without panicking. And you don’t have to start off by putting everything you make into the public domain. You can shut yourself in a room with just you and a camera in an empty house or office and make something you know no-one will ever see just to get used to the process. You can start by talking to a group of your friends instead of a room full of people you don’t know. Invite them around and make a social event out of it; convince them to let you try out a presentation on them so that you get used to delivering it, and in return you can provide a bottle of wine to share or a pot of tea.
 
Get comfortable with your viewpoints. You’re vegan. You are on the right side of history and morality and you never need to apologise for that. Don’t concede to other people’s views if they are counter to that – because your audience will likely be vegan too and on your side. If you start out building a persona that doesn’t quite fit then it will be like wearing a pair of shoes that always slightly rub – it will take effort to put them on every day, and the more you wear them the more uncomfortable you will be. The term ‘authentic’ gets used a lot at the moment, but the idea of presenting your true self to the world has a lot of value because you are on a journey. You will grow, you will improve, your opinions will change and your audience will see this and grow with you. The more of a real human you are, the more your customers will build a relationship with you, your company and your mission.
Another reason to be authentic is because if you are building your personal brand then you become your company. If you’re pretending to be an ethical vegan but it’s found out that you’re still quietly mixing dairy into your diet then that will have a huge negative impact on your company. We’ve seen this happen to high-profile vegan brands, where the founder jumped on the plant-based bandwagon and created a personal brand which was just an act. When this is found out, their companies lose their loyal vegan following overnight, or the founder has to quickly step down leaving the company firefighting the bad PR.
But the opposite of this is also true. If you truly believe in your company’s mission and in your core values as a vegan, then your passion will be infectious and you will become your business’s best marketing tool. There are lots of places you can get your passion and expertise seen. Writing articles is an easy place to start. It only takes people a short time of seeing you post about a topic for them to recognise that you have some expertise in it, even if they never read the articles in full. YouTube is also the obvious place to be get visible. If you don’t have time to create regular video content then create really good content but less often. Established YouTubers post daily and build their whole working life around their recording schedule, but you might make a great video every month explaining a specific topic. Even making 6 good videos a year will give you a platform.
And once you do have this platform you can do a lot of good with it. All high-profile vegans use their elevated visibility to further the vegan cause in their own way, even if that’s not obvious on the surface. Vegan Strongman Patrik Baboumian won Germany’s Strongest Man in 2011 and starred in The Game Changers Netflix documentary – which is probably responsible for leading more people to investigate a plant-based diet than any other film or campaign. Non-vegans who first encounter Patrik would laugh if you told them he was an animal lover and passionate environmentalist. They see the muscle, they see the masculinity. Patrik explains that if you want to reach people who are far away from the idea of veganism then you cannot be aggressive because they won’t engage. You need to introduce them to vegan ideas by other routes first. This is what he did; he realised that he was not reaching people by leading with a vegan message and so he changed his public persona to talk about the increased muscle and training gains that going plant-based brings.
Gaz Oakley, The Avant Garde Vegan, is a very successful young chef and YouTuber but found the same issue. So he started with how great and easy plant-based cooking is and you will now find his recipe books in supermarkets across the country. He is quickly building a profile as the vegan Jamie Oliver but rarely talks about the ethics of veganism in his work. If you speak to him one-on-one however, or if he’s talking at a vegan event, then you will see just how passionate he is about veganism and how much campaigning he does behind the scenes. And with over a million followers on YouTube that can’t just be vegans who are engaging with him, so we know the personal brand he’s built is working. He’s encouraging a high number of non-vegans to start their journey to plant-based, he’s normalising the concept and building a successful business at the same time.
