Yesterday, I talked to a coaching client, someone who has a sizeable email list and a bunch of offers he’s been selling for a while.
Recently, he decided to step back from this to take a proper job. He enjoys learning something new at his new role, and he finds the work exciting, and he likes the company and the people, and there’s more money, stability, and free time than with all the stuff he has been doing by himself.
He asked if I have any advice as he transitions from his online business to this new job.
I’ll tell you what I told him:
Over the course of the past six months, I have had a number of people come to me and say, “I used to have this great gig, until yesterday.”
One was a business owner whose business partner screwed him and took everything.
Another was a freelancer whose main client’s business turned out to be shaky, so the client decided to bring the work in-house as a cost-cutting measure.
A third was a salaried employee whose employer decided to simply terminate the role, even though the guy was making the employer more money than he was getting paid, and could prove it.
All these people, and a few others, came to me after their once-great gig disappeared, with the idea to build a personal brand as a way of making money now.
So what I told my coaching client yesterday is, enjoy the new job and make the most of it. But at the same time, even the best, most certain gigs can disappear, overnight.
Businesses go out of business. Partners cheat you or simply step away. Employers get sick, die, or go bankrupt.
For all these reasons and more, it makes sense to have a backup to your great gig.
My coaching client is very lucky, because he’s already got the best backup I know, a personal brand, an audience, and a relationship with that audience.
If anything happens to his current job — the company is sold and the new owners fire everyone, or they slash everybody’s salaries while keeping the workload the same, or they hire somebody else to do the job because he’s cheaper/better/a nephew — then he can go to this list, and write an email or two, and most likely find a new client or a series of clients by the end of this week.
So my takeaway for you is, if you have a personal brand, don’t let it go.
You don’t have to email daily or create new offers or moonlight in addition to your day job. All you have to do is show up on some regular schedule (once a week is good), and let people know you are alive, and give them proof that you’re doing well, and are still worth listening to and knowing about.
And my takeaway for you if you don’t have a personal brand but you have a great gig going… is also to start now.
For one thing, your great gig can give you authority and content ideas and behind-the-scenes data to make it easy to be somebody online.
For another thing, as I’ve been saying, your great gig might not always be there, so it makes sense to beware and prepare for that possibility now.
Here’s one more thing I told my coaching client yesterday:
Just focus on the content. Don’t worry about list growth or about offers or about what form this personal brand might take in the future.
This is true for you even if you are starting a personal brand now.
There’s value in creating content online EVEN IF NOBODY’S READING. For one thing, it makes you better at what you do. For another thing, it can grow your list on its own (albeit slowly), and it becomes fodder if you do want to create offers or lead magnets or books in the future. Most important of all, it becomes a proof element if you are ever talking to someone you want to impress. Compare:
“Why should you hire me? Gee, let me try to sum up the past 12 years of my career for you in the next 45 seconds before I lose your attention…”
… to…
“Why should you hire me? I don’t know that you should. Here’s my website where I’ve written tens of thousands of words on this topic, based on my previous experience. Take a look at it and we can talk afterwards.”
So let me ask you?
Do you have a great gig right now?
Do you want to have a personal online brand, and an audience, and a great relationship with them that you can use as a backup in case your great gig ever vanishes?
Then write me and let me know.
You can’t buy anything here. But I am curious what you do, and what kind of a personal brand you want to build and how, and what questions you have about the process.