Never start at the beginning. Always start from some point halfway to the top, and work your way backwards. Now you might be wondering what I’m talking about.To create the story of your own personal brand, to be like the book that people can’t put down, you begin with climbing up the mountain.
You see, back in my early days as a copywriter, people didn’t even think I could succeed in business. And before that, when I was in high school, no one wanted to talk to me. So I don’t want to start my story there.
But now that I am a multi-millionaire, a business magnate, internet celebrity and global educator with students and fans around the world… people want to hear my story. They want to know how I became successful, and how I’ll take my success to the next level.
And now that I’ve reached this point and I’m still climbing up, people want to learn how I did it, and they can relate to how I started. They can relate to how I used to struggle to begin my career because that’s where many people are now.
This is a good place to create your story – when you are successful, and people are hungry to know how you got here from your humble beginnings. So this is how your create the story of your personal brand, using one of the following character types.
Watch this video about creating a story of your own personal brand.
The Reluctant Hero: Forced Into Action
People love a good story, and this is how you reel them into your brand, and from there, to build trust in your business.
The first character type is the reluctant hero, the person who is just like us until something extraordinary happens to him. Peter Parker was just a regular teenager, into girls and from a regular family until a radioactive spider bit him.
His life wasn’t the same after that – he had enhanced strength, speed, and reflexes. Special powers to help others. It was his uncle who said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” But Peter didn’t want extra responsibility. He just wanted the power.
Peter changed his mind when he let a thief escape and his Uncle Ben tried to stop the thief instead. When the thief killed his uncle, Peter realized the full meaning of his uncle’s words. Peter became the hero Spiderman whose mission was to find his uncle’s killer and to fight crime.
That’s the reluctant hero. A regular person with flaws just like everyone else but that hero must leave their comfort zone to make a difference in their world. It’s a formulaic storyline we’ve seen in many movies and books and it works. These characters could be any one of us.
Frodo Baggins, a hobbit from The Lord Of the Rings has no special powers and no aspirations to change his life, yet he gets sucked into an epic journey. He meets many fanatical and spectacular characters as he faces extraordinary adventures, but after all that, he’s still just a regular character.
The reluctant hero is a proven storyline that captivates.
The second type of character is the exceptional man or woman who overcomes great obstacles.
Exceptional Person Who Overcomes a Challenge
People are intrigued by characters who are good at what they do. They also love underdogs who thrive against all odds and the skepticism of others. Here’s a real life example of how someone without limbs overcame a huge challenge.
Nick, a famous motivational speaker without arms or legs, inspires millions and millions of people with his positivity. He’s an exceptional man who’s overcome challenges everyday.
For us, brushing our teeth is a simple task. For him, it’s a big challenge but he’s overcome it. We’re inspired by people like him. If you search for him online and study the message he’s trying to convey, you’ll noticed he’s narrowed down his message to mostly Christian-based philosophies. He’s found his audience.
Another example is one of the highest paid motivational speakers in the world, Tony Robbins. At one point he was overweight and broke, living in a one bedroom condo, until one day when he got sick of his life. He went for a run along the beach, then wrote in a private journal, “No more!”
Tired of who he had been, he wanted to work on himself and his psychology. He wanted to inspire others and started doing seminars on personal power. He taught people how to master’s psychology… and that brings us to where he is now. Successful and a household name.
It’s a familiar storyline.
Us Versus Them
The third type of character is us versus them. It works well because it’s based entirely on the fact that we as human beings create our own belief systems based on completely irrational beliefs.
Let me give you an example. Usually we like to blame our problems on others so it’s us versus them. When you meet someone and you both don’t have anything in common yet you have a common enemy, that instantly bonds you. You have the same enemy.
So hypothetically let’s say I don’t like Donald Trump and you don’t like Donald Trump. When we watch him in the election, we instantly have a common enemy. We can talk about a lot of things including his hair.
Here’s another example. Let’s say I am selling natural herb supplements online. I can easily talk about how in the past I wasn’t very healthy so I was overweight and sick a lot. I tried Western medicine but it didn’t quite work for me. Then I stumbled on Chinese medicine.
Then in my journey I discovered these supplements and they are amazing. I have this mission I want to share with you so I put together these products and I set up this company. Now we are fighting against these pharmaceutical companies.
They actually don’t want you to get well because if you get well you won’t buy their medicine anymore. I want to focus more on prevention and that’s what these supplements do.
A Formula For These Stories
So with these stories, you can see there’s a formula. When you use an us-versus-them storyline you stumble upon a secret. The secret proves there is a problem with the market or something similar. It’s the market’s fault.
For example, in the case of the natural supplements, the fault is the pharmaceutical companies out there selling their drugs and teaching the doctors to get them to write prescriptions. You vow to fight against them and unite on your mission to solve the problem.
You emphasize that by buying your product, your client becomes one of us, the good guys. If you don’t buy the supplements, then you support the evil pharmaceutical companies. Or you buy the supplements and you become one of the good guys who fight against evil.
It’s a very powerful formula, so you want to use it with caution.
One of the things I used to do was talk about how most internet marketing gurus haven’t been there and done that. They talk about things that they don’t have firsthand experience in. So it’s us versus them when I talk about a lot of these other people, the so-called gurus who are selling information. That’s an example of what I do in my business.
Them. So that’s an example of what I do in my business.
Now, after you’ve got your character type, you work on character crafting.
How To Craft A Character
To make a character compelling and irresistible he’s got to have some flaws. Nobody likes to meet a person who is just far too perfect. The perfect family, the perfect kids, the perfect home. People don’t want that.
They want to see a bit of loss that will reveal the character’s motive, their human side. They want you to be transparent because real people have flaws. We all have flaws and we’re all a work in progress.
You sustain your tribe’s interest over time to the degree and extent that you’re willing to be transparent. If you want to have a strong character you have to be transparent. If you want to have a powerful personal brand you have to be transparent.
Look at Superman as an example. Superman is almost perfect. What is his weakness? Kryptonite. If you take away that weakness, think about it. It won’t be as fun to follow his story. You can’t kill him, he doesn’t get hurt, and he can dominate everything.
Final Thoughts On Creating Your Branding Story
What draws an audience to you is the type of character you create. The reluctant hero, who is forced to leave his comfort zone and take on a new mission. He or she is just an ordinary person, which makes this person relatable.
Another character type is the exceptional person who overcame an obstacle. We admire this person because they have faced challenges that we haven’t. They inspire us.
And finally there is the us versus them story type. We bond instantly with another person because of a common cause or belief. We take their side so we can either become the bad guy or the good guy.
No matter which character type you choose for your personal brand story, you want to have a character who is flawed. A perfect character is uninteresting and unrelatable. It would be like watching an undefeatable Superman rid his world of his enemies in two seconds because he is invincible.
Which character type is your favorite? Comment below.
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