How my personal brand drives 68.56% of Lead Cookie's revenue
68.56% of Lead Cookie's revenue is a direct result of my personal brand.
This comes in two forms.
Referral partnerships.
Content marketing.
In this article, I am going to explain my philosophy behind the choice to build my personal brand, and more details on how I utilize it to drive such large amounts of revenue toward our business. My personal brand has helped Lead Cookie grow into a top lead generation agency for B2B.
Your personal brand is the one investment you can't go wrong with
In this article, I am going to share my journey and story with my personal brand. But what I really want to drive home with this article is one simple point.
You can't go wrong investing in your personal brand.
Your personal brand is an asset that you will have for the rest of your life.
So even if you don't monetize it today, you may just find that 8 years later, it's the largest source of income for your business. 🙂
Your different businesses will come and go.
But you will always own your personal brand.
So start investing today.
Spotlight Marketing
To reinforce the importance of a personal brand even more, I want to share one other concept with you called "Spotlight Marketing".
Dan Andrews, of the TropicalMBA podcast, put out an episode on this once and it has stuck with me ever since.
Basically, the idea is simple.
Build an audience
Point that audience to different offers (aka "spotlight" different offers)
This simple concept has stuck with me over the years. And so, as I have built my audience and brand, I have tried out many different offers to my entire readership.
Some of the offers (in chronological order) include:
Freelance web designer
Coaching on how to be a freelancer
An ebook and video course on freelancing
Marketing consultation for agencies
Outbound physical packages to generate clients
Outbound marketing campaigns
A group course focused on how to run your own outbound campaigns
Sales and marketing consultation for agencies
Agency Scout - A failed attempt at a job marketplace for agency owners to refer leads to each other
Lead Cookie - A done-for-you Linkedin prospecting service
Content Allies - We turn consultants into thought leaders through content marketing
The same audience. 11 different offers over the years.
If I had invested in a blog focused on any single one of these ventures, that audience would have become lost or irrelevant.
But by keeping all of this under my personal brand, I have been able to point my audience toward different offers over the years.
The start of my personal brand
On February 26th, 2011, I published my first ever blog post. It was called Six Reasons to Start a Business while you are in school and it's still on this website.
What followed after that was a ton of random, scattered blog posts on a variety of topics. I would publish randomly, and then not publish for years.
If you want a good laugh, just visit this page to see the very first articles I've ever written...
And the same with my podcast. I started that roughly 4 years ago and it was called The Creative Freelancer Show.
I was caught up in the internet marketing fads and thought I was going to get rich selling ebooks on how to freelance...
Yet, despite all of these missteps and complete failures with my personal brand, I have still been investing in it slowly, year after year.
I was horrible at first, but over time I got better and better.
But the key was that I just started...
Trying to monetize my personal brand throughout the years
As I mentioned earlier, my personal brand drives 68.56% of revenue for Lead Cookie.
Did I know that would be the case when I published my first blog in 2011? Heck no...
I was too busy smoking the reefer 8 years ago to even think about where my life would end up today.
Yet, I just started putting stuff out there and investing in my own personal brand.
And for years, I didn't even monetize it.
I just published, wrote, and shared what I knew.
The first point when I started to actually make some income from it was when I did freelancing. I remember some people liked the self-development style posts I wrote and ended up hiring me as a web designer.
That was step one of monetization.
Eventually, I tried to coach other people on freelancing, which was pretty stupid. I made a bit of money but it was a flop.
Then I tried to sell an ebook. After countless, painstaking hours of writing a whole book and creating a video course, I made around $1,200...
And then I just gave up on it for a while....
At certain points, I would literally let my personal brand sit for years at a time and not touch it.
But that is the great part about personal brands. You can always invest, and they never go away.
Making real money with my personal brand via consulting
After I woke up and realized all of the "internet marketers" were leading me astray with their bullshit "make money selling ebooks and courses" promise, I figured out how to make real money with my brand.
Consulting & services.
I positioned my brand around what I was really good at, which was making sales for agency-style services.
I started teaching what I knew, and then charging people retainer fees for the done-for-you services.
If you are struggling to monetize your personal brand, and you are trying to sell ebooks...
Stop that shit. Now.
Instead, focus on providing one-on-one consulting, training, and done-for-you services.
Begin there. You will make money way faster, hone in on your skills, and monetize way quicker.
Once I came up with the new offer, it took me less than 12 months to transition from a web designer to a sales and marketing consultant.
But even today, I still don't make money selling ebooks.
This consulting journey continued for about 4 years.
I learned a lot along the way.
I signed clients.
And I taught what I learned.
At times, I got too busy with consulting and didn't podcast or publish for almost a full year after that.
But the brand was still there.
Growing my network & partnerships with podcasting
The next major evolution of my personal brand was podcasting.
And while having the audience for the podcast is nice, the real value comes through the relationships you build.
I've written a whole article on this called Grow your agency through podcast networking.
40.22% of Lead Cookie's revenue comes from referral partners.
EVERY SINGLE PARTNER was, at one point, a guest on my podcast.
28.34% of Lead Cookie's revenue comes from content.
I don't have the exact numbers, but a majority of those leads come from my personal appearances on podcasts, webinars, guest blog posts, and interviews with the partners above.
They invite me to speak in front of their audiences, and as a result, I get to point all of these people to the Lead Cookie offer.
Starting a podcast is one of the best things I've ever done for my personal brand.
It enables me to build relationships with other influencers.
It established me as a thought leader.
I learned a TON from all of the interviews I did.
And it created a massive network of other influencers who I now collaborate with.
The funny thing is, almost all of the influencers who send leads to Lead Cookie are people I've actually interviewed already and built relationships with BEFORE Lead Cookie even existed.
Once again, I was just investing in my personal brand, and waiting to find that right offer that I could spotlight to the audience...
Need help launching your podcast, then review our list of Top Podcast Production Companies & Agencies. Or reach out to Content Allies which is my B2B podcast production service.
Big time monetization of my personal brand: Lead Cookie
After years of building my brand, building relationships, and building an audience, I finally monetized my personal brand when I launched Lead Cookie.
Within 30 days, Lead Cookie had a $12,000 MRR.
That is 100% a result of the fact that I had built a network and audience of people who already looked to me for sales and leadership advice.
That first $12,000 MRR from Lead Cookie came 100% from my existing network and audience.
I already had the audience.
I just shined the spotlight on a new offer.
The other day someone asked me "How do you build new businesses so fast?"
This is the answer.
My personal brand.
It's like having a cheat code for your business.
It's a massive advantage.
If I want to go build a relationship with any influencer, I can reach out and interview them.
If I didn't have a personal brand, I would have nothing to offer that influencer.
What is next for monetization?
At the moment, Lead Cookie is still my primary monetization channel for my personal brand.
Yet, I am in process of launching an entirely new offer:
Lead Cookie Content - Nurture your Linkedin audience with daily content
So once again, I will point my audience and existing customer base to a new spotlight with this offer.
Also, as Lead Cookie grows, I have more and more people reach out to me about coaching and mentoring.
While I am not offering any coaching and mentoring today, it is on my radar.
At some point in 2019, I plan on launching some form of a group coaching or mentorship program.
The bottom line
Your personal brand is an asset.
It's one you must invest in and build over time.
But I promise you, you will never regret it.
Start building your personal brand today, and you will thank me in 5 years.