You Are The Brand: The 8-Step Blueprint to Showcase Your Unique Expertise and Build a Highly Profitable, Personally Fulfilling Business

By Mike Kim and Todd Herman

Inspires corporate professionals to build their own full-time business as a coach, consultant, or content creator

Provides clarity on how to market oneself in any market

Features a proven 7-step system to building a personal brand based on working with top names in the industry

Provides actionable strategies that leave the reader feeling clear, energized, and inspired to dream big

Features practical steps to building game-changing connections and win-win partnerships

Provides clarity on the vague business of building an “expert” business

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Release date: Jun 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781631953484

Book preview

PART ONE

The Personal Brand

Who Do You Have to Become?

How-to-Preneur vs. Ideapreneur: Which One Are You?

CHAPTER ONE

Who Do You Have to Become in Order to Serve the People You Want to Serve?

I was in high school during the early days of the internet when web browsers like America Online (AOL) and Netscape were all the rage. I still remember interacting with strangers in chatrooms, reading blogs (Xanga, anyone?), and keeping up with friends through AOL Instant Messenger—or AIM, for short.

AIM was a chatting app that was a precursor to the direct messaging features found on most social media platforms today. One summer, all of my friends seemed to catch the AIM bug. Everyone I knew seemed to have an account, and the fear of missing out hit me big time. AIM was the place to be!

I scrounged through my family’s mail to track down one of the free discs that America Online was sending out in those days. I grabbed our telephone cord, plugged it into the computer, and fired up that snail-paced modem ready to join the party that was apparently happening on Instant Messenger!

Suddenly I stopped completely in my tracks, my face frozen by what I saw on the screen.

I had to create a username for my AIM account.

Laugh if you will, but I’m positive I’m not the only person who was terrified at the prospect of having to create my own username.

I must have stared at the screen for at least half an hour trying to come up with something cool and witty. My username had to be cool because I had friends to impress, and if I’m really honest, I wanted girls to think, Mike is so witty! He’s so cute! I think I’ll marry him!

After what seemed like an eternity, I came up with the perfect username. It would be powerful! It would project manliness! It would sound unique! It would be a clever play on my first name, and girls would surely bombard me with requests for dates! My AIM username would be…

Mikovitch!

(Stop laughing.)

Things didn’t work out the way I imagined. In fact, they completely backfired. All of my friends thought it was the dumbest username ever. One of my buddies asked if I was trying to sound like a Russian guy, and from that point on whenever I saw my so-called friends in person, they mocked me with a military salute shouting, Greetings, Comrade Mikovitch!

The final moment of humiliation was when a girl I really liked said she had an even better username for me: "Mikobitch." I still remember her chuckling at me. (Whatever, I’m a grown man now, and she’s probably living a miserable exis–– oh, never mind.)

For as long as the internet has been around, people have been obsessed with how they present themselves online. We want to come across well. We want people to like us. We want, in marketing terms, to build a brand.

As you may know, branding stems from the old ranching practice of burning an identifying mark onto livestock with an iron. The concept of branding later expanded into business and marketing to identify products manufactured by a particular company under a particular name.

Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter born in the 1700s who is often called the father of modern marketing, was perhaps the first person who leveraged branding to create a retail empire. After winning a competition hosted by Queen Charlotte, Wedgwood dubbed his pottery Queen’s Ware, opened an exclusive showroom in London for a more affluent market, and pioneered sales practices of money-back guarantees and "free

Reviews for You Are The Brand

[Susan Ifeoluwa Adesiyan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

God!!

I’ve never read a book like this in my entire 30 years. I cried when I approached the closing of this book.
Mike has touched unimaginable places in my heart with his book on personal branding. I’m super excited to have read this book

[Kristen Hunt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is THE personal brand book that needed to be written in 2021. This is the only book I’ve found that tells you how to build a business around your personal brand.

The author, Mike Kim, has been helping entrepreneurs build the right businesses for years by helping them become the person they need to become to make the impact on the world they desire to make.

But it’s not just a “How to” book that’s prescribing one solution for all businesses. He actually helps,you define what your story is through an 8 step framework, and along the way Mike teaches you how to tell compelling stories to help you build your personal brand business.

I read a lot of books looking for great personal branding books. This is the best I’ve found.

If you’re like 70+% of people who hate their jobs and what more from your life, this is the path. So refreshing, clear, and energizing! Love what you do, and do it being you. Become the brand. You ARE the brand. And Chapter 8 on pricing is worth the cost of the book.