THE PERSONAL

BRANDING BLUEPRINT
The 5 step framework to build your personal brand
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Kat is an Aussie actor, coach and entrepreneur who
grew up on the Gold Coast in Australia. Her
professional career began with a bang, playing
Marilyn Monroe at Warner Bros Movie World before
landing a role in the original Australian cast of Jersey
Boys and then Hairspray the Musical.

After a “quarter life crisis” at 25, she realised she

wanted more than to just play someone else’s role
and speak someone else’s words, so she wrote,
produced and starred in a series of cabarets that
ignited a love of marketing and branding.

A few years into her marketing journey in real estate

and the advertising industry, she decided to become
a freelance copywriter and brand strategist,
something she did successfully for 4 years and was
what eventually led her to becoming an online course
creator and full time content creator.

These days you can find Kat on YouTube as well as

the occasional TV commercial and TV show (she’s
currently based in Vancouver, balancing
entrepreneurship with her acting career) and is most
obsessed with teaching fellow creative solopreneurs
how to find the confidence to show up and create a
powerful personal brand using the power of video.

THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT

 WHY PERSONAL BRANDING?
As you’ve probably figured out by
now, personal branding has become a
pretty big deal in recent years.
What you might not realise, however, is that
it’s not just for celebrities and entrepreneurs.
Every single human being (that wants to have
a career and/or make an impact in the world)
needs one… and already has one.
That’s right. Whether you’d thought about it
before or not, you yourself have a personal
brand. ‘Cause guess what? A personal brand
is about how other people perceive you (the
good, the bad and the ugly) and they’re going
to have an opinion of you whether you’re
intentional about your brand or not.
So now you know this, you have a choice to
make. You can take action and be proactive
about how people see you – taking the power
back into your own hands. Or you can
continue to leave it all up to fate, getting
frustrated when your agent, friends, casting
directors and acquaintances don’t seem to
‘get’ what you’re about.
THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT
If you’re ready to take action, you’re in the
right place – the following pages are going to
kick-start your personal branding journey.
If you’re not, then I guess you should just close
this window, unsubscribe from my emails and
pretend we never met. Because I can only
help you if you’re prepared to do the work.
Alright, I’m assuming you’re still reading this
and are ready to dive in! But first a disclaimer:
A personal brand is about more than making
some superficial changes to your social media
profiles or writing a killer bio. It’s a lifetime
commitment to showing up daily and
consistently so your actions become louder
than your words.
Oh, and it’s an ever-evolving process. Your
personal brand WILL change because it’s
simply a reflection of you – an ever-changing,
always fascinating piece miraculousness.
So relax and enjoy the journey!
 Clarity is at the core of your personal brand.
Without it, you could end up creating the wrong
content for the wrong people written in the wrong
tone of voice… and what good will that do you?

Sometimes we convince ourselves that any content

we create is better than no content, but every
piece of content we create needs to have a
purpose – to educate, to help us get found, to
entertain, to lead to a sale… etc etc.

And if you’re pouring time and effort into creating

anything that doesn’t lead to some sort of result,
you’re wasting precious time and effort. Not only
that, you could be attracting the wrong people or
confusing the people you want to be serving.
Which is why we’re going to dig deep into
answering some crucial questions before we start
creating anything.

The clarity you need to build a powerful personal

brand covers a few areas…

‣ Who you want to serve

‣ What problem they need solving
‣ How you solve that problem
Mystification is simple; clarity is the ‣ What makes you qualified to help them
hardest thing of all. ‣ What makes your own story unique

– Julian Barnes So let’s get down to business!

THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT

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QUESTION 1: WHO DO YOU WANT TO SERVE?

I want you to create a profile for your dream customer (feel

free to do this 2 or 3 times if you have secondary and
tertiary markets, but even just 1 profile will change
everything for you). If you’ve been in business for awhile,
you could base this on one of your favourite customers or
clients, or if you’re new to this or pivoting right now, then use
your imagination – as long as it’s specific.

By the way, if you want to do this thoroughly, I recommend

scheduling some discovery calls with people (friends, family,
acquaintances, past clients) who you think fit your profile
and get answers straight from them as opposed to making it
up. Alternatively you could create a Typeform questionnaire
and send it out to your list or suitable contacts in order to
complete some real market research.

I often incentivise this in some way (give them a thank you

gift, discount code, digital product etc) to increase the
response rate. Whatever you do, take your time with this
step as it’ll make the rest of the personal branding process so
much easier and more rewarding.

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PART ONE: DEMOGRAPHICS
Name

Age

Lives

Relationship

Children

Career

Annual income

Reads

Listens to

Holidays in

Spends time online

Searches for answers

Follows Why

Follows Why

Follows Why

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PART TWO: OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE
What are their biggest frustrations (in the context of what you do)?

What is their number 1 struggle (in the context of what you do)?

How have they tried to solve it so far?

Why didn't that solution work?

If they could wave a magic wand, what would the ideal product
or service look like to solve that problem?

How much would they be prepared to pay for that?

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1 HOW DO YOU SOLVE YOUR AUDIENCE’S PROBLEMS?
What is your product or service offering and how will it help your audience?

2 WHAT DO YOU DO DIFFERENTLY TO YOUR COMPETITION?

What do you think makes you and your product/service unique when compared with any other similar offerings out there?

3 WHAT MAKES YOUR OWN STORY UNIQUE?

What is it in your own life that led you to doing what you do? Have you experienced the same problems as your customers/clients? Is there something close to your heart that drives your
“why”? What is it about you that would make a journalist want to write about you and your business that would connect emotionally with their audience?

4 WHAT DRIVES YOU?

Why did you choose this field and why is it important to you that you succeed?

5 WHAT ARE YOUR VALUES?

Some examples of values are: integrity, affordability, transparency, perseverance, innovation, respect, passion and equality. Brainstorm up to 10 but then narrow it down to your top 3.

THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT


In order to serve your audience in a way that is genuine
and un-salesy, you need to have confidence in what
you do and your audience needs to have confidence
in you. This works from the inside out.
First, you need to have absolute certainty in your own
ability to serve your audience and that you have what it
takes to solve their problems and improve their lives in
some way. Then you need to find ways to demonstrate
this in action so they start to have confidence in you –
before they spend a cent on hiring you/buying from
you.
We often get very impatient for people to buy from us
because we know how good we are and know that we
could help our audience get the results they desire. But
we forget that they often barely know us from a bar of
soap. Put yourself in their shoes. If all you knew about
you was what you could see on those few pages of your
website plus a pretty Instagram feed, would that be
enough for you to hand over the credit card? I highly
doubt it.
This is where that old know/like/trust equation comes in.
And it doesn’t happen overnight. With some customers/
clients it might be a matter of days or weeks of talking to
you (this often connected to how expensive your offer is
too — how high risk is the investment?) For others it could
be months or even years.
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For instance, my mum is a real estate agent who has been
in the industry for 11 years. Occasionally she’ll get called
in to appraise a house and will find out that the couple
who called her first met her 5 years ago and hung onto her
branded notebook all that time, observing her success from
a distance, knowing that when the time came, she’d be the
agent they called. Even then, they may still call in a few
agents to interview, meaning despite the fact that she’s
created 5 years of evidence for them, she still needs to put
on an impressive show when she pitches her services.
The takeaway? Both your “incidental” actions (like daily
interactions, social media posts, Facebook lives, being
seen on the street – which, when done properly are
actually always intentional) and your “essential” actions
(direct contact via emails, sales calls, webinars, face to
face meetings – anything that’s trying to close the sale) are
all working together to build the confidence required to
eventually turn your passive follower or engaged fan into a
paying customer.
So… how are you going to do that?
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1 WHAT MAKES YOU QUALIFIED TO HELP YOUR AUDIENCE?
What training, experience, results and/or social proof do you have that will help your audience believe that you’re qualified to help them?

2 IN WHAT WAYS ARE YOU GOING TO DELIVER VALUE?

How do you serve your audience before they become paying customers or clients? Think of the platforms you use, the kind of content you can create, the generosity you’ll have when
answering questions, the hours you’ll dedicate to those “unbillable” hours that create deposits into your audiences’ confidence piggy bank. Don’t overthink this – treat it like a brain dump
and you can streamline this later when you create your strategy.

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3 WHERE ARE YOUR CURRENT CONFIDENCE CRACKS?

There are all sorts of ways that confidence can slip through the cracks, whether it comes from our own mindset blocks (imposter syndrome, fear of selling, newbie nerves) or the content we
put out there that may undermine our efforts (unprofessional looking website, spelling mistakes in copy, lack of testimonials, inconsistency on social media, not having a great profile photo…
the list goes on). I want you to run an assessment of your own mind AND your entire marketing presence and write down anything and everything that might be causing your audience to
have a lack of confidence in your ability to help them. Take your time with this step – it’s really important.

THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT


The single biggest problem in
communication is the illusion that it
has taken place.
– George Bernard Shaw
THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT
MM N N
Now you’ve laid the foundations for yourself, the
next step is communicating your message and
ensuring it reaches the right people.
As I'm sure you know, communication is more than
just words. It’s in all the other signals we send,
from the colours and fonts we use, the photos we
share, the clothes we wear, the body language
we use and so much more.
We’re going to start by running an evaluation on
how your existing communication is going, then
we can make a plan on how to improve it moving
forward. Give each element of communication a
score from -5 to +5.
Anything under 0 means it’s potentially damaging
your personal brand, whereas a +5 means you’re
nailing it and using it to grow your brand on the
daily.
Then I want you to jot down a) what message you
think it’s currently sending and b) how you think it
could improve either by up-skilling/spending
more time on it or whether you think you might
need to outsource some help.
 SCORE HOW I CAN IMPROVE

VERBAL (phone)

VERBAL (face to face)

WRITTEN (emails)

WRITTEN (website/blog)

WRITTEN (social media)

AUDIO VISUAL (video - live)

AUDIO VISUAL (video - pre-recorded)

AUDIO VISUAL (public speaking)

VISUAL AESTHETIC (logo)

VISUAL AESTHETIC (website)

VISUAL AESTHETIC (social media)

VISUAL AESTHETIC (brand photography)

VISUAL AESTHETIC (stock images used)

VISUAL AESTHETIC (how you dress)

VISUAL AESTHETIC (hair + makeup)

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Next, I want you to think about what your STRONGEST form of communication, then
you’re going to choose a primary platform to utilize this skill and up to 2 secondary
platforms to support it (by cross-promoting your content as well as creating shorter
form content to build more CONFIDENCE with your audience).

1 MY STRONGEST FORM OF COMMUNICATION IS:

Written
Verbal
Video (live)
Video (pre-recorded)
Design

2 MY BEST PRIMARY COMMUNICATION PLATFORM (ONLINE) IS:

Blog
YouTube
Podcast
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn

3 MY BEST SECONDARY COMMUNICATION PLATFORM (ONLINE) IS:

Blog
YouTube
Podcast
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn

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Now we can get down to the nitty gritty: What will your communication style be on
your chosen platforms? Even though you have a primary form of communication, to do
truly make an impact, you’ll still need to incorporate them all, so we’re going to dig
into the details here, from tone of voice to visual aesthetic.

1
PERSONALITY: HOW DO YOU WANT TO BE PERCEIVED?
Some examples are: Warm, funny, relatable, down-to-earth, authoritative, serious, quirky, energetic, motivating. Choose 3-5 that feel right – use a thesaurus if you’re stuck for ideas!

2 VISUALS: HOW WILL YOUR PERSONALITY LOOK?

a What colours best represent your personality?
(If you have existing brand colours, are they consistent with this or is it time for a visual brand refresh?)

b What fonts best represent your personality?

c What shapes best represent your personality?

d What emojis best represent your personality?

3 TONE OF VOICE: HOW DO YOU “SOUND”?

Write an example email and/or social media post in the kind tone of voice that you think best represents your personality and will resonate with your audience.
Keep tweaking it until you’re happy then use this as a reference point whenever you write your own copy for your business.

THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT

4
PRESENTATION: WHO ARE YOU SHOWING UP AS?
Is the way you currently present yourself a good visual representation of your brand?
If not, describe the kind of style choices that would as well as the hair, makeup and accessories that would allow you to be a walking billboard for your personal brand. Is there a
signature piece that you could invest in to help you create a stronger visual impression? For instance a blazer in a statement colour or t-shirts with funny quotes on them.

How would you translate your style for different occasions, such as…

Filming a video:

Meeting a client for a coffee:

Attending a business-casual networking event:

Presenting a keynote speech:

Attending an awards night:

BONUS EXERCISE: MOOD BOARD

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BONUS EXERCISE: CREATING A MOOD BOARD

If you’re unclear on how to communicate your brand visually, a

mood board is the perfect place to start. You can do these for
specific purposes like getting logo or website design
inspiration, creating your style uniform, or designing your office
OR you can do a general one, pulling in anything that has the
“vibe” you’re drawn to… colours, textures, objects,
typography, offices, quotes, infographics, you name it.

The quickest way to do this is on Pinterest via a private board,

but you have less flexibility as you can’t re-order them. If you’d
prefer to take complete creative control, you could instead…

•Use Milanote’s Mood Board Template

•Use design software like Canva or Illustrator
•Create a Google Drive folder to pull everything into
•Go old-school and start cutting out clips from magazines to
paste onto a big ol’ piece of cardboard.

…Whatever makes you feel best!

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Finally, you can pull together everything you’ve worked on so far and write some killer
bios ready for your social media profiles, website, press releases and more.

1 MY MICRO BIO (INSTAGRAM ETC)

2 MY SHORT BIO (150 WORDS)

3 MY FULL BIO (300 WORDS)

THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT


I don’t believe that any one of these four Cs is more
important than the others, but I will tell you now that no
amount of work you do on the first 3 will matter if you’re
not consistent. Consistency is the key that builds the most
trust with your audience as you’ll become familiar to
them, they’ll know what to expect from you and you’ll
become a reliable source of education/value/
information/entertainment/whatever it is you’re
offering.
In the case of personal branding, I like to break
consistency into two parts.
Part 1 is how consistent your brand looks/sounds/
feels across every platform. For instance: are you
showing up as the same person on Facebook as you are
on YouTube? If someone was to meet you in person after
reading your website, would they get a surprise or know
what to expect? Or something as simple as if they typed
your Instagram handle into other social platforms, would
they be able to find you?
So to help you with part 1, you’ll find a checklist to make
sure you’ve covered all bases. This stuff is pretty basic
and once it’s done, it’s done.
Part 2 is a different story, however. It’s your
commitment to showing up consistently.
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From how often you’re sharing valuable content to how
available you are on different platforms to answer
questions and build relationships with your audience. This
part takes work and is the main reason most personal
brands never reach their full potential.
It’s also why I know you WILL succeed if you commit to
doing the work — because there’s less competition out
there than you think. Sure, plenty of people are saying they
do what you do, but how many of their actions match their
words? How many of them are prepared to play the long
game? You’d be surprised.
And so while I’ll give you some simple prompts to help
your “technical” consistency, the real task at this point is to
make that commitment to yourself AND your audience, that
you will start to show up daily, generously sharing value
and representing your own personal values no matter how
you feel that day or how pissed off some online troll’s
behaviour makes you feel.
Your audience is paying attention to everything you do, so
it’s just as important to respond with integrity to the people
you like and want to serve as the people you want nothing
to do with. And that’s easier said than done! But just think
of the payoff once your brand is established and growing
your business like wildfire.
BRAND CHECKLIST

Own a good domain name Curated suitable stock images

All my social handles match Have branded photos of myself

All my profile photos match OR planning a brand photoshoot

All my cover images are on-brand Completed my customer profile/s

All my social bios are complete Wrote my elevator pitch

Claimed all of my vanity urls Wrote my micro bio

Verified my social accounts Wrote my short bio

Set up a custom email address Wrote my full bio

Designed a custom email signature Chose my primary + secondary platforms

Chose my brand colours Designed website to suit my brand

Chose my brand fonts Designed social media post templates

Chose my “go to” emojis Brainstormed 12 months of content ideas

Chose my IG filter (or editing style) Brainstormed some opt-in or promo ideas

Have a consistent IG stories style Decluttered and styled my office

Have intentional IG highlights Created an on-brand video backdrop

Have a powerful CTA in social bios Styled some on-brand outfits

PERSONAL BRANDING WORKBOOK

 MM M N
1
HOW OFTEN I’LL BE CREATING CONTENT FOR MY PRIMARY PLATFORM

2 HOW OFTEN I’LL BE SHARING CONTENT TO MY SECONDARY PLATFORMS

3 HOW MUCH TIME I’ll DEDICATE TO ENGAGING WITH MY EXISTING AUDIENCE

4 HOW MUCH TIME I’ll DEDICATE TO ENGAGING WITH NEW PEOPLE

5 OTHER WAYS I’LL SHARE VALUE + CONNECT WITH MY AUDIENCE

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“Life is a series of natural and
spontaneous changes. Don't resist them;
that only creates sorrow. Let reality be
reality. Let things flow naturally forward
in whatever way they like.”
– Lao Tzu
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This final step of the blueprint is one that most of us
often forget because we’re too busy doing all
things – myself included!
You’re going to turn yourself into a compass who
can take a look at everything you’ve been doing
and use it to determine how you can improve,
where you can double down on what’s working,
and when it’s time to set new goals.
A few practical tips to do this:
- Become friends with the analytics of your social
media and email platforms. Use them to see
what content is helping grow your brand and
which activities aren’t really moving the needle.
- Survey your audience. Check in with them to
find out what they want more of, where they’re
struggling, how they like to hear from you.
- Intentionally test out new kinds of content, new
subject lines and get a feel for which ones have
the biggest impact.
- Try daily journalling to help you stay in touch
with how you’re feeling about what you’re
doing, what niggling thoughts are bothering
you, and to have a safe space to dream big
and set goals for the future.
- Use your coach, mentor or accountability
partner to help guide you through this process if
you find yourself feeling stuck or overwhelmed.
 Now let’s set this all in stone by committing to some goals that excite you and will keep
you motivated even on those days you don’t really feel like it PLUS sum everything up
by creating your official mission statement.

1 IN 6 MONTHS I WILL HAVE…

2 IN 12 MONTHS I WILL HAVE…

3 IN 3 YEARS I WILL HAVE…

4 MY MISSION STATEMENT

THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT

 A brand is the set of
expectations, memories,
stories and relationships
that, taken together,
account for a consumer's
decision to choose one
product or service over
another.

SETH GODIN

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CONNECT WITH KAT ON SOCIAL

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kat@personalbrandingproject.co

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THE PERSONAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT