What’s in a name? Well, a lot.

Shakespeare said it first; What’s in a name? Ask any personal branding expert and they’ll tell you… well, a lot. 

Sometimes even millions of dollars could be lightly riding on a simple, harmless name. Welcome to the world of personal branding, where your name alone is your business card, your elevator pitch, and your ticket to a spectrum of success beyond your wildest imagination. 

Your personal brand is the aura you radiate, the melody you compose that resonates with others, and the legacy you build brick by brick. It’s an amalgamation of your passions, beliefs, values, and the quirks that make you, you. So, how do you begin building an empire and embarking on a journey that could potentially redefine your role in the much larger scheme of things? And how do you undertake the seemingly daunting task of putting together your very own personal brand?

The quest begins by digging a little deeper and trying to hone in on what truly floats your boat. The books that you can’t put down, the movies that move you, the social causes that ignite your soul, and even the hobbies that you could spend days immersed in. These are the tiny jigsaw pieces of your personal brand. 

Here’s the basic question; if you were a personal brand, what kind of a product would you be? 

A luxury, niche product offering an exclusive experience, or a brand that appeals to the masses, known for its reliability and accessibility? 

The answers you come up with could potentially determine the fate of your brand, the people it might appeal to, and the success it will go on to achieve. 

You could, for instance, be inspiring and uplifting, like Nike. You could be happy to just spread cheer like Coke, or you could have a wholesome agenda to just make people love the way they look, somewhat like Dove. You could be a luxury brand like Louis Vuitton (inspiring a rampant and aggressive knock-off industry or in your case, just many social media replicas of your personal brand). 

You could spawn a tribe of loyal fans and followers, and a community you could learn to lean on as your inner circle. If you wanted to, you could potentially create a tiny little tea party consisting of a few thousand followers and maybe occasionally, over a glass of cider or whatever, you could all gather round a zoom call and braid each other’s hair, if that’s your thing.

Either way, personal branding is a solid handful of currency to hold, especially when you realize that you have the power to influence not just how people perceive you, but also how they feel about themselves in your presence. 

Of course, you don’t have to believe everything I say; in order to really hone in on the power of personal branding, you need only to Google the OGs of personal branding. 

You know… from back in the day when folks like me weren’t around to peddle the good ol’ dream. The archives of history are filled with names that stood for a clear USP, a product offering based on which they amassed a following. 

Take Gandhi for instance; with a clear USP of a non-violence, Gandhi took on branding symbolism like the charkha and the dhoti and turned it quite literally into the birth of a new country. 

Further west, we had the likes of Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Lady Diana, and so on. Of course, when we look at such elevated examples, it seems much more far-fetched. 

But these are modern times, and we’ve got a chance at enormous amounts of visibility if we’d like that sort of thing. So now, it's much easier to get your agenda and your message out without having to make the front page of the daily post. But first, there are questions to be answered. Are you a one-time wonder, or does your brand have the depth to keep people engaged over time? The consistency, value, and emotional connection you offer will dictate the longevity and loyalty of your relationships.

Your personal brand is your legacy. It’s how you present yourself to the world and, more importantly, how the world remembers you. Maybe it's time to leave an indelible mark.