This is the second part of a 2-part series article. I highly recommend reading part 1 first so you have all the necessary context.
“Escape competition through authenticity… No one can compete with you on being you.”
– Naval Ravikant
The moment you stop forcing yourself into a niche and start embracing all your interests is when you create a business impossible to replicate and compete with.
How many eggs baskets do you have
The next point is the immediate unlocking of possible content options, products that you can offer, and you again don’t sew yourself into a narrow specialized niche, where you can only come up with a limited set of products. Obviously from a sports creator we all expect that he will sell protein powder, or pre-workout tablets, a completely expected story, and in most cases that’s how it happens.
No, now, as a multi-niche brand you can sell, for example, seeds for growing bok choy in your backyard, or stylist services to pick suitable clothes for yourself. These are completely different things, and they complement each other, and they don’t contradict each other, so diversification immediately comes into play. The famous “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket”.
An extremely useful principle, especially here, in business, which is constantly changing and in which you need to adapt, and this adaptability appears for you just with the versatility of your personal brand, you don’t have this limitation.
Now you’re greatly expanding your audience. If before the audience was attracted only by that narrow segment that was covered by your one interest, which all your content was aimed at, now there are many interests, and, accordingly, the potential scale of your audience also increases, because, guess what, you’re not the only one in the world who combines several interests, not only are you interested in not just one thing, but many different things.
Take any person, and there are, of course, maybe such exceptions that really dedicate their life to only one thing, but even this is a very superficial judgment about a person, if you look deeper, then, as a rule, it’s always a combination of different interests.
Even if Thomas Edison tried to make the same light bulb ten thousand times, besides this he was interested in a huge number of other things, which just brought to his work this understanding of how everything is interconnected, and how to make his inventions, for example, useful, applicable in life, and not just some fun experiments in the laboratory, he was a very well-rounded person.
Or take Leonardo da Vinci, who simply spread his genius across a huge number of domains – art, science, even biology and medicine, architecture, and painting. This is just a colossal, rather, the most extreme, probably, example that can be imagined, of such a handy, leggy person, for whom all this also worked out perfectly, and I, of course, admire such people, it seems like something unreal.
You can take our contemporaries, like Elon Musk, who knows how to write programs, play computer games, launch rockets into space, make electric cars, establish connections with the president and play politics, buy out social networks and so on, this is also an extremely well-rounded personality, who precisely with the combination of all these interests attracts attention to himself, this is one of the most interesting people known to a huge number of the planet’s population.
Someone loves him for one thing, someone loves him for rockets, someone loves him for Tesla, someone loves him for his closeness to the president, someone, on the contrary, doesn’t love him for this, but in essence it doesn’t change, it attracts attention to him.
This is exactly what we want to do with our personal personal brand, that is, based on our various interests, we want to attract a different group of people with whom these interests combine.
And here you go, a huge number of opportunities opens up before you, and immediately the size of the potential audience increases many times as soon as we start applying this.
The Content System Approach for Consistent Brand Growth
That’s exactly why with the launch of my personal brand I immediately began to describe the various domains of my life in which I have interests. It’s business, it’s psychology, it’s philosophy, because my stories, articles, and thoughts, they can often be a bit woo-woo, blurry, impractical, but this is my way of explaining things to myself, I’m sure that for some people precisely such a method will also be suitable, such reasoning, providing argumentation, some logical conclusions, and so on.
I understand this, and I try to use it as my own advantage.
Entrepreneur Marie Forleo, who famously calls herself a “multi-passionate entrepreneur,” struggled early on with advice to “choose one thing,” until she realized that her drive to pursue diverse fields (business, fitness, dance, spirituality) was an asset, not a liability.
“Trust the drive and passion… to do many different things,”
she says – following those genuine interests turned out to be the key to a meaningful, successful career.
Now this gives a huge space for maneuver in terms of content. Because this question arises for everyone who becomes a content creator. Okay, I’m starting to develop my personal brand, but what should I write about, or what should I create content about, what should I shoot videos about, record podcasts. The answer is – about these very interests.
And now, when you no longer have the limitation of just one niche, you can write about what you like.
At first it might seem that all this will lead to us shooting a cannon at sparrows, and not catching any of them in the end, and this diversification of content will just lead to the fragmentation of the audience.
But in fact, you can find several examples which, despite the fact that their interests are very different, are at the same time competitive and so whole, and there’s no contradiction here, again, because each person is a combination of several interests.
And there’s a high probability that if you’re interested in, for example, five things, five domains of life, then there will be another person who will be interested in, for example, all these five domains, or at least one of your interests.
And then what happens? When these people begin to immerse themselves in the study, for example, of some things, if you, of course, give some content that attracts their attention.
What kinds of content, by the way, are there? I have an article that will answer the question of what kind of content I should create when I create my personal brand: The Three Content Categories: How To Attract an Audience That Buys.
And it turns out that, getting to know, for example, about your other interests, the audience, possibly, will also adopt them. Because, if they’re interesting to you, it means that some part of your thinking coincides.
This combination occurred to you, and it similarly occurred in another person too. But this means that, probably, for his mindset, another interest will be suitable, maybe he just didn’t know about it.
According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, 61% of people trust “a person like yourself” as an information source – higher than trust in advertising or corporate executives. A Twitter survey found 49% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations for purchase decisions. This explains why personal brands hold considerable marketing power – their audiences trust them.
For example, there are a lot of people who are interested in the business domain. I’m taking, by the way, such broad domains of life, or interests, in order for it to be obvious. So, many people from business, they’re very interested in spirituality, or the inner world, those things that monks usually do, but for them it’s a narrow specialization. One interest is spirituality. So this monks sit somewhere in Tibet, in the mountains, and meditate. This is such an extreme, manifestation of one interest.
But business people are versatile, they can do business, but at the same time be spiritual, while also meditating, engaging with their inner world, doing something to get to know themselves better, and they succeed perfectly at this.
It’s understandable that a person from business, who has earned money, has time to do this, and this is what most people come to when they have this freedom of maneuver in life, to do whatever they want, regardless of whether it brings money now or not, and this is wonderful.
But this says that these people are similar to each other in this, and it’s no coincidence that they all share their findings in this area through books, podcasts, and communication groups.
They have their circles of communication, where they share just their findings, interests, and methodologies that they use to develop in one area or another.
And guess what those people whom you will attract with your interests will do the same. This, actually, is our task, right? To attract people and share our findings with them.
This, by the way, is also an answer to the question of what content to create, and what to do. Here it already depends very much on your personality, and on your interests.
Let’s say, you can be naturally a very talented showman, and tell a good story. I, for example, am not very good at this, so I constantly delve into such philosophical stories. But it seems that this is exactly what I do better. This is not entertainment content, but rather for someone it can be educational, for someone it can be motivational and inspiring.
This is what I seem to do much better. I can construct my thought in such a way as to explain something.
Plus my profession predisposes to this. I am, by education a systems analyst, and I really like this field of knowledge, so I also often share in my content. When it comes to systems, about systems analysis, about how this is applied in business, you just can’t shut me up.
And I try to build precisely around this my life, and apply a systemic approach to this.
That is, exactly the same as now, telling about one topic, I try to systematically lay out the argumentation and make it so that you understand what we’re talking about, all this made sense.
Where is the business
Now, where’s the business here?
Okay, I start my personal brand,
okay, I don’t go into one deep niche,
okay, and I have content,
I understand what to create this content about.
But where’s the business here?
I have an article about the essential parts of business The Only Digital Business Skill I Wish I’d Mastered Earlier, which are people, product, distribution, brand. We’ve so far missed two elements from all this, although the first two we’ve actually already covered:
The brand, precisely your personal brand, which will be unique in the market, not replaceable by some other, non-commoditized, precisely for the reason that you are a combination of different interests, you are that very unique composition, which another person can’t repeat, unless somehow he manages to live your life from your perspective.
People or audience, and as soon as you begin to attract these people, they’re attracted by the fact that they follow your interests, and you do this naturally on social networks, on the internet, then over time you gather this audience, which suits you by type of thinking, which is somewhat akin to you, these are your followers.
What we haven’t covered is the product, which I’ve already, by the way, partially touched on, and the distribution.
You followers know your interests and know your audience as well, because you’re actually its main representative. Remember, you combine various interests, and some from your audience, will definitely repeat at least one of these interests, and will definitely match with you in understanding.
And each of your products, it can be either in a combination of these interests, or follow one interest.
What is a product? A product is a tool with which one or another need is closed.
We can return even to basic needs, so that the understanding is very simple and clear. If a person needs to eat, he needs food, food is a product that closes his need, it’s hunger.
Here we refer to Maslow’s pyramid, with the basic human needs, or think about the eternal four markets – health, wealth, relationships, and happiness.
Everything that’s directed at these four markets – they are infinite, as long as there is a human, in his current incarnation, until we’ve changed, haven’t become some bio-robots and our sphere of interests hasn’t changed, these markets are inexhaustible.
The food is a subdomain of health. If you don’t eat, you, accordingly, will endanger your own life, or health.
So, your product should close one or several needs of your audience. And the easiest way to do this is to make this product close your need first.
Build a product for yourself
You as a representative of this audience, you perfectly know what interests you. You perfectly know what you need, and you can make something that closes your need.
If you need to close it, then, again, there’s a high probability that it will close someone else’s need from your audience.
What is this product? I’m speaking very abstractly now, because, it seems to me, we need to devote a separate article and discuss separately on this topic in order to build understanding.
But the market is already very wide, it’s not limited to just some one option. Personally, I prefer digital products, because they have the highest margins, they’re the easiest to distribute, they can be made once and sold up to infinity, especially if these are such evergreen products, which will always be relevant.
For me this is closest, because I’m an IT guy. But this, again, is my combination of interests, experience, and skills, which I can cover most easily. It’s easier and faster for me to make a digital product, and I have all the necessary skills for this, but you need to look at yourself.
This can be an absolutely offline story, the example with the seeds from a bodybuilder, or a styling service. There’s a very wide choice of options and possibilities here.
“I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.”,
Oprah Winfrey
Distribute across your audience
And finally, distribution, which is actually naturally covered by the presence of this audience. If you have an audience, then all you need to do is to let them know that you have your product.
Here marketing, sales, and presentation skills come into play. You need to show that these products have some value, which you possess, which you can offer, and they close some need for your audience.
As a rule, any product comes from some pain in the consumer, and you can just say such a simple thing as, for example:
“I, when I started building a personal brand, faced the first problem or the first pain – creating content. And I needed to come up with a system for myself that would allow me to create content. And I was actually very afraid of this at first, because I didn’t understand what I needed to write, where I would need to get a huge amount of information, data, and so on.
But in the end I managed to build a system for myself, which I, of course, constantly tweak. And it allows me, without spending a lot of time, to generate a huge amount of content, which literally allows me to plan publications for several weeks and even months ahead.
And now I absolutely don’t have writer’s block, or some need to search for inspiration. My system works like clockwork, and I’m going to use it.”
Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? And if you’re thinking about creating your brand, then, at a minimum, you understand that such a need will arise, or, if you’re already doing this, you have this need.
So the first product takes shape, for example, from my point of view, this is the system that I use. I can simply sell it. And guess what, that’s exactly my first product – the System of content creation with the help of AI, witch I will announce very soon.
And just now I literally did that very distribution that I was talking about. And if you’re reading this now, accordingly, we have at least one interest in common, and this is an interest in business, in building a personal brand.
And surely you also have the task of creating content, if you decide to go down this path. And I’m offering a solution to this problem right here.
And, since my audience consists of several people, then this is the distribution, I give notice that I have a product, and then you make a decision about acquiring this product.
Living Your Personal Brand
Thus, we’ve built a full-fledged business model of a personal brand, which is clear is future-proof or protected from any further changes in the business landscape. Also this model closes all the questions that I discussed at the very beginning of the article (in the part 1): it doesn’t feel like something incompatible with my personality, something that I need to force myself to do, because these are simply my interests.
I share my findings, thoughts, knowledge, skills with you, I just kind of immerse myself in them deeper, I continue to grow, grow in audience, grow in potential products that I can offer.
Sharing this we are actually building a community, because it turns out that, uniting around these interests, we form a group of people who have something to discuss together.
And this, actually, is that very mechanism that allows not just for this business to exist, but which allows you to live it, that is, you literally just live your life, fill it with meaning, share your findings, share what interests you, and this brings you income.
I hope everything has fallen into place for you, if not, then write questions in the comments, what exactly you lack for understanding, I’ll try to close these questions too.
So what are you waiting for? Your unique combination of interests, experiences, and insights is the foundation of a business that can’t be copied or commoditized. Your personality is the differentiator in a crowded marketplace, and your growing audience becomes both your distribution channel and your community.
Identify your constellation of genuine interests, create authentic content that expresses these passions, build an audience through consistency and value, and develop products that solve problems you’ve personally experienced. Let your audience guide your product development, leverage their trust for natural distribution, and diversify your income streams across multiple interest areas.
In a world where attention is the new currency, cultivating a loyal audience around your authentic self is one of the best investments you can make.