What’s up everybody. I’m Shontavia Johnson and this is another episode of The Shontavia Show where I want to inspire you to build a brand, business and life that you love. Today is Thursday and what I love to do on Thursday is give my thoughts on your questions, usually, and whatever’s happening, you know, that I just have thoughts about. If you have questions for me, please reach out to me at askshontavia@gmail.com — that’s askshontavia@gmail.com — and maybe you’ll hear your question on a future episode. All right, so let’s jump into the question for today.

Hey there Shontavia. My name is Les and I have some questions about how to build a personal brand. I’ve been working in my field for more than 10 years and I feel like I know the space very well, but nobody knows me. I don’t have a website, I don’t have social media, and I don’t know where to start. Obviously, I am hopeless. Please help. Yes, I know I can Google it, get a website, Google it, get social media. But other than Googling, I don’t really know where to start. You Google something and there’s like thousands or millions of hits. So could you please offer any advice to me. Help! Because like I said, I am hopeless. Les.

Les, Les, Les you are not hopeless, darling. You just need a strategy and I have thoughts about this because I have been in the same place–not really knowing where to start and not really having a strategy. I lived in this zone. This was my neighborhood Les. We were neighbors, because I knew I wanted to do something. I didn’t really know how to make it happen, but I kind of picked myself up. I read a ton, worked with a ton of people, made a bunch of errors, but I do have thoughts for how you can create a personal brand.

This is one of my favorite, favorite topics. So let’s jump into it.

So here’s what I would suggest you do right now to get started.

(1) The first thing I think you should do, Les, is create a vision. Create a vision for what you want, your brand, your business, your life, your energy, to look like. You need to know what the point is. I mean, perhaps one of the reasons why you don’t really know where to start, is you don’t really know what you want. So let’s create a vision, Les, for how you can start to think about what is the point of you creating a personal brand or website or social media account, whatever the case might be. Create a vision. If you visit my website shontavia.com, I have a whole Create a Perfect Vision exercise that you can walk through. I think that that might really help you get a better idea of what the goal is for all of these things.

So that’s the first thing. Create a vision.

(2) Number two, create a message. So what is the message you want to get out into the world? So before you–so I’m glad you haven’t put up a website and done a bunch of social media content yet, because it doesn’t really sound like you know what your message should be.

Once you create that vision that can help you figure out what is your message? So my message for example is that I want to help people build brands, businesses and lives that they absolutely love and that is my message. That is what I want to do. That is what I want to put out into the ether, into the universe, into the atmosphere and into real people. So number two for you is create a message for yourself. What is it you want to share with the world. And, keep working on it.

It is not going to be great or perfect the first time around. I’ve been at this now almost, gosh, eight or nine years and I’m really just getting to the point where I feel really, really good and confident about my message and what I want to do out in the world. So create a message.

(3) Number three, yes, you’re going to have to create a website, create content, whatever that looks like for you. I think it is imperative for you. All that stuff you said you don’t have, like none of that stuff is impossible to get, right? And we live in an age where you can throw up a website pretty quickly. You can create a social media account for free. I have a couple of resources on my website about this, about how to create your own website, where you should think about starting with social media.

So I really want you to go check some of those articles out. I’ll drop some links in the show notes below so that you have more information about where you should start with creating a website whether you hire somebody and do it yourself. What types of social media platforms you need to use. The last I checked, there were like 180 different options for social media accounts. I don’t think you need all 180, whatever, but you do need to figure out where to get your message out there. So I would suggest you doing that. Developing content.

I think you should put your content on your own website first before sharing it across social media platforms. So, you know, create a strategy where you’re blogging or creating podcast or videos or a newsletter or whatever it is you want to create. Don’t be limited by the couple of examples I give.

Put all this stuff on your own website first and then out to your other social media platforms.

And then, finally, leverage other people’s platforms. Go on other podcast, blog for other websites. Put your expertise out on display, on other people’s platforms. And by the time you get to this step, people will want to work with you because they’ll be able to see all the amazing things you’re creating on your website and on social media.

I hope that is helpful to you, Les, because I think the, the issues you have, the challenges you have, they’re big challenges, don’t get me wrong, but I think if we break them down into digestible pieces, you could have an amazing personal brand in not that much time with a really good curated strategy revolving around the things I mentioned.

So creating a vision, developing whatever your message is going to be, creating content, posting your content on your own platform and leveraging other people’s platforms.

I hope, Les, that something I said today helped you. For everybody else, I hope you got something out of that too. If you have questions or comments, or agreements or disagreements with me about this, please reach out to me at askshontavia@gmail.com. If you have a question, you may hear your question on a later episode of the show. Thanks so much for listening.