This is a series of mini blogs where I write about marketing, building products (online courses), and personal development. Much thanks HCH for keeping me accountable:)

I used to shy away from personal branding because I don’t want to “show off”. I want to stay “humble”. I believed humility means you don’t talk about yourself. You point the spotlight to something or someone else.

I think my old way of understanding personal branding is not progressive. Though I am still trying to gradually change and challenge it.

For the past two years of building MO, we have been trying our best, day in day out, to sow the seeds, build our brand, and create our own signal. We consistently have to prove ourselves and win customers’ trust. There are a few things that reshape my view on personal branding.

• A lot of our success up to today is thanks to my cofounder’s brand. People trust him, thus they trust us. He consistently creates content and shows the world his thinking and his work. A lot of the students who join our courses right now are followers of his work.
• We have had courses where it’s hard to sell because the instructors do not have work to show. Students and parents do not know who this person is and how they can trust them.

In both of these scenarios, a person’s brand brings values to the people they seek to serve. They need to build up their craft, credibility, and personality that align with their values to serve others, to help someone else’s life out there become better.

Seth Godin has said in the book “This is Marketing” that marketing is about creating change in the people you seek to serve. You yourself, no matter whether you are one person or a whole brand, want to genuinely create change. Marketing is not trying to fool others, perform your story in a certain way so that you can successfully convince them to go your way, to serve yourself.

Take Seth’s marketing lesson to branding, building a brand is never to show off, to show that you are better than your peers or other people in society. Building a brand is gradually creating trust in the people you seek to serve. Talk the world about yourself, about your work! Because when deep down you are doing so to help others, you won’t feel bad about “showing” it. I know I will stop feeling bad.

Thus, personal branding for me is building personal credibility. I want people to trust that I am capable of living up to my promise, of serving my loved ones and the communities that I believe in.

The picture is not about ME anymore. Building my personal brand is a way for me to help others. It’s about the PEOPLE I want to serve.

What values do you want to bring to people? What’s your personal brand?