what it means to BE your brand.

In late 2014, I launched a new website for my then health coaching practice on a teeny tiny budget. My friend took my headshots in Union Square Park for free, and my web designer charged me under $900 to design and build a custom WordPress website.

Can I get a high five for that?

I was pumped. Because I had been sitting on my health coaching certification for 3 years, telling people in passing that I was a health coach, and taking on clients here and there while working full-time at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (yep, I worked there too).

Being freshly “funemployed,” I figured it was as good a time as ever to get going on the whole entrepreneur thing. So I coached clients, dabbled in marketing consulting, and eventually worked as one of the founding health coaches at Parsley Health, an amazing functional medicine practice in New York City.

Life was good.

Yet as 2015 kicked into gear, my business started to take shape in an unexpected way: nearly everyone I talked to and their mother (kidding) wanted to hire me for content development. Blog posts, taglines, e-books, social media… for whatever reason, I had “copywriter” written all over me.

After a few months, it became incredibly clear that the core of my business was meant to be copywriting. But if you visited my website, you wouldn’t know it. I was a copywriter masked as a health coach, and that had to change.

Not to mention that the colors, the fonts, and the pictures on the site had all been rushed and thoughtlessly chosen. I hadn’t spent the time getting to the heart of what I stood for and the kind of vibe I wanted my website to give off as people visited it.

So I decided to do it right and scrapped that site to create a new one. I hired a real photographer. I decided on the look and feel I wanted before working with my designer again. And I thought about the elements of “me” that needed to be present so that people felt the way I wanted them to feel.

In this process, I realized that I had to infuse my whole self into creating my brand. So I chose my favorite blouse, bought my favorite flowers, and wore my favorite lipstick for my photo shoot. I chose a WeWork space that I was working in at the time as the setting. And I spent hours and hours and hours writing my own website copy. What you see came straight out of my own brain.

At the time, I didn’t realize how important this actually was. It seemed natural to bring my real self into my business vs. trying to create a brand persona. At the end of the day, I believed that if I filled my website with genuineness and a pure desire to be of service—everything I’m about—then everything would fall into place.

And so far, I’ve been right.

People tell me all of the time when they meet me that I match the vibe my website gives off: professional, friendly, experienced, creative, and kind. And that makes me so happy. Because truly, I’ve never felt more aligned with my brand than I do today.

I’m sharing this with you because I’m a big believer that building a personal brand requires total authenticity. The more yourself you are, the more your ideal clients will be drawn to you. Creating a separate brand persona or trying to copy other people in the industry doesn’t have the same impact.

I see so many coaches and freelancers out there trying to be funny or cheeky or characterized a certain way when that’s not how they are in real life. And it feels so weird to meet them and realize they’re not what you expected. Know what I mean?

If you’re someone who feels like your website or head shots are kind of cookie cutter and falling along the lines of what everyone else is doing, or if you have no idea how to make a brand out of who you are, here’s what I recommend…

1. Write down all of your strongest qualities on paper. What do your friends and family always say about you (the good stuff!!)? Are you sweet and smart? Are you spiritual? Are you incredibly researched and scientific? Get clear on what makes you YOU.
2. Figure out what environment suits you best. Are you someone who loves snacking on strawberries at the kitchen counter while checking emails on your computer? Are you someone who loves sitting cross-legged on your couch while Skyping with a client? Or can someone usually catch you meditating in a corner of your apartment? Whatever is true for you is where you should be photographed. Because the more comfortable you feel, the more YOU you’ll be in your photos.
3. Get familiar with your visual style. What colors are you most drawn to? How do you decorate your home? Do you go for simple, clean, and white? Or lots of texture and colors? Knowing this should help you more easily direct the creative process with your web designer, making you much more likely to wind up with something that feels like YOU.

That’s how I felt after I launched my current website: it was totally me, and that felt freaking awesome.

Having clarity on all of these things will allow you to infuse your “you-ness” into your brand identity—the web design, the voice, and the overall experience of working with you. It should all align and make sense, and when it all aligns and makes sense, your readers, followers, and clients will get the opportunity to know you. And that makes them more likely to remain loyal for life.

Remember, you are the only YOU that exists. So the more you own that and the more you shine your you-ness out there, the more you’ll align with the right path, the right clients, and the right opportunities.