HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND TO GAIN MORE STATUS AND OPPORTUNITY
EASY TO APPLY TACTICS LEARNED FROM DEION SANDERS AND THE JACKSON STATE TIGERS.
“How do I do this?” Eddie a Star DB for a Top FCS asked me. Eddie wanted to know the easiest way he could start making money selling SuperAthlete candies and supplements.
“”By balling out on the field and building up your personal brand.” I replied.
“You mean be like Deion?” He asked with a smile on his face.
“That’s it. Be like Deion.”
You can check out this Video here of the interview Sanders had with ESPN the night he was drafted.
Deion Sanders was one of the greatest SuperAthlete's in sports history. His ability to make things happen on and off the field led to big time winning and major success. 2 years ago Sanders became the head coach at Jackson State the Historically Black College in Mississippi. Jackson State wasn’t close to relevant when Coach Sanders arrived less than 2 years ago. Now they are starting the season on the Cover of Sports Illustrated with big plans to dominate their level of college football.
How was Sanders able to do this?
By combining his football knowledge and personal brand to attract high level recruits and persuade business professionals from all over the country like Magic Johnson and Michael Strahan to provide resources to help build facilities.
Sanders has made things happen!
Because of the internet, the N.I.L, and social media there is more opportunity than ever before for you to utilize your personal brand to create income and opportunity for yourself.
WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
Personal branding for your business is a promise – it’s the way you differentiate yourself from others to your customer base. Your personal brand is the signature way you create an emotional connection with your business partnerships and your customers.
You present your brand with everything you do on the field, with everything you do off the field, with every IG post with every Tik Tok video. Your brand is the certification of your promise.
3 TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
1) BRAND CONGRUENCY
Congruency means identical. When developing your IG, Tik Tok and personal website you want to make sure that the messaging and imagery are all similar. This creates a level of trust with your potential customers. What is the opposite of brand congruency? Brand disconnect, not a good thing.
Why is it not a good thing?
“Although the average adult human brain weighs about 1.4 kilograms, only 2 percent of total body weight, it demands 20 percent of our resting metabolic rate (RMR)—the total amount of energy our bodies expend in one very lazy day of no activity."
"Resting metabolic rate" simply means that even if you lay in bed all day and don't move a muscle, your brain is still burning tons of fuel. As an athlete you are most definitely not lying in bed all day.
Because thousands of years ago it was hard to find enough food every day (our great, great, great, great grandparents had no grocery stores), we humans have developed a simple system to conserve that energy.
Your brain and your potential customer's brain do NOT do much logical thinking. It conserves glucose by continually guarding the amount of complex concepts that get sent to the higher neocortex part of our brain.
We all think we are logical, but we aren't. We can be logical when we want to but in an average day we will mostly sit back and rely on raw instinct.
Why do you think you jump in your seat when you are watching a horror movie? You know logically it's not real. But your fear instinct doesn't.
The human brain has wisely evolved to screen most of them out so we don't get information overload. If you want to build a profitable personal brand you better hope your advertisements are not the ones getting screened out.
2) REPS, REPS, REPS
Everything in sports, branding and business is reps and mileage. The more you lift weights the stronger you become, the more effort and attention you put into your personal brand the better it will be. So get out there and Attack your business reps. just like you attack your training in the weight room.
What is the Best way to get your Reps in the right way?
1. Have well-defined process goals.
2. You need to be FOCUSED when going into our personal branding work. Just like you need to be Focused on Gameday.
3. You need feedback on how you are doing. This is the fastest way to get better at something. Just like you get feedback from coaches consistently as an athlete. You want to be getting feedback consistently on the development of your personal brand.
4. We need to exit our comfort zone. As we discussed in our +1 on Your Infinite Potential (And Where to Find It), you need to leave your comfort zone if you want to get better. This is absolutely essential. You don’t need to go that far out of it, but you need to move out. (Do you?)
As Anders says: “So here we have purposeful practice in a nutshell: Get outside your comfort zone but do it in a focused way, with clear goals, a plan for reaching those goals, and a way to monitor your progress. Oh, and figure out a way to maintain your motivation.”
3) Just like in Sports, the Little Things aren’t so Little
When it comes to personal branding the little things aren’t that little. This is because when developing our personal brand we create and put out so many more little things compared to big things.
The little things are these micro-moments of mastery which are the foundation of all the big things we want when it comes to developing our personal brand.
Jerry Rice (Graduate from another HCBU school Mississippi Valley State) is one of the greatest (American) football players ever. He was a wide receiver known for his astonishing work ethic and commitment to (and demonstration of) excellence. He was a great example of someone who attacked the little things.
Here is how Geoff Colvin describes Rice’s training strategy in his book Talent is Overrated.
“He designed his practice to work on his specific needs. Rice didn’t need to do everything well, just certain things. He had to run precise patterns; he had to evade the defenders, sometimes two or three, who were assigned to cover him; he had to outjump them to catch the ball and outmuscle them when they tried to strip it away; then he had to outrun tacklers. So he focused his practice work on exactly these requirements. Not being the fastest receiver in the league turned out not to matter. He became famous for the precision of his patterns. His weight training gave him tremendous strength. His trail running gave him control so he could change directions suddenly without signaling his move. The uphill wind sprints gave him explosive acceleration. Most of all, his endurance training — not something that a speed-focused athlete would normally concentrate on — gave him a giant advantage in the fourth quarter, when his opponents were tired and weak, and he seemed as fresh as he was in the first minute. Time and again, that’s when he put the game away. Rice and his coaches understood exactly what he needed in order to be dominant. They focused on these things and not on other goals that might have seemed generally desirable, like speed.”
Rice is a great example of someone who broke down his position into smaller components and then attacked those areas with ruthless ferocity.
UTILIZING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND TO MAKE CHANGE
The 2 biggest recruits leading the transformation of Jackson State are Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and cornerback Travis Hunter. Sanders signed with Jackson State because he wanted to play for his dad. Hunter signed with Jackson State because he wanted to learn his db position from one of the best to ever do it.
Those two are clear about their motives: They want to return Jackson State to prominence and they want the school to be a catalyst to their NFL dreams. They’ve been teammates only a few months, but already they’ve forged a tight bond.
“We understand each other; we both had similar situations,” says Shedeur. “We came to Jackson State for the same reason: to make change.”
HAVE A VISION OF WHAT YOU WANT YOUR PERSONAL BRAND TO BE AND STICK TO IT
“I dream my painting and paint my dream.” Vincent Van Gogh
Sanders had a vision of who he wanted to be as a football player and he has a vision for what he want his Jackson State Tigers program to be. Create a vision of what you want your personal brand to be and then ride that vision until the wheels fall off. Focus on your vision and keep going until you hit the finish line. Don’t be one of the people who believe in their vision at first but then give it up.
Last year, in his first full season as Head Coach at Jackson State, Sanders led the Tigers to a school-record 11 wins and their first Southwestern Athletic Conference championship since 2007. He earned FCS Coach of the Year honors. And this, perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence that big things are coming to JSU: Three days before the season wrapped he flipped five-star recruit Travis Hunter, from Suwanee, Ga., who had originally committed to play cornerback at Sanders’s alma mater, Florida State.
“Folks are screaming, ‘I believe!’ now—but they didn’t [before],” Sanders says. “It’s easy to scream now. But I meant that on Day 1.”
Focus on your vision and keep going until you hit the finish line. Don’t be one of the people who believe in their vision at first but then give up. See it through, no matter how long it takes. Understand that obstacles are just part of the game. Whatever you imagine, you can achieve. Once you realize this truth, no one is going to be able to stop you.
WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO START PUSHING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND? HOW ABOUT NOW.
Coach Sanders had to hit the ground running to jump start the Jacksonville State Tiger program. There was no time to hesitate. It was go time from jump. You need to do the same thing with your personal brand.
Don’t Stall!
You already know from your time as an athlete that the pain that is created by hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself.
PUSHING SUPERATHLETE PRODUCTS LIKE SANDERS PUSHES HIS JACKSON STATE PROGRAM
If you are an athlete interested in utilizing your personal brand to sell products then you can learn more about being a SuperAthlete Distributor by pressing here.
“How do I do this?” Eddie a Star DB for a Top FCS asked me. Eddie wanted to know the easiest way he could start making money selling SuperAthlete candies and supplements.
“”By balling out on the field and building up your personal brand.” I replied.
“You mean be like Deion?” He asked with a smile on his face.
“That’s it. Be like Deion.”
You can check out this Video here of the interview Sanders had with ESPN the night he was drafted.
Deion Sanders was one of the greatest SuperAthlete's in sports history. His ability to make things happen on and off the field led to big time winning and major success. 2 years ago Sanders became the head coach at Jackson State the Historically Black College in Mississippi. Jackson State wasn’t close to relevant when Coach Sanders arrived less than 2 years ago. Now they are starting the season on the Cover of Sports Illustrated with big plans to dominate their level of college football.
How was Sanders able to do this?
By combining his football knowledge and personal brand to attract high level recruits and persuade business professionals from all over the country like Magic Johnson and Michael Strahan to provide resources to help build facilities.
Sanders has made things happen!
Because of the internet, the N.I.L, and social media there is more opportunity than ever before for you to utilize your personal brand to create income and opportunity for yourself.
WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
Personal branding for your business is a promise – it’s the way you differentiate yourself from others to your customer base. Your personal brand is the signature way you create an emotional connection with your business partnerships and your customers.
You present your brand with everything you do on the field, with everything you do off the field, with every IG post with every Tik Tok video. Your brand is the certification of your promise.
3 TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
1) BRAND CONGRUENCY
Congruency means identical. When developing your IG, Tik Tok and personal website you want to make sure that the messaging and imagery are all similar. This creates a level of trust with your potential customers. What is the opposite of brand congruency? Brand disconnect, not a good thing.
Why is it not a good thing?
“Although the average adult human brain weighs about 1.4 kilograms, only 2 percent of total body weight, it demands 20 percent of our resting metabolic rate (RMR)—the total amount of energy our bodies expend in one very lazy day of no activity."
"Resting metabolic rate" simply means that even if you lay in bed all day and don't move a muscle, your brain is still burning tons of fuel. As an athlete you are most definitely not lying in bed all day.
Because thousands of years ago it was hard to find enough food every day (our great, great, great, great grandparents had no grocery stores), we humans have developed a simple system to conserve that energy.
Your brain and your potential customer's brain do NOT do much logical thinking. It conserves glucose by continually guarding the amount of complex concepts that get sent to the higher neocortex part of our brain.
We all think we are logical, but we aren't. We can be logical when we want to but in an average day we will mostly sit back and rely on raw instinct.
Why do you think you jump in your seat when you are watching a horror movie? You know logically it's not real. But your fear instinct doesn't.
The human brain has wisely evolved to screen most of them out so we don't get information overload. If you want to build a profitable personal brand you better hope your advertisements are not the ones getting screened out.
2) REPS, REPS, REPS
Everything in sports, branding and business is reps and mileage. The more you lift weights the stronger you become, the more effort and attention you put into your personal brand the better it will be. So get out there and Attack your business reps. just like you attack your training in the weight room.
What is the Best way to get your Reps in the right way?
1. Have well-defined process goals.
2. You need to be FOCUSED when going into our personal branding work. Just like you need to be Focused on Gameday.
3. You need feedback on how you are doing. This is the fastest way to get better at something. Just like you get feedback from coaches consistently as an athlete. You want to be getting feedback consistently on the development of your personal brand.
4. We need to exit our comfort zone. As we discussed in our +1 on Your Infinite Potential (And Where to Find It), you need to leave your comfort zone if you want to get better. This is absolutely essential. You don’t need to go that far out of it, but you need to move out. (Do you?)
As Anders says: “So here we have purposeful practice in a nutshell: Get outside your comfort zone but do it in a focused way, with clear goals, a plan for reaching those goals, and a way to monitor your progress. Oh, and figure out a way to maintain your motivation.”
3) Just like in Sports, the Little Things aren’t so Little
When it comes to personal branding the little things aren’t that little. This is because when developing our personal brand we create and put out so many more little things compared to big things.
The little things are these micro-moments of mastery which are the foundation of all the big things we want when it comes to developing our personal brand.
Jerry Rice (Graduate from another HCBU school Mississippi Valley State) is one of the greatest (American) football players ever. He was a wide receiver known for his astonishing work ethic and commitment to (and demonstration of) excellence. He was a great example of someone who attacked the little things.
Here is how Geoff Colvin describes Rice’s training strategy in his book Talent is Overrated.
“He designed his practice to work on his specific needs. Rice didn’t need to do everything well, just certain things. He had to run precise patterns; he had to evade the defenders, sometimes two or three, who were assigned to cover him; he had to outjump them to catch the ball and outmuscle them when they tried to strip it away; then he had to outrun tacklers. So he focused his practice work on exactly these requirements. Not being the fastest receiver in the league turned out not to matter. He became famous for the precision of his patterns. His weight training gave him tremendous strength. His trail running gave him control so he could change directions suddenly without signaling his move. The uphill wind sprints gave him explosive acceleration. Most of all, his endurance training — not something that a speed-focused athlete would normally concentrate on — gave him a giant advantage in the fourth quarter, when his opponents were tired and weak, and he seemed as fresh as he was in the first minute. Time and again, that’s when he put the game away. Rice and his coaches understood exactly what he needed in order to be dominant. They focused on these things and not on other goals that might have seemed generally desirable, like speed.”
Rice is a great example of someone who broke down his position into smaller components and then attacked those areas with ruthless ferocity.
UTILIZING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND TO MAKE CHANGE
The 2 biggest recruits leading the transformation of Jackson State are Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and cornerback Travis Hunter. Sanders signed with Jackson State because he wanted to play for his dad. Hunter signed with Jackson State because he wanted to learn his db position from one of the best to ever do it.
Those two are clear about their motives: They want to return Jackson State to prominence and they want the school to be a catalyst to their NFL dreams. They’ve been teammates only a few months, but already they’ve forged a tight bond.
“We understand each other; we both had similar situations,” says Shedeur. “We came to Jackson State for the same reason: to make change.”
HAVE A VISION OF WHAT YOU WANT YOUR PERSONAL BRAND TO BE AND STICK TO IT
“I dream my painting and paint my dream.” Vincent Van Gogh
Sanders had a vision of who he wanted to be as a football player and he has a vision for what he want his Jackson State Tigers program to be. Create a vision of what you want your personal brand to be and then ride that vision until the wheels fall off. Focus on your vision and keep going until you hit the finish line. Don’t be one of the people who believe in their vision at first but then give it up.
Last year, in his first full season as Head Coach at Jackson State, Sanders led the Tigers to a school-record 11 wins and their first Southwestern Athletic Conference championship since 2007. He earned FCS Coach of the Year honors. And this, perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence that big things are coming to JSU: Three days before the season wrapped he flipped five-star recruit Travis Hunter, from Suwanee, Ga., who had originally committed to play cornerback at Sanders’s alma mater, Florida State.
“Folks are screaming, ‘I believe!’ now—but they didn’t [before],” Sanders says. “It’s easy to scream now. But I meant that on Day 1.”
Focus on your vision and keep going until you hit the finish line. Don’t be one of the people who believe in their vision at first but then give up. See it through, no matter how long it takes. Understand that obstacles are just part of the game. Whatever you imagine, you can achieve. Once you realize this truth, no one is going to be able to stop you.
WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO START PUSHING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND? HOW ABOUT NOW.
Coach Sanders had to hit the ground running to jump start the Jacksonville State Tiger program. There was no time to hesitate. It was go time from jump. You need to do the same thing with your personal brand.
Don’t Stall!
You already know from your time as an athlete that the pain that is created by hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself.
PUSHING SUPERATHLETE PRODUCTS LIKE SANDERS PUSHES HIS JACKSON STATE PROGRAM
If you are an athlete interested in utilizing your personal brand to sell products then you can learn more about being a SuperAthlete Distributor by pressing here.
The reference to Jerry Rice interested me, it highlighted the importance to keep that laser focus. Thank you!
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