How to Succeed in 2013 – Invest in the Business of YOU!

It’s the beginning of a New Year, and with it should come a renewed focus on what we’re doing business wise, and the way that we’re doing it.

I generally plan my business movements approximately 3-months in advance. And this year is absolutely no different.

And for me, 2013 is gonna be all about building my personal brand even further than I already have, and I’ll tell you why…

I believe that 2013 is going to be the year of the personal brand. 

I’ve been saying it for a while now – people want to do business with people. Not big brands, or huge companies. Because of this human need, or requirement, we have to plan for the future of our businesses and understand that building our businesses around our personal brands (and vice versa) is a good way to move forward in today’s business climate.

I’ve summed up my feelings in this short video, where I discuss why you should invest in the business of you. Please take a couple of minutes to check it out:

Here’s a text recap from the video, as well as some elaboration points.

Build More, Better Relationships

I can honestly say that since I became active online, just 3-years ago, I’ve made more ‘worthwhile’ friends that I have in the last decade! In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’ve even made a couple of friends that I know I will literally be friends with the rest of my life!

The business world runs on relationships. People you want to do business with – sell to, market to. Those that you need to work for you, and help you on your mission, towards entrepreneurial success. And then there’s the ‘middle of the road’ relationships. They help forge everything.

These are the relationships that make the difference. They connect you. Share things about you, and things that you produce, such as your products, services, blog posts and online videos. They do favors for you, and make things happen for you – sometimes for monetary gain, but most of the time, just for the hell of it – because they believe in you.

These relationships help build the collection of people that you need to succeed in today’s business world, more than anything else. The make up your tribe.

Build Your Tribe

Marketing GOD, Seth Godin believes that a tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea.

Boom! There you have it.

If you check out the 1,000 True Fans post over at The Technium blog, you’ll see that the author reports that, and I quote from that article directly, “A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce…”.

Enough said.

This is why I believe that 2013 is going to be the year of the personal brand.

Build your tribe.

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The Most Important Business Decision you can make for 2013 is to Invest in the Business of YOU! [Tweet This!]

 Build Your Platform

In his excellent book, “Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World”, author Michael Hyatt talks a lot about blogging and social media, in regards to building an online brand and then embracing the opportunities that come along thereafter. I couldn’t agree more with him.

Since I’ve moved over to this domain from my older blog, VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com (no longer live and forwarding to this domain), I’ve see a massive increase in everything that makes sense and that’s important in today’s very online, social economy. Here are a few examples:

• Increase in social media followers, and the communication from those followers.
• Email’s coming from people that I’ve NEVER heard from before, asking questions about my businesses and how I can help them.
• An increase in coaching clients (I’ve had to suspend taking on new clients at the moment, as my calendar is simply full).
• And more recently, with the launch of The New Business Podcast, an increase of website traffic, with the result being an equally obvious increase in my Bootcamp Subscribers!

All in all, I truly believe that the stepping stones I’ve put in place in the last few years are starting to pay off. But, here’s the thing – I only just REALLY started to focus on the personal branding element of all this, investing in the business of Chris, a few months ago – and I can already see the difference.

The future is bright.

This year is going to be a phenomenal year for the entrepreneur. I’m sure of it. However, just how awesome is going to be left up to the entrepreneurs themselves, as well as the time, energy and effort they put into building their relationships, their tribes and their platforms.

What do you think about my opinions in this post? I’d love to know. Are you going to embrace building your brand in 2013? If so, what’s gonna be your first move? Comment below.

Tagged as: how to start a business, small business startup