I attended Sudharsanan Ganapathy’s personal branding workshop last Saturday(23-Nov-2024). The lessons he shared were mind-blowing.

In the 29 years of my life, this is the best advice I have ever got.

The advice was regarding life, optimism, and personal branding.

For those who don’t know Sudharsanan Ganapathy. He is someone runs a personal branding agency. He is recently ranked by Favicon as no. 6 in personal branding globally.

I was taking notes during the workshop. I felt compelled to share what I learnt to you because of its immense value.

The notes are now in the form of a blog which you are reading now.

This blog may take 7 minutes to read. But what you learn in those 7 minutes, is much greater than 7 years of your life. If you don't have the time now, take time to read it.

I divided his advice into 2 categories.

1. Personal branding advice
2. Advice about Life, belief, and systems

General Personal Branding Advice:

“I got 60,000 followers in 6 months on LinkedIn. Because I had 8 years of experience to talk about. Your experience matters a lot in your social media growth”

“The average income of a meta user is 10 dollars, while the average income of a LinkedIn user is 35,000$(30 Lakhs INR). That is the value of LinkedIn”

“The difference between personal branding and content creation is authority. It’s good to be a content creator but choose to be a personal brand. “

“If a client needs a service, they can go to any content creator. But if the client wants your service only, then you have established your personal brand. So, build a personal brand.”

“Writing is the best form of content. It never dies.”

“People follow your work. So, talk about your work”

“If you build a personal brand, your company will make sure to retain you. Because your brand is boosting your company’s advertisement.”

“If you can do a podcast for busy people. Do a podcast. The audio podcast is the best way to access busy people, or I can say, rich people.”

“The ultimate goal of creating content is to collect data. So, collect data.”

“The goal is not to reach a lot of people. The goal is to reach a few people who can reach a lot of people for you.”

Personal branding strategies:

The top 3 ways to get people know you:

1. PR
2. Author a Book
3. Create digital assets.

PR means Public relations. Use journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. to let people know you.

Author a book – Authority comes from the word author. This is one of the best ways to make people know you and trust you.

Either you can simply introduce yourself or you can give a copy of your book and introduce yourself. Think which is better.

Let me give you a hack. Do you have a list of 50 rich people in your city or village?

If you want to be rich have rich friends. Meet these 50 rich people and give a copy of the book to them. If possible, give multiple copies and ask them to give it to people who meet them.

Rich people meet rich people. If any of these rich people promote this, then chances are you will become a best seller. If not, atleast you can teach something to the rich people. And they would give you back in some way.

Note: Becoming a best seller is not the goal. Writing a book should be your goal.

If you have 10 years of experience, then writing a book is a mandate for you. Write by yourself or hire a writer.

Digital Assets –

Your written content, videos, or podcasts are your digital assets.

Here is the hack to create content in 30 minutes:

1. Put your content creation time on the calendar and do it. If it is on your calendar, then it must be done.
2. Create 1 long-form content and make multiple short forms out of it.
3. Hire video editors if you want. There are a lot of cheap video editors. I saw a kid from college doing video editing. He charges 300 rupees for 1 reel. For founders and executives this is so cheap.

Content creation shouldn’t take time. For me, it just takes 15 minutes.

A Newsletter is a mandate.

Social media platforms are rented lands. While a newsletter is owned land. Use rented land to have your own land.

If someone has subscribed to your newsletter, then it means they want your private content. Or exclusive content. So, create exclusive content only for newsletters.

“We don’t create content because we think there isn’t much to talk about ourselves. We don’t write a book because we think we are not worthy enough. We think bad about ourselves because our expectations for ourselves is far higher than others.”

“Omnipresence has become a must. You can’t rely on only 1 platform anymore. You should be available across several platforms.”

“Once there was a thick line to distinguish one platform from another. Now it’s not the case. LinkedIn is having reels. While YouTube has text posts. My text posts on YouTube work better than my videos. So, diversify.”

“Twitter pays you for your content unlike other social media platforms but has its own terms. Twitter tech is slow, and your growth is also slow there. But it’s the only platform having a large number of intelligent audiences. Try to use it.”

“People focus on more reach. But more reach doesn’t guarantee more sales. Niel Patel recently shared that people with 5k, 10k, and 25k audiences can give you more sales than influencers who have a very high following.”

“Selling in private works better than selling in public. That’s why you need to have a newsletter. Sell in your newsletter first. Make it exclusive for them.”

“If someone is writing for you on social media, people will know. They are smart. So have authenticity. Write by yourself.”

“You may think content leads you to wealth. It’s not. Content is wealth. Spotify bought Joe Rogan’s audio podcast for 250 million dollars. Hubspot bought the hustle.com newsletter for 27 million dollars. So huge amount of money is spent to buy content. Because their content has a huge user base.”

“Sales is a bad word until you sell”

“Social media game is about quality and doing more. Make sure you post valuable stuff. Quality stuff. Growth comes from putting quality stuff more. And quality comes from putting crappy stuff more.”

Advice about Life, beliefs, systems:

“Most of your problems and lack of growth are not because of your lack of skills. But because of your wrong thinking. Think right. To think right, you must have the right beliefs.

Let me explain by asking you a question.

Raise your hand if you think you are healthy.

(only 4-5 people raised their hand among 150+ people)

Why so many of you didn’t raise your hand?

Do you have evidence that you are unhealthy? If no. Then why you didn’t? It is because you believed so. And why did you believe so? Because you are raised that way. With a negative mentality.

We people have been raised with some form of negative limitations about ourselves.

So do this exercise is to get rid of it. Unless you don’t, you can’t grow.

Write down some beliefs you have about money, relationships, health, and success. Write it down, no excuses.

For example, my belief about money is

1. Money loves me
2. Money comes to me easily.
3. I can make money how much ever I want.
4. I am good with dealing money.

Etc.

Make sure if you write about money, write only about money. If you write about relationships. Write only about relationships.

Not health or success.

While writing your beliefs be positive. Avoid negativity, what-ifs, problems, limitations, etc.

For example, if you write about money don’t write I want to make 1 crore. What if God wants to give you 100 crores? Set a belief that you will make more money.

Also, while writing about health don’t write, I will be healthy despite my health problems. Don’t include problems. Simply write I will be healthy.

Write this down somewhere and try living your life based on this belief for at least 1000 days. And see how drastically your life changes.”

“Once your belief is set right, you will grow.”

After belief comes action. Do the below points:

1. Grounding

Have a grounding action daily. Like meditation, walking, running, writing, etc. you need to get lost and feel calm because of grounding.

2. Knowing:

Know what you want. If you don’t know where you are going, you will go nowhere.

Have monthly goals. Break down your goals. Shorter goals give you the confidence to achieve them.

Set goals and don’t think whether you might make it or not.”

“My mentor once said about achieving my goals. You might not make it. But the person you become will make it.” Become the person.

(A beautiful quote in between his talk:

“Be rich. Try to be rich.

Rich is a good place to be.)

3. Creating.

Once you know, create the life in your mind. Write it on a paper daily or in your mind about what you want. Be specific about what you want. And take action towards it.

4. Trust.

In this process, you will be facing setbacks. Simply trust the process. Trust that it will work. You will make it work.

5. Flowing:

Keep flowing. Don’t stop.