Build a Moat Around Your Personal Brand's Unique Value
It’s not enough to have a strong personal brand in the marketplace. You need a strategy to protect it.
As one of the world’s most successful investors, Warren Buffet highlights the importance of moats. This is his metaphor for companies with a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. He has said:
"In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats'."
When you build a castle, you also build a target for all to see. One others may try to enter or replicate.
In The Unfair Advantage, Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba liken your advantage to the philosophy. Your unfair advantage protects your unique value from competitors. They say:
“Your Unfair Advantages can’t easily be copied or bought. Your set of Unfair Advantages is unique to you.”
Competitive Rivalry
The value of the moat reminds me of Michael Porter’s classic framework. Used to analyse competitive forces within an industry, Porter’s Five Forces Model is:
Threat of New Entrants: How easy or difficult it is for competitors to enter the industry. Factors such as barriers to entry, economies of scale and brand loyalty influence this threat.
Bargaining Power of Suppliers: Power that suppliers can exert over an industry. Including controlling the supply of key inputs, setting prices and imposing other conditions. Factors like the number of suppliers, uniqueness of products and switching costs influence this power.
Bargaining Power of Buyers: Power buyers can use to influence an industry. Including demanding lower prices, high quality or better service. The power is influenced by buyer numbers, substitute availability, and product importance to buyers.
Threat of Substitutes: The ability of alternative products and services to fulfil the same need. Factors such as availability of substitutes, their price, quality and switching costs influence this threat.
Competitive Rivalry: All these factors contribute to the competitive rivalry in a marketplace.
So, when it comes to your personal brand or business, how are you building your moat?
1. Engage your super powers
In business and professional development, we often talk about focusing on our strengths. While this is without doubt invaluable, it’s more likely that others share the same strengths.
Where the magic happens is in the value that is truly unique to you.
What’s your mastery? Your most comprehensive knowledge or skill. What knowledge or proficiency do you have more of than almost anyone you know? If you could identify one thing, what would it be?
What strategies are you using to weave your superpower into your personal brand or business? By doing so, you reduce the threat of substitution and new entrants. Because. alternative personal brands or business brands can’t replicate the same need.
2. 10x your efforts
Once you know how to integrate your superpowers into your personal brand or business, scale your efforts in this area. Scaling helps prevent the threat of new entrants. It builds your economies of scale and brand presence, therefore creating greater barriers to entry.
For example, you can choose to share a video on YouTube once a month. At the end of the year, you’ll have 12 videos. Or you can choose to upload two a week, publishing over 100 a year. My favourite podcast uploads every weekday. Its efforts monopolises all the time I would otherwise put into similar competitors.
This reminds me of Grant Cardone’s The 10x Rule in which he urges you to:
10x your initial goals
10x the action required
Cardone proposes the four key mistakes in setting goals are:
Setting goals too low
Underestimating the actions, resources, money and energy required
Competing not dominating
Underestimating the resilience required
By dominating, not competing Cardone proposes the competition becomes irrelevant. Competing will always be a losing game, as someone will eventually outdo you. To dominate, you focus on owning and scaling your white space in the marketplace. You dominate a position no one else can.
3. Target your efforts effectively
It’s not enough to simply 10x your efforts. You want to focus on what’s most effective for your business or personal brand.
Consider Pareto’s Principle (or the 80/20 rule). It observes that 80% of results come from 20 percent of efforts.
There is likely going to be quantitive data available to you to analyse. Spend time evaluating this data, analytics, sales or any other marketplace feedback you have. Do it specifically with your 80/20 objective in mind. Where are your results coming from?
What qualitative data e.g. customer feedback, audience comments or team comments can you analyse?
When you confuse them, you lose them. Plus, when you confuse yourself, you lose yourself. While you’re busy being everything to everyone, new entrants are targeting your core target market. They are replicating the strengths you should be dominating.
Double down on what’s delivering the strongest results and cut the rest. They are likely only distracting your focus and diluting your efforts. Efforts that could be better spent on activities with the best return on investment. By focusing on improving your quality, you reduce the threat of substitution and new entrants.
4. Remember the power of personality
Bargaining power of buyers (or potential employers) is high when your skill set is substitutable.
Less easy to substitute is the personal value and personality you bring to your work. There is no one that has your exact personality. No one who has your story. Or your unique combination of interests. Together this makes you irreplaceable.
You can have all the technical ability in the world. Your brand risks substitution if its personality, story, interests, and experiences aren't considered.
5. Make time for your moat
Strategising for your moat should not be a one-off event. It should be a regular part of your work.
Schedule time for your moat into your week. Get as granular as you need to. E.g. if a LinkedIn presence is one of your strengths, make time to create the best posts possible. Not just routinised posts. But, work on what’s going to move the needle even further ahead of the competition.
6. Up-skill yourself
If there is one thing new entrants do well, it’s having the latest skills. Think of the flashy skills a new competitor or new entrant in your industry has. They likely learnt from the path you and your industry helped pave. But, as a new entrant, they’re looking to make their own mark. They are likely well-versed in what the future of your industry will look like.
Don’t make the mistake of you treating your learning like a one time thing. By doing so, you increase your threat of substitution and the threat of new entrants. You also increase the bargaining power of buyers. Buyers who can go elsewhere for a higher quality value or service. One that comes equipped with all the latest knowledge and skills.
Have you allowed your skills to become outdated in your industry? Perhaps, all while you continue to demand higher prices. Buyers won’t hesitate to switch. And they’ll likely face low switching costs in the process. With continuous up-skilling, you can outpace the competition.
In Future You, Frances Valintine says:
“Let’s take an employee who has worked in the same organisation for five years. If you took a blank piece of paper and a pen and listed all the ideal skills, capabilities and attributes needed for their role, would the current employee still meet the criteria if their job was advertised today?”
I personally schedule time for daily learning. Up-skilling like reading, watching videos, and listening to podcasts.
7. Diversify your investments
Keep one important investment golden rule in mind - diversify.
Reduce your dependency on any one thing.
That doesn’t mean being everything to everyone, everywhere. But, simply ensuring you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. Especially if you don’t own the actual basket.
If you rely almost entirely on Instagram, what happens if it eventually becomes redundant? If your personal brand or business is based around TikTok, what if is actually banned? What if your accounts get hacked or disabled? There’s a difference between having a profile on someone else’s platform and having your own. That’s why I recommend building your email list and personal brand website from day one. It reduces supplier bargaining power.
In business in general, diversifying might be strategically expanding your product or services. This can reduce supplier power. Through vertical integration, you take ownership of various stages of the production process. This might be producing the inputs you relied on suppliers for. Or, perhaps manufacturing the product you once had other suppliers stock in your store. You can sell other people’s products for a commission, or you can sell your own.
Remember, it’s not enough to be building a castle. For it to have a lasting impact, you need to protect your value in the marketplace.
So, how are you building your moat?
