CNLP 272: Kevin Jennings on How to Build an Authentic, Personal Platform That’s Not About You, How to Gain Traction Online and The Power of Focus and Strategic Quitting

1. When building a brand, it has to be the authentic you, not a facade

In today’s modern world building a personal brand can be a great way to steward the giftings you have been given and get your message out to help more people. But not all platforms are healthy. The unhealthy platforms are created when people begin to build a platform to fill a hole only God can fill. It can be so easy to begin to feed off of online likes, clicks, and followers. Don’t fall into that trap.

Another major temptation you might face as you build your personal platform is to become someone else for the sake of growing the platform. Copying someone else’s platform may work early on, but if you start to scale an inaccurate facade of who you are, you build your own prison and become miserable because the whole world expects you to be someone that you are not. You can’t keep up a fake facade forever. If you want to build a healthy platform, build it off of the authentic you.

2. How do you build a personal brand that’s bigger than you?

There are many good reasons to build a personal platform. A big example of this is leaders of organizations like churches. Most people won’t trust an organization (or a church) until they trust the leader of the organization. People trust people. So as you build this platform, ask yourself; “What are the core parts of my message that people will find helpful?” and “What are the key principles I am made to talk about that can help people?” When you answer these questions you are starting to make the audience the hero of your brand.

Another huge part of building a platform that is not about you is to bake in opportunities to lift other leaders up. When your platform is done, you should be a platform where you’re standing on the bottom, holding up millions of people. Not a platform where you’re standing up on a mountain and everyone has to climb up it to get to you. Your platforms purpose has to be bigger than your own personal gain.

3. Want to succeed in life? Learn how to strategically quit

Vince Lombardi told us that “winners never quit and quitters never win.” Kevin disagrees, Kevin has seen that strategic quitters win every day. Beyonce was a full-time singer at 16 years old, already on television. Lebron James was practicing basketball full time at 12 to be inundated by 18 years old. If you are going to succeed in life, you have to be a strategic quitter. As leaders, we can get so attached to initiatives and projects that are not producing any results. For each of us, strategic quitting matters, because it frees us up to do what we’re really called to do and do it at the highest level.

There is a cost associated with having that person or two people on your team work on that initiative that doesn’t support the main focus of the organization. When you are misallocating those resources, you are actually preventing the main thing from being as good as it can be. There’s something in your life or organization that you need to strategically quit. What is it?

Quotes from Episode 272

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