Icons like Richard Branson and Taylor Swift have made their mark in the world by building strong personal brands to match their extraordinary goals. Find out how you can do the same and mould your dream business into reality with a luxury business model, writes Kathryn Porritt, CEO of Icons Incorporated.

How do you think a marketing company works with someone with a rather unique brand? I don’t know about other companies, but here at Icons Incorporated, we push our clients to play big. We tell them to be brave about their personal brand.

Instead of turning them away, we fuel their audacious goals to allow them to grow bigger and bigger.

If you want to attract luxury-level clients using a luxury business model, you’ve got to become an icon. A luxury influencer. Someone with enough charisma and magnetism to deliver a strong message and inspire action with it.

In short, you’ve got to have an iconic personal brand. After all, that’s how you can commercialise your expertise.

Establish your personal brand

My client, Melanie, is living proof that that’s how we roll. You see, in simple terms, Melanie works very exclusively with highly gifted beings. Those who are here on their own evolutionary journey and taking part in the evolutionary journey of the planet.

Now, ‘highly gifted beings’ could mean a lot of things for Melanie. But mostly, they are part of the top two per cent of humans in terms of intellect, creativity and intrinsic potential. These people can really feel a huge sense of purpose that’s been driving them their entire lives. They are the ones who have done incredible feats in their lives.

Melanie’s goal is to unlock their own giftedness. Why? Because she believes that these incredibly talented people came into the world for a reason: to create a new way of being by doing things that have never been done before.

But despite how grounded Melanie is with her work, she didn’t really have clear branding for it at first. She was so sure about what she wanted to do. But she didn’t know how to present her services in one neat package.

For the most part, she already had everything figured out about her business. All she needed was someone to point her in the right direction of how to do her branding. I told her to just package it all under one strong brand: herself.

She told me that at that moment, everything just suddenly clicked. Melanie realised that this was what was missing from her business. And that all she needed to do was own her personal brand. Soon enough, the changes to herself and her business were astronomical!

Once she understood that she was the brand, it gave her total freedom to do what she wanted with her business.

Let your inner icon shine

Richard Branson. Oprah Winfrey. Taylor Swift.

These three people almost have nothing in common. Except they’re all icons.

My point here is that icons come in all shapes and sizes. And it takes more than just power dressing. This is about you being your most truthful, honest and extraordinary self. That’s how you leave a huge impact on the world.

And it’s how you move past the mainstream way of doing business and instead tap into the high-impact luxury model.

Once you position yourself as THE icon in your industry, once you’ve got that massive personal brand out there – there’s just no telling how far you’ll go.

Back to Melanie …

Once she created her personal brand, it reminded her about why she continues to do what she’s doing, without overthinking things. She was able to break free from mainstream business practices. She designed her own way of doing business with a chosen number of people.

Because Melanie took complete control over her business, she became successful. She unleashed her inner icon and everything magically fell into place.

Best of all, she continues to bring in high-level people and offer private packages that cost $50,000 and above. As she well should!

Now, Melanie has long since accustomed herself to working privately with people. And she tells me that she’s having the time of her life. She is completely satisfied with how her business works, even if it does not follow the mainstream approach.

In addition to this, she tells me that the more she’s charging, the less she cares about the money. She no longer feels compelled to expand just to make ends meet or make more money. Because she’s charging premium rates for her premium service, she can just focus on the purity of her interactions with her clients.

Melanie soon found herself with more money than she ever thought possible. So much so that she started investing in her business and even in her personal life. She invested in her team in some critical ways. And she also started hiring domestic help to deal with household management so she could free up more time to do what she loves.

Allow the magic to happen

Icons become icons not just because they have created a disruptive legacy that would live on even after they pass – part of their success lies in how they fully embraced their personal branding. They created such a strong personal brand that it resonated with thousands of people from around the world.

Melanie’s passion for unlocking the talents of highly gifted people might not be at a global level yet. But her legacy to her handpicked clients will definitely live on because she could offer such extensive guidance and service to her clients.

Melanie is now in full control of her business’ present and future. All because she made the choice to embrace her personal brand, let her inner icon shine, and steer clear of the mainstream market.

Like Melanie, you may have an extraordinary service or business to offer the world. You might even be the best in the world at what you do. As such, you’re short-changing yourself by doing business the mainstream way.

You’re destined to be an icon, so step into it. Because if you don’t, someone else is going to do it.

The reality is that there’s almost no one brave enough to step into the top end of the market. Yet everyone thinks it’s already pretty crowded up there.

In fact, most business owners are eating each other’s lunches down at the bottom. But when someone becomes brave enough to go for the top and get paid what they deserve … you’re going to wish you did it first.

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