Nick F. Nelson, CEO and Founder of Brandprenuer®, is a visionary in the world of personal branding. Nelson draws inspiration from iconic figures like Tony Stark and sees himself as the Iron Man of personal branding – a bold, innovative force with over two decades of experience as a brand strategist, creative manager and content creator. His journey from consultant to one of the leading voices in personal branding has been marked by his ability to look beyond the surface and help people discover and leverage their unique strengths. Nelson’s work isn’t just about creating a brand; it’s about changing lives by uncovering hidden opportunities and empowering clients to reach their full potential. Whether he’s working with major brands like Disney and HBO or guiding entrepreneurs to new heights, Nelson continues to push the boundaries of what personal branding can achieve.
In this interview he discusses his mission and his specialty with Munson Steed.
(Editor’s note: This is an abridged transcript of a longer video interview. The full version can be found in the video. Some errors may occur.)
When you were thinking about the name of your company, what was the first thing you wanted to communicate to the people who came to you with your vision?
I wanted people to understand that they are a brand. I’m a brand person. I’ve been a brand person for years. And what I’ve learned about brands is that it’s about what you want to be known for and what you want to make people feel. Being known for something and making people feel a certain way is the real definition of a brand.
What I noticed, even in my own reinvention in 2013, when I became a brand or when I started getting my name out there, was that there was no place to go for guidance. I had to go to so many different places, work with so many different people and figure things out on my own. It just took longer. And as a leader, sometimes we just don’t have the time or the patience.
I work with a lot of people, even in marketing, who say, “You know what, Nick, I do this for everyone else, but I have such a hard time doing it for myself.” So I wanted to start a company that could really focus primarily on black people first. That’s always been my passion; that’s how I was raised. But now we’ve expanded to a more diverse audience.
I wanted to create a one-stop shop for people to reinvent themselves, showcase themselves, learn, grow, and ultimately advance their careers so that they can… stand out. Often it’s about standing out. Standing out allows you to take advantage of what I like to call hidden opportunities – those opportunities that might never have been available to you if no one had known you existed.
When you’re simply busy doing your work, you’re often only known to a small group of people. But there’s a much larger audience out there, a big world of people who need you, want you, desire you, and who, had they known you existed, might have opened up opportunities for you that are a good fit for you and them, and that can help enhance your professional profile and career. And that’s exactly what I wanted to create with Brandpreneur – a vehicle for people to get noticed and advance their professional careers beyond what they could do on their own.
Why should someone rebrand?
When you look at it closely, reinvention is the key to sustainability. Your ability to reinvent yourself. When people think they know you, they know what you do and they know who you are, you get into a situation where they say, “Okay, yes, that’s what you do. I get you.”
But if we look at some of the most professional people in the world, let’s look at the presidential campaign that we’re going through right now. Kamala Harris was a district attorney in California. She reinvented herself as a senator, then she reinvented herself as vice president, and now, in four weeks, she reinvented herself as a leading presidential candidate. Reinventing yourself is what sustains you and what actually drives you. But so many people stay in the same place. They’re afraid of reinvention. They don’t know how to reinvent themselves. They don’t know what that looks like. In the past, we’ve seen that the only way to make yourself relevant is to reinvent yourself. That’s what we’re helping people do – to see themselves in a different way.
Imagine if you could see yourself differently or see yourself in a different light. I’ve had to reinvent myself over and over again in my career, and I’m still reinventing myself. When you did the same thing, brother, I saw you in real time. So that’s what we help people do, and that’s why repositioning yourself is so important – helping you reinvent yourself so that you can now access and appeal to a different audience, to have a different level of opportunity.
What can people expect when they come to you?
I’ll give them a couple different things. I’ll give them a strategy because I tell people I’m not their friend. When you come to me, I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. I’m going to tell you what you need. And that’s just based on years of experience doing this over and over again. I have a methodology that I use for every single person that goes through our process. It’s the same thing over and over again, but it works, and there’s always a different outcome because everyone is different.
At the heart of this is history. History is what we often overlook, discount or discredit, but history is your most powerful asset. When you look at people, one of the greatest and most impactful things we have is our history.
I’m a huge Marvel fan. When I look at any superhero, and my clients are superheroes, with Marvel Comics I look at the backstory. The reason we care about Black Panther is the backstory. The reason we care about Iron Man is the backstory, or any number of those characters. The reason people care about you is your backstory – what you’ve been through, what the challenges, successes, failures have been. We learn a lot through failure and inspire people through failure, especially because we’re able to overcome failure.
So it’s really important that people understand that with me, story is a big part of it. But my methodology is always about who you are as a person. What do you do? What’s the one thing you do? If you were Chick-fil-A, what would your chicken sandwich be? People don’t have time to get to know you for more than one thing because this is a scroll-based economy. And I need to see you do the same thing over and over again and say, “Okay, this is what you do.”
Who are you doing this for? That’s your target audience. Not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to want what you have, not everyone is going to want your services. So who are you trying to appeal to? Really, really think about that person and then specialize in a niche. And then, ultimately, why you? Why you? Everyone claims they can do these things. The problem with the internet these days is that it’s so easy to look like an expert. And people just don’t know how to differentiate who’s an expert and who’s not. So why you? What’s your superpower? And then, ultimately, how do you convey that story? That story these days is conveyed through a nice, succinct message — a call-out platform, your campaign slogan. What message are you going to use that will appeal to people?
If I don’t need you, I can at least refer you to somebody who does based on what I saw in you. That’s the way it goes these days. A lot of people see you online and think, “You know what? I don’t need you, but man, have you seen X, Y, and Z? We need to look at their profile. I think they would be excellent candidates for you. I think they could really help you.” And then having an online presence where people can do their own research and have visible credibility – visible credibility means, “I see it and therefore I believe it.” And that’s why this whole methodology is so important – having an online presence and being able to visibly and clearly demonstrate what you do, who you do it for, what makes you special, and ultimately what is the message you want to get across?
How important is managing your brand integrity?
Integrity is everything because it is reputation. It’s so easy to get to a certain point, but it’s so easy to lose reputation. It only takes a few different people to say, “Oh, you know what? No, that person is shady” or “You don’t do quality work” or whatever, and it hurts all the hard work you’ve done. So you have to protect (your) reputation at all costs. Protecting reputation is integrity in the sense of “your yes is your yes and your no is your no.” It means making sure you take pride in doing excellent work and not cutting corners, that you’re careful about who you hire to do work because people are a reflection of who you are.
As a CEO or leader of a growing organization, you can’t and shouldn’t try to do everything. So you have to make smarter decisions. You have to be careful about hiring and firing quickly. And when a person shows up for themselves, you have to believe them. You have to believe them, and sometimes you have to let people go. You have to let them go, because ultimately your reputation is what people are going for. And as you grow and scale, that reputation goes beyond you, but it’s now a reflection of the people you’ve hired.
Describe your superpower as “brandpreneur.”
My superpower is that I see things in you that you have never seen in yourself before… I see you. I not only see you now, I see where you are going. I see who you are. I see who you are meant to become. I see the message. I see the picture. I see everything… I consider myself a good judge of people… Those are some areas you need to develop. Those are some things you have talent in that you never thought about and should pursue. I see people for who they are, accept them for who they are, and then encourage them to get to where they need to be.
