Nick F. Nelson, CEO and founder of Brandprenuer®, is a visionary in the world of personal branding. Drawing inspiration from iconic characters like Tony Stark, Nelson sees himself as the Iron Man of personal branding—a bold, innovative force with over two decades of experience as a brand strategist, creative executive, and content creator. His journey from consultant to one of the top voices in personal branding has been marked by his ability to see beyond the surface, helping individuals discover and harness their unique strengths. Nelson’s work is not just about creating a brand; it’s about transforming lives by uncovering hidden opportunities and empowering clients to reach their full potential. Whether 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 specialty with Munson Steed.
[Editor’s note: This is a truncated transcribe of a longer video interview. Please see the video for the extended version. Some errors may occur.]
When you thought about the name of your company, what did you want to communicate directly to those individuals who came to you for your vision?
I wanted people to understand that they were a brand. I’m a brand guy. I’ve been a brand guy for years. And the thing that I’ve learned about brands is it’s all about what do you want to be known for, and how do you want to make people feel? Being known for something and making people feel a certain way is the very definition of a brand.
The thing that I noticed, even in my own reinvention in 2013, when I became a brand or when I started putting myself out there, is that there was no place for me to get guidance. I had to go to so many different places, work with so many different people, and figure out stuff on my own. It just took a longer time. And as an executive, sometimes we just don’t have the time or the patience.
I work with many people, even in the marketing space, who say, “Well, you know what, Nick, I do this for everybody else, but I have such a difficult time doing it for myself.” And so I wanted to create an entity that could really focus initially, primarily on Black folk. That’s what my passion has always been; that’s how I was raised. But then we’ve since expanded to a more diverse audience.
I wanted to provide a one-stop shop for people to be able to reinvent, put themselves out there, learn, grow, and ultimately enhance their professional careers so they can…get noticed. It’s often about getting noticed. Getting noticed allows you to tap into what I like to call hidden opportunities—those opportunities that may have never been available to you if a person had not known that you existed.
Oftentimes, when you’re just busy doing the work, you are known to a smaller subset 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 had opportunities available to you that are a good fit for you, a good fit for them, and that can help elevate your professional profile and career. And so, with Brandpreneur, that’s what I wanted to create—a vehicle that allows people to get noticed and elevate their professional careers above and beyond what they could do themselves.
Why should someone rebrand?
Well, if you look at it, reinvention is the key to sustainability. Your ability to reinvent. When people think they know you, think they know what you do, and think they know who you are, you get stuck in a space where they say, “Okay, yeah, that’s what you do. I understand you.”
But when you look at some of the most professional people in this world, let’s even take a look at the presidential campaign we are going through right now. Kamala Harris was a district attorney in California. She reinvented herself as a senator, then she reinvented herself again as vice president, and now, within a four-week time span, she reinvented herself as the leading presidential nominee. Reinvention is what sustains you and what actually propels you. But the thing that so many people do is they stay in the same spot. They are afraid of reinvention. They don’t know how to reinvent. They don’t know what that looks like. Historically, we’ve seen that reinvention is what makes you relevant. That’s what we help people do—to see themselves in a different way.
Imagine, just imagine if you could see yourself in a different way or see yourself in a different light. I’ve had to reinvent over and over again in my career, and I’m still reinventing. As you’ve done the same thing, bro, I’ve seen you in real time. So that’s what we help people do, and that’s why it’s so important in terms of rebranding yourself—to help you reinvent so that you can now have access to and tap into a different audience of people, to have a different layer of opportunities.
When people come to you, what can they anticipate?
I will give them a few different things. I will give them a strategy because I tell people I’m not your 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 in doing this over and over again. I have a methodology that I leverage for every single person that comes through our process. It’s the same thing over and over again, but it works, and there’s always a different outcome because everybody’s different.
The centerpiece of that is story. Story is the one thing that we often overlook, discount, or discredit, but story is your most powerful asset. When you look at people, one of the biggest and most impactful things we have is our story.
I’m a big Marvel fan. When I look at every superhero, which my clients are superheroes, the thing you look at with Marvel Comics is the backstory. The reason we care about Black Panther is because of the backstory. The reason we care about Iron Man is because of the backstory, or any number of those characters. The reason people care about you is because of your backstory—what you’ve gone through, what have been the challenges, the successes, the failures. We learn a lot through failure and we inspire people through failure, especially as we are able to overcome failure.
So it is very important that people understand that with me, story is going to be a big part of it. But then my methodology is always about who you are as a person. What do you do? What’s the one thing that you do? If you were Chick-fil-A, what’s your chicken sandwich? People don’t have time to know you for more than one thing because this is a scroll-based economy. And I gotta see you doing the same thing over and over and over again and be like, “Okay, that’s what you do.”
Who do you do it for? That’s your target audience. Not everybody will like you, not everybody will want what you have, not everybody will want your services. So who are you going after? Really, really think about that individual and then niche down. And then, ultimately, why you? Why you? Everybody claims they can do this stuff. The thing about the internet nowadays 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 an expert. So why you? What’s your superpower? And then, ultimately, how do you convey that story? That story nowadays is through a nice, succinct message—a calling platform, your campaign slogan. What is your message that you’re going to be using that can drive home with 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 how it happens nowadays. Many people will 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 check their profile out. I think they would be an excellent candidate for you. I think they could really help you out.” And then having a presence online where people can do their own research and have visible credibility—visible credibility is “I see it, and therefore I believe it.” And so that’s why this whole methodology is so important—for you to have a presence online and for you to be able to show visibly and clearly this is what you do, who you do it for, the thing that makes you special, and ultimately what’s that message that you’re trying to drive home?
How important is managing your brand integrity?
Integrity is everything, because it’s reputation. It is so easy to get to a certain spot, but it’s so quick to lose reputation. All it takes is a few different people to say, “Oh, you know what? No, this person is shady,” or “They don’t do quality work,” or what have you, and it damages all the hard work that you’ve done. So you have to protect [your] reputation at all costs. Protecting reputation is integrity in terms of “let your yes be your yes and your no be your no.” It is making certain that you take pride in doing excellent work and not cutting corners, that you be careful in terms of who you engage in terms of doing the work because people are a reflection of who you are.
As a growing CEO or leader of an organization, you can’t, and nor should you, try to do everything. So you have to make wiser decisions. You have to be slow to hire and quick to fire. And if a person is showing themselves who they are, you gotta believe them. You gotta believe them, and sometimes you gotta let people go. You gotta let them go, because ultimately your reputation is what people are buying into. And as you are growing and scaling, that reputation goes beyond you, but it’s now a reflection of the people that you have engaged.
Describe your superpower as a “brandpreneur.”
My superpower is that I see things in you that you’ve never, ever seen in yourself before… I see you. Not only do I see you right now, I see where you’re going. I see who you are. I see who you are to become. I see the message. I see the image. I see everything… I consider myself to be a good reader of people… These are some areas you need to expand upon. These are some things that you are talented in that you never even thought of that you need to pursue. And so, I see people for who they are, I accept them for who they are, and then I encourage them to get to where they need to be.
