Over the last few months, I have been having regular board meetings with myself as I needed to seek out the help of my self-appointed committee of great advisors made up on my inner thoughts, feelings and ideas. This has been a journey of deep introspection in a bid to understand myself better as I sought to articulate what I wanted my Personal Brand to be defined as.
Crafting your personal brand takes time and energy, but it’s well worth it. Defined as the process of packaging yourself for impact, the biggest advantage of embarking on this journey is the ability to unearth little (or big) unknown facts about yourself.
On the surface, any aspect about yourself can be used to develop a personal brand – from the way you look, to the way you dress, to what you studied and perhaps even what you do at the workplace but for a more meaningful brand outcome, you must seek to understand the YOU that is buried deep within. John C. Maxwell in his book No Limits details that for you to go far in your journey of life, you must be willing to go deep. Going deep means looking deep inside first to seek out some uncomfortable truths before seeking external validation.
This is the foundation of building a brand presence that will connect. As we go through the journey of life, there is a general assumption that we have it all figured out…well, this is until our inner committee deep dives into our performance score card only to realize some KPI’s are under-performing.
The framework to crafting a well thought out personal brand follows the following general steps:
- Visualizing your future and defining your vision, a process that starts with the assumption that there are no obstacles holding you back from doing what you absolutely love to do. Look at your future 5 or 10 years from now. What do you see?
- Objectively reviewing your current capabilities, seeking to answer the question: Where am I?
- Identifying the key issues that need to be addressed to get you where you need to be.
- Defining and executing the defined strategies.
- Reviewing for impact
My journey may have started from a point of discomfort but through it all, I managed to unveil my special power. So, what has my self-appointed committee packaged as the personal brand for me?
Well, I look forward to impacting generations. I look forward to helping audiences attract opportunities with confidence and I look forward to building great corporate and personal brands.
Do you know what your special superpower is?
If not, then Personal Branding is for you. Strategically building your brand and taking control of it will effectively position you as a superpower in your domain. To have a great Personal Brand, you need to first and foremost define and understand yourself. This process of understanding WHO YOU ARE is a very personal and introspective process that allows you to get to the WHY YOU DO WHAT YOU DO.
True brand clarity happens when the internal and external brand views meet. Would you like to discover yourself? Would you like to define what your personal brand stands for? Then check out the Personal Branding Self-Discovery Toolkit today!
This Toolkit is a self-paced, self-analysis workbook that will guide you to finding your inner self; the brand called YOU.
Looking to be the latest hottest brand in town? Spend some time with yourself and #standout4growth.