Building Your Brand
What do you want to be known for?
Clarity
Take a few minutes to really think about how you’d like others to describe you, your career or your business. What terms would you use in creating your personal brand?
Distilling this down will allow you to figure out your own personal vision - your why you do what you do. It will help you identify the value you bring to the world and what gifts you want to leave behind after you’re gone.
Some questions to help spark your creativity:
What would you like your legacy to be?
What change do you want to make?
What do you seem to get more easily than others do?
What are you most complimented on?
What do people thank you for?
What motivates you?
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
What do you like most about your job? like least?
What would you do with your time and energy if you had all the money you ever dreamed of? What would keep you engaged and excited about life?
Your personal brand must be authentic. You have to live the values you profess to have and they have to be meaningful enough for you that they are worthwhile on their own. If no one was watching, and no one paid you to be these things, these are the things you’d still want to be and do day in and day out. You’re good at them, you enjoy them, and will continue to develop these qualities in yourself because they have intrinsic value to you.
If you’re stuck, a good starting point could be a career or personality assessment which can bring to light qualities in yourself that you haven’t yet recognized. A few of my favorites:
Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 which you can purchase on Amazon here. Another great supplement to the assessment is Strengths Based Leadership, which also includes an access code to take the test. You’ll come away with an in-depth understanding of your top 5 strengths.
Myers Briggs Type Indicator can help you better understand your personality out of 16 general personality types. Even just reviewing the descriptors listed for each personality type can be a good jumping off point!
For myself, I’d like to be known as strategic, a developer of people, a strong communicator, highly intelligent, generous, warm, inspirational, a change maker, career catapulter, an achiever, and a visionary. Several of these qualities are from my Clifton Strengths (Strategic, Communication, Developer, Input, Achiever). Others are personality traits associated with my personality type, ENFP. But all of them are things that I live by daily at home, at work and with friends and the general public.
Consistency
Once you have that clarity of purpose, then it’s about ensuring that you become known for your personal brand. The best way to build your brand is to use those qualities and values all the time, and to put them in service to others.
We gain and lose our reputations, social esteem and power through helping others. It is through give and take that we make a name for ourselves. We need to exemplify our stated values in these interactions, on a consistent basis, in order for people to come to expect more of these qualities from us and share that feedback with us and with others. A virtuous circle comes to life when your brand is shared by those who have experienced it, bringing more opportunities to continue to live and breathe that brand. Your impression and influence will continue to grow, as long as you remain consistent in your brand.
Consistently living your personal brand also means being creative and going the extra mile in finding ways to apply it to everything you do. You don’t have to be the best or even exceptional. There may be one hundred people vying for the same goal as you, but if you give it an extra 1% - by going an extra 1% above and beyond, or being 1% more creative, or committing 1% longer than the rest who give up before you - eventually you’ll end up on top.
That consistency will eventually lead to others simply knowing you for the brand you’ve built for yourself. They won’t need to think hard or search for the right person - you’ll come up for them because of the consistent example you’ve set. This is key in getting ahead of the competition - there IS no competition if you’re already the clear and consistent frontrunner. No one else even makes it on the list.
If you’d like to chat more about building your personal brand and making it work for you, send me a note at hello@kendehlandco.com. I’m looking forward to chatting with you.
