Personal Brand – Why is it so important?
I recently had the opportunity to speak with a group of people from a major accounting and tax consulting firm. They were reading The 10Ks of Personal Branding: (K)reate a Better You, written by Kaplan Mobray. They sent me a copy before the meeting and wanted me to talk about the book and personal branding in general.
Personal Branding is one of those topics that I love to deepen, discuss and teach. A lot of people talk about social media or the buzz of Twitter and Facebook, but to me those are just the methods of communication and relationship building. Maybe that’s why Kaplan only devoted a couple of pages of his nearly 200-page book to social media.
What lies below and what needs to come first is figuring out who you are, as an individual or small business owner, before you put yourself out there. Many people want to market themselves before they figure out how to articulate their strengths and why they want to be more well known. What is it about. Who do they serve? Why do they do what they do? What is your mission in life. What legacy do you want to live, and leave for others?
I was listening to business consultant and author Brett Harvard last week, who had studied both universal laws and probability statistics before writing his book, The 5 Laws That Determine All of Life’s Outcomes. He said the average company spends just two hours in planning mode each year, while the average family spends eight hours each year planning their vacations.
I don’t know what the statistics are on how much time the average person spends focusing on developing their personal brand, but I guess it’s not much. Even the group I spoke to last week had a hard time even reading the book: A couple of people mentioned that when Kaplan asked them to answer questions about themselves in the book, they stopped reading. Another person stopped reading when they found out there was going to be a speaker. It’s amazing how we humans break free so easily.
There are three groups of people that I think should find personal branding extremely valuable:
1. Those who already have a fairly comfortable job working for an employer
In his book, Mobray focused heavily on this group, even going so far as to pursue opportunities with senior management in the elevator early in the morning or before or after the 2-hour lunch rush. And she goes into detail about the different personalities in meetings and to be careful which one you are, making sure you have a meeting strategy and don’t come across as the dreaded “Question Mark.”
This is also the group that is most oblivious to the fact that they should build their personal brand and use social media to network while having a job, because with the job market the way it is, that investment will come in handy if their employer decided to suddenly lay them off. . They’ve laid off tons of really great people recently, but if you’re prepared, you’ll sleep a little easier at night.
We don’t always know what we are going to do in the next five years, but if we have a roadmap of where we want to be, then we help create our future instead of letting “whatever happens happen to us”. Unfortunately, those people who are working for someone else tend to allow themselves to be identified by their title and company – yes, they are your company’s brand – but if you were to find yourself unemployed today, you would most likely experience a bit of an attention call. There are no walls to hide behind when you don’t have the security of an employer. It’s just you and the rest of the world.
2. Those in Career Transition
These are the many people right now who are out of work for one reason or another and who are looking for work. Instead of spending so much time with other job seekers in weekly networking meetups, they should consider working full time to build their personal brand and go public through social media. And even fully considering whether starting your own business would be a viable career option, instead of going six months or more without receiving any income, as some people are doing right now.
3. Small business owners
Small businesses, whether a one-person shop or multiple employees, are almost always inseparable from the owner. The owner is the face in the community, to their customers, and often defines the company’s brand. As I said at the beginning, the average business owner spends about 2 hours a year planning; I bet he spends less time working on defining his own personal strengths, especially since they (us) tend to wear a lot of hats.
But just as important as defining a company’s brand, the owner must define his own. Sometimes people are so engrossed in the day-to-day operations of the business that they don’t think about an exit strategy or what to do next if they ever want to sell the business. Also, having the owner define his own brand provides options and opportunities to the business that might not have been achieved otherwise. For example, many business owners get presentations but don’t have a strategy for that effort. While it’s nice to get the experience and exposure by speaking in front of groups, does the time invested pay off in opportunities? Sometimes yes sometimes no.
To me, this is all part of the brand of that business. What are the topics that the business owner is uniquely qualified to talk about? What are the topics that are most likely to get that combined brand (the company and the business owner) in front of the right people who will be able to provide the most or best sales opportunities? A personal brand strategy is usually a sales strategy, but the definition of the brand must come first.
So what about your brand? Do you fit into one of the above categories? Have you been constantly working on BRAND YOU? Or are you going to stop reading the book when Kaplan poses the first probing question you’ll have to answer about yourself?
Some of you will take the next step, perhaps buying Kaplan’s book or starting a personal development journal and/or blog. And some of you will go as far as putting together your personal branding team which could consist of someone like me, a life or business/career coach, an image consultant, a voice and/or voice coach, and others as per it is necessary depending on your goals
If you would like help taking the next step, putting together your personal branding team, or would like to speak at your next event, please call our office at 804.777.9940. We will be happy to help.
