My Personal Brand is About You. Confused? Don't Be.

Let me challenge your definition of personal brand.

Counterintuitively, we can do more with personal brand if we make it about others.

Your personal brand may not be where–or what–you think it is.

Try this definition:

personal brand - noun: a) how I want you to feel when we work together, and b) what I'll do to make you feel that way.

What does this change? EVERYTHING.

Take Control of Your Personal Brand

Forget what people say about you (you hope!) when you're not in the room. Forget the adjectives you hope (that word again!) people associate with you. Those are out of your control.

My personal brand is about you. And I hope you'll make yours about someone else. Why? Because, ironically, that shift will lead you back to the concrete things you can control.

How It Works

Here's how I want you to feel when we work together:

• Excited

• Confident

• Optimistic

  
  

What will I do to make you feel that way? Five things:

1. Ask questions others don’t.

2. Bring curiosity and creativity to spark ideas.

3. Collaborate and invite you to dream with me.

4. Think beyond what we want to say and consider what our audience needs or wants to hear.

5. Lead you to unexpected discoveries that advance relationships and win new work.

Can I control those five things? For the most part, yes. And if I want to know whether I'm doing my job well and to my best abilities, then those five actions become my personal brand checklist.

Those are mine. What's on your checklist? It will likely be different.

Mission, Vision + Values

Can I really control how you feel? No, not always. But 17 years of professional services experience has taught me that when I account for those five actions, then, in fact, you probably will feel excited, confident, and optimistic about our work.

To get to my personal brand checklist, first I identified my mission and vision for our work together, along with the values that drive me in work and life. That's not easy!

In the Axis personal brand workshop, you'll work through prompts and get clear guidance to articulate your mission, vision, and values. Then, we examine what happens in your work as a result of those unique variables.

Together, we'll work to unearth and articulate your personal brand statement and develop your checklist. The workshop is part of every Axis Accelerator Training, and it also serves as a stand-alone exercise.

Curious to learn more? Let's chat. matt@axismarketingstrategies.com