Chasing Chaucer: How The Canterbury Tales Influenced My Personal Brand

In this series, professionals describe the skills they’re building this year. Read the stories here, then write your own (use #SkillsGap in the body of your post).

How do you define your personal brand? How much private information do you share to engage an audience or tell a story? How do you express your moral being to the world?

I struggle combining these two dimensions of my world. Writing professionally and bridging my personal life, whether in the past or present is a challenge. I haven't found the path to move outside my comfort zone, yet. However, I think it is important to share short stories of our lives because they connect us as human beings. Small snippets provide tremendous insight to the world-our unique beauty, talent and gifts we bring to the planet. They also shed light about where we came from, how we landed here, and where we want to go. Stories engage and unite us on an emotional level, and this creates a level of trust between two parties.

My Goal: I will always remain professional and provide useful information via this platform. I won't make you cry, well, maybe just a little. My intent is to inspire you to tell a bit more of your story as well. I hope we can learn more about personal branding together.

A Bit of my Brand: The stories behind my brand carry the reasons why I became a teacher and a writer. These memories are filled with poverty challenges, struggling single parents, instability, overcoming obstacles, and survival.

Most of all, these stories from childhood always come back to the same theme: never give up.

This is a picture of my brother and I when we were young children. He was probably close to three years old. I was about to turn eight. As you can see from the photo, those were challenging days.

Fast-forward seven years. In high school, I was placed in high honors English with the most challenging and brilliant teacher in our school (who also taught Hillary Clinton for the brief time she attended Maine East). And if you are a Star Wars fan, Harrison Ford attended Maine East as well.

Courtesy of my friend, Karen Belgrad, who took this image at our high school reunion.

I loved everything about my English class. Translating The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer was quite often the highlight of my day. The pilgrims' tales showed me the eternal beauty, strength and power of story-telling. The contest between the characters made them come alive. Their personal stories triggered great emotion and endless conversations in our classroom. Reading about the undeniable love between Romeo and Juliet captured my passion for the written word. And with classic literature a constant in my mind, my passion for writing grew daily. I wrote many stories. I shared them. They shaped who I was at that moment, and gave me the freedom to change on a whim.

In high school and college, I wrote about my life without incident. I was quiet, yet opinionated through words. I addressed important topics. I combined stories from my personal life with matters of the day without concern. My narratives captivated instructors, sparked debate, left some people in tears and made others laugh. I inspired classmates to tell their own stories.

We all have a story to tell. Years ago, in school, we were not defined nor confined by our words. Unless we were well-known authors or columnists, our stories never traveled across the globe; this is where the vast difference intersects today. Online, we must be aware in regard to what we share-to protect and build our reputation. On paper through a pen, in English 101, this was not a common thought.

My brand just begins to hit the surface. However, my young life as described above, is the first building block behind it.

This is my first step toward intersecting professional advice with a microscopic view into my young personal life. The high-level reasons only scratch the surface in regard to why I became a teacher. As I write more this year, I hope to convey my professional word with a short story.

And so I leave you with this picture of my brother and I today.
We worked extremely hard to get here. And we made it. Never give up.

Your Brand: For every article, speech or personal brand, there is a story hovering quietly in the background. There are words left unspoken that need to be heard about why and how we share information. How did you get here? Why did you choose this career path? What is your purpose? What are your values? What are your goals?

Genuine experience combined with emotion generates remarkable storytelling. When we can tell a story effortlessly, it is authentic. We can then build our brand.

How have you integrated your narrative into your personal brand? Do you tell your personal story or stories to inspire others? How do you make yourself stand out? Please share away in the comments. I would love your suggestions!

About Me:
I am an editor for Boys & Girls Clubs of America. I also manage ED News Daily, contribute to the Huffington Post and was recently featured on Cision’s Influencer Blog.

And I am excited to announce that you will find me on LinkedIn's new application among Influencers via the education technology and management channel.

Please follow me here or via Twitter.