Who Are You Really?

For a while I've written and spoken about the need to remember 3 things in business (and in life for that matter) ....

1 ... Your approach - Approach things in the most appropriate matter for the circumstances ... tailor your approach (including your branding/marketing) to the circumstance.

2 ... Your authority - Authors have authority. Hence many people's desire to become a published "author". This is the thing you and others know you can deliver - time after time.

3 ... Your Authenticity.

I can tell you as an author AND as someone who his been flown around the world to speak at major events, all three of these are important but ... it's only if you lose the third one .. that you are (sorry about the language) royally screwed.

You can always get someone to help you who has more experience and resource, including expertise, that you have .. That takes care of 2.

You can hire in experts (Brand experts?) to get the approach absolutely bang on. So that takes care of 1.

But Authenticity ... you really are on your own with that one. That has to come from you. I found that as I developed in my own life and as I grew older my focus, outlook and expectation changed ... I was still the same person but I felt how I was living my life needed to change ... and I felt the drive to do this coming from both the outside (ie changing economic, technological, political and social circumstance and my kids growing up etc ) and from the inside - my understanding of who I was and what I was here for.

I've spend the last ten years striving to understand the world around me more and more fully - not at the micro level but from a perspective of tens of thousands of years and thousands of generations ... if I was going to understand myself and the world around me I wanted to know "how WE got HERE".

I learned a lot about how we have evolved and changed to meet the changing circumstances of our world .... I understand a lot better now how "we" got here. I even understand where "here" is, more clearly.

But if I was going to fully understand my world and my life it was only when began to explore my own identity, my authenticity, that I began to live and do business differently. I was an authority on me, and being authentic, supporting others from my place of authority allowed me to develop an approach that suited the people I wanted to do business with AND me. It sounds a bit crazy but I can put their needs AND my needs first.

This journey has taught me that before any of us can "brand" ourselves we need to really know ourselves... "who am I really"?

My advice to anyone here would be to "know yourself" and build your business "from the inside out", - after all that's where your unique value lies.