YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN 'PRETTY GOOD'

Is your Personal Brand taking a back seat to your Business?

I recently rewatched one of my favorite streaming series of the last decade: 2015's PATRIOT, the comedy-drama created by Steven Conrad and starring Michael Dornan as John Tavner, an intelligence officer who is incapable of letting his country - or his Director of Intelligence dad - down, even as he loses himself. John is seemingly capable of enduring almost anything, and when asked by those close to him "How you doing, John?" his response - agreeable yet unconvincing - is always the same: "Pretty good."

But is "pretty good" good enough?

I work with a lot of high achievers, and I talk to many, many more. Every day. And I've noticed over the past few months that many of them have put their Personal Brand on the back burner while they run their business.

Quite often, their business involves serving others in some capacity, repairing the world, what I'd describe as noble for-profit enterprises.

They are working tirelessly, delivering, overdelivering, putting out fires... but they are note quite connecting with their audience. It's not a question of clarity: they have clarity around their message. They're just overwhelmed, and failing to put into words all the great stuff that makes them who they are.

Part of the problem is that we collect skills and accomplishments to help us on our quest...but audiences don't connect with a list, or with the multi-hyphenate descriptions so common on LinkedIn:

SARAH S. JOHNSON, MBA, MD, JD // NLP // Helping certain people achieve certain things // Best-selling Author // Acrobat // Something about saving the world // Amazon, Microsoft, NIKE, Apple // something under something...

And we haven't even gotten to the ABOUT section yet!

It's not even about brevity - clearly, John Tavner is a PATRIOT...but he's lost his essential self.

It's not about how many words - it's about 'Which words?' and 'In the service of what strategy?'

I know you're busy, and that your Personal Brand may seem like another one of those "me" things you'll get to when you have some "me" time. But there's also "ME" in "MESSAGING," and without the right message, you're going to have more disconnects and unfulfilled longings than are necessary.

The irony is that Personal Brand Building doesn't require a lot of time or effort on your part; in fact, it takes work OFF your plate. It paves the way for smoother connections.

It does begin with a commitment of 60 seconds.

My popular Personal Brand Building Quiz typically takes one minute to complete, and provides you with insight and suggestions for shaping and sharpening that MEssage, so that when your friends, colleagues, and loved ones ask how you're doing, you can do better than "Pretty good."