Your Brand... It Takes a Little Bit of Magic

Define Your Personal Brand

“It’s important to build a personal brand because it’s the only thing you’re going to have. Your reputation online, and in the new business world is pretty much the game, so you’ve got to be a good person. You can’t hide anything, and more importantly, you’ve got to be out there at some level.” - Gary Vaynerchuk

Throughout my life, I have heard countless clichés about who you are and why it matters. “What you see is what you get.” “You are what you eat.” There are many other phrases that attempt to guide you to define who you are to yourself and to others. The reality is that your personal brand is not in your absolute control. Your personal brand is what people say about you when you aren’t in the room. Words like reputation, image, and character are words that we often use to represent our brand. From the time we are young children, we begin to establish who we are and shape our personal brand or persona. In the early years, I recall such “brands” as goody-two-shoes, mama’s boy, mean girl, bully, and tattle tale. All of these names or brands are derived by a person’s actions, words, and the impression made on others. As kids, we are often left curled up in the corner crying from name calling. As adults, it isn’t as obvious to us what others think about our brand.

What is different now than when I was a child is social media and the internet. Now, your brand can be broadcast to millions of people without you even knowing it! You cannot contain distribution of opinions about you and who you are. Just spend a few minutes on Twitter and you will know what I am talking about. While it is true that others define your brand, it is through your words and actions that your brand is created. I am a strong believer in doing what you can to make sure that you are leaving the impression that you want both personally and professionally.

To make all of this easier for myself and for others with whom I mentor, I created an easy way to think of personal branding. All it takes is a little bit of M A G I C!

In the last few years, magic has become part of my brand. Indeed, I do believe in magic. A few years ago, I was asked to present at our Plano Chapter of Toastmasters. The assigned topic was Personal Branding. I was only a few months into my job, and I was concerned with what people would think of me. The pressure was on. I was portrayed as a public speaker to my colleagues, so I knew that I had to deliver something impactful to this new group of comrades. As I prepared for this talk, I relied on my own personal experience of branding myself when I launched my own consulting company. For decades prior, I relied on the brand of whichever company I worked for at the time. I had a big corporate brand to get me in the door, and I followed in after that brand. When I started my own company, I was the brand since I was a company of one. I had to become an expert in branding, yet I didn’t feel especially qualified.

While crafting my presentation, I thought of the acronym magic and how it helped me in my own branding journey. 

M Message

A Authenticity

G Grow Your Network

I Impression

C Consistency

This simple acronym has become the platform for my discussions on personal branding. I have shared this with my colleagues, college students at home and abroad, and frankly, anyone who asks.

Message represents a two-sentence phrase that encapsulates your strongest points and characteristics. You must ask yourself, “what is it about me that makes me stand out in a crowd?” What do you want people to associate your name with when you walk out the door? It is critical to create a message that is clear, concise and relevant.

Authenticity defined is being true to one’s own personality, spirit or character, and is sincere and authentic with no pretensions. Are you pretending to be someone you aren’t in order to make a certain impression? Being genuinely you will help guide you to the right career or opportunity and not to something else someone wants for you. We are raised in a society that, more often than not, thinks it knows what is best for us. It can be difficult to go against the grain and be genuine.  As Brené Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection, “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” If you follow this advice, your brand will be steady and readily understood. The difficulty comes from determining who you are versus who you think you should be.

Grow Your Network In this era of digital and social media we have an increasing number of tools that help us expand our community of influence. Growing your following via LinkedIn, community outreach, college alumni network and family is a key element of building your personal brand. Your network is not about what someone can do for you but rather what you can do for them. It is imperative to follow the principle of “pay it forward.” Growing your network is showing up to serve others before yourself. In the last few years, more often than not, complete strangers on LinkedIn reach out to me to ask me for help getting them a job at whatever company I work for at the time. Is this how to treat your network? You must get to know your community of connections first before asking them to do something for you. It is in bad taste to anything different. 

Impression is an idea, feeling, or opinion about something or someone, especially one formed without conscious thought or on the basis of little evidence. We commonly hear the word “impression” in the phrase “first impression.” A first impression can span just seconds. In mere seconds, a person can form his/her opinion of you, and it may not be based on the reality of who you are. Hence, it is critical to make that impression authentic and lasting in a positive way. When I address students or recent college graduates, I ask them “what is the impression you want to leave on future employers, investors or potential customers?” Your impression starts now. If a future contact researched you on Google, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat etc, what impression would they have of you? Is it something to be proud of or something you would like to erase? Thankfully, we did not have social media when I grew up. It meant that I had more direct control over my brand and what people thought of me. If I did something out of the ordinary, it didn’t end up in the hands of complete strangers across the internet. (Yes, I pre-date the Internet).

Finally, the element I find most important in personal branding is Consistency.

Consistency about being uniform with your brand, messaging and your values. One must behave in a way that is in sync with the values you are portraying online, in writing, and in person. If I were to ask five people to describe you, would they all say the same thing about you? If they do, you have a consistent brand. If you have more differences than similarities in the adjectives, then you have a branding issue. It means that you are behaving differently across your various communities. Inconsistency in your brand makes life complicated as you have to change your behavior depending on the audience. Being consistent is liberating as you don’t have to try to be this way or that way. You simply get to BE.

When I deliver this talk around the world, the most common question is “how do I know what my brand is or what I want my brand to be?” Just ask. The second most common question is, “what if I don’t like what they say about me and my brand? How do I change it?  The cold, hard truth is to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you like what you see. If you don’t, keep asking questions of those people closest to you. With a little bit of magic, you will discover how you show up and can modify your brand. I promise.