Demystifying (and de-nasty-fying) personal branding
Volume 2, Number 4 | April 2008
I resisted networking for years.
Partly, I resisted it because I lean toward introversion. But I also resisted it because to me, it was either
obnoxious or sad-making or both; it was what the clueless did in between cold calling (another loathed activity) and sending me overproduced junk
mail. It was cheesy, and I don't do cheese.
But when I finally went into business for myself, I realized I needed to do something to meet people. And at
some point when I was out there doing it, this networking, it hit me that really, that's all it was: meeting people. Something I'd been doing all my
life, since my mother first plunked me down in a shared playpen with a friend's baby.
In the same way, for years, I resisted the notion of personal branding. It felt pushy and self-aggrandizing--not
my style! I liked clean lines and lots of white space and a more laid-back kind of persona. And of course, after years of applying those
principles--of choosing the same, all-lowercase, serif typeface for my advertising résumé, my acting headshots, my blog name; the same
style of eyeglass frames; the same aggressively casual, slightly off-kilter style of dress--I had a similar revelation:
Personal branding is just expressing who you are in a way that the world can understand.
While it's a newish term in the mainstream world, "personal branding" really has been around forever.
There are just lots more tools and avenues for the expression and application of it than there have ever been before.
That's a good thing, but it can be a bewildering one, too. How do you go about establishing your personal brand
when there are so many places to be, so many ways of expressing the unique you-ness of you?
Like most big jobs, it's easier if you break it down into steps. Here's one possible order of them:
1. Think about the why
I know it may seem like you should start with the "what" or the "who", but I think a really good question to ask before any project is "why?" Why do
you want to put the message of you out there? Why is clarifying who you are and sharing it with the world going to be helpful, and to whom?
Just like networking, branding works best if you first give thought to the person(s) on the receiving end. My own "why" is to spare people the crap I
had to go through to get where I am.
2. Clarify the message
Think about who you are, and your special skills, talents, vision, etc. The more specific the better. If you're at the beginning of this journey,
there are lots of fun tools to help you. I'm a big fan of Julia Cameron's The Artist's
Way;
it's what set me on the path to become an actor, years ago, and I've seen it deliver astounding clarity to many, many people.
Other good resources are Now Discover Your Strengths (good for business-minded folk), Is Your Genius
at
Work? (kind of a hybrid creative/business-y approach) and the Myers-Briggs test. But really, as my
friend, Adam Kayce, said so brilliantly, if you're
in this
mode of discovery, your best bet is to give yourself some open-ended time at the
bookstore,
and see what you're drawn to.
3. Play!
The fun part, for me, is trying on different stuff. Which typefaces do you like? Which colors do you look good in, and also make you feel good? What
kind of furniture, art, clothes do you like? What books/music/TV/etc do you enjoy consuming? What are your hobbies or interests?
Keep track of it any way you like--a notebook, a heap of ripped-out magazine pages and scraps of paper on the
floor, an orderly set of files on the computer. (Even your preferred means of collection can give you ideas about your personal brand.)
Of course, once you've got a good idea of your brand, you'll need to figure out how to start putting it out
there in the world. I'll have more ideas about how to do that effectively next month.
In the meantime, if you have questions--or ideas!--about either discovery or implementation, please do email me.
I'd love to hear from you, wherever you are on your odyssey of self-discovery.
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