Your personal brand is how you present yourself – the impression you leave on the heart and in the mind of others. It is an accumulation of your strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, experiences, (the good, the bad, the ugly), and values.
Your personal brand is the messages you tell others about your Unicorn Abilities ( those abilities unique to you – experiences, network, process, system, frameworks, skills) and how you help others, the real hero of your brand, make a transformation in their lives and business.
Your personal brand is often the first idea that people think of when they hear your name and what will make you relevant and trusted in the market.
Like my good friend and former client, Tom Hopkins says, ‘getting in touch with your true self is the fastest way to build trust.’ People are more likely to do business with someone they know, like, and trust. Your personal brand gives you the opportunity to show up as your true self, and build rapport that creates the opportunity for trust before you ever meet someone in person.
How do you build trust through your personal brand?
- Define The Specific Goals Of Your Personal Brand:
Creating a personal brand often starts with identifying specific goals you want to achieve. You need to be strategic and know where you are going. After all, if you don’t know where you are going, how are others going to help you get there?
These goals could be related to your executive career, such as becoming known as a results-based thought leader; an expert in your field or landing a promotion. Alternatively, you may be looking to transition out of corporate and become a founder, taking your business idea or thought leadership to the market. Perhaps you are already a business owner and you are looking to build more relevancy, regardless of where you are professionally, once you’ve identified your goals, you can begin developing the right strategies for achieving them.
- Become An Audience Architect:
Identify, analyze, and attract. One of the most important factors in creating a personal brand is understanding ‘who’ you’re targeting. Who do you want to reach with your messages? Becoming an audience Architect requires you to be ‘person-focused’ first, and building trust through your personal brand is recognizing that it takes more than knowing their age, profession, and where they live. ( don’t get me wrong you need to know those factors as well)
Listen more, talk less and you will discover what their pain points are.
Ask yourself, what is that emotional transformational journey you tend to take them on? What does that transformation look like for them? Once you’ve identified your audience’s pain points, and specifically what they fear, get angry about, or even have a distaste for; you can then begin identifying the benefits of what and how you do what you do – and tailor your message to them accordingly.
- Improve The Way You Communicate:
The more specific you are with the language you use, the more effective you will become at building credibility and authority with others which ultimately fosters a greater sense of loyalty and trust. In order to be more specific, you must have the right communication strategies based on the profile of the individual.
How you communicate with an engineer, will sound and feel very different than how you communicate with a fashion designer. An engineer requires you to be detailed, technical and on point whereas, the other tends to go with the flow and tailor the message towards ‘the emotion of’ and, be expressive and spontaneous.
Both require you to specifically identify what ‘stuff’ and ‘things’ you are referring to and answer, what is ‘it’ and how big is ‘a ton of’ (please use ‘a handful of’ or ‘plethora’)?
I’ll never forget the time when a really amazing opportunity happened for me and I ‘texted’ a colleague who happens to be a very good friend ‘Oh my god, you can’t believe this thing that happened!’ she immediately called me, but when I didn’t answer she came to my house. When I opened the door, she stood at my door stoop almost in tears, and of course, I hugged her and asked her with concern, ‘are you alright?’ and she immediately responded – ‘when you didn’t answer my call after your text, I knew something must be wrong and immediately came over.’
I wasn’t specific and she immediately filled in the missing gaps in the communication and wrote a new story in her mind of what was happening. We by default will seek the negative and fill in the gaps in the communication to create a new story, even when it’s not necessarily true.
Had I texted, ‘Oh my god, you can’t believe this amazing new opportunity for me just happened!’ how the result of the communication within that message would have evoked a very different response and triggered a different set of actions.
When you build your personal brand, the messages you create, and the stories you tell, will set forth a series of emotional responses and actions, so, be specific and get the right results – specificity will build trust.
- Show Up:
Always show up as ‘you.’ Be real and honest about who you are, why you do what you do and what you do. This means knowing who you really are and not comprising. Building a brand online requires you to be your own biggest fan in the toughest of times. It’s easy to be a raving fan of yourself when you are winning, but much more difficult when times are challenging.
Building a personal brand is not easy – and there will be a time in the journey when you need to show up and be accountable for the transparency required for any mistakes or shortcomings – because they will happen. In theory, we all know that you’re human and capable of making mistakes just like everyone else – however, people are more likely to trust someone who is authentic and honest, and accountable.
You need to show up as you. Like a fingerprint, your personal brand is uniquely yours. Your BravuraImprint is defined by your ‘why’ and the characters, those ‘Unicorn Abilities’ that only you can bring to the market.
The biggest mistake that I see Executives and Founders make when building a personal brand or leveraging their existing one, is not spending enough time designing that fingerprint. You need to understand who you are, and why you do what you do, so you can build an imprint that clearly articulates how you will help others achieve their goals and build trust and loyalty long-term.
I know it can be tough to define your brand from the inside looking in, so I created a free resource to help you discover your unique value proposition.
You’re already got #Bravura, you just need to lean on me and the team at BravuraBranding.com to help you.
#BecauseYouCan
Love,
Lisa Patrick
Founder Bravura Branding
