Be Your Brand

by Regan Hillyer

  There are professional opportunities where building a personal brand is now extremely important and powerful. These opportunities can include industry recognition, better contacts for your company and your tribe, and a greater ability to stand out from the rest. If you are looking for some improvement in your career for example, your ideal company and possible bosses should relate your personal brand with something necessary for that particular company and team. If what you are looking for is to grow company sales, you will want your work clients to relate your personal brand with the feeling of long term success, trust and satisfaction.

  Doing what you love and following your passion leads many people into becoming entrepreneurs and branching out of their career at one point or another. For many professionals, the ultimate career goal is being self-employed. Naturally, there are tons of benefits as well as risks that come with becoming your own brand. Here are a few expectations of what will most likely occur.

  When you work for other people, you help them in building their own vision and brand. Now that you decided to step out and do your own thing, you get complete control—one hundred percent of everything, including every brand detail involved. This includes who you want your audience or your tribe to be and what message you would like to send out. This is a dream come true for those who have been thinking about developing their own brand for some time now. All of you artists, creators and passionate rock stars, I know you’re understanding this right now!

  Making all the decisions is one reason many people decide to go off on their own and become a brand. Not only will you be the boss, you will be responsible for everything from start to finish. Of course, at this point you will also be accountable for all the mistakes that could happen, but the same goes for all the successes. After a while, you will soon develop discernment about what a good deal looks like and also develop tons of self discipline in the process. On the whole, you become a better, more developed person overall.

  Another reason many individuals leave their supervised, traditional jobs to become their own brand is to do what they truly love, one hundred percent of the time. They want to commit to doing what they love without any interruptions. One of the benefits of doing this is being flexible enough for setting your own schedule and devoting the necessary time you feel is needed to focusing on your dreams and accomplishing your goals.

  Of course there is uncertainty when the next check will come for you in the mail. This is the main difference between being employed and being self-employed. All you had to do when you were employed was to wait in the mail for your check to arrive. Now that you stepped out of your comfort zone, it is time to create your own paycheck, as you are responsible for all the money your company makes.

  Being your own brand involves a promise and a commitment or pledge made to assure the recipient, that he or she can trust that certain expectations will be fulfilled. It goes beyond a simple statement of intent to a higher ethical level that puts at risk the grantor’s honor and integrity if the commitment goes unfulfilled.

  The consistent fulfillment of purpose is the essence of the Oprah brand, for instance. The reason for viewer loyalty is the emotional connection to the brand, as well as the foundation for Oprah’s success. For those of us responsible for fulfilling our commitment, it is our common purpose that is widely shared at all levels of the company. It gives us direction, inspires us, and unleashes our passion and commitment to convert our intentions into great results. As consumers, we are constantly promised that we will be inspired by the food and beverages we consume, the products and services we buy, and the organizations that serve us. The organizations that actually fulfill these commitments gain our trust, our loyalty, and our business. In our other roles as a brand, we want to be inspired by a purpose, the work we do, and the integrity with which we do it. We want to be part of responsible organizations that meet or the commitments they make so that we have reason to be proud of where we work. Promises made and fulfilled are the foundation, not only for consumer loyalty, but also the passion, commitment, and loyalty required to create and maintain successful organizations. This book provides the insights strategies, and mechanisms for people who sincerely desire to make meaningful brands of themselves that inspire the loyalty of their customers and fellow associates. This philosophy is perfect for individuals and organizations that want to build genuine brands or relationships that are trusted and admired. It requires a sincere and real commitment to customers’, associates and shareholders’ well-being and satisfaction.

  Making a real promise means caring about others in a way that is heartfelt, and not just a great business proposition. Imagine a world where everyone makes a promise and keeps it. I am here to provide a practical understanding of why the promise philosophy is so important to him or her and how anyone can use it to enhance the lives of customers.

  The search for substance in competitive strategic thinking has moved from advertising to marketing to branding, and more recently to promise. Many leading businesses and intellectual thought leaders are beginning to talk about the importance of a commitment to a promise in all types of organizations. My philosophy separates substance from hype and provides a practical guide for any organization or individual on how to make the right promise and how to keep real promises to customers, associates, and shareholders alike.

  The concepts I created revolve around the importance of focusing on how a brand wants its tribe, associates, influencers, and, for that matter, all of its stakeholders to feel. It is this paradigm shift that provides the kind of success that truly admired brands enjoy.

  To become a one of a kind brand, an individual must think like a “genuine brand,” and this requires a different mindset, perspective, and strategy from the usual. Successful individual brands need to be perceived as having a distinctive commitment to their customers and consumers that delivers emotional and functional benefits. When an individual thinks and acts like a “real brand”, the entire organization understands what the promise is all about and how to deliver the right experience. Everyone from the CEO to the frontline associate has the same mindset. Successful implementation of a promise initiative requires that everyone in the organization be onboard. It’s not optional. Leading brands that deliver on their promise will benefit from enhanced customer satisfaction and profitable pricing opportunities, as well as increased pride and the power of a positive experience. The key to becoming a successful genuine brand is to focus on providing distinctive and relevant experiences for customers that provide lasting and memorable positive impressions. Genuine brands make a promise, and they deliver on that promise consistently, eagerly, and at their customer’s convenience. The power of a promise is based on what customers say about a brand to their friends and their feelings toward the brand. In a word association exercise, when consumers are asked, “What is a brand?” the most frequent response is: A name. Consumers see brand names every day; they are bombarded with thousands of brand impressions in print and across all forms of electronic media. It’s impossible to escape them.

  Don’t get me wrong. Having a good brand name is important and offers several advantages. However, there is much more to a strategy for a brand than a name. Successful brands lead the way. They become their promise, and they behave like a guarantee. Yet brands really exist only in people’s minds. Brands tell customers whether something will make them feel better or make their life easier, better, solve a problem, or fulfill a need or desire. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines a brand as: “A kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic.” It is the distinctive traits that separate brands from commodity items in consumers’ minds.

  Is it truly distinctive or different in a manner that is important and valued by its customers?

  Is it committed to providing certain emotional and functional benefits for its customers?

  Does it consistently fulfill its promise and deliver on its commitments? Genuine brands exist only to add value.
They understand that people make real-life decisions every day on both an emotional and a functional level. Genuine brands make promises that make you feel great about your experience.” Then they deliver on that promise. Genuine brands treat people right and exceed expectations.

  Reasons for Creating Your Own Brand

  In building and creating your own brand, you may want to do this for the purpose of:

  Laying the foundations of your success in the future, no matter what your definition of success is

  Build communities online to further increase opportunities in your profession

  Grow your network professionally so you open more opportunities

  Land better company clients to create more efficiency for your company

  Win more company clients to increase your earnings and your sales

  Create a bigger impact in this world and also create a bigger amount of money in the process

  WHO ARE YOU?

  Before you develop a personal brand and launch it out to the world, it is important to be yourself, authentically. Remember - as I touched on earlier, you actually already have a brand, except it has not been established just yet. You no longer need to hide or search to hide, as you ARE the brand. Realising your potential sooner rather than later is going to go a long way towards helping you establish a truly authentic brand.

  Start by asking yourself these questions:

  Who are you?

  What do you believe about the world?

  If you were to know, what is your true message that you need the world to hear?

  What frustrates you?

  What excites you?

  And this is just the beginning…

  The clearer you can get on who YOU actually are, the more powerful, authentic and impactful your brand will be.

  GETTING CLEAR ON YOUR VISION

  Let’s chat on vision. Vision is the bigger picture, it’s what is driving you every day. Ultimately your vision should be so powerful that you are willing to die for it. And I don’t say that lightly. It is the essence of your brand, and ultimately in personal branding, the essence of YOU as a unique individual.

  When it comes to personal branding, your vision often develops into a promise that is intended to characterize how you want your tribe to feel and what you want them to also be empowered by.

  The promise should become the heart and soul of your brand and set the tone for everything your brand does. It’s the internal battle cry that is intended to set a brand’s expectations for every team member, agent, or representative. It dictates how the brand wants its tribe to feel about their experience.

  The way you want to unfold is a direction only you can determine. It is not easy to control every life aspect. However, you can develop steps for achieving this and create long term vision as well. The vision of your life needs to make an inclusion of how you see yourself in ten, twenty or even fifty years. Consider your life elements and what makes you smile- a challenging corporate job, a beach house, a family? There are really no wrong or right answers—only the ones that apply to you. Just like everything else, there are a few things you need to do to create your own brand.

  Basically, what separates you from the rest of the globe is your personal brand. To start creating your own brand you will need to create your own vision for your brand. Do this by organizing your thoughts. Basically, you will want others to perceive you this way and this is also the way you want to live your personal and professional life.

  To create your vision, it is necessary to really understand the needs of your tribe. If you really want to understand your tribe’s needs, you must walk in their shoes. Ask yourself, how will your brand really enhance your tribe’s lives? What drives you?

  Why does this drive you?

  What exactly do you want to achieve?

  What is the message you want the world to hear, now?

  When developing your vision, I suggest that you sit down and write out a list of fifty plus words that you would use to describe your brand and where it is headed. From here, the strongest themes driving your brand will start to become apparent. Like every exercise in this book, make sure your vision is true to your authentic self and so strong that it really is the essence of YOU and who you are.

  AUTHENTICITY

  Personal branding rests on the foundation of authenticity. This is the ability of tapping into your individual, humble, genuine, human quality from which your character, personality and identity stem from.

  If you are not showing up through your brand in a way that is completely, one hundred percent authentic to you then trust me, it is going to end in disaster: Be it financial disaster, or simply just resulting in you feeling totally unsatisfied or unfulfilled.

  So let’s start with the end in mind and make sure that every step in developing your brand, every step of the way, is completely aligned with you, your core message and what you want to shake the world with.

  Otherwise, you may as well quit right now…

  Your authentic self appearing constantly through your brand creates a “genuine brand”. For instance, when an organization thinks and acts like a “genuine brand”, the entire organization understands what the promise is all about and how to deliver the right experience. Everyone from the CEO to the frontline associate has the same mindset. Successful implementation of a promise initiative requires that everyone in the organization be onboard. It’s not optional! Leading brands that deliver on their promise will benefit from enhanced customer satisfaction and profitable pricing opportunities, as well as increased pride and the power of a positive experience. The power of a promise is based on what customers say about a brand to their friends and their feelings toward the brand. In a word association exercise, when consumers are asked, “What is a brand?” the most frequent response is: We see brand names every day; they are with thousands of brand impressions in print and across all forms of electronic media. It’s impossible to escape them. Don’t get me wrong. Having a good brand name is important and offers several advantages. However, there is much more to a strategy for a brand than a name. Successful brands lead the way. They become their promise, and they behave like a guarantee. Yet brands really exist only in people’s minds. Brands tell customers whether something will make them feel better or make their life easier, better, solve a problem, or fulfill a need or desire.

  DISCOVERING YOUR DRIVING VALUES

  Your values are one of the most important things that you need to get clear on when developing your brand. Your values are what drive your life, your decisions and ultimately your results. They are at your being’s core and when making decisions, your values automatically click into action. Everyone makes mistakes once in a while and maybe you don’t refer to your values. However, when you make life decisions it is your values that you usually consider.

  The following set of values may be what you have:

  Freedom

  Ambition

  Community

  Friends

  Family

  To people, values define the stuff that is considered most important. When you need to make a decision such as whether or not you are going to take on a new career, it is with your personal values that you consult. Ask yourself what the best decision would be in terms of values on the list such as friends and family.

  On your list, there is no limit of values you can add. They are yours alone. Consider your life situations, feelings and people that make you happy the most. This is usually where your values are found.

  The goal of personal brand building is not just to grow your company or achieve further success, it is about ultimately finding happiness. When you really consider that personal brands are simply an extension of you and who you are, then ultimately the decisions you make within your brand will result in more happiness if these are aligned with your values. Many individuals know other people who are successful in their work but are not happy. This is due to the fact that it was only later on that they realized how much they valued their fa
mily and vice versa, those who may have a great family life only later realize that they lack fulfillment due to the challenges of their profession. You will know how to approach your personal vision for your brand if you make understanding your values your priority.

  It is a good idea to hire a team with similar values to your brand. People that have almost the same values as the brand that is hiring will be likely to meet the needs of the brand more, and tend to adapt to new roles much faster. They also tend to fall in love with the brand’s vision very easily and often will want to be a part of the team for a very long time.

  Go through the things that make you happy in life. Realize that there is no equality when it comes to values. List values according to priority and how important they are to you.

  You may be faced with decisions in life and situations that are at odds with your values. For instance, when considering new work, it may fit into your intelligence and ambition values, but will require more time away from your job and family if they do not have the same values that you believe in.

  WHAT IS YOUR PASSION?

  The whole point of developing your personal brand is so that you can do what you love, every single day and of course, create an empire and a legacy from doing just that.

  Which brings us to the question:

  What do you like doing with your time?

  Whatever the answer, these are your passions. Generally, passions are different from values although they do overlap at times. For instance, your highest values might be family life and your passions might be playing with your kids or going out to dinner with your spouse. There is an intersection of passions and values but these are also different. Identifying your passion in order for you to know what is most rewarding to you in life will go a long way towards creating your personal brand. Identifying your passion is the key to creating a personal brand successfully. Make it your objective to experience your passion in your life professionally.