Many people believe that personal branding is all about you and how you show up. BUT…if your personal brand is the EXPERIENCE that other people have of you, a personal brand CANNOT exist without other people. Let’s dive a little deeper.

Like a lot of things in life and business, many people think that the development of a brand is LINEAR. Here’s the rub. Brand building is NOT linear. Because the human experience is not linear. So, if we DON’T develop a brand linearly, how does it happen? MOSAIC-ly.

A battle to the death…which will win? Corporate Brands or Personal Brands? Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a way to create harmony between the two. Is it complex? Yes. But it’s also simple.

Your brand experience is how someone else feels about you when you leave the room. It’s always evolving. So, what type of support works best in the development of your intentional brand experience. Let’s explore.

So many people are looking for the “easy way” these days. And to be fair, the marketing industry is all about selling it to you. But I’ve seen the “easy way” have a NEGATIVE impact on brands one too many times. So let’s explore the benefits of YOUR way vs the “easy way”.

“Talking it Out” for me is a critical component of how I process information. But “just talking” (especially to myself) is NOT where I find the most value. It’s in talking to others. So today, I’m exploring how conversations create the space for us to learn what being authentic means for each of us.

No, I’m not talking about face masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And I’m also not talking about Halloween masks, although it is that time of year. I’m talking about the masks we put on every day to go to work. So let’s break down a few of the reasons why most people wear a mask to work.

OK all. I want to talk about something that’s super important to me. The curation of authentic experiences. Specifically, of HUMAN experiences. It all comes down to how others are affected by interacting with your personal brand. Are you curating that by design?

I’m a fan of dictionary definitions as a place to start a conversation. And this one is going to be GOOD. Because our friends at Merriam-Webster have a plethora of definitions for authenticity. So let’s break it down to figure out what we mean by “being authentic” when it comes to personal branding.

Like most things that take ACTION in life, knowing the theory behind personal branding is all well and good, but if it’s not put into practice, it doesn’t become part of your behavior. If you want to become a personal branding Jedi, you must put your personal brand to work. How? Let’s let some Yoda guidance lead us :)

Living your personal brand. It’s the activity of being yourself. But in a world that’s so good at telling us who we SHOULD be, what we SHOULD want, what our goals SHOULD look like, somehow the concept of just being ourselves gets lost. Here’s how to get it back.

Like with all things, each individual person has their own definition of a brand voice. But there are some standard things that you should know in terms of what a brand voice ISN’T so you can set your expectations accordingly.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Not once, in the history of time, did one person accomplish what they did without other people. Let’s explore why your business peeps are so critical to your success.

I’ve met a lot of people with different opinions on collaboration. There seem to be those who believe collaboration ADDS to their genius, and those who believe it TAKES AWAY. It’s interesting to me, from the point of view of personal branding, so let’s dive a little deeper.

I keep asking myself questions about how we got to the point in corporate cultures where humans became a RESOURCE instead of people. So today, I dove a little deeper into some research to see if I can get a better idea at what is currently driving business cultures, if it’s NOT personal brands.

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs talking about “re-branding”. As I have seen it, it’s almost 100% related to getting a new logo, updating a business name, or launching a new package. But none of that is truly a re-brand. Why not? Let’s discuss.

In short; EVERYTHING. I’ve heard a lot of definitions of brands over the years. For me, any true definition has to do with feelings. And being memorable. And what makes something memorable? Emotions :)

We so often speak about brands in the sense of huge commercial brands, which can sometimes make it difficult to understand what a personal brand is. And the key to the difference is the word, “personal”. Might seem simple right? But let’s dive a little deeper into what this means.

There is still a lot of mystery that surrounds the concept of personal branding. Probably because they are unique to everyone. Selling them off-the-shelf seems easier for a lot of people. But let me tell you why it’s not.

I participated in a LinkedIn poll a while back asking people if they were allowed to authentically lead in their organizations. My immediate response was, “NO” (based on my experience in my corporate career). To my surprise, 67% of people said, “YES”. But I wondered if people confused authenticity with authority or autonomy. So, I thought I would address it.