5 Reasons To See Yourself as a Personal Brand
Thinking of yourself as a personal brand can help expand your career choices.
Businesses are often seeking support and consultants. Building personal wealth
through entrepreneurship is more mainstream than ever before, networking and
associating with special interest groups can be beneficial. You could even
help people find a significant other.
By Jacqueline Walker
Seeing yourself as a personal brand is critical to reaching your goals. If you see yourself as a personal brand, you position yourself to succeed. Here are just a few ways you can bolster your opportunity to advance.
Achieving your private, or professional objectives, requires preparation and effort. You cannot just sit, wait, and hope that by chance someone will drop a golden opportunity in your lap.
A huge part of being prepared is self-assuredness. This helps you take action, approach contacts, market yourself and your skills and remain persistent even in the face of adversity.
If you have clearly defined and embraced your brand and, if you believe in the value of what you offer to a role, company, group, or person, you will proceed boldly. Your brand will add to your confidence and tenacity, helping you to pursue and accomplish your goals.
Connecting and interacting with like-minded individuals or businesses leads to information sharing, gathering, self, and business development. Networking can also lead to opportunities to excel and grow. However, everyone is networking!
So, it’s critical to present some distinctive qualities, ideas, or undertakings that capture the attention of those you want to notice you. These people have the power or access to help you get to the level you are seeking.
If your personal brand is not noteworthy, you will blend in with the masses. This makes it difficult to gain the attention you seek. Many people have achieved titles and earned rewards that they use in their brand. So, you have to find some particular thing to emphasize.
If you are a Technical Writer by day and a children’s book author by night, you are demonstrating flexibility. These varying interests distinguish you from most Technical Writers. This will likely widen the circle interested in having you in their network. The more people you connect with, the more avenues you will have to pursue your endeavors.
If you don’t get noticed, it’s hard to gain personal or business success. You can have skills, abilities, and ideas that surpass your peers. However, you might never achieve what they do.
While many things can gauge your progress, catching the eye of someone in your field or area of interest with the power to influence others or introduce you to higher-ups is critical. If you look, walk, and talk like everyone else, it will be hard to see your uniqueness.
People are looking for ideas that are different from the mainstream. They avoid people who think there is no new way to do what everyone else does. Show off key characteristics, style, or methods that set you apart. Then, you will outshine the masses.
It is your personal brand – your particular way of thinking, dressing, presenting, or doing what you do that will allow you to stand out from the crowd! This will help you be selected as an outlier that will set the trends and standards for the future.
So, don’t be afraid to tastefully display your style! Dare to creatively deliver presentations, by taking advantage of technology. Don’t feel forced to stick to the typical methods if you can add more and still retain professionalism.
Finding a job is work. But, it is work that goes beyond sending out resumes, building online profiles, or beefing up your network. You can have all the qualifications, get referred by one of your contacts, and go into the interview with all the confidence in the world.
You still have to get hired! It is your job to convince that particular employer to select you above all the other candidates. Many of which have excellent skills and abilities, or like you received an introduction from a connection. They also believe they are best suited for the opportunity.
Again, it is your personal brand. Make it a priority to show that special something to the hiring manager to separate yourself from the field of candidates. Don’t only answer questions in the interview, but ask questions.
Ask interview questions about the work and challenges. This may set you up to interject ideas you have for approaches to overcome these challenges, making you appear outstanding and gaining selection for the opportunity.
As much as you think that you select your friends and significant other, they also choose you. Typically, you want friends or partners that complement you. They don’t have to be just like you, and they don’t have to be the exact opposite. But, there must be an attraction.
In most cases, you form bonds with those with whom you share like interests. Or, if their interests are different, those differences are intriguing. It is the unique charm of a person that will captivate you and draw your desire to be in their inner circle or share a close personal relationship.
So, understand that it is your enticing idiosyncrasies that encompass your personal brand that grabs others’ attention and leads them to align with you. It may be a distinctive trait, eccentric behavior, singular thought, eclectic style, authoritative approach, eloquent, and persuasive response that gets attention.
Regardless of which, it still comes back to brand – your distinguishing mark, feature, or action. If you want that special relationship, show the true you by displaying your brand (up-front).
Now, there are no surprises as to who you are, what you like and what makes you who you are. This way, they know going in, and no one is blind-sided or uncomfortable when you fearlessly show and live your true self.
It is vital to nurture and build your brand. If you don’t see yourself as a personal brand and never take steps to design and display your talents, gifts, interests, and offers to the world, you may not get the results you desire professionally and personally.
But, if you proactively develop a unique delineation or personal brand, you can exhibit your authenticity and separate yourself from others, presenting an unmatched appeal.
Regardless of whether your goal is to impress a prospective employer or client, join a social group, market a product, or attract a suitor, you want to stand out from the crowd.
You have to make that employer, client, social group, market, and partner want you and what you have to offer more than anyone or anything else that is similar and available. So, do curate your personal brand to drive your success.