Practice before you preach, practice what you preach, and practice even after you stop preaching! These adages and their extensions could not be more significant than in these times of personal branding. I can only try to capture the essence of this nebulous or amorphous essence of the word “brand” by saying that a brand emerges when it is associated with a particular image of a person/product/service, over a period of time. and that consistently displays the same qualities that are unique and singular to that person, product or service, regardless of time, place or situation.
The key operative word here is “consistency”. And consistency brings credibility, which in turn is inextricably associated with integrity, security and trust in a person, product or service.
That is the power of a brand!!
I want to emphasize this by quoting Peter Montoya, the author of the book “The Brand Called You”, who defines personal branding as the process of taking your unique skills, personality, and characteristics and packaging them into a powerful identity that lifts you above from the crowd. of anonymous competitors.
It’s no wonder then that every person worth their salt is queuing up to create their own brand. Given the impact that a brand has on the consumer’s mind, it is imperative that entrepreneurs first seek to create their personal brand before doing so for the product and/or service they manufacture and sell, or propose to sell.
I’m afraid Shakespeare’s line from Romeo and Juliet, What’s in a name? What we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, it would be completely anachronistic in these times, like today, what smells like a rose cannot be called anything other than rose!
So why all the fuss about having or building a personal brand?
For entrepreneurs, their own personal brand says a lot about the product/service they choose to create and sell to consumers. And every time consumers buy it or recommend it to others, they inadvertently endorse that very brand as brand ambassadors. Which means that the personal brand equals the company and the value it provides.
But building a personal brand is not a shot in the dark. Rather it is a well thought out and planned lifelong endeavor for the entrepreneur, from the moment their idea is discussed, carefully nurtured and nurtured until it is established. It follows a step-by-step design that ultimately projects the personality of the entrepreneur to the world that includes clients, investors, and employees.
A strong personal brand begins with a personal mission statement that resonates with that of the company. In that sense, one needs to do some soul searching to make a mission statement that convincingly speaks about the “authentic you”, the real you, as in “yourself”. You need to discover the language and words that best represent your spirit and core values. The personal mission statement also defines your goals and the paths to reach those goals.