Building your PERSONAL BRAND in what you do (Part 2)

THE FOUNDATION OF A PERSONAL BRAND

First, let’s look at your values.

🚩VALUES are the things that we hold most important in life, that help us make the right decisions and drive us in the right direction.

For example, my values in life are:
✴Family
✴Career development
✴Personal growth

Take a moment to think about the situations or people that make you happy and jot down your ideas. There’s no limit to the values you can include – everything from intelligence to healthy living should go in if it ticks the boxes.

Now that you have them on paper, go ahead and prioritise – not all the values on your list are equally important. To build a happy life you need to be attuned to your true, authentic self.

Next, let’s move on to your passions.

🚩PASSION are the things you love to do in your spare time. They’re rewarding experiences that drive your personal and professional life. Stuff that you would do even if you weren’t paid for it!

In this exercise, we want to identify both your personal and professional passions to ensure that your personal brand is created with them in mind.

For example, my professional passions are:
✴Planning
✴Project Management
✴General Events Management

And my personal passions include:
✴Family
✴Writing
✴Travel

Combined with the values, these passions give us a better insight into where you want to be in the next 2, 5 or 10 years. And a strong personal brand is one of the factors that can help you get there faster!

The third step to figuring out your current personal brand is TALKING to your friends, family, and peers about how they see you.

🚩You may think that your own perception of yourself is what really matters here, but creating a personal brand is all about how others see you and what they think you stand for.

To be able to shift that perception you need to know what it is first!

So ask people about what they believe your values are, what passions energise you and what they would recommend you for in terms of your skills and personality traits. Try to figure out what people think you’re really good at.

If you find the idea of such conversation slightly embarrassing, send them a chat, text or an email – no eye contact makes it more bearable! 🙂😀

Another thing you can do to audit your current brand is to simply GOOGLE yourself and check your SOCIAL MEDIA score. Instagram, Google, Facebook and Twitter are great tools to measure the impact and influence you have on the social media platforms,  Expecially Google… well, you know – it’s kinda the centre of the world wide web.

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WHAT'S YOUR DESTINATION?

You have a pretty good grasp on the professional image you have at the moment and on the values and passions that give your life meaning.

So, where do you see yourself in 5 years?..

Yes, we all hate this question. But it only matters which path you take in life if you know where you want to get to in the end.

To achieve professional or personal goals, everything we do has to be in sync and powered by a well-defined purpose.

Let’s say you’re in sales right now but your dream is to open a cocktail shop. How can your personal brand help you in this new endeavour? By giving you a massive boost in credibility!

If you concentrate all your efforts in building your personal brand as an expert of artisan cocktail mixing, when you finally quit your job and dive headfirst into this new project, you’ll see many more doors open to you than you ever expected.

You can start shaping your brand by spending your spare time writing a personal blog on the art of making cocktails, by ensuring all your social media channels are in tune and you’re talking about this new-found passion of yours, by hosting cocktail tasting evenings at your place and making connections with the city’s best baristas.

Get out there, be seen, build credibility and let everyone know that you are a passionate expert in that field.

So, take a moment now to think about your ultimate goal and what kind of finale would make it all worth it. What’s your destination? Write it down.

In the next part,  we shall look at some simple yet effective tips that will help you develop your professional image and experience success in your professional life.