Where Do You Stand With Your Brand?

"We all have bears that chase us. Oftentimes they're imaginary, but imaginary bears are real and that's a real problem because it creates real stress."

If you don’t think you have a personal brand, think again. You are your brand, and your brand is you. That means everyone has a brand. It is what people describe you as when you are not there. If you don’t feel like you have a brand, that just means that you are not taking control of the narrative.

What if I told you that no one cared what you do? What if that was true? To a large degree it is true. People don’t care what you do. Instead, they care about the problem that you solve. If you are going to clarify your vision and what you want your brand to look like in the future, a great place to start is identifying the problem that you solve. The 3-1-3 ® Method allows you to go out and explain who you are in three sentences, down to one sentence, then onto three words. Whether you're talking to someone in person, online, or over the phone, this process will help you pique the interest of the people you’re speaking with so they are more interested in learning more about you and what you do. This is much better than the alternative: selling them on exactly what it is you do and giving them too much information up front.

Your bios may just be the most important part of your entire online presence. Most people think that when you see someone online for the first time, you need to know about how great they are at what they do. It’s important to be great at what you do, but that’s just one single component of the matter. What people are looking for is a lot simpler than that. They want to make an emotional connection to the person they are going to talk to, follow, learn from, meet or get treatment from. Then after they get that out of the way, they don’t really care if you are the best or not. They just want to know whether or not you could help them solve their problem.

Once you have clarity on your Vision using the 3-1-3 ®, it is time to start sharing your Voice. This means creating content with your expertise through writing, videos, and/or imagery. Want to know a secret about content creation? Don’t ask, “What do I want to promote?” Instead, ask, “What do people who require my services want or need to hear?”

With your Vision in position and your Voice taking the form in strategic content creation, it is time to turn up the Volume. Volume is all about the amplification of your content so more people see it. Most content creators feel so much frustration after they start putting their material on the internet. They feel like they spend so much time creating something, for only five people to see it. When you think of how much time it truly takes to create something of quality, you can feel the frustration that one experiences when very few people get to appreciate that content.

Once you have built an online presence and you are creating content and syndicating it across multiple platforms, you will start to come up in searches for your expertise. People will begin to recognize you as a thought leader in your space, and will start to reach out to you. Some might want to interview you for a major publication like Forbes, Fortune, or Entrepreneur. Others might ask you to speak at conferences. You will gain true fans who want to follow you, and they will start to share your content with their networks. These are all forms of Validation, and this is where you start to see the power of the personal brand. Explore how to use the validation to earn more opportunity and accolades. Soon, your biggest problem will be dealing with all of the inbound requests. This is a good problem to have.

I love books. They help me to tap into the expertise and life experiences of others, so that I can stand on the shoulders of giants. I have selected a handful of my favorite books that have helped me to find my vision and voice as well as better understand how to increase the volume of my content, and ultimately earn the validation that comes with building a strong, authentic, and reputable personal brand.

If you are anything like me, you spend a lot of time traveling. This could be in planes, trains and/or automobiles. I leverage my travel time to listen to podcasts that exposes me to new ideas and introduces me to people who are not yet on my radar. See below for some of my shows, as well as others that I regularly listen to, so that it keeps me sharp and and gets me motivated.