Whether you work by yourself or have a team of employees, as a small business you are going to have direct interaction with your clients. How do you want to be remembered in the minds of your customers? Your customers buy into YOU as much as they do your product and services.

“Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

It’s that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.” Tom Peters, FastCompany (source)

“Customers build an image of a brand as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon.” - Jeremy Bullmore

Continuing with my detailed review of Book Yourself Solid, the next couple of chapters are about building your personal brand and branding messages. I like how Michael breaks it down. There are two parts to your personal brand.

• What you do
• Why you do it

The key here is that you aren’t manufacturing your brand. No, instead you need to discover your brand and then work on articulating what you discover in a concise, clear and memorable fashion.

Build this into a short, memorable, one sentence message that explains what you do and why you do it and then repeat it everywhere. This is the classic elevator pitch. For me, my “elevator pitch” is:

I help small business owners put their business on auto-pilot so they can get their lives back.

Or, if I have to shorten it due to lack of time, I’ll just say, “I put small businesses on auto-pilot”, and at least tell them what I do.

How To Discover Your Personal Brand

I don’t typically like touchy-feely stuff, but that’s what discovering your brand is all about. It takes some deep soul searching. You need to uncover what is uniquely you. Just to get your juices flowing, here’s an exercise to get you started. Pull out some paper and pencil and jot down the answers to these questions. Answer them as quickly as you can without letting your inner editor interfere. You want what immediately comes to mind to just flow onto the page…

1. What do people always compliment you on?
2. What interesting hobbies or extra activities do you participate in?
3. If you didn’t have to go into the office today, what would you choose to do?

Great! Now, take out a fresh sheet of paper and again. At the top write, “I want to be remembered as the person that…”. Next, just start writing as fast as you can. Don’t think, just write. Let it flow. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling or logical flow. This is a powerful technique to just let your nearly sub-conscious mind go wild. Do that until you’ve filled the page.

Now for the hard part…

Look for common threads. Go through the answers to all of that and write down as many common things as you can. It’s not an easy process to connect the dots sometimes and it’s harder than it sounds. Silly isn’t it? That it should be so hard to really know yourself. Sometimes we are too close to our own problems so this may be a good point to get an outside opinion too.

Find a simple message that connects with who you are and seems to be the thread holding all of your answers together.

Articulating your brand to others

Another great tip from the book is when talking to others about what you do, reflect this personal branding. Don’t tell people your title when asked “what do you do”. Instead, engage in conversation that naturally brings out your unique brand message.

This same idea is echoed by Tom Peters in his article on personal branding he wrote for FastCompany….

“Your next step is to cast aside all the usual descriptors that employees and workers depend on to locate themselves in the company structure. Forget your job title. Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the standard rungs of progression you’ve climbed in your career up to now. Burn that damnable “ladder” and ask yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about? If you’re going to be a brand, you’ve got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value, that you’re proud of, and most important, that you can shamelessly take credit for.” - Tom Peters

I’m interested in what you, the reader, have as your personal branding message. Leave a comment and share with us. The more examples we have, the better.

Welcome back again!