The Power of Personal Branding | Crafting Your Professional Identity

Whether it’s for your business, your professional identity or even in your personal life, the power of your personal branding directly affects your level of success. The more powerful your personal brand is, the more you will be able to achieve.

What is the point of personal branding?

Your personal brand, at the most basic level, is what people think of you and about you. Mousy, confident, awkward, charismatic, aloof and admirable are all words that can describe a personal brand. Each one comes with an attribution of skill and competence, accurately or not, which affects the opportunities that come to you. This is why it’s so important to take the time to craft your personal brand. Making sure people think of you in a way that aligns with who you are authentically and supports the impact you want to make in the world, increases your odds for success. 

Once your personal brand is defined, it will guide your in-person interactions, professional online presence, brand messaging and your social media branding. The more consistent you are the more powerful your brand becomes. 

What are the advantages of personal branding?

The advantages of personal branding are too many to create an exhaustive list, but below are a few of the most compelling things a strong personal brand delivers. 

• Credibility influences a person’s decision to believe in what you say or what you can do. The more competent you are, shown through the actions you take, the more credible you become. Without credibility, your ability to rise is severely impacted. 
• Trust is another person’s belief that you will do the right thing. It is a measure of your integrity and the level of safety people feel when they are with you. The higher the level of trust, the more likely a person will be to follow you as a leader or work with you as an entrepreneur or business.
• An exclusive niche is a key part of your personal brand. Once you find and establish your niche, people will see you as the go-to expert in that area because you excel in it, which gives you a competitive advantage. 
• Opportunities naturally come to you when you establish credibility, develop trust and have a clearly defined niche because people can see what you do best; they know that you are fully capable of doing it; and they trust you to deliver the result or outcome they want. That makes people want to work with you, increasing the number of opportunities you will receive. 

How do you build your personal brand?

Building a personal brand takes time and focus, as well as the understanding that every experience you have will help to define it further. This is why the consistent evaluation of your progress and how it applies to your brand is so important. However, at the core of your personal brand (excluding any major life-changing events) there are three things that usually remain consistent.

Your values: Whether you realize it or not, your values guide the decisions you make and the way you show up in the world. Unless you define them and actively use them to guide your choices, you will lack the understanding about the drivers behind your actions. Additionally, you run the risk of degrading the consistency that builds trust in your personal brand. Your values are the foundation of your personal brand and should consistently be at the forefront of everything you do if you want to build a powerful one. 

Your story: Why you do what you do, how you got on your path and the obstacles you have faced are the things that will connect you to your tribe. This is why it’s so important to detail your story. It will help you get better clarity about the changes you want to make in the world and why you want to make them, which will in turn, make it easier to connect to the people that matter most to you and your business. 

Your purpose: The impact you want to make in the world is your purpose. The more clarity you have about your purpose, the easier it is to develop your brand message, which will connect you to the people you want to help.

Brand consistency: Once you define and develop your values, your story and your purpose, brand consistency is EVERYTHING! We don’t trust people who say one thing and do another. We also don’t want to work with brands that lack reliability. Staying true to your brand, especially when things aren’t going well, is the key to building a powerful personal brand that people can depend on. 

Building a powerful personal brand will give you a competitive advantage. Working with a Master Mentor who has helped other professionals, entrepreneurs and business owners develop successful brands, will help you accelerate your results. I love working with my mentoring clients in helping them define, develop, build and impact the world with their personal brands. In fact, many of them call me “Mama Lechter.”  Angela created a new personal brand statement for me a few years ago to “A Legacy of Building Legacies!” If you would like to fast-track your personal brand development, apply for my Master Mentor Program today! I would love to work with you to create the success you deserve.