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Images & Sound-Bytes of a Brand YOU Leader

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What’s Your Big Idea?

Personal Branding logo

Knowing your Big Idea , showing what you believe, and capitalizing on strengths, making a personal branding brochure have brought you 99% there. Let’s talk about how you might explain your personal brand using images and sound-bytes that people will remember.

Suppose you’re at a networking event and your conversation partner asks your opinion of what makes a true leader. Could you answer in a few words that show you know–because you are one?

Picture Yourself as a Leader

Leader Flame

Leadership is at the heart of every personal brand. You’ll be asked questions about your idea of leadership throughout your entire working career. You’ll want your own answer–one that is as unique as you, one that expresses what only you bring as a leader. That means the definition needs to come from YOU. You need a leadership brand that is as personal as developing your own logo might be.

Start with an Image of a Personal Hero

Pick a hero, real or fictional–living or not–someone you admire and aspire to be like. Choose one from history, your favorite superhero, or just make one up. Now imagine that leader on a quest–something larger than life–Marco Polo about to travel to the Far East, Joan of Arc about to lead an army. You get the idea.

Make a List of Sound Bytes

Picture that leader preparing to a take team on a mission. Make a list of what traits and strategies that leader uses. Write them down as a list of sound bytes. My list looks something like this.

A true leader
1. knows where the team is going and why the team is going there.
2. plans the operation before setting out.
3. explains the plan to the team–the team might need to improvise along the way.
4. delegates to each members’ strengths and skills so that every member feels a vital part of the mission’s success.
5. supports the team and gets the job done, without a thought of glory.
6. lights the way.

So What Was With the Picture?

I used the picture to see what a leader would do. Now the picture helps me remember the sound bytes on the list. Even better, when a question comes out of the blue, I can not only answer, I draw a picture of leadership for whomever I’m talking to. Folks might not remember all of the sound bytes, but the picture of my idea of leadership stays in their head, long after I’ve gone away.

That picture serves in another way too. I’ve internalized my answer so my conversation partner gets a chance to respond and be a pert of the conversation too–which I’ve found is always a nice gesture.

The 3 Big Ideas of Your Brand

Spend some time thinking about your brand. Make mental images of the traits you want people to understand and gather your sound bytes. Then you’ll be ready to draw anyone a picture of why you are a unique and valuable asset that they should be learning more about.

It’s not hard to do and it only works in your favor. You can promote your brand, your business, your blog the very same way. You could promote me too. Imagine that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Your Resume-The Brand YOU Brochure
Building a Personal Brand–YOU
Brand YOU–What’s the BIG IDEA?
Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool

Your Resume-The Brand YOU Brochure

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Forget the Rules

The rules are for everyone. Personal brand is about showing you are the only one.Somewhere along the line, you probably learned rules about writing resumes. What I’m about to tell you is going to break them. I like breaking rules, especially when that works in our favor. I don’t usually do it when it doesn’t.

You don’t need a resume anyway. You need something that works like one, but is more than that.

Get Rid of the List

It’s easy to think of a resume as a list – three suits, two blue, one gray, of what you’ve done and to write it off as a painful requirement of job acquisition. That’s a major missed opportunity. With a few tweaks, your resume can be a dynamic tool in your personal branding strategy.

Throw away the list as concept.

Think about Brand YOU and promotional tools.

You’re making a personal branding brochure. Just let other people think it’s a resume. They’ve been confused before.

A Personal Branding Brochure

Imagine that you’re a product — a Ferrari. Your resume is your specification sheet. Add some marketing copy, and you’re well on your way to a promotional brochure for that Ferrari. On my own resume I include the usual career experience with the chronological job history, but that is page 2.

On page 1, I include branding information built around my branding big idea – that I am a leader and a strategist with a proven track record and competencies in several key areas of publishing. I want the person reading my resume to read this first, to know what I can do before where I did it. The former is more important than the latter. As you read through, you might notice how I took the opportunity to further my brand identity by targeting first statement under each core competency.

Turn a resume into a personal branding brochure.

Use It as a Promotional Tool

Change the way you look at your resume, and you soon find a world of uses for it. Use it as you do your business card. Just this week I sent mine to a business friend with a note saying, ““Let me know if my voice might help you in the meetings with the publishers you told me about.” Design it into your blog’s About Page to let your readers know more about you, your brand, and your business.

I use my “branding brochure” a lot when I’m networking.

It’s one more way to let people know you’re not just another suit. You’re uniquely valuable.
Without you, the world would be missing something–the one and only Brand YOU.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Building a Personal Brand – YOU
Brand YOU – €œCapitalize on Your Strengths
Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool
Brand YOU – What’s the BIG IDEA?

BusinessWeekOnline Agrees

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I just got this in my BusinessWeekonline email.

It seems that Carmine Gallo, corporate presentation coach agrees. Click the screenshot to reach his presentation tips.

Thank you, Carmine. The facts are the facts. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Brand YOU–You Are What They See
Building a Personal Brand–YOU

Brand YOU–You Are What They See

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Covers Sell Books

People say, Don‚’t judge a book by its cover. People judge books by covers. Covers sell books. We only have so much time to look at books, and the cover is what gets our attention. This photo lets you know how important a cover can be. As a publisher, I’d edit that old advice to say, “Judge a book by its cover, but also judge the book builder too.

A book cover makes a promise about what you will find when you open the book.

Your image works the same way for you.

What’s Your Cover?

What people see about you, your first impression, your image, is like the book cover to your personal brand. Your first impression literally makes a mental image. Your image makes a silent promise about who you are and what people can count on when they get to know you. That mental image lasts. Pictures stay longer than words.

When there’s a question about what to believe, your image might just tip the balance. That’s a powerful reason to be sure that the big idea of your brand carries through into all things that people see around you. Here’s a checklist that might help you make sure your image supports your personal brand.
For the sake of this checklist let’s imagine that you want to be known as one who is always on top of information.

  • Your personal image. Do you dress the part? Do the clothes you wear and your haircut look pulled together? Do you sit and stand like one who is always ready to take notes? Have you got the right energy level? Do you carry the tools you need? Notebook, pens, list of phone extensions to use when outside your office? When you’re asked, can you look things up and find them?
  • Your workspace. Is your workspace organized? Is your computer desktop organized too? Have you put the things you use most often closest to where you use them? Have you placed the things people are likely to ask for in a place where you can find them quickly? When you stand at your doorway, does your space look like the workspace of one who handles information well?
  • Your skills. Have you mastered information software programs, such as spreadsheets and databases that might be useful in your job? Do you know more than usual references that people might use to answer questions that come up?

Once you start thinking in this direction, you’ll start to see that everything you do is an opportunity to enhance the big idea of your personal brand. It’s not so hard to develop habits that form around your big idea. That’s the key learning to live your brand.

People do judge books by the promise of the cover. Make a promise they will value. One that you will keep–and they’ll notice it for sure.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
Brand YOU – What’s the BIG IDEA?
Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool
Building a Personal Brand YOU

Brand YOU–What’s the BIG IDEA?

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What’s Your Big Idea?

Personal Branding logo

Now that you know how to capitalize on your strengths and make your weaknesses irrelevant, you can work on the big idea of your personal brand.
What’s the big idea? People talk about the big idea of someone’s personal brand quite often really. You’ve probably even made big idea statements yourself. They sound like these.

  • Call Mario. He can do anything.
  • That Vanessa, she’s so sweet.
  • If you want it organized, Anne’s the one.
  • Martin’s a whiz. He’ll have this figured out in minutes.
  • I don’t know about Cat. She can’t find anything. Look at her desk.

There’s no question that folks who make such statements have a big idea about the people they’re describing. The descriptions might be accurate, or they might not be. The point is that the people talking believe them. The people being described have communicated those traits strongly over time.

The big idea of your personal brand is the most powerful point of your unique value. It’s the one sentence that folks can believe in it and can share with others easily. As I said earlier

Everything about you contributes to your personal brand–everything you say or don’t say, what you wear, your tone of voice, the look of your space, the look on your face, the way you shake hands. The quality of your work is an immense part of your brand, but not, by any means, all of it. Even there it matters whether it’s on time, done with friendliness, with teamwork, with innovation and flexibility.

I Promise

Now is the time to decide the answer to this question

If you were known for one attribute, skill, or competency what would you want it to be?

It’s a tough question, I know. However once you decide, you will have found your big idea–the focus of your personal brand. That will be what everyone sees when they see you, your work, your signature. It’s the promise that you stand for. Think of your big idea as a promise that you know you will always keep.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool

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Strength and Weakness Assessment

Personal Branding logo

Here’s a tool to help you assess what you have to work with.

Capitalizing on My Strengths

  • What am I asked to teach others?

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  • What responsibilities are delegated to me?

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  • What kinds of meetings and tasks am I asked to lead?

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  • What special skills do I have that others rely on?

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  • What parts of my job would be hardest to fill?

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  • What traits make me a valuable member of the team?

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  • What are the things that only I can do?

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How does each strength meet a need in the marketplace?

Strength _________________________________________________________

Means that ________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

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Making My Weaknesses Irrelevant

  • What weaknesses do I have that correspond to my strengths?

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  • Who might I talk to that has a strength where I have a weakness?

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  • When might I do the following?

    • Volunteer for jobs that play to my strengths.

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    Find opportunities to learn about shoring up my weaknesses.

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    Find people to work with who have strengths that balance my weaknesses.

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    Remind myself to check tasks for what strengths and weaknesses I’ll be using.

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My Personal Brand

With what I already know about capitalizing on my strengths and weaknesses, I can say this about my personal brand.

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This is one kind of assessment tool you might use to get ideas from your head onto the page where you can look at them to make decisions about what to keep and what goes away.

Like any great city builder, you want your personal brand set on a foundation of concrete, not on sand. You can’t promote yourself, your brand, or your business, until you know who you are. If you take the time to think through these questions you’ll be farther than most folks are.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Building a Personal Brand–YOU
Brand YOU–Capitalize on Your Strengths
Brand YOU–Making Your Weaknesses Irrelevant