8 STEPS TO BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

The need to have a personal brand cannot be overemphasized, particularly in an increasingly competitive environment where the economic law of scarce resources and endless needs and wants can’t be truer.

The population of the world daily experiences geometric growth, while the resources needed to meet the needs of the population is actually reducing by the day.

Personal branding therefore is no longer negotiable or a luxury. It is a NEED.

Survival of the fittest can as well start reading….”survival of the best branded”.

While personal branding may sound like the exclusive reserve of the highly intellectual or exposed or rich, it actually is something anybody, irrespective of background, education or culture can practice.

An understanding and aggressive implementation of the eight steps below would no doubt, put one in good stead, to build his or her personal brand.

1.      Discover yourself. One of Plato’s most profound quotes is “Man, know thyself”. That it is important for man to discover self would be putting it mildly. Self-discovery is everything. Why? Because, without self-discovery, there can’t be self-mastery. And without self-mastery, there can’t be true mastery of any other subject, or of the essence of life and existence.   To discover yourself, an easy and popular framework to use would be the SWOT analysis tool. SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat. While Strength and Weakness are internal factors, Opportunity and Threat are external factors. But, like I said earlier, it is important that one first understands oneself, obviously commencing this journey to self-discovery with SW, before proceeding to OT. 

    Your strengths refer to those things you are extremely good at, that you have easy understanding and execution of. It refers to your talent, gifts and innate abilities. 

     Your Weakness refer to that thing or those things you know you are not exactly good at. An understanding of this is important, so you don’t bark up the wrong tree. 

    Your opportunity refers to the fertile ground where you can start sowing your seeds, the identified gaps that your identified strength and skill set can bring value to fill. 

     The Threat refer to that thing or factor that has the capacity of nullifying or mitigating your efforts.

2.   GET EDUCATIOIN/TRAINING: Upon doing the SWOT analysis and discovering self, the next step would be to start learning more about the discovered you, more about your discovered strength, learning about how to exploit the discovered opportunities. This could be through formal or informal education. It could be online or offline. It could be through graduating from a university or as a footballer, graduating from a football academy. The beauty of this part is that it paves way for the third step you need to take.

3.  GAIN EXPERIENCE: Having gotten the education/training, the next logical step would be to gain experience. Notice I did not say ‘get a job’. It was not an error. What this means is that you need to start practicing everything you have learnt at school. Whether you are paid to do or not, is immaterial. The emphasis here is to hone your skill. No matter how well a student fighter pilot performs at military aviation school, he is still a student until he actually flies a fighter jet in a real life aerial battle.  I put it to you that a 3 star fighter pilot with 2 years real battle experience is way more dependable than a 5 star student fighter pilot who has only being doing simulations without actually being in a real war where he is shot at with real missiles and has to maneuver for dear life, and shoot down the enemy pilot.

4.   BECOME AN AUTHORITY:     You can’t become an authority without experience. Having gained experience, and practiced for long hours, and getting the 10,000 hours under your belt, you clearly become an authority. Being an authority means becoming the best in your field. It means becoming a reference for other practitioners in your field.

5.   KEEP A RECORD: It is important you keep a record because at many times in your life, there would be need to verify your claim to fame, your pedigree, your achievements, the process, your journey and everything that got you to where you presently are. Skeptics, journalists, regulatory bodies, the government, mentees, and the general public would need to know about you. There is a need to be able to clearly articulate your story. How do you keep a record? There are two ways to keep a record….Online and Offline. Online, you keep your record via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, websites, and every other platform that leaves a digital imprint. This would ensure that your achievements cannot be debated, denied or disparaged. It also ensures that everybody has access to it for objective public opinion. Offline, you keep your records by clear documentation in your resume, or writing a book. It is important to be able to link everything stated offline to its online version, for the sake of objective and independent third-party authentication.

6.    ADVERTISE YOURSELF: In advertising, a famous quote reads “selling without advertising is like winking at a woman in the dark. You know you are winking at her, but she can’t see it” So, what’s the point of going through steps one to five above if nobody knows about it, if nobody can learn from it, if it is not usable by the next generation. You need to aggressively advertise yourself. How do you do this? By seizing every opportunity to share knowledge, to solve problems, to contribute to intellectual discourse. You ensure you have presence in industry activities, you have an active, value-adding social media presence, you have an active community involvement in any and every activity relating to your field.

7.   BUILD RELATIONSHIPS: Your network equals to your net-worth. The major difference between the highly successful and the average, mediocre person is in the value (not volume) and quality (not quantity) of the strategic relationships they have. Success is built on relationships. DEPENDENCE as a child must always give way to INDEPENDENCE as an adult, and if one is wise, to INTERDEPENDENCE. This is where the law of leverage kicks in.

8.   GIVE BACK: A mentor who I hold in high esteem, is fond of always saying “Success without succession planning is Failure” Nothing is truer. Growing up, we all were beneficiaries of many things from parents, family, society, and the government. If we must become an enduring brand, we need to start giving back. All the global and local brands we adore today were all mostly built sacrificially by an individual or a family. But long after they have passed on, their legacies have been passed on to us, ensuring there are jobs for people, brands for consumers, case-studies for business schools, and reason for aspiring entrepreneurs to believe in the validity of their dreams. 

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