#50 - Building Your Brand
Making friends is hard. Making good friends is even harder. Many people waste their time and effort trying to build a reputation that everyone will like. What a waste of time! If there are certain kinds of people or certain “deal breakers” that you wouldn’t want to be friends with anyway, why waste effort trying to make them like you? Instead, focus on building the reputation of the person that you want to be and people will be drawn to that—the kind of people that you’ll get along with.
Why do you know that you would prefer a Kleenex rather than a Brawny paper towel for blowing your nose? You know this because of the reputation that Kleenex has. In the same way, people are less trusting of a Doctor covered in tattoos or a mechanic wearing a suit—we simply don’t believe that they’re competent in their respective fields. This basic truth of branding applies to your life also—building and protecting your personal brand is invaluable in being successful and getting the things you want. Do you think the coach is going to try extra hard to help that athlete that is always talking when the coach is trying to talk? No, because to the coach it doesn’t seem like that athlete really cares about getting better.
We’ve talked about direction; our goals, our passions, what we want to get out of life. But all of that can be jeopardized by a poor brand. If we want to be successful in the things that are important to us, it means making a commitment to our brand. Warren Buffet once said, “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Your reputation is dependent on your actions, but not only the result of your actions but also how people perceive them. It seems unfair that our own brand would hinge on someone else’s perceptions, but unfortunately it is reality. We all know someone that everyone’s parents trust—anytime “so-and-so” is involved, the parents seem to be at ease that everyone will be smart/safe/etc. I’m sure you also know the polar opposite; the person that could organize a casual bonfire get-together that leaves the parents worried about a wildfire burning half the town. The intention could be simple and fun, but the personal brand of the person organizing can have drastic effects on how people perceive the event. Perhaps that individual’s brand is based on multiple foolish choices, but it could be the result of only one careless decision or a wildly exaggerated story. Think about the athlete that isn’t paying attention again. The actions of that athlete have given them a reputation that isn’t going to help them improve.
I don’t want my brand to get in the way of me doing the things I want to do and getting the things I want. In fact, I am willing to invest time and effort in my brand/reputation so that I am more likely to get the things I want, more likely to experience success, and more likely to get friends that I would want. That’s the good news: you can build your personal brand to be whatever you want it to be.
Does your social media represent the person you are/want to be?
Does the way you act and look make it more or less likely that you get the things that are important to you?
Do you like the person that is your reputation? Does it accurately reflect you?
Does your social media seem like it would attract the kind of people you want to be friends with?
As Warren Buffet said, thinking about the reality of personal brand is the first step in having the reputation that will help you rather than hurt. Live the life that you are proud of—let your actions be ones that you want people to know you for. Are you happy with your personal brand? Do you think that people know you for the right things? If you have any questions about how to build your brand, let me know!