Your Compounding Personal Brand

I first wrote about this on May 12, 2012 and it’s still important. In fact, it’s lightly more important than ever. What I’m talking about is the notion of personal brand. Last year, Whole Foods spent $113 million dollars on marketing. That’s $113 million dollars to cultivate an series of thoughts and images in your head when you hear the name “Whole Foods”.

Well, you don’t have to have a marketing budget in order to have a personal brand. In fact, you’ve been working on this brand your whole life whether you realize it or not.

What, then, is your personal brand?

If you could be a fly on the wall for a casual conversation amongst acquaintances when someone mentions your name, you’d know about your personal brand. If you could live inside someone’s mind when you came up in thought, you’d know about your personal brand. So, while you can make a case that social media is part of your personal brand, it’s important to note that “everything is everything” when it comes to the makings of your brand.

The scary side of this is that, yes, all of your human interactions, relationships, and actions have built your personal brand to what it is today, but there’s good news. This asset (if it is an asset and not a liability for you) cannot be overstated in its value. This is largely because your brand is compounding as networks of past positive experiences with you tend to validate your personal brand further.

Man: “Ah! Gary is so great!”

Woman: “Oh, isn’t he? We went to high school together and he was the nicest and was such a hard worker.”

Your personal brand precedes you in every room you walk in, every email your write, and every opportunity you wish for and it’s either helping you or hurting you. Oddly, most people with a poor personal brand will never be aware of the opportunities that don’t come their way because their personal brand kept it hidden. Instead they are left wondering why things never seem to go their way, yet things seem to always workout for Gary.

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach