The last three months, I have been learning a lot about creating my personal brand. What does this mean? Some people don’t like the term “brand” when talking about themselves. They feel it makes them sound too “businessy”. It turned me off because it made me feel like I was selling something to someone (which, in a way, I am. But more on that in a later post).
No sweat if you don’t like the term. Call it “personal reputation” if you’d like. It doesn’t matter what you call it, the important thing to remember is that you have one. Whether you want it or not, you have one.
What is your brand?
Your brand is the perception that people have of you after looking you up online or talking with other people about you. You may have heard the quote before –
“The customer’s perception is your reality”
This same is true when trying to get hired, or any time you’re working with others. If you’re Joe Shmo, who would do anything to help anyone in any situation, but when people look you up online, all they see is status updates of you making fun of people and pictures of you playing video games, your reputation is not going to say “I can help you”. It’s instead going to scream: “I LIKE TO TEAR OTHER PEOPLE DOWN TO MAKE MYSELF FEEL BETTER”
It doesn’t matter if that’s not your personality, that’s what your personality is to them.
I think some people don’t like the idea of creating a personal brand because they think it makes them look pretentious. “Look at me. I’m doing these things. I’m better than you.” I struggled with this at the beginning too. I didn’t want to talk about all that I did because I didn’t want people to think I thought I was really cool or something.
The problem is, if you don’t take control of your brand, what’s to stop you from ending up like Joe Shmo over here? If you don’t let people see what’s important to you and what you believe is important for them to know about you, how will they know if they want to work with you?
Who is your brand for?
I think it’s pretty easy to see the first kind of person your personal brand is for. Basically, anyone who might be interested in working with you. Whether that be a business looking to hire, someone wanting to collaborate, or even people looking up to you as a mentor or teacher.
People who see your brand and get excited about working with you.
Here’s the other person your brand is for: people who hate you and would never want to work with you.
“Wait, what? Why does anybody hate me? I don’t want to offend anybody! I want to work with everyone!”
This is such an important aspect of your brand that I think a lot of people don’t even realize. It’s nice to think that if you took all the right steps that people wouldn’t hate you and you could make peace with everyone, but the truth of the matter is, if you’re actually making an impact, there’s going to be somebody on the opposite side of that impact who doesn’t like what you’re doing.
Take Praxis for instance. Praxis is a company that was built to help young people discover personal freedom and go after real jobs and real opportunities without accumulating massive debt going to college. That’s perfect, right? Who wouldn’t want more freedom for young people? Well, most of the college world for starters. Anyone who is used to and believes in college being the best opportunity for students is instantly going to be turned off to Praxis.
Of course, some people will change their mind and decide differently later on, but for the most part, Praxis probably doesn’t care to interest the people who believe that college is the only way to gain an education. They’re much more interested in talking to the people who are discontent with college and are looking for alternative ways to learn.
Having a clear personal brand is just as much about turning away the people you don’t want to work with as it is signaling value to the people you do want to work with.
Don’t purposely try and turn people off, but if something is important to you, don’t be afraid to put that out there.
Be true to your brand.