The hardest part of personal branding is defining your brand. Your brand should be a statement of your value – how you can help others address opportunities or solve problems that matter to them.
As part of defining your value, you need to think about your mission – the things you do – but I don’t think you should write a mission statement. I do, however, think you should try to develop a statement of purpose – why you do the the things you do.
Even though I had been purpose driven for a number of years, I still struggled to put my purpose down in words. You probably will too, and that’s OK. Look in your rear view mirror back at all the different things you have been doing and see if you can find a common thread running between them. That might be your purpose. And think about when you said “no” to an opportunity, because the reason you turned something down might be that it did not resonate with your purpose.
Do not let the difficulty in describing your purpose deter you. It might take some time, but it’s a valuable effort and worth the struggle.
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Personal Branding: Is Your Cart Before Your Horse?
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Bret, I love the idea of a statement of purpose. I think that we should be teaching our kids about statement of purpose at an early age. Think of what I could have accomplished if I had identified my statement of purpose before the age of 20, 30….39!!!
When my son gets older, I am not only going to ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, but also have him think about what his statement of purpose might be. Laying the ground work for the future. Then, when he becomes a teenager and gets presented with all the teenager “situations”…. maybe, just maybe, he will run his response to these situations against his statement of purpose before he behaves badly.
Thanks for the post. Some great food for thought!
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 am
That’s a great idea, Sharon, to start talking to our young folks about purpose. As you know, I think it is a powerful driver of behavior. As I think back to when I was a teen, I think was purpose driven more than goal driven, even though I had no idea of the concept at that time. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Bret
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