A Brand Called YOU - The Secret to Business Success is YOU
By Bernard Chanliau, Tuesday 05 December, 2006
YOU are the CEO of YOU Inc.
YOU are also the product and the business, but you may not be the whole team that will make you successful Just how can managing your identity create more impact for your career and business success?
Lorna McDowell spent 15 years marketing some of the world’s most successful companies from start-up to major success, before a career and life change took her full-time into the psychology and executive coaching seven years ago. She explores one of the most pertinent issues in the business of talent management: how to promote self-mastery in the workplace.
It is a new brand world. There’s no doubt that personal development is one of the world’s fastest growing businesses today and the number of products and services on offer is now immense to the point of being overwhelming. For some it is still too ‘touchy feely’, for others it is the secret of their success. And while, more people than ever before are talking about leaving their jobs to become yoga teachers and life coaches, this is not necessarily the answer, for the challenges of managing the self still remain and there is still a living to be made which requires grafting … and much more, because you cannot escape YOU.
It is vital to be able to self promote in order to be successful in whatever field you choose. Beyond the glossy brochures and fancy websites, there is something much closer to home to look at YOU. How you see yourself, how others perceive you, the external image and the internal framework that directs your presence and actions. Not just survival of the fittest, it is survival of the smartest and the most emotionally intelligent. It takes 5 seconds to make a lasting impression.
As a coach to many first time entrepreneurs, I usually find that most clients who have just left the corporate field feel absolutely naked in their identity without the comfort of a known brand and organisation behind them. Creating their own brand from scratch, for themselves by themselves, scares the living daylights from them at first. Why? Not just the mammoth task involved and time to develop a brand, but the fact that it means exposing themselves, who they are and what they stand for in front of people they don’t know and worse still, in front of people they do know and used to work for! The result though is a major journey of self-actualisation.
What I have found is that insecurities of self-promotion in such clients began in the corporate jobs, when self promotion was frowned on as being ‘ego-driven’ or too exposing ‘in case of failure’. Recognition came through jumping through hoops, achieving corporate goals, meeting targets etc, rather than through being a great person with a strong magnetic identity. This can lead people to identify themselves through what the company does or their role in the company, rather than who they are as individuals in the world, creating a completely co-dependent and unhealthy attachment to job security in order to feel like a worthy person. This is sustainable for a period of time, but at some point, usually in the late 30s and early 40s, feelings of ‘There must be more than this!?” occur, rather like waking up and realising you have been married to an alcoholic for many years. You jump when the company jumps, but the YOU is not YOU, it has become enmeshed with someone else’s image and drama.
So how can we re-create this journey of self-actualisation in the workplace rather than having the most talented people leave? To really win the hearts and minds of your staff, you have to encourage them to be all that they can and encourage individual identities to flourish. Take them on a journey of discovering who YOU is … quite apart from the workplace, redefining themselves, finding a deeper meaning to their purpose in life … and then healthily weave individual identity and strengths to business needs.
Key steps on the Journey?
# What’s your story: great characters have compelling anecdotes and challenge stories behind them, map your past, present onto your future – what have been your great personal achievements, who inspires you, who has believed in you?
# When have you felt in a ‘peak performance zone’? What environments / influences do you need around you to feel amazing?
# Who/what challenges you
Questions to ask yourself:
# What are you motivations for being in business and where do they stem from? Do you need recognition and ‘fame’, are you in it for the pursuit of knowledge, or is it a simple necessity for keeping the roof over your head? I figured out that throughout my career I had a massive need for others to recognise me, which stemmed from an emotionally absent father, which sought me to take on challenging roles that would cause others to give me feedback all the time. In latter days, I have become fascinated by parallel processes between my business and my self realisation. In developing my business I have rediscovered my passions, and my main motivation in business today is realising my life path of enlightenment, self mastery, wisdom and moving towards even greater emotional freedom. I teach other what I have most needed to learn myself!
# Who are you? How do you define yourself? What makes you stand apart from the crowd? Stripping the product and service aside, what is the special unique slant that you give to it (because you do give it a slant, even if you are not aware of it!). Many people look absolutely blank or confused when I ask them this. As Ram Das says, “It is YOU who defines the “I” when you say “I. Knowing how to define yourself, over and above your role as mother, father, and daughter, lawyer etc, is critical on the path to developing clarity in your business. You must know your impact. If you are not clear, about whom you are, how will you customers find clarity? Coca cola is very clear about what it is and does not aspire to be Sprite or Fanta or a mix of several now and again.
# What are you passionate about? A clue to beginning to define yourself, is to understand what causes you to feel passionate, to feel ‘in the zone’? What have been your peak passionate times in your life and why? For instance, I realised that I am at my happiest when I’m brainstorming ideas and bringing concepts together with others. Customers tell me that I energise and inspire them through this creative process. That is why I was led into marketing and now even as a coach I find that ‘my brand’ has been developed around trailblazing new areas and putting a creative slant onto the mundane, helping others explore their creative resources. So I would define myself as a creative motivator and change-catalyst and that crosses every role I have ever played in the theatre of my life. If you’re not sure, ask others to tell you what makes you stand out or think back to times when you’ve felt yourself to be in peak energy. I have also found past life regression to be useful in this respect to examine patterns between lifetimes.
E-motive Connections with Customers
Secondly, understand the connections and movements of energy you make with your customers/colleagues. What conscious and unconscious messages do you give out? Examine, for a moment, your own buying patterns? Do you tend to buy brands that you know and which brands are you attracted to? Does advertising sell to you and how does it do that? Whose opinion do you trust? Even when you go by referral, what is it that convinces you that this is a product or service that you need? What is your motivation for purchase - self-nurture, pain-relief, boredom, learning etc? What you will find is that all of these questions break down into emotional or inspirational states. Things that we move away from or towards. Emotion is simply energy in motion – it comes from the Greek symbol E that stands for energy, so that E-motion is moving energy, a sign that something is happening.
Questions to ask yourself:
# How do customers perceive and experience you? Do you know what customer experience you create from discovery through to post-purchase? From the moment, someone comes across your name to after they have purchased? Many of us tend to focus just on the core purchase or treatment time, but there is a whole decision making process ahead of this and after this, which determines whether a customer will purchase in the first place, or come back to you again?
# How emotive is your communication style? Both in terms of marketing (logo, brochures, adverts etc) and your staff communication style? Does it ‘move energy’ or does it leave it lying stagnant or worse still, drain it?!
# How confident do you feel about yourself as a vendor? Do financial transactions cause you anxiety ? Do you therefore transfer this self-doubt to your customers? Many therapists complain about having to deal with money at all … it’s something that ‘gets in the way’ of the customer relationship. This is a major concern as the money represents your value and any anxiety you feel around the transaction may indicate an insufficiency in valuing yourself. Money is simply an energy of value, not a dirty word!
# If the product is essentially, YOU, just how clear and present are YOU – and your brand style - in the way you sell yourself? From the way, you dress to the way you answer the phone to the consultation that you give and how you follow up.
Essentially, you are selling an inspirational promise that evokes emotions and desires in your customers: it’s not just the product or service that the customer buys, or even the personal relationship, it’s a combination of things that create awareness, interest, desire, need, trust, a feel-good experience and tangible benefits, most of which happens through movement of thoughts and emotions.
You are branded, branded, branded, branded.
Yes you are branded, whether you like it or not. And I’m not talking about whether your trainers do or don’t have a swoosh on them, or where you buy your coffee or whether you wear a cosy rainbow woolly jumper. Humans make judgements, that’s what we do. Fact. And we make them fast, in less than 5 seconds. Even the most Rogerian of therapists, is still a human that does make judgements, hard as they try to put them aside.
Personal branding is about being truly comfortable with who you are, about being clear who you are and embracing your shadows. It’s not about being perfect or showing off, it’s just be very present and expressive in who you are that enables you to connect meaningfully and purposefully with your clients/colleagues/stakeholders.
Years ago, I was introduced to a concept called "The Slight Edge.” In business, in sports, in education and in all walks of life, the organisation or person who wins - winning being defined as beating their own previous best and not beating others - is not 100 hundred times better than others in anything but they tend to be a little better at the important things.
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.
It is that simple -- and that hard. And that inescapable
Lorna McDowell will be facilitating two courses entitled A Brand Called YOU: weekend intensive 26-28 January in Co Galway and 3 month group coaching course on Personal Branding in Business (3 Fridays February to April) in Athlone, starting Friday 9 February. 1-1 coaching programmes also available which follow a 3-month process of a minimum of 6 x 2 hour sessions. For more information please contact Lorna on 091 782826 or download our brochure.
A 1-day workshop is also to be held in Dublin in partnership with the Marketing Institute Ireland in early 2007, please visit www.mii.ie for details.
