If you think talent alone will create success,
you need to read on…
I spent over 15 years helping others to market and promote their businesses, and yet when it came to my own work, I fell prey to the same mistakes I had seen others make for years and I’ll bet you’re making too if you’re reading this.
I knew I offered a valuable service that was far and above the service most of my competition offered. And I offered it at a very reasonable price. In my mind, clients should be knocking down my door. I shouldn’t need pushy sales pitches or paid marketing. My pride and confidence in the quality of this work said, “the quality should be enough.”
But in today’s market, it’s not…
You have to find a way to set yourself apart from your competition, BEFORE your audience tries your service or you might never get the chance. You have to be able to gain their confidence from the start. How do you do this? By developing your personal brand.
Think of Oprah Winfrey, her reputation precedes any new venture. Although her success was never attributed to her ability as a book reviewer, because of the strength of her personal brand, her Book Club was a success from the get-go, jettisoning hundreds of relatively unknown authors into notoriety. People trust her opinion. Her brand is caring, relating, and insightful. She is seen as an incredibly successful version of “every-woman”.
Yeah, but that’s Oprah, you say. How do I build a brand? I’m just me. I’m no Media Mogul.
Well, neither was Oprah, Madonna, Bill Gates, or Roseanne Arnold for that matter, when they started….The difference is, they got an accurate view of what made them unique, and from those unique qualities, which of those were significant to their audience, and pushed those traits. Roseanne became the Queen of White Trash. Her biting sarcasm and bawdy laugh became trademarks instead of liabilities. She leveraged these attributes into true "brand assets”.
Try a test to see the strength of individual brands. Pick someone famous. Ask any member of their target audience (someone who would be familiar with their work) to list 5 adjectives that describe the successful professional. I guarantee you will get at least 3 out of the 5 adjectives that are very similar to the responses of everyone else. These are their core brand attributes, the traits that make the professional memorable and significant in the minds of the audience.
So how about you? What makes you special?
Most of us either don’t know, or are too modest to say, and that
is what keeps you from the success you deserve…
If you are tired of working hard for little reward, you need to get an
accurate picture of how others perceive you, strengths and weaknesses
alike, and aggressively promote the positive.
That is counter-culture to many of us, even though there are countless
examples to show us that it is true. Think of any successful business-person
you can, famous or not…I’ll bet you know EXACTLY why they’re
successful. They don’t hide it. They flaunt it.
Trust me, I know this one. I’ve struggled with this too. Women are notoriously shy about their professional assets. I’ve got an IQ of 140, an aptitude for creative strategy and analysis that scores off the charts in every assessment I’ve ever taken, and until I embraced the essential truths of personal branding, I had never mentioned these assets specifically in a job interview, a client sales meeting, or service brochure. I figured my work would show it. But I wasn't thinking that I needed to flaunt it in the first place to "GET" the work. You tell me. Do you think these attributes make a difference to the buying audience? Sure they do!
So why aren’t you making the most of your assets? Why aren’t you making millions off the skills you’ve worked hard to cultivate? You deserve it.
If you're ready to take responsibility for your own success, and willing to push past the barriers of your comfort zone, keep reading. We've got work to do...