Quick Career Coach, step 3: Establishing your personal brand

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I am the only Career Invention Coach in South Africa certified with master coaches, trainers and authors Pam Slim and Michele Woodward. This blog series outlines my approach to career coaching and gives self-helpers ideas for how to use their innate talents and life experiences to do great things at work.

You can think of your brand as being your ‘story’ or as career strategist Michele Woodward says, it’s “what people say about you.” This is a combination of what you put out there about yourself plus whatever impressions people have picked up from other sources such as the media, acquaintances and your competitors.

While a certain measure of your story is outside your control, you can help build your brand by developing – and consistently repeating – a succinct, powerful message about who you are.

When I coach clients on brand development I help them develop crystal clear answers to three core questions:

• What makes them unique, special, different from their competitors?
• What do they offer?
• Who do they offer it to?

I encourage them to think specifically, rather than generally, so they can picture in their minds exactly who their ideal client is and why that client would want to do business with them. Let me give you a couple of examples:

• A young startup graphic designer might say: I use my talent and energy to design attractive, functional and affordable websites for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
• An established life insurance company might say: With 40 years’ experience and offices in most cities in South Africa, we offer individual and corporate customers throughout the country trusted financial products and unparalleled service.

Rather than trying to be everything to everybody, I suggest clients think of their niche as being ‘an inch (or two) wide and a mile deep.’ With this knowledge they can then focus their marketing, customer segmentation and other efforts much more effectively. I then help them develop a physical ‘gut feel’ about what’s right for their brand and what isn’t, which is a fabulous tool for evaluating opportunities.

If defining your brand in this way makes you fear that you’ll miss out on a fringe group of potential customers, think of starting here, building something that plays to your core strengths and passions, and then leveraging that when you have the potential to expand into new markets.