Who are you?
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Let’s get a big lie out of the way: branding is not an activity. It’s an outcome.
You have a brand whether you like it or not. And whether you’ve tried to or not.
The people you work with and talk to on a regular basis have already formed an opinion about you. They choose whether or not they are going to do business with you.
People make decisions based on stories: to some extent, they are built with facts. To a much larger extent, stories are built with feelings. How someone feels about you: that’s your brand.
The way you present yourself and the work that you do is an expression of storytelling. You are telling a story every day. You are either building that brand upwards. Or you are sending it to the basement.
If you are a designer and are meticulous in how you define the design problem that your client has hired you to solve, you are telling a story about your dedication to craft.
If you are an account manager and your clients, when they call you, are greeted by a rambling voicemail message that forces the caller to wait up to a minute before being able to leave a message, you are telling a story about how you value time.
If you are in sales and you invest in professionally crafted case studies that put in the forefront a client’s problem and the way it got solved (as opposed to a lot of self-congratulatory talk about yourself), you are telling a story about your priorities and methods.
If you are a photographer and you force your clients to use a website that demands email and passwords for every visit when all they want to do is look at and select proofs, you are telling a story about your understanding of customer service.
Far too many creative entrepreneurs never figure this out. They assume that branding is something you buy. Or that they can define themselves with broad strokes just by talking about themselves endlessly.
The littlest choices (like the examples I’ve highlighted) tell the true story of our personal brand.
When it is a good story, it serves us.
When it’s not, it pierces through the lie we are telling ourselves and others about our true nature.
Very best, Patrick
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