What can a powerful personal brand accomplish for YOU?

In a world of information overload and decision fatigue, our brains are more exhausted and distracted than ever before. To break through the noise and claim your seat at a place of preeminence in your industry, you need to craft a solid personal brand that will elevate your reputation, your knowledge and your PRESENCE to a level where people don’t have to discover or make a decision about you — they already know.

In this episode of Fierce Feminine Leadership, I’ll show you how to TRIPLE down on your personal brand by sharing SEVEN effective strategies that will help you market yourself skillfully AND leave a lasting impression on the people you want to attract and influence.

I’ll also show you how to build your brand by focusing on what you ALREADY know and do so you can start making a deeper impact TODAY.

Are you ready to boost your visibility and claim your space — but don’t know where to start? Listen in to get the essential tools you need to build an outstanding personal brand and reap the rewards that follow.

Listen here: http://bit.ly/2KJRr9e

Full Podcast Transcript

Eleanor Beaton: You are listening to Fierce Feminine Leadership, episode #268: Why you need to triple down on your personal brand this year.

Voiceover: Welcome to Fierce Feminine Leadership. The Success Podcast for women in business. Each week we feature interviews and advice to help you step into your power and lead your way. Now here’s your host women’s leadership expert Eleanor Beaton.

Eleanor Beaton: Hello there Fierce Ones. Eleanor Beaton here. Welcome back to another episode of Fierce Feminine Leadership: the Success Podcast for Ambitious Women in Business.

This is episode number 268 and today we are talking about why you need to not just double down on your personal brand but triple down on your personal brand this season. If you want to truly step into the potential and the impact that you are here to make.

Eleanor Beaton here so excited to welcome you back to another episode. If you are a loyal listener of Fierce Feminine Leadership thank you so much for joining us. We so appreciate your time. And by we, I mean myself and our very first production team. And if you are a new listener to Fierce Feminine Leadership welcome. Welcome to fierce land. We’re so excited to have you here.

And this really is a show where we bring you cutting edge insights from powerhouse women leaders from the field of technology, entrepreneurship, media financial services. These are women who have truly leaned into the art of building a big career and having a big life. It’s a place where you’re going to get ongoing insights, trainings, tools, tips and tricks from myself — Eleanor Beaton.

I’m the founder of the Leadership Lab which is the world’s premier development program for ambitious women leaders. I’m also the founder of The Incubator, which is a 12 month development program for women entrepreneurs. And you can learn all about me at www.eleanorbeaton.com if you are new to me into our show.

But I wanted to do a piece about building a personal brand. Now, this idea of personal brands, it’s almost like jargon. To be honest. We hear it a lot. And the irony here of course is that I hear a lot from people who do not have a very strong personal brand with tips and tactics to actually build a personal brand. And so I wanted to sort of put together some training this month all about the art of building a strong solid personal brand.

And if you’re interested if you know something that you need to do you can certainly get more of that at www.eleanorbeaton.com/brand. And I have a brand new white paper hot off the printer, hot off the presses I should say, that takes a look at 7 Unconventional Strategies to Build Your Personal Brand, because again, so much of what out what’s out there about building a personal brand I find to be vacuous, fatuous and actually guaranteed to have the reverse effect. You know?

So when you’re building a personal brand it’s actually the ROI from other actions that you take. So if you go out to essentially, with great intention, step by step systematically build your personal brand, the irony is that many of the things that you do because the intention is wrong right. You’re trying to build the personal brand first. Personal brand is the return on investment that you do from being intentional about doing other things. And I’m going to tell you what those other things are in a moment, but it’s got it’s the byproduct. Got it? And it is an amazing byproduct. But it is the byproduct. That’s what ROI always is. There are other lead indicators that have to come first. And if I’m confusing you  –listen in — because I’m going to explain.

But here’s the thing. In the world of work success is not just about what you know. Nor is it about who you know. Your success is going to be about who KNOWS what you know.

We live in a connected world, people. We work in teams. Even if you’re a solo entrepreneur, the last I heard you still need clients. You still need contractors. So we live in a connected world. Business is a team sport. And so in order to reach the success that you want it’s about who knows what you know. Consider the following examples.

Tony, a client inside our programs, developed a powerful app that allows first responders to quickly access a patient’s medical records. But the technology has languished for six months because the investors she’s been cold calling are not returning her messages because they don’t know from a hole in the wall.

Rupinder is a product development director inside a big financial services firm. She’s been twice turned down for the vice president role she covets because, although her boss has given her glowing reviews, her presence barely registers outside her department.

And then 14 months after launching her life coaching practice, Vivian is struggling to consistently land clients and is nowhere near sure placing her previous salary as vice president of H.R. at a healthcare company because she is struggling to distinguish herself in a crowded market.

Now these three examples actually serve as three different reasons why you need to triple down on building a powerful personal brand this year. The reality is that we as human beings are making tens of thousands of decisions per day. Micro decisions. Should I open this email, should I deal with it, should I delete it? Should I look at this text? Is this Instagram photo worth my time? Should I read this article that’s just popped up on LinkedIn? Should take this phone call? Should I take the time to consider this strategy or is it a bright shiny object? I mean, we’re literally making tens of thousands of decisions on a daily basis.

And so when you put together the twin forces of information overload and decision fatigue with the reality that our brain is not meant to handle this much information, that’s where you really land at the importance of building a personal brand and a strong one. Because when you build a strong personal brand, what you are essentially doing is elevating your reputation and elevating the knowledge in the market of your value that people don’t have to decide about you — they already know. Right, okay? “Oh, that’s Megan coming in with a question about such and such. Listen, Megan’s absolutely solid. I know who she is. I’m going to take a call.” Got it?

So when you combine, again, because this is a huge important point. When you combine the information overload of our modern working world with decision fatigue, I mean people are making tens of thousands of micro decisions on a daily basis, and you divide that by the fact that as people our brains are not meant to live in this climate of information overload and in decision fatigue, what it means is that it’s really important that you become a sure thing. Right? That people don’t have to decide about you because they already know. So that’s really why you need to build a powerful personal brand. Because I want for you to have the experience of having your ideas heard, respected and acted upon.

I want you to have the experience of having an investor say: “Absolutely, I’ll take your call, I know about you. Your name came up at a party the other evening.”

I absolutely want you to have the experience of NOT being around the boardroom table but having somebody influential inside that boardroom table put your name forward for your next promotion and have others around the table say: “Yeah, absolutely. That Sharon, she’s a solid person. I’ve heard great things about her. Yeah, absolutely. Let’s get her name on the shortlist.”.

These are the things that a powerful personal brand can accomplish for you. Because, again, business is a team sport and you’ve got to be visible. Now I promised you earlier that I would elaborate a little bit about why so much of what I see out there, the information around building a strong personal brand, is actually not effective. In fact it can actually erode your personal brand because it fails to register this important truth about building a personal brand: which is that your brand is a return on investment. It is not the lead indicator.

If you don’t know the difference between lead indicators and lag indicators you can look them up. It’s a really powerful concept, but the idea is that lag indicators, these are measurements which you get off the back end. Lead indicators are the things you act on.

So for instance, if I wanted to lose 10 pounds. The 10 pounds coming off would be the lag indicator. The lead indicator would be, ‘Hey how what was I eating? Was I sleeping? Was I lifting heavy weights? Like all those things that I could act on. So your personal brand, that’s the lag indicator. That’s the return on investment that happens after you act on important lead indicators. OK? Things that you can control today — right now.

So I’m going to share some of those with you. And again if you were really focused on building a personal brand that is authentic, that is powerful, that has depth, that has substance, head on over to www.eleanorbeaton.com/brand,  because I’ve put this together into a comprehensive white paper and we have a comprehensive training, live training, that I’m going to be doing as well to really drive this home, all totally free. Part of what we do on an ongoing basis to really add value and move the needle with respect to women’s leadership, which is of course providing excellent, free training opportunities in addition to our obviously much more in-depth, paid training opportunities like The Leadership Lab. But here are some of the lead strategies. It’s really a seven-part system I’ve put together to help you figure out how to leverage what you have. Get yourself out there with a powerful personal brand.

#1: make sure you’re adopting a mission that’s bigger than you. Not going to go into detail on these but but it’s all about the mission. What is the big impact you are here to have? What do you stand for.

#2: arm yourself with killer statistics. Arm yourself with killer statistics about your area of focus.

#3: take a galvanizing point of view. Have an opinion take a position. Right?

#4: master the art of public speaking, Public speaking is a powerful delivery mechanism for your brand.

#5: fly your “freak flag” to be authentically unconventional. Now this doesn’t mean being inappropriate. This doesn’t mean being outrageous. Think about Amal Clooney. This is a woman who has a very powerful personal brand. When I think about her freak flag, what I think about is number one: highly successful international rights lawyer, who is right now authoring a book on international law. And I promise you, it’s not going to be a page turner, although it’s going to be hugely important contribution to the somewhat murky world of international law.

But what makes her so interesting is the “freak flag”, interesting combination of professional gravitas of working on some of the most disturbing abuses of human rights internationally, combined with a huge love of style and fashion, which I think is beautiful. And so this is just it. This is how you really fly your “freak flag” to be authentically unconventional.

#6: execute quarterly high impact initiatives because it’s about what you do and the value that you create, people. Not just what you say you do.

#7: cultivate your conviction. Like cultivate that ability to have powerful, strong, guiding beliefs and principles and to express those confidently.

Now again there’s so much more that I can say about each one of these but you can see this goes so much further than, you know, make sure that you always show up in a consistent way. I mean, yeah, but you know that. You’re a smart, intelligent, successful person. This is about really making sure that you are building a brand of substance and understanding that your brand is the return on investment. It’s not the lead indicator. So you’ve got to get out there, do great work, make a real impact. Make sure that people know about it by connecting and building relationships and that powerful brand will follow, as will all the benefits of having a strong personal brand.

All right. That’s it for me. If you want to get more on this head on over to www.eleanorbeaton.com/brand. This is all about building a powerful personal brand and tripling down on building your personal brand this year by actually focusing on other things first. All right. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it.

Let’s stay in touch. Make sure you subscribe to the show or leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us more than you know, and until next time, stay fierce.

Voiceover: Fierce Feminine Leadership is executive produced and hosted by Eleanor Beaton. Technical producer is Kate Astrakhan. Content producers are Adrianne Alexander and Marie Hanifen. Special thanks to Kelly Fillman and Amy Bleser. Find Eleanor on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram @ Eleanor. Thank you for listening. Stay fierce.

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