Who is the famous voice narrating your personal commercial?

[Joseph Coplans]

We are always brands in transition. Living, breathing, brands. We’re prone to breakthroughs. We’re prone to setbacks. We have a lot of pressure on us to perform; to never be indecisive; to know where we are going at all times. No company brand or personal brand was developed in front of a white board in a day. Yet, I think the ‘Rags to Riches’ story embedded in our culture plays a role in our self-discovery. The middle of the journey ends up on the editing room floor sometimes. It’s not as glamorous as getting from what “wasn’t working” to “it working out perfectly”. The middle, that’s the messy part, and there’s nothing more feared than wandering or indecision. Only mythical figures from the past in foreign lands do that. People like Siddhartha. Or maybe Jack Kerouac. (if there is a movie deal attached to that thinking)
In our markets, introspection and ‘discovery time’ is stacked on the same dark shelf where weaknesses are stored. Discovery is for the ‘un-serious-minded’. We need to be in a mode that is always getting to “yes” and never looking back, or to the side. But self-discovery, it’s the most interesting part of our perpetual transformations. It’s the part we need most for authenticity.

I think we’ve all watched the corporate culture change for the better in the 90’s and champion this self-discovery. Company leadership is aging. Age and crisis change the relationships to meaning. Companies have taken on more social responsibility, and some of it truly is based in crisis. The neo-downsizing ‘workmosphere’ has also created an environment of anything can happen at any time, but companies have a desire out there to attract really good people, excellent talent. Right-brained thinkers, even!
And it’s not just about compensation. It’s about fostering meaning in the lives of people. Companies are performing in marketplaces that only recognize excellence (product or services) and authentic values.

Why? Because transparency is sitting side by side with contradictions in values. Web news is fast. Blogs are honest. Forums are places where people are learning on the street, from others. The web is the new street.

There’s no room for ‘just being a profitable company’. That’s not enough to thrive or differentiate. And automatically, company values have a new relationship to individual vales.
Do you see it like I do? Environmentalism has shifted from activism to thoughts about sustainability to embrace the mainstream. There’s been a paradigm shift in thinking. Even the wording is different. Environmentalism is action oriented and has a villain cast as an antagonist. Sustainability is about all of us. One term indicts companies as wrongdoers; the other embraces the values of a new era. Companies are realizing that they cannot deplete the resources they depend on. They also have realized that they cannot attract extraordinary people if it’s for only company gain. Now companies are forging a new role in what they do, one that is making the first steps toward harmonization of profits and resources because that’s what the market (you) is demanding. That requires people who know what their own brand is too. “Yes men” need not apply.
911 changed everything in just a few short years too. People everywhere redefined what their image of leadership should be. And people leading companies saw the affect of ‘fight or flight’ living, and have begun an audit concerning what is meaningful on a much more companywide level. On the heels of crisis are the breakthroughs of meaning.

It doesn’t matter if you’re making 5 Million a year with stock options that make you worth 120million, or if you are debating an entrepreneurial leap, or if you are in the first 5 years of your new profession, transition is the strengthening ingredient that creates a differentiated and powerful personal brand.

Have you ever thought of doing your own personal brand audit with your own focus group? To find out what others think of you and what your brand is? The benefit would be that you might key in to a strength you never knew you had. And the difference between good brands and great personal brands is the ability to identify how you affect people positively based on accurate information.

The very toolkit that David Sandusky uses asks all the right questions for important personal brand discoveries. Giving them a twist, and asking others to answer the questions based on what they think of your brand, your personal brand, will yield even more opportunities.

Some questions to ask others: (not family members, not employers) (Co-workers and clients you have an established relationship with)

Ask them:

“I’m conducting a brand audit of my own personal brand.”

What has been the one consistent value that I promote in my actions?

Why do you return to me for business?

Ask them: Think of your favorite brand. (consumer brand) (answer could be any brand on the market, from Coke to Keen) If your favorite brand were a car, what kind of car would it be?

Now with that question in mind, If I were a car, me personally, what kind of car would I be?
(Design agencies use this question all the time to uncover a feeling about a brand, and it works!!! Try it!)

Ask them: If you were to hire a spokesperson to speak in my commercials about what I do, whom would you hire? (Martin Sheen? James Earl Jones? Sam Waterston? Lindsay Wagner?) The answers will surprise you! Make sure you ask them why they’ve chosen that spokesperson. Therein lies the answer to so much about your personal brand. Now choose your own spokesperson. Who would it be? How do they sit beside each other? It would be interesting to cut out the photos of both of them and see what unique combination they make.

Ask them to choose a color palette concerning their feelings about what you offer them. (Professional graphic Designers do this to match emotional associations with colors. People will associate a color palette with you too) But make sure you ask why they’ve chosen those colors, because blue by itself won’t reveal the answers why they turn to you.

So many questions in David Sandusky’s workbooks can be adapted to ask others the same questions you need to ask yourself too. Try some twists on them and see what you get! Have fun.