The phrase “personal branding” is often misunderstood and even maligned, due to inauthentic “coaches” and “gurus” who have given the term a bad name.
"You need to understand who you are and how you want to be perceived, because in the end, your personal brand is how you walk, how you talk, how you make people feel, how you dress, your social media content."
What does the term really mean?
“For me, it is a self-leadership and a communications tool,” said Dr. Natalia Wiechowski, personal branding expert and author of the new book, Personal Branding with LinkedIn: The Think Natalia Method. “So you need to understand who you are and how you want to be perceived, because in the end, your personal brand is how you walk, how you talk, how you make people feel, how you dress, your social media content. It is a beautiful collection of impressions, perceptions, and everything around that. And based on that, people decide if they like you or don't like you, if they're going to do business with you or not, if they're going to hire you or not, if they're going to date you or not, if they want to be your friend or not.”
Wiechowski joined Freedom Media Network founder Curt Mercadante for a discussion of her book. She said that everyone has a personal brand, whether they like it or not.
“So instead of being a passive victim of the circumstances of others, like allowing your social environment to dictate who you are and what you do, et cetera,” she said. “I believe in a personal branding approach, where you literally take or design the time to ask yourself these painful questions of how do I want to be perceived, and what am I good at? Whom am I helping? Because you have a personal brand, if you like it or not. So instead of being, again, a victim, blaming others and being unhappy, sit down and then shape or steer or polish your personal brand.”
She said that such an approach makes it harder to be inauthentic.
“When you do that, you can't be fake, because you start with the true you that you are,” she said. “And then you just make it a little bit shinier for social media, a little bit more glitter there, a little bit more impressive up there, because, hey, I believe that life is just a stage. Shakespeare was right.”
Watch her full discussion with Mercadante by clicking here.