Personal Branding Strategy. Do You Know Where To Start?

Do You Know How To Start?

When it comes Personal Branding, we introduce the Personal Branding Wheel. 

Your roadmap to building AND maintaining your personal branding efforts.

One morning as I sat in my office, I thought to myself, how could I take all that goes into building a personal brand and make sense of it all. As we always say at Leading Edge Branding^®, if your reputation was created by everything you do, everything you say, everything you represent, everything you associate yourself with, and everything you produce, how would such a task be possible? I needed to put structure around it so that our clients could create a system that was easy to follow. I then created the CFX Personal Branding Wheel™ to structure the process. Let me explain.

As I write and create, I need to see the big picture and narrow it down, moving things around until I can put it all in a spreadsheet format. I was fortunate that my office had floor-to-ceiling walls while writing this blog. Which made it easy to add, delete, move around ideas with an eraser marker. I do this at home on sliding glass doors and windows. It’s an excellent process for creative minds. By the end of the day, I had an outline. Here was my thinking process.

First, I started by listing all the “activities and interactions” that professionals do. Such as writing emails, giving presentations, dressing for work, how to handle conflict, how to make proper introductions, to mention a few, and I do mean a few. I covered a lot of window space. As I began to see commonalities, I began to group these “activities and interactions” into four categories which I call your Personal Branding Disciplines™. The five categories are:

I will go in more depth on other blogs about all the disciplines from the wheel; however, I want to elaborate just a bit on the CORE as it is critical, and I want to give you a bird's eye view of what it is all about.

The CORE Personal Branding Disciplines™ consists of two personal branding disciplines: DISC: behavior and DRIVING FORCES: motivational factors. They are the foundation upon which your brand is built. As you can see from the graphic, the CORE is at the very center of the wheel and is what holds the wheel “together.” Think of the CORE as the same as how professional athletes refer to the CORE of their bodies.

They are referring to the midsection that involves more than just their abs. It links all the other parts together, including the muscles in that area, in the front, back and sides. They develop their body’s core to perform much better at their sport. Bodybuilding.com refers to these muscles as “stabilizers” for the entire body.

All the “activities and interactions” you do stem from your CORE. It is the basis for which the decisions you make.

Again, the CORE is about who you are; however, the challenge for most of us is that we don’t know how to put into clear, succinct words or statements of “who we are.”

How would you answer the question if someone asked you to tell them about yourself? You could but notice how you probably have to search for words to do so. It’s typically not so easy. But if someone were to ask you to tell them about who you are, not as a person, the task seems to be easier.

“We first identify your behavioral style, as this tells you “how” you do what you do. It’s about how you interact with those around you in the workplace. We do this by utilizing the DISC assessment by TTI, a scientific instrument that measures normal behavior. (Please know that all DISC assessments are not scientifically based!)

To read more about how the DISC works, click on the blog title called “How Does Behavior Affect Work Performance? Are You Being Isolated At Work? Are You Losing Out On Business Opportunities Because Of Your Behavior?“

The Organic Personal Branding Disciplines™ are those “activities and interactions” and “skill-sets” that every professional should develop and maintain. They are Organic to “doing business”! For example, everyone should know how to communicate well. Or, you might be an introvert and do not like going to networking events; however, you need to attend various functions for your organization. If you learn how to network as an introvert, you can maximize your exposure in the marketplace, becoming a “Networking Guru”! 

So how does the Personal Branding Wheel™ work?

To read more blogs on the topics of Personal Branding, click here. Keep in mind that we are constantly adding new blogs so be sure to check back!

You can also submit any question concerning this topic or other personal branding topics by submitting your questions here. Our “ASK! The Branding Experts” will try to answer your question(s) in a blog.