The Traps and Pitfalls in Personal Branding

Why it's important for executives; where to start.

In this issue #99:

• Execs sabotage themselves by ignoring their Personal Brands

• 98% of Personal Branding Experts are Wrong!

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Executives Miss Career Opportunities by Ignoring their Personal Brands

A LinkedIn profile is an easy litmus test to see how an executive thinks about their personal brand.

Why is this true? 2 reasons:

1. It's so easily ignored, only those who care about personal brand bother. Yet...

2. A LinkedIn profile is high-return for little investment.

Don't believe me? Google your name.

If your LinkedIn profile isn't # 1, 2 or 3, please ignore the rest of this post.

We think personal brand is so important it kicks off the core of the Job Search module in our Executive Breakthrough Mastermind.

Here’s a great summary by Mandy McEwan, LinkedIn sales expert. Follow her on LinkedIn and grab her LinkedIn profile overhaul checklist (it’s the first link on her Featured Section) to get started on your brand overhaul.

She has some great first steps to get started online:

𝟭. 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘁𝘆: What makes you unique? What’s your USP?
𝟮. 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲: Now you’re ahead of 99% of users.
𝟯. 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: Leverage your existing connections to attract new ones.
𝟰. 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀: Build community and connections through engagement.
𝟱. 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀: Post valuable content that highlights your expertise.

The starting point of developing a personal brand is defining who you are professionally. It's Mandy's Step #1 and ours as well.

• What's your unique proposition?

• What are you about?

Don't have that, the rest is fluff. 🍬

🚀 Develop it, and you can supercharge the arc of your career.

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Next Cohort of our Executive Breakthrough Mastermind is getting ready to launch.

Seats are limited!

What is the Mastermind? It is a live, virtual transformational experience - designed to give you pragmatic experience in accelerating your own career in the transition to the executive level, and in executing effectively once you’re there. We focus in 4 key transformational areas:

1. Develop Executive Mindset and Turbo-charge your learning

2. Learning to design and build Organizational Capability

3. Super-charge your Leadership Influence and lead big change

4. Finding the next opportunity in your new career arc - i.e. Executive Job Search

Click to learn more and find out about the 4 common personal traps that prevent leaders from thriving at the executive level.

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98% of Personal Branding Experts are Wrong

Most Personal Branding advisors are like Resume Writing advisors.

They focus all on “the how,” without changing “the what.”

• Hacks

• Tasks

• Methods

• Checklists

• Keywords

Why do they do that? Because it’s the easy stuff. It’s easy to package and easy to sell.

But Kendall, you just pointed me at a checklist? Yep, because the author has the right priority.

The first step in figuring out personal branding, is figuring out who you are.

Don’t do that and personal branding is just “lipstick on a pig.”

It’s why we wait until the end of the Executive Mastermind to work on Job Search. Because if you haven’t developed your executive identity, the no amount of superficial branding will work.

Here’s a great episode of The Futur Podcast “98% of Personal Branding experts are Wrong!” by Chris Do, a noted communications and entrepreneurship commentator, on what it takes to really understand yourself, your career arc.

When you do that, you can build a killer personal brand.

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