This is the third Guest Blog here at www.pharmascholar.co.uk and courtesy of Sally Inkster from Finding Brand You, which aims to help solo business owners develop their brand to boost their business.
Sally is an ex-nurse who wanted more time and a flexible working life. She discovered a way to bring all her experiences together - Ward Sister and Nurse Specialist on an oncology unit, including end of life nursing, it made her realise and appreciate what’s important in life. Her passion for psychology has always been part of her career and bringing up 3 girls just added to that. Tapping into her creativity allowed her (with children) to have a career as a stylist which spanned the 14 years. This past history, experience and wisdom has enabled Sally to grow her Personal Brand Business to help lots of people like you, become more aware, secure and happy with their own personal brand and how to use it in developing their career path.
This is what one client had to say following a bespoke session with Sally: “She was very knowledgeable, personable and friendly, I was totally engaged throughout the session. I came away with lots of practical ideas of how to align the various elements of my personal brand and this was a very holistic process and outcome. I came away far clearer, more excited and more confident Thank you Sally!’’
Here is the Guest Blog from Sally at Finding Brand You:
Personal Brand is for life, career, and business too.
Building a personal brand is a foundation of everything you do!
Think of it as if you were building a house.
Today build some foundations - (call them goals if you want) around Personal Brand.
Let me introduce the aspects that I think everyone should be clear on! And to make it memorable I have an acronym SCWIBY!
Self-awareness
Communication
Website
Image
Brand story
Your why
Let's start with
1. Self-awareness - the ability to understand who we are AND What others think of us.
It's one of the things that sets us apart from animal kingdom.
Self-awareness can be divided into 2 parts...
Internal - Our consciousness of our likes, dislikes, ambitions, place in the world.
External - Being able to look at ourselves from the outside and understanding how others see us.
Research shows a coloration between self-awareness and the following...
⭐Happiness,
⭐Decision making
⭐Relationships
⭐Success
⭐Creativity
Draw (a stick man will suffice) and then add tags to explain what your 'ideal you' looks like - a bit like you do your avatar - list your main attributes you want to have, what do you want to be like?
Self-awareness makes you unique not superior (which in this age of self-esteem environment can mean that this sometimes gets mistaken)
Look at this blog too Click Here
2. Communication
The imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium - verbal, nonverbal or visual.
Let's imagine I am a lecturer and I travel to Japan (a rural part) - I have a huge audience, unfortunately they do not understand a word of English and I speak no Japanese - I'm not really going to get my message across!
Whatever we are doing to reach out to our recent or potential clients by
Email
Social media
Networking
Advertising,
Picking up the phone
We need to be speaking our clients and potential client’s language.
For this one task I am going to suggest a very simple communications book to read...
The Four colour personalities by Tom 'Big Al' Schreiter. it is in fact a book written for MLM companies. Link Here
It shows how to 'talk' to all people 'in their language 'based on their personality type.
This work was started by Hippocrates around 400BC and over the last century, many psychologists and speakers have taught and expanded on his original work - most of that is too deep and detailed for me, I found this book ideal for a quick understanding.
It helps you quickly identify which personality type your potential clients are and helps you understand exact words you can say to those people so that your message is received more easily and with more rapport.
Now if you are a student of endless detail this probably isn't going to be your ideal book, but for a starter of one - it’s really good.
For more on this subject Click Here
3. Website or your LinkedIn Profile!
Does yours represent you or are you really a bit reticent to send people to it?
Either because it's...
Not really you,
Or it doesn't really work in someway or other.
A good idea is to pretend you’re a complete stranger (hard I know - you can enlist help) to your site or profile and look at it from your phone -
Does it work?
Does it make sense?
Does it show you?
4. Image
Have you in the last 10 months let this slip a bit?
Last year has been hard and all of us have had PJ bottoms on with a nice top for a Zoom.
The good thing is we are all very forgiving of each other, or at least we appear to be, but the human brain doesn't change in 9 months and our old hypothalamus brain still judges instantaneously about balance and relevance.
When we are in slippers and pyjama's our energy isn't the same - how you look has a has a huge amount to do with how your feel.
Make a conscious decision every day to dress as if you were going to work, if you can't do it all, then concentrate on doing one extra thing each day to make you look and therefore feel better - even if it's just about the earrings,
5. Brand Story
Have you written yours? - you may think you know it, but until it's written down you won’t see the power it has to teach and build.
I's not easy and at times it's hard.
The task is to decide to write for 5 mins a day in a journal and add to it as you go on.
It's necessary to write all the great and more importantly the bad describing how you survived came through -
What was the learning?
What was the way forward?
How did you move on?
Think of any motivational speaker, they talk of the hardships they endured and how they came through, that doesn't mean you have to have had such an obvious tragedy or heartbreak, but all our experiences have a bearing on who we are now.
6. Your Why
Pivotal - If you know your why it will...
Get you through the bad days.
Increase your motivation.
Help keep you consistent.
Help you stay focused, and goal orientated.
You may feel you have lots of why's or maybe you struggle to find one.
Write all your reasons for 'doing what you’re doing' down and see if there is an umbrella one.
If all else fails, then use this one.
'What one can be one must be' 'Maslow'
Do you need some help trying to set your goals or stay consistent with the activity you need to do them?
Why not book a...
'Skyrocket' your business through personal brand, a Free 1 hour session
Love Sally x
