A peek inside the brand guide for a personal brand
Did you know that YOU have a brand as a person? Of course you do. You can't fire up Linkedin without seeing something about it.
It's very en vogue to focus on one's “personal brand”. But have you ever seen brand guidelines for a person?
As a consultant, I'm the whole face of my business. It would be easy to think that—of course—I know my own values and the value I bring to my clients. Moreso because I AM a brand person, right? Wrong.
My whole deal is that I help consultants organize their thoughts to get them down on the page. I do this by taking them through a series of workshops. So I took myself through my own workshops and I was GOBSMACKED to discover that there was a LOT I didn’t know about my own brand and services.
Taking myself through the same branding adventure I take my clients on wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Even though I—myself—am the product.
My process is like therapy for founders of brands. This was a self-help journey and investing this time into my own brand was an act of self-care.
My own brand guidelines took me a few weeks to pull together and I’ve been revisiting and refining them for the last year (because a brand is never done!)
I had to dig deep to pull these truths out and organize them into my...
Golden Circle
Why
How
What
Brand Pillars
Promise
Purpose
Position
Perspective
Proposal
Pursuit
Values
Brand Story
Persona
Tone of Voice
Vocabulary
Beliefs
People buy brands. The product is a souvenir. This is why my personal brand guidelines are 8 pages of THE WHY behind what I do and just one page to sum up the visuals.
I hope it inspires you to go on a self-branding adventure of your own!
