Developing, Defining and Projecting Your Personal Brand

The world is a stage, humans are all actors- Shakespeare

What is your personal brand? Why do you have to identify it?


Your brand positions you clearly in the minds of others and increase your perceived value. It distinguishes you from the herd.

Another important thing about your brand is that it extends to products/services/platforms that emanates from you. Your brand also enables you to make emotional connections and develop loyalty to people who have similar values to your brand or those who just admire it.

Your name, product or even your look could create a remembrance of your brand, but each in itself is not your brand. The purpose of branding yourself or identifying and nurturing your personal brand is to achieve preference or an edge amongst the roaring herd or looming crowd.

Your brand is your distinct identity in the mind of the people who know you or have heard of you. Branding yourself is thus the process of defining, enhancing and consistently expressing your entity identity to your audience.

We all have an audience: it could start from your spouse, family, colleagues, boss, customers or even the general populace. We are social creatures and we relate with other humans who watch us and who we watch too.

In defining your personal brand, its important you discover your 1. values: the ideals you hold clearly, that define your personality. 2. your mission in life: what you feel or know you have been called or assigned to do here on earth by mother nature. 3. Your vision; your ideal picture of the future you see.

After you must have identified the above, to consistently maintain and express this personal brand of yours in order to get any great currency or value thereof: you need to demonstrate:
i. Sincerity: an honest value in connecting with your identified personal brand. It has to be honest and wholesome. For example; if you have identified yourself as a technical solution expert then all tasks given to you related to such should be done perfectly or at least communicated to your customer clearly in an otherwise case.
ii. Sophistication: Why do you identify yourself as a brand? To stand out from the roaring crowd. So you dont want to be different from the crowd in a lesser way, that won't command a high value, you have got to have a brand that makes a connotation to some charm and upper class.
iii. Excitement: The world is tough and brutal enough; so no one needs more pain and sorrow. So when projecting your brand it must come with some daring, spirited, imaginative power.
iv. Competence: This looks more like the first point on honesty; but we need to emphasize that whatever field of endeavour or character you have chosen to be identified with, you have got to be competent in it.

Reliable, Intelligent and successful are the buzzwords here. Lets take an example in our world: when you hear Oprah Winfrey you think media, Michael Jackson: music, Steve Jobs: Technology, Business etc. This people have so identified and defiened their brand and gotten to the zenith of their field that the world can't forget them even long after they are gone.

An individual like Richard Branson who has an adventurous spirit, a risk taker and fun loving individual with a business mind has such projected his personality and brand and created a business empire that embodies his personal brand; from his music business to the Virgin airline and now trying to take humans to the galaxy. Richard has so defined his brand and projected it and made a commercial success of it.

Taking it further, your brand identity needs to have an output or what i call translations such as a name to call you, a logo to represent your product, service, platfrom or company. This brand identity have to be:i. simple to pronounce.ii. memorable.iii. give an hint of the benefit to be experienced.iv. create an expectation for the experience.v. create an emotional appeal for the brand. vi. extendable.

In the case of your product, service or organisation. Your logo is a visual representation of the organisation's DNA and aspiration. Visibility is more obvious than ability. Awareness is the first point of call in building brand equity.
Brand equity is the overall value both tangible and intangible of a brand. The stages of developing brand equity are: Awareness of the brand, Quality product/service/platform, Association and brand loyalty.


Studies have proven that at least 10,000 hours of study, learning, education and practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being world class in any field or career.