Building a Personal Brand: Your Name is Your Best Asset

Sharing something i believe soooooo deeply in. ---- Your name is the business. This is a bit of a guide to building a brand that outlives any title. Remember: Every job ends. Every title fades. Every company moves on. The one thing that follows you everywhere is your name. And your name is your reputation. Your name is your brand. We got hired for the next job or engagement because someone said our name and it carried weight. Not because of a logo on a slide or a past experience. What people say about us matters. Referrals built on trust are our bread and butter and we die without it. But, here is the trap we fall into; many people in corporations act like their company owes them their career. It’s not personal (usually) but business happens. This means restructuring, market shifts, and new leaders shuffling the deck. If the only thing you built lives inside that company, you walk away with a light bag. If you shift your mindset you will see that your brand is your best friend. And, like your best friend, that relationship needs to be cared for. How to decide what your brand / your name should stand for? Here is the question I ask every founder and every fractional I coach - “How do you want people to talk about you when you are not in the room?” If you don’t know the answer, stop reading here and go think deeply about this. If you know - write your answer in one sentence. Now, here is how simple this is. You just defined the BRAND you want to be. Some examples (none of which are true of course 🙂)

If you cannot say it in one sentence, the market will never say it for you. Now, go plan out the tactics you are going to use to get people to say these things about you when you are not in the room. In other words - How will you make this come true? That’s your marketing strategy. Building your brand is not charisma (though that can help). It is consistent behavior. Your personal brand is a core sales strategy. This is not only for flashy founders. It scales to teams when you turn it into habits. Sales gets easier the day a prospect says I have heard of you. Try this and make them habits

Lead with kindness to stand out and be remembered. Traditional channels are noisy. Cold email used to get ten percent response. Now the baseline is closer to one. You can still win if people talk about you. A few weeks ago, I created 20 custom bobbleheads for a few friends and partners. It was cheesy as hell. But it was fun to do and my goal was simply to make people smile and for me to say thank you to them for their friendship and support. It worked I think. The recipients sent me thank you notes. They posted pictures, they keep them on their desk. Their kids loved them. They smiled and laughed. From a personal perspective - mission accomplished. From a business perspective - I suspect they might work for them to keep me top of mind when opportunities arise. Don’t get me wrong - I hope friends don’t need gifts to think of me. I sure don’t need gifts to think of my most trusted go-to-network. The gifts are simply a gesture. I bring my wife flowers. I am kind to my friends. Gifts and thank you’s are what we do for those we care about. Here is a simple system to build your name;

Repeat this and your name will carry further than any title you ever held. And please please please use these guardrails so you do not lose yourself;

The takeaway is this; Jobs and titles are rented. Your name and reputation is owned. Build a name that stands for kindness, and clarity, and expertise in your chosen lane. People will talk about you when you are not in the room. You just need to lead them to words.