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Understanding Your Brand

Lesson 3 from: FAST CLASS: Personal Branding for Creative Professionals

Dorie Clark

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Lesson Info

3. Understanding Your Brand

Lesson Info

Understanding Your Brand

as we start to think about personal branding, essentially, we have a multi step process, right? We were talking in our first segment about the fact that if we're really doing it right, Personal branding starts out by beginning to get a sense of who we are now, how are we perceived by other people and you know, what is that brand baseline next? We move into the phase, we're proactively saying, well, how do I want to be known and what do I need to do to make sure that I actually am known that way by other people? And then third, and finally it becomes about living your brand and making sure that all of your actions, everything you do, manifests it, but you can't get anywhere if you don't have an accurate perspective upfront of what your current brand is in the marketplace. So someone is going to say something that's you know, that's basically a strength, right? Let's say you are an amazing tactician, that sounds like a good thing, right? The question that we need to ask ourselves is is i...

t possible that the opposite of that thing may be the opposite of that strength? Could it be a weakness? So if you are an amazing tactician, if you're really good at sort of the nuts and bolts of whatever does that possibly mean, that you are not strategic enough, what's what's the polar opposite and it doesn't necessarily imply that, But it could so you've got to ask yourself that question if people say, oh you're you're so sensitive and loving and giving clearly that's a great thing to be and it's a wonderful thing in moderation, if it doesn't mean, oh, you're so sensitive and giving that you never look out for yourself and you're a pushover. So we just want to say, and we're going to talk about this a little bit later, how do your strengths and weaknesses interact with each other? But getting feedback from other people can be a really interesting and powerful way to begin the process of understanding more about ourselves and about our brand. So, you know, part of why this matters so much is that we do all have blind spots. You know, I mean, that's the reason they're called blind spots, which is that we don't even know that they exist and yet nonetheless, they can actually be really shaping our, how we operate in the world because people are reacting to us based on certain things that they take as facts and if we don't know what they are, were really operating at a handicap. And so one of the things that's so powerful for us, I think that a lot of times when we think about personal branding, we think about reinventing ourselves. I think that a lot of people think that it's this huge, enormous task, right? That it's like, oh, it'll be this thing, it'll take years, you know, and sure let's not whitewash it here. It's true that depending on whatever change you want to make, sometimes it could take years sure, maybe you have to, you know, if you want to be a doctor and you need to go back to medical school, that's going to take a while. But not every changes like that. And in fact some changes can happen in an instant. I don't mean that you can take a hardwired habit and suddenly make it okay because things take time. But so many of us, most of us probably can't afford to hire an executive coach on our own. And so that's why there's actually an exercise that I'm going to suggest that we do now. That is what I will call a modified version of the 360 so that we can begin the process of figuring this out on our own. And so this is this is the three words exercise. If you only had three words to be able to describe yourself, what would they be? We were talking earlier about the fact that for most people, you know, maybe three things is like the most that they're going to have in their heads about you. So my question to you is if you could pick what those three words are, what do you wish that people would think about you? And so that's number one. And then number two is this is helpful for us to figure out what we want it to be, but it's also helpful for us to go out into the world and to ask other people this question. So if you only had three words to be able to describe me, what would they be? This can be incredibly telling because what we discover is that um pretty soon, by the 2nd 3rd, 4th person you're talking to, you are going to see distinct patterns in terms of what they say about you, and also in terms of what they don't say, the answers are going to cluster and you can really learn important things about what is coming through loudest to other people about you. So I will invite you now, please feel free in studio audience to take a moment and write down these three words. You only had three words to be able to describe yourself, what would they be?

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Ratings and Reviews

Sandi K. Terry
 

I never thought I would watch a class on personal branding and end up wishing that I had watched the longer one instead. Wow! I watched this instead of a different one I looked at on another platform that struck me as the antithesis of this class. It gave me that yucky, using-people feeling that Dorie teaches you NOT to do. If you're like me and confused about how to create a personal brand (part of my new career as a UX designer) and you're put off by what you've seen elsewhere, take this class instead. I am so glad to have taken this class and only wish I had watched the longer one instead. Five stars; highly recommended!

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