Keys to Building Your Brand: Authenticity

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A few weekends ago I participated on a panel discussion hosted by Darnyelle Jervey. The focus of her event was Maximizing the Incredible You. The very first question to the panel was, “What has been instrumental in helping develop your brand?”

Once you get beyond the buzz, at the core of branding is the concept of being able to position yourself. Positioning yourself as an employee or entrepreneur is critical to communicating your value, being connected to the right opportunities, and creating the right environment for success. In this series of posts I’ll be sharing the five things that have been important in helping me effectively craft my brand not only as the Career Makeover Coach, but what helped me position myself throughout my career with corporate employers as well.

The five keys that have helped create my brand are:

• Authenticity
• Passion
• Knowledge
• Attraction
• Leveraging Technology

Let’s start with authenticity…

Authenticity allows you to leverage who you are and what you’ve done in establishing credibility. Although not impossible, it would be a challenge to market myself as the Career Makeover Coach if I had ever only had one job in my entire career.

You can read my full profile on the Tai’s Story page, but here’s the snapshot: I started out as an AmeriCorps member serving in Philadelphia schools. Flash forward about 14 years a you’ll find me managing and building e-learning courses for a global IT company. In between those two roles I’ve had about five different positions in different industries never with the same title or exact responsibilities. I can’t say that I was always strategic but I always chose my next move-based online wanting to do work that I was passionate about with assignments I knew I could be good at (even if I hadn’t done it before). I finally added strategy to the mix when I decided to make a move to something that I could not only love but get paid the salary that I wanted too. It didn’t happen overnight. It took some work. It took some planning and it took time. But in four years I was able to not only have the position that I wanted in the kind of company that I wanted to work for, I was also making the salary that I wanted. Without moving into a management position I was able to more than double my salary. If you had asked me 10 years ago would I be in a position to turn down a six-figure management position with a Fortune 500 company because I had a better option it would seem like a joke but that’s exactly what happened. I still have the most recent job offer letter that I turned down from Canon a few years ago. I joke about framing it.

There are plenty of talented passionate, smart, ambitious women in the workforce today. Unfortunately this same group is often under employed, underpaid, or un-interested in their work. I know that and can relate to that because it’s where I was. I know what it feels like when you look at everyone else around you and it seems like they have opportunities you don’t know how to get. Or what it feels like when you are putting in 120% and it still doesn’t seem like you are making headway with the goals you have set for yourself. As a coach I connect with that feeling and I work with clients who are ready to go from bright to brilliant, who want a career they can both love and live with. At the end of the day it’s not about title or the money but being able to create the life that they want.

One of the reasons my brand works for me is that I have lived the experience my clients want for themselves. I have successfully reinvented my professional image, crossed industries and changed career paths in order to get the experiences and create the lifestyle I wanted. Having taken the steps and put in the work to make over my own career, the experience, information and insight I bring to my clients are authentic.

As you begin to build your own brand or if you’ve already started the process – have you started from an authentic place? Here are some questions to consider:

• Is there a difference in how you see yourself and how you present yourself to the world?
• Are you working towards becoming more of who you are or are you striving to become more of someone else’s expectations?
• Are you connected to your own vision and purpose or are you focused on other people thinking that you are successful?
• Remember: The world is waiting for you to show up and be exactly who you are uniquely purposed to be. I encourage you to show up.

The next post in this series will focus on the second component for building a successful brand – passion.