MOTIVATION

Don’t waste time trying to be a celebrity. It will easily reduce you from hero to zero in an attempt to keep up with public demand. While celebs make headlines, legendaries make history. Celebrity lasts just but a season or two. We must therefore, seek to build a lasting personal brand that goes beyond the spectacle of the media and informed by an enduring legacy anchored on lasting values. How come one architect will pull a building design at a professional fee of KES 10 Million while another one will be paid KES 1 Million for the same project? How come one lawyer will charge legal fees of 10 Million and another will not attract clients willing to pay more than KES 100,000 for the same magnitude of job? How come one public speaker will be paid KES 500,000 for an hour speaking engagement and another one KES 5,000 for the same period? And the list is endless in all professional disciplines. The answer to the above queries lies on Personal Branding. Your mark of identity. Your personal brand determines your value in the market place. It is your personal value proposition largely influenced by people’s perception about you. People’s perception is their reality. You can’t wish it away. In addition, your personal brand is the promise that you commit to deliver. Thirdly, your personal brand is your uniqueness. It isn’t available amongst your peers. It’s only available from you. Everyone has a brand. The real question is the value of your brand. The good news is that there is a formula for re-creating your personal brand. Re-inventing yourself. To re-invent yourself, first, be rare. That’s why gold is more valuable than sand. Because gold is relatively rarer. It is the law of scarcity to create demand. Standing out from the crowd. Secondly, identify who you are. Your personal vision. Your best self that keeps you off from pursuing the ring of fame. Can your personal brand attract a life partner? Can your personal brand make the market hunt for your phone number? What is your real identity? Be informed that you are most comfortable when you are yourself. Work then no longer conflicts with what you love. Resources including money follow a vision. No one who did what he loves passionately, objectively and strategically ended up poor. Be it singing, swimming, mountaineering, speaking, artistry, sports, leadership, entrepreneurship or social work. This is because success is not something we pursue; rather, it is something that we attract. What stands out about a Volvo car? Safety. Consistency. Day in day out, year in year out, you will get the same quality. This is the third pillar upon which personal brands are built. It is the secret upon which Apple, Microsoft or Coca Cola was built. You can predict with precision the taste and quality of coke with no guess work. If Tiger Woods is not playing, the attendance for golf tournaments in the U.S. dramatically goes down. He is an outstanding brand. His appearance alone has a price. What is your price tag? The principle holds true for personal brand. You can’t demand people to like you. Everything you do either adds or subtracts to your brand. Whether it is dress code, tattooing, associations, language, mannerisms, etiquette, joints you visit or institutions that you patronage. Your brand ought to stimulate a certain emotion from people. Otherwise you are flat. A flat drink is dangerous for consumption. A flat person is boring. His presence doesn’t trigger any excitement. It must never be lost on you that you are not one brand with one group of people and a different brand with another group. This double life leads to incongruent lifestyle and it is arguably the leading cause of stress amongst professionals. A brand must be predictable in respect to product offering and quality assurance. A commodity competes on price but a brand is only available from you. Your commodity (job title) is replaceable. Anyone with the same qualifications will replace your office position. Your personal brand, however, has no substitute. People are not waiting for you to reveal yourself. They will blog you out unless you give them a convincing reason to need you. Now. Begin to align who you are with what you do. Begin today. Your brand journey continues till the day you die. Consciously or unconsciously. No doubt in my mind that if you are an inquisitive reader, you must be having a couple of questions by now. How then do I become rare? How do I create a personal vision? How do I sustain consistency?