If you want to learn how the Art of Creative Business Storytelling Can Help You Build Reputation and Recognition read this post.
“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” E.E. Cummings
Societies, companies and families need leaders and leadership. Sometimes one person leads, sometimes more. People want connection and growth and something new. They want change. Steve Job’s leadership provided change. He’s given this society a lever to dramatically alter the way business is done in their industry. Along the way, he’s found his passion (and grown his company).
Your personal brand is just an extension of your brand. In order to survive in this competitive marketplace, having a personal brand is just as important as having a brand. By building your personal brand and your company at the same time, it can help to increase sales and get your name out there as a leader in your industry.
#1. Be Remarkable
“Being Remarkable is the best way to attract Attention. In the classic marketing book Purple Cow, Seth Godin uses a wonderful metaphor to illustrate this principle. A field full of brown cows is boring. A purple cow violates the viewer’s expectations, which naturally attracts Attention and interest.”
However, even the most Remarkable object of attention gets boring over time. Human attention requires novelty to sustain itself. Continue to offer something new, and people will pay attention to what you have to offer.
This means that you must challenge yourself, if successful new products are the ones that stand out, and most people desire not to stand out, you’re set! So it seems that we face two choices: to be invisible, anonymous, uncriticized, and safe, or to take a chance at greatness, uniqueness, and the expose our actions values.
All interesting characters have flaws, they are like you and me. We’ve been raised with a false belief: We mistakenly believe that criticism leads to failure. From the time we get to school, we’re taught that being noticed is almost always bad.
Change your false belief with a new story. Every hero makes mistakes, but this doesn't prevent her of being active in following her dreams and goals.
#2. Be Authentic
With the growing emergence of social media and social profiles, having a strong online image is paramount to increasing sales and pushing your business to new heights.
People want to know who they are doing business with, which is why having a personal brand is so important, but you also need to make sure that you do it right.
The last thing you want to do is have customers turned away because you have built your personal brand in all the wrong ways.
When it comes to building your personal brand, it really is about truth and authenticity.
Stories that work
To be successful, each and every story in your Personal Story Brand must demonstrate two things:
authenticity and purpose.
Like for example my purpose is to help companies transform their customers' lives by using the power of creative business storytelling.
#3. Learn from Your Mistakes
In order to create a MEANINGFUL Personal BRAND you have to grow and learn constantly.
Havas Media defines meaningful brands as those that inspire the thought "This brand improves my life".
This sense of enhancement envelops both the consumer and the brand in an aura of well-being.
While the two are correlated, a person’s sense of well-being versus ill-being depends on the moral emotions moved by the values of right/wrong, fair/unfair, loyalty/betrayal, and justice/injustice at play in his life.
If you don't make mistakes there is something wrong, either you are not honest or you're not active.
Sharing flaws is critical to gaining rapport. No one cares about Superman until we introduce kryptonite.
He’s an uninteresting character until he has flaws and weaknesses, and the same is true of any hero. Sometimes it’s scary to share these flaws in your stories, but they are the key to building rapport.
Everyone is flawed in their own interesting and individual ways. Our flaws make us who we are, helping to define our character. But our flaws also impair our ability to control the world. They harm us. The problem is, in fiction and in life, changing who we are is hard.
Correcting our flaws means, first of all, managing the task of actually seeing them. When challenged, we often respond by refusing to accept our flaws exist at all. People accuse us of being ‘in denial’. Of course we are: we literally can’t see them. When we can see them, they all too often appear not as flaws at all, but as virtues. The mythologist Joseph Campbell identified a common plot moment in which protagonists ‘refuse the call’ of the story.
This is often why. Identifying and accepting our flaws, and then changing who we are, means breaking down the very structure of our reality before rebuilding it in a new and improved form. This is not easy. It’s painful and disturbing. We’ll often fight with all we have to resist this kind of profound change. This is why we call those who manage it ‘heroes’.
Conclusion
By sharing your authentic personal brand story with your customers you will become a hero who through constant action/reaction, mistakes and learning, will change and transform until the final realization of who you really are.
This constant chain of action/reaction will provide your customers with infinite new information about who you are, your brand, your values and your mission and purpose.
How many brands have this kind of leaders now?
Not so many, because those who have are extremely successful well known to the general public.
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