Who am I? A Fresh Approach to Personal Brand Identity

Want to go places in your career? A lot of people will give you advice about your personal brand identity when you tell them you’re looking for new opportunities. In our socially visible culture, personal branding is that elusive skill that requires us to present ourselves authentically, visibly and powerfully. And yet, what is it really? Does it have to express the “true you?” Is it really worth the trouble to figure it out, much less put it out there? Where do you start, anyway? Can you just update your LinkedIn and be done with it?

In my executive coaching work I often advise people on how to align their personal brand identity with their higher level career goals. When you’re looking for specific opportunities, or looking to attract the people who will open the right doors for you, paying attention to how you show up online and offline is absolutely worth your effort. In short, when you craft your personal brand identity, you’re being intentional about building your reputation. And your reputation is what opens doors. Here are the kinds of things you can do proactively to show the world who you are with clarity and impact:

1. update your LinkedIn with a clear picture of the “true you” in a professional context (i.e., who you are, what you’ve accomplished and where you’re going)
2. network strategically to tell this same story to people who can help you 
3. target some big accomplishments in the direction of your future and achieve them
4. repeat

Yes, as you can tell, this isn’t a short term fix. And even if it was, you’re always growing and changing so crafting your personal brand identity is really a matter of letting the story you tell about yourself keep up with who you are becoming. The people who have strong personal brands, the people who other influential people know about and talk about–inside companies and inside industries–do good work and make sure other people know about it, throughout their career. Over time they become good at telling their story and updating their personal brand becomes just who they are and what they do. Given how big this task can seem from the specific moment in time when you decide, “Yes! I’m doing it!” I understand why this can seem daunting. 

Getting Started with Personal Branding

Here is where I see people go in circles when they launch into shaping their personal brand identity with intention. Maybe you’re stuck here too. As one client put it, “Crafting my personal brand identity feels like trying to push myself back into a toothpaste tube.”

It’s not comfortable. Even if you like yourself, have accomplished a lot and don’t mind talking about it (three non-trivial hurdles for many of us), putting all that into words on LinkedIn and networking talking points can feel like you’re trivializing all the great stuff that comes along with the “true you.” All of a sudden all that great energy you have for your career withers down into a statement like. “Hi, I’m a project manager.” Somehow putting yourself into words you think makes sense to other people feels like it takes all the bursting potential that is you and boils you down to something generic. 

And if there’s one thing a personal brand identity is not, it’s generic.

Personal Branding: Like trying to stick yourself back in a tube of toothpaste? – Click to Tweet

Hopefully you’re looking at that toothpaste tube and saying, “Nope! That’s not me! I refuse to be generic. I refuse to stuff myself into words that don’t feel like me just so other people get it.” If this is you, then you’re in the right headspace to build a really powerful personal brand. 

But if you’re like most of us, being in the right headspace isn’t enough; you don’t know where to start. So start by understanding that while the expression of your personal brand identity does need to make sense to others to help build your reputation, your “true you” starts with you. 

You don’t craft yourself into what other people want, you craft yourself into who you are and then you express yourself so other people can see you. 

Personal Branding: Start with who you are. – Click to Tweet

And then. Bang. There you are facing that other daunting question. Who am I?

The core question of humanity. The existential puzzle each person carries uniquely inside them. Gah! How did we get here? You just wanted a new LinkedIn title! 

Never fear. You don’t have to fall down the abyss into navel-gazing and eternal journaling. I have good news for you. There are simple ways you can latch onto solid, motivating and powerful answers to the “Who am I?” question, and turn them into interesting and meaningful personal brand statements and stories.

3 Steps to Refresh Your Personal Brand Identity Authentically

Step 1: Characterize Yourself and Find Your Story

This is the fresh place to start. Start with a teeny bit of journaling. Answer these questions for yourself in ways that tap into your motivations and excitement:

• What are my strengths? 
• What are my values?
• What’s my “perfect career opportunity” – the one that will bring out my greatest potential and the one I’m on the look-out for right now?
• What 1-2 stories can I tell to best demonstrate what I’ve accomplished, how I did it in my own unique way and what my next chapter is all about? 

If these questions seem hard to answer, consider taking an InPower shortcut.

These are your core messages. Spend some time crafting your stories. They bring all of the goodness of you into clear relief for others to see. Spend time making your experiences into stories you love to tell. Make sure they have a beginning (i.e., problem), middle (i.e., your solution) and end (i.e., happy ending). Make sure you’re a character in your own story and key into common character themes others quickly recognize (e.g., Are you the hero? the explorer? the creator?) 

How do you know when you’ve got it right? Easy. You LOVE your stories. 

Every time you think of them you light up. Why? Because they tap into what you most enjoy about yourself. Your truest gifts. They demonstrate what you can do by showing how you use your unique talents and skills to accomplish things that mean the most to you. 

What’s not to like?

If you’re not sure what a personal brand identity story might look like, take this free and fun workplace personality assessment for clues.

Step 2: Recraft Your LinkedIn Summary With Your Story

Yes, you could run straight out into networking with these exciting stories, and you will! 

But take the time first to craft a tight, 2000 character summary statement for LinkedIn. I promise the act of crafting it in writing will help you hone your stories. You’ll make word choices and in these choices, you’ll get closer to the core energy you feel when you think about these amazing stories that you’re proud of and which show the world what you can do.

Feel free to try on some of the stories in informal networking. See how they land. That will help you hone them too. But bring what you learn back to your LinkedIn.

Yes, make sure your keywords are in your summary, but don’t let the keywords drive your writing. If your keywords appear in the text, those tricksy computers will find them, AND humans reading your summary will catch a strong sense for what makes you special and why they want to reach out to you. Keywords are how you connect your amazing story to the generic labels others are looking for. But the keywords are not YOU. They are not your story. 

Step 3: Network Strategically

Now that you’ve got your story down pat… Now that when people look you up on LinkedIn they’ll find the YOU you love to be… Now… you can get intentional about making sure the people in your network who can help you, know the story of who you are NOW. Before you reach out, they know a story about who you were the last time you talked to them. But they don’t know this new you. This new, motivated and excited-for-the future version of who the true you is today.

So tell them.

Create a short list of people who are in a position to open doors, advocate for you, hire you, help you by ____________. Set your intention to find authentic and natural ways to reach out to them, run into them or meet them so you can share your new personal brand identity with them. Think about how you’ll tell your story to them in ways that will matter to them. How can being who you are help them be who they are? Sound abstract? Here are some easy, tangible ways to network strategically by putting your personal brand story out front:

• Find an article they would like and send it to them with a short intro that tells the most relevant part of your story. (e.g., I recently wrapped up a project that accomplished ______ and overcame ______, and found this article about related strategies that made me think of you. Happy to share what I learned. Free for coffee?)
• Attend an event that will put you in front of one person you want to meet. Look for others there who would add a similar potential benefit to your network (and you to theirs). 
• Identify something others can help you with (e.g., advice, an introduction, a recommendation). Reach out to the people who can help you. Give them an update (including your story!) Ask them for help they can give, and then offer them help you can give. 

Most importantly, don’t get stuck on any particular interaction. Don’t get down on people who don’t call you back. Get up with people who do! Your network will deliver in ways you can’t anticipate. 

I know this can seem like a lot, and it is certainly something you have to focus on, but I also think that you’ll find it refreshing and exciting when you tap into your unique story and way of putting yourself in your story as the main character.

There you have it! The 1-2-3 of personal brand identity! Good luck and, importantly, have fun!

Updated November 2023