4 THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

There are four main elements that go into building your personal brand—personal proof, social proof, association, and recognition. Each piece is part of a puzzle, and they all work together to tell a story: your story.

PERSONAL PROOF

The proof that gives you the confidence to go after the next goal, comment on a recent event, and pursue your passions is personal proof.

Examples include:

≫ Education

≫ Experience

≫ Credentials

≫ Achievements

Personal proof can be difficult to manage, because we all have different metrics for confidence and start at varying confidence levels. Some of us will unknowingly want to put different obstacles in our own way, such as, “I would do A, but I have not completed B, and they may not want me to do A until B has been completed.” That reasoning does not make sense. You first have to ask whether you can do A; then and only then should you consider B, once you confirm that B is required for A.

Others will have a different problem: they will want to lie to themselves or others. These people will say, “I have already completed B, so I can do A,” even if they have not completed B. People who see no need to prove anything to themselves personally have an easier time taking on commitments that they may not be qualified for.

The people who have a lot of confidence and see less value in the personal proof are those who end up taking the qualified person’s job. Of course, there are people who fall somewhere in the middle, but ultimately we all lean in one direction or the other. I have become qualified by jumping into situations for which I was not qualified, because I don’t have as much need for personal proof as some do. Those experiences really opened my eyes to how expertise—perceived and actual—factors into modern society. The first time this became evident to me was when I was asked to speak at an executive training event for Fortune 1000 chief marketing officers.

I was excited to be flown to Miami and put up in a nice hotel—all because someone had found me on Twitter. I had to show up a day late to the event because I had previously committed to work I was doing for a charity, which involved many high-profile entertainment professionals. I knew I would be speaking at a roundtable alongside a sponsor and that there would be twelve people in the session. Meeting with the sponsor to go over the details of the first session was one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had. As we talked, I said, “Well, we just want to make sure that we don’t go over anyone’s head.” The sponsor looked at me with a smile, as if he suddenly became aware that I might be out of my element, and said with a laugh, “Oh, we won’t be going over their heads.”

The next day, I met my cohost in a small room where we waited for the participants to arrive. It was then that I was given the pamphlet that included the other attendees. When I opened it, I almost spewed my coffee across the room. I was hosting a roundtable session with chief marketing officers of some of the most well-known Fortune 500 companies in the world. It hit me then: I was going to be the least qualified, maybe the least educated, and possibly the least prepared person in the room. I wasn’t too far off in thinking that. As the room filled up, the session started, and the roundtable flowed with conversation. I found myself in the middle of some of the most interesting conversations I have ever had.

After the session, I had a realization. The discussions I had just been part of was the conversation that people needed to hear, not the nonsense content being pumped out everywhere by people like me, when I was younger and testing ideas to get more clients. They needed stories from people who were the real deal. That day, I started to value my personal proof more than I had done before, and I started my journey to truly understanding personal branding. I wanted to learn how to make these hyperintelligent, driven, and successful people better known. I knew there had to be a better way to make smart, relatable people more visible to the greater population, and to do that I needed to hold myself to a higher standard.

What is included in personal proof? To understand it a bit more in depth, answer the following questions for examples of how these metrics for confidence vary:

The purpose of college or trades’ training is?

Did you go to college?

Did you complete a degree?

Do you have a job?

If you have a degree and a job, is your current job in the same field as the degree you earned?

When you interviewed for your job, did they ask for proof that you completed a college degree?

Did they call your references?

What is more important to the person interviewing you—your degree or your references?

I have asked these questions to audiences of many different sizes, ages, and skill levels. Unless doctors, architects, or lawyers are in the room, 99 percent of the participants will say that they have never been asked to prove that they have a degree, that their current job is not what they went to school for, and that their current employer never checked their references. If so few companies check to see whether we went to college and received a degree, why do we wait to get a degree before we look for work? If most of us end up working in an environment unrelated to our degree, then why do we spend money to go to college before we have the opportunity to explore new fields? The answer is personal proof. We need that degree to feel prepared enough to interview. What else does this tell us? It tells us that people care more about whom you know, how you know them, and what they think of you than about what you know.

I am not saying that you should not go to college. I am asking that you recognize why you are going or why you went. If you need college to serve as your personal proof that you are educated and capable of greatness, then that’s why you do it. I did. I needed it. But if you also know that most people care more about whom you know than what you studied, attending a college that yields the best network and networking opportunities takes on greater meaning and importance.

Personal proof is different for everyone. Here is how I saved two years and $140,000. After I received my bachelor’s degree in 2013, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, I felt unstoppable. I went from feeling insecure to acting overly confident. I had already been working at an agency for just over a year, and I made partner a few months after I graduated. A year after I graduated, our agency was acquired by another company, and I began looking into attending business school at a few well-respected institutions. This idea came to me after meeting the chief officers at the Miami event.

I took a bunch of GMAT courses and spent a lot of cash to take them; then I took the GMAT three times and started on my application for a part-time program at one of the schools I was considering. This program involved attendance on weekends and evenings. To my surprise, I received an email from the director of admissions at one of my top-choice executive programs, inviting me to come in for a meeting.

When I sat down for the meeting, the director stared at me for a minute and asked, “How old are you?” I told her that I was nearly twenty-nine. “Looking at your résumé, I expected you to be much older,” she replied. I took this as a great compliment, considering that I had just earned my undergrad degree a couple of years ago (with a modest GPA, no less).

She spoke about the program, the level of executive students that come in, and the big companies they come from. Then she asked me the question that made me rethink it all: “Why do you want to get an MBA? Most people who apply to get an MBA are doing it because they want to end up where you are now.” I was floored. For the past few years, I had been managing social media accounts, and now I was being asked by one of the top business schools in the country why I would want to attend their program. I said I wanted to learn more about finance, to network, and to have a reason not to travel back and forth to Nashville. (I was working for a company headquartered there.)

After that meeting, I changed my application from the part-time program to the executive program. That is when things got interesting. I started attending executive classes to get a feel for the program. That is when I discovered the greatest hack of all: crashing 
MBA classes. I started attending as many of them as I could get to. I would look up the guest speakers and let the school know that I wanted to visit the class as a potential student. During that time, I was becoming increasingly aware that I didn’t want to attend business school because the timing was off. I was introduced to a teacher at one of these schools, who had taught there for years and was a trusted source of advice. “You should ride the wave that you are on: save your time, save your money, find a strong chief operating officer, and do your own thing,” he said. “The option for an MBA will always be here. The opportunities at your feet now may not be.” His advice opened my eyes to an exciting future.

I never applied for business school. Instead, I found teachers and offered to speak to their classes. I have now been a guest lecturer at the University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, Harvard Extension, Vanderbilt, and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. I open every presentation with the following statement: “I don’t think I could even get into your school, and today you are paying them to hear me speak. And one day I will have to hire you, because you will know more about many things than I do. Where we are today is not where we will be tomorrow.”

For me, personal proof came from asking and hearing the perspectives of the people most involved in the profession that I was considering at the time—people I admired and people who were living a lifestyle that I idolized. I didn’t know it at the time, but their opinions were worth more to me than an MBA.

SOCIAL PROOF: WHICH CAME FIRST—THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG?

Social proof is the proof that other people need in order to believe that we are qualified to do something. These are the things that lead people to believe that you can help them, you have something they may want, or they can learn from you. Networking is a selfish game, but not for the reasons that we hear about. For example, CEOs do not want to network with interns; they want to network with other C-suite executives. Producers do not want to network with new actors; they want to network with celebrities. Venture capitalists do not want to network with start-ups; they want to network with investors. This does not mean that all of these people do not need interns or new actors or start-up founders in their circles to do their jobs. It means that people want to network with people on or above their perceived status. However, if you break with traditional avenues and metrics for success, or you have mild success in another circle, then you can network with whomever you like.

EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL PROOF

≫ Social media followers

≫ Referrals and references

≫ Writings as a guest blogger, writing for a major publication, published content, case studies, and so on

≫ Speaking engagements and SlideShares

≫ Experience doing what you want to do

≫ Years of experience, quality of experience, and positive references

ASK UNTIL YOU HEAR “YES”

About two years ago, I asked someone whom I knew how he had started to write for so many different publications. His answer was, “I started a blog and made it really popular with lots of amazing content. Then I started writing for smaller publications and applying to bigger ones. It takes time and a lot of energy. Not very easy to do at all.”

I have two problems with his answer. The first is that it infuriates me when someone tells me that what he or she has accomplished is most likely too difficult for me—or anyone else. Again, we are changing the way we think. Support, share the knowledge, and do not glorify yourself.

The second problem I have with his answer is the message that “if it works at all, it will take forever.” That is my least favorite answer, ever. I don’t like minor things that take a long time. So instead of taking that person’s advice and starting a blog full of content that not enough people would read, I went to where I knew I could easily contact people: Twitter.

I searched Twitter for anyone in the United States with the word editor in his or her bio. I sent nearly one hundred messages asking the editors if they were looking for contributors. It took me about three hours to send the messages, and I got one response. It sounds pathetic, but the truth is that I only needed one response. An editor at a major publication responded, “We sure are.” And just like that, I had gained contributor access in three hours, not three years.

I had no idea what I was going to write about. Presciently, my first article was titled “Your Personal Brand Needs a Growth Strategy.” I knew that via writing I could influence topics, help my friends, express myself, add the media outlet’s logo to my website under the phrase As Mentioned In, and barter. If I could barter, I could get my clients published in more publications. It was a huge value-add. All of the other endless opportunities that come with writing for a publisher didn’t become clear to me until I had that access. Once I had it, I started learning about what it could do.

Was I qualified to write for a major publication at that time? This is debatable, but it wasn’t for me to decide: it was up to the editors. For those of you who have no experience, don’t use that as a reason not to try. For those of you who have solid experience, be proactive and reach for more opportunity. A ruler’s influence can extend beyond the boundaries of the kingdom, but only when the ruler communicates outside those borders.

How to find and connect with editors on Twitter:

1. Log on to www.twitter.com.

2. Decide which publishers you want to get in touch with.

3. In the search bar at the top right of the page, enter the handle for the publication.

   

4. Get results.

   

5. Write down the editors’ emails.

6. Follow the editors.

7. Research their work.

8. Retweet their content.

9. Look at their LinkedIn pages.

10. Email them.

HOW TO WRITE FOR PUBLICATIONS

Decide who you want to write for (and why).

Read their contributor guidelines.

Have original, unpublished content ready that fits the guidelines (ideal, but not necessary).

Apply the way the publication requests.

If you don’t hear back in a few days, start messaging the publications’ editors.

Keep an Excel sheet tracking your submissions and the responses.

SUCCESSFUL BY ASSOCIATION

Association is the part of the personal branding puzzle that determines nearly all of your successes. Why? People decide whether you are credible based on your expertise and your network. You’ll need both, and this includes the following:

≫ Companies and people you have worked with

≫ Blogs and publications you write for

≫ Your friends on Facebook

≫ Your connections on LinkedIn

≫ Anyone you have followed or @messaged on Twitter

≫ Anyone who has ever written about you or that you have written about

≫ Your family, friends, and acquaintances (good and bad)

≫ The schools you’ve attended and the alumni

≫ The companies you’ve worked for and the company you currently work for

≫ Any organization you volunteer with or support publicly or financially

≫ Clubs and professional organizations

≫ Nonprofits and boards that you are on

Association sounds simple, right? You are whom you hang out with. The problem with association in the digital age is that it impacts us more than most people realize. Who is willing to connect with you and how people feel about those people are extremely important. Whom you know, whom you are related to in search, whom you associate with on social media, and so on, are the keys to building your brand. It is extremely important not only to connect with people strategically but also to phrase things in a manner that lets other people know you are associated.

The interesting part about connecting is that one good connection can change your entire network. Instead of reaching the top influencer you hope to connect with, find the person who influences that influencer. Then you have an entirely new group of people at your fingertips and you reach your target influencer at the same time.

Volunteer Your Way to Association

Whenever I was told that I couldn’t do something or I wasn’t right for a certain position or role, I would find a nonprofit organization with a value system I believed in that needed help in the same area I was trying to improve and develop in. The best way to prove you can do something is to do it, but it can be difficult to find a paid opportunity to do so. Volunteering is the way to break in. No one wants to hear about how good you think are or what you think you’re capable of. They need to come to that conclusion themselves, and for that to happen, they have to see what you have done.

So do you volunteer just anywhere? No. Volunteer at places that can help you as much as you help them. Do your best, and make sure to talk about the work you’ve done—for your sake and that of the organization. Don’t feel guilty for gaining something in return for your free work. Just don’t sign up and underdeliver, or that will become part of your brand story.

SOME SOURCES FOR VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

≫ www.volunteermatch.org

≫ linkedinforgood.linkedin.com/programs/linkedin-members

≫ www.idealist.org

≫ Google (search “jobs for volunteers near me”)

RECOGNITION—EVERYONE LIKES A PAT ON THE BACK

Being recognized as the best at something and for doing a great job is very important to your abstract and personal brand. It is this recognition that elevates you in the hearts and minds of people everywhere. For example, recognition can include:

≫ Top lists in media publications such as Forbes: “The World’s Most Powerful People,” “Top People to Follow,” and “Tips from 11 Experts”

≫ Employee of the month

≫ Top percentile of students in your class

≫ Traditional awards such as the Nobel Peace Prize, Grammy, Oscar, Gold Medal

≫ Academic awards

≫ Local awards

≫ Military awards

≫ International recognition

≫ Anything that shows you were the best at something

Something to remember about recognition is that as you grow or change direction, some forms of recognition become less valuable. For instance, I won the Best Actress award during my junior year in high school. As proud as I am of that, it doesn’t help me in what I am doing now or open any new doors. It is important to focus on your goals at each new level and to stop leaning on past accomplishments that are no longer relevant to your new direction.

The Business of Recognition

The crazy thing about awards is that some are given for merit and some are presented for political reasons. In fact, some are completely fictional. That’s right. How often do you check to see if a person or company was actually featured by the publisher whose logo they display on their website? Call this out—along with fake awards systems—whenever you see it.

A few years ago, a mentor and colleague nominated me for the Los Angeles Business Journal Women’s Summit: Rising Star Award. I was honored, not because of the award itself but because someone I admired and looked up to thought enough about me to take the time to nominate me. I got an email from the journal’s awards program, informing me that I had been nominated. I was so excited that I did what anyone else would do: I started looking up the judges, the various qualifications for winning, and the past winners. I could not find any information on the qualifications or the judges but only on the prior winners, none of whom had much in common. After a few searches, I assumed that’s just the way it’s done.

A couple of days passed after I received the nomination email. Then I received a second email, informing me that there were tables to be purchased by my company and that they would be happy to reserve an entire table for a little more than $1,000. The individual tickets were $165 per person. As a nominee I got a free ticket, but everyone else had to pay. I was slightly confused by this, but I was working for a corporate company that had the budget, and we bought a few tickets for others I worked with to attend.

On the day of the event, I was shocked by how many attendees there were, but I was even more shocked by the pamphlet. All of the nominees’ names were listed on it, and all of us were given a rose and a glass of champagne. We were then lined up to take individual pictures with an award book that had all the nominees’ names on it. After the pictures were taken, we were given a slip of paper that informed us where we could view and purchase the images (taken in terrible lighting, mind you). Irritated from the start because I had given up half my workday, beginning at 7 a.m., to be shuffled around, I walked into the ballroom where the one-hundred-plus tables were located and found our table. We ate some food, listened to some speeches, and waited for the big moment to arrive, when the host began to announce the nominees and the winners. My category was the first one up.

Excited and surrounded by my colleagues, I was disappointed when the host named the winner and only five of the seventy nominees. In that moment, all the nominees probably realized simultaneously that the event was likely a profit generator for the publication and that the selections were possibly political as well. We were all there so that the organizations could benefit from the nominees’ social media postings. I was embarrassed, and everyone at my table was embarrassed for me. After we left the event, I did my best not to think about it anymore.

A few weeks went by before the new issue of the Los Angeles Business Journal came to the office. My manager (the mentor and colleague who had nominated me) called me into his office and asked if I’d seen the issue. Below the list of winners for each category was a large ad that read “Special Recognition of Cynthia Johnson, Rising Star Nominee.” My employer had taken out an ad on the same page that listed the winners, to recognize me in a more prominent way. At that moment I realized what true recognition is: it is having the people who care about you most, whose opinion you care about most, recognize and appreciate you.

Whenever these types of things happen to you, don’t discount them. It is fine to say that you were nominated even if a hundred other people were nominated, too. It doesn’t take away from you, and many people will still see it as an accomplishment. Post it, share it, and leverage it for as long as it remains relevant. After all, the organization expects to benefit from your affiliation or they wouldn’t have created the construct, so you should claim your benefit as well.