Chapter 3

Identify your Professional Value

Depending on the season, there can be as many as fifty-eight distinct species of birds inhabiting the Galápagos Islands. Twenty-eight of those species live on the islands year-round, and thirteen of those species are finches. This means that depending on the time of year, finches account for roughly one quarter to one half of the avian species on the islands. During his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin puzzled over how so many different types of finches could not only survive together but thrive together on the island chain. What was the conclusion he arrived at decades later? Variation and differentiation.

As a modern professional, you might recognize these two concepts not as keys for surviving the volcanic landscape of the Galápagos but as effective business practices. In corporate jargon, they are better recognized by the terms value proposition and competitive differentiation. According to Anthony K. Tjan, a venture capitalist and blogger for the Harvard Business Review, an organization's value proposition is the sum total of the responses to three key questions:

1. What product or service is the company selling?
2. Who is the target customer?
3. What makes the company's offering unique or different?

Once this value proposition is defined, it gets translated into the organization's competitive differentiation by the sales and marketing departments. If you are unfamiliar with this term, you can think of it as the effective branding and messaging of the value proposition. The goal of competitive differentiation is to have the most compelling value proposition that is communicated in the most persuasive way to your target audience so that you are differentiated from the competition in a way that gives you the advantage.1

In the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote that “the preservation of individual differences and variations” is at the heart of understanding how survival of the fittest works. Differentiation and variation are the very crux of adaptability: they are the means of making a place for yourself within the context of an ever-shifting environment and also among other individuals within the environment. Variation and differentiation are adaptive (as Darwin noted) as long as those distinctions are “beneficial to the being under its conditions of life.”2 That is, variation that supports the goals and needs of the individual marks a member of the Fittest in any ecosystem—including the economic one.

The Galápagos finches can teach us a thing or two about variation. Across the thirteen species are some that live in trees and some that live on the ground. Depending on the species, a bird may eat fruit, insects, seeds, or even cactuses, and each species has a unique beak shape adapted to one or more functions: probing, crushing, grasping. These various traits—and myriad others—combine in a host of ways to create thirteen unique and distinguishable species of birds that can live together in a small area without stepping on each other's toes . . . or whatever kind of foot things finches have.

In the previous chapter, we explored how adopting the gig mindset can help you take ownership of your career and control of your professional survival. In this chapter, we will focus on how purposeful variation and differentiation can help you stand out from the crowd and fuel your vocational success. This is the core of the Finch Effect's second strategy: Identify your professional value.

We certainly aren't going to spend the next pages determining what shape your beak should be or whether you should eat insects or cactuses, although I hear both are yummy choices. But we are going to spend this time working on the professional human equivalent: your adaptive professional brand.

Over the last several years, I have observed members of the Fittest using what I call an adaptive professional brand (APB) to help leverage and package their professional value. The APB can encompass anything and everything from physical presentation, to skills and education, to an individual mission statement. Just like the corporate concepts of value proposition and competitive differentiation, successful APBs are designed to effectively communicate a compelling presentation of your professional services and unique value to your target market. APBs call upon you to utilize your gig mindset and channel your inner Jay-Z: “I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man.”

You can think of your target market as the customers you are trying to sell your brand to. For most professionals, the target markets are typically their current employer, a future employer, or a client. For example, if you currently work at a company that you would like to remain affiliated with or get promoted in, your target market for your APB is your current employer. Within that market, the customers for your brand may be one person who holds the keys to your advancement, or a group of people whom you need to affiliate with or impress to achieve your professional goals. For this customer, the main value you need to communicate through your APB is how you already meet and exceed the needs of the organization and how you are eager to grow in value to benefit the organization.

If you are unemployed, underemployed, or a soon-to-be college graduate, then you will likely choose the “future employer” option as your target market. Customers in this market can be hiring managers, human resource professionals, recruiters, or even people at networking events. When projecting your brand to these customers, you should be highlighting the value you have the potential to bring to their organization.

If you are an entrepreneur, freelancer, small business owner, or in an entrepreneurial industry (insurance brokerage, law, medical practice), then you will tailor your APB to the third market option, “clients” (or “patients”). When selling your brand to these customers, you would be wise to emphasize how your services or products have helped other clients with similar needs.

The reason I call these professional brands “adaptive” is that like all things in the Finch Effect universe, they are capable of evolving and growing with you and your career, especially in the context of your target market. You will likely not be job hunting, lobbying for advancement in a company, or selling to the same clients for your entire career, so it is important that you build a brand that can journey with you as the job environment changes and as you change as a professional.

Whenever I mention the concept of professional branding, the first things people think of are the corporate brands that saturate our daily lives (think Apple, Pepsi, Staples), or the personal brands that saturate our daily communication channels (think Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Barack Obama). The problem with being surrounded by all this larger-than-life branding is that we forget what these brands, at their most foundational level, are created to do: they are for making products, services, and individuals stand out from the competition. My trusty American Heritage dictionary has reminded me that the formal definition of a brand does not include anything about multimillion dollar ad campaigns or reality television shows. A brand can be simply defined as a “distinctive category; a particular kind” of anything. In the context of this definition, we could even go so far as to say that each of the thirteen species of finch is its own “brand” of bird.

Professional brands—adaptive or otherwise—sit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between a corporate brand and a personal brand. Like their corporate counterparts, professional brands communicate to the world what “product” is being offered to the target market or consumer, whether that product is a service, skill set, body of experience, or actual physical product. However, like their personal cousins, professional brands can also communicate to the world some key intangibles about an individual, such as the person's values, personality, and overall mission. One of the most common questions about professional brands is how they differ from personal brands. Alison Doyle, a human resource expert and guide for About.com's Job Searching page, explained it best: “Your professional brand is what [about you] matters to a potential employer, networking contact, or anyone who can help you find a job or grow your career.”3

When it comes to thriving in today's economy, Susan Walaszek, the founder of HR Compliance Consulting, notes that projecting a well-defined professional brand has a “significant impact on employers.” In fact, the projection and leveraging of a professional brand can help your target market determine “not only if you can perform the job but whether you will fit in with the culture of the company.”4

However, most American workers aren't accustomed to seeing themselves as a brand. Or even worse, they mistake the organization they work for as their brand. While I was researching for this book, I asked Emily—a smart, educated, and driven twenty-something—about her professional brand. Her response shocked me a bit: “I haven't ever thought of myself as a brand. Instinctively, I guess I've always associated my ‘brand’ with the organization I am working for.”

What I found as I continued to interview people on this topic is that Emily's perception is not the exception but the norm. And when you think about it, can you be surprised? If you work forty hours a week, that means you are clocking in around two thousand hours at your job per year, assuming you get a two-week vacation. If you work at that rate from age 21 to 65, that can mean you spend almost ninety thousand hours of your life at your job. Those numbers don't make the point for you? Then let's consider it this way: if you rise at 7 a.m. and go to bed around 11 p.m. and work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., that means that of the sixteen hours you are awake during the day, eight of them—or one half—are spent at your place of work. That doesn't include commute time or the less quantifiable “I am thinking about something for work right now even though I am at my kid's soccer game” time.

Our jobs, whether they are part of a larger career plan or just something to make a little green with, are huge parts of our daily lives. They aren't something separate that exists in little vacuums of time. It is no wonder then that the individuals I connected with mentioned the companies they worked for as major elements of their professional brand. It was only members of the Fittest who thought otherwise.

Perceiving the organization you work for to be an elemental part of your professional brand is not only an antiquated notion reminiscent of William H. Whyte's definition of an “Organization Man,” but also a serious liability in an age when organizations shed workers as easily as a cocker spaniel sheds fur. Individuals who perceive their company as their brand are setting themselves up for a major professional identity crisis if they ever part ways with the organization, even voluntarily. And I think we can all agree, knowing what we know about the forces shaping the job market, that anyone's staying at just one organization for an entire career is highly improbable.5

In the rest of this chapter, we will dive deeply into the concept of adaptive professional branding, outline the APB components that members of the Fittest have found vital for their success, and begin to identify and craft your own APB. Finally, we will put it all together to help you identify how you can best leverage this brand for your own success. By the end of this chapter, you will have a clear sense of what your professional value proposition is and how to communicate it effectively to your target market.

Let's build a brand.

The Value of Crafting an Apb

I've had people ask me if defining a professional brand is the best use of their time in this tough economy: “Shouldn't I be spending my time sending out résumés or something?” But here's the thing: you already have a professional brand. Everything about you is constantly coming together and being communicated to the outside world. Everyone already sees a “You, Inc.,” especially in the workplace. As Susan Walaszek points out, “The résumé and interview presentation, the clothing one wears, the events one attends, and the body language of the individual all are a type of branding in terms of the level of professionalism, approachability, and personality.”6

But if you don't consciously refine and project a particular brand, then what “You, Inc.” is communicating to the world on your behalf is up to the gods. In the best-case scenario, you aren't actively leveraging your assets and are missing opportunities; in the worst-case scenario, you are projecting a message that is inaccurate, unhelpful, or damaging.

We often fail to realize that while every single person is a complex and multifaceted individual, we are perceived by most of the world through a small set of relatively simple and one-dimensional terms. John is driven and funny. Suzy is quiet and thorough. Brad is clownish and irresponsible. Don't believe me? Think about someone you work with whom you don't know very well. Do you have a robust conception of their life experience, skill sets, passions, goals, and preferences, or do you have a couple of adjectives on mental file? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Of course, the longer and more intimately you know someone, the more your perception of them expands outside of basic descriptors. Yet in a business world where many career-altering decisions can be made quickly and on the basis of just a few interactions, it behooves us to actively communicate an easily digestible professional brand that projects the right descriptors to our target market.

There are other major benefits to be gained from taking the time to outline your adaptive professional brand. One of these is an increase in your professional worth. The clearer and more confident you can be about your value and differentiation from the competition, the more you are worth to employers or clients. Professional worth translates as tangible worth (compensation and benefits) and intangible worth (value to an organization, reputation), and in this economy both are essential. When you know what you bring to the table and can firmly assert it, you can command more for your talent.

Communicating an adaptive professional brand can also improve your networking success. The ability to communicate your brand concisely to others improves your capacity to network. Not only will it help you project a consistent message about who you are as a professional and support your reputation; it will also help you engage better with others. Instead of fumbling around for an answer to “So, tell me, what you do?” you have a succinct response on hand so that you can spend the conversation learning about the other person and making valuable connections.

One of the most underrecognized but important benefits of building and maintaining an APB is that it gives you a guide for skill development. Should you get that MBA? Is executive coaching a good use of your resources? An awareness of your differentiated value can help you pursue investments of your time and capital that continue to strengthen your value proposition and help you weed out random focuses that don't tie into your larger brand. We will talk more about skill development in the context of your APB in the next chapter.

Finally, your adaptive professional brand can be your vocational North Star. Brands are not just projections of what other people can expect from you; they can also serve as reminders of what you can expect from yourself and where you want to go. In a world full of distractions, flash-in-the-pan pundits, and shiny objects, a clear sense of what you bring to the table as a unique professional can help you maintain your sense of career ownership and identity through good economic times and bad. It can also provide you a foundation for coherent adaptation, growth, and expansion of your skill set over the course of your career. I can tell you from my own career journey that I identified writing as part of my APB long before I had a column or book contract. Building that into my brand helped me achieve that goal by keeping me focused on seeking out opportunities for development that supported it.

These are the most common and powerful ways adaptive professional brands can provide value for you on your vocational journey, yet they aren't the only ones. Beyond career benefits, the process of building and maintaining an APB can be a real quest for self-discovery, self-understanding, and self-acceptance. I encourage you to embrace it and engage with it fully and go where it takes you, whether to a different perspective on your job or to a totally new career. Remember what I said in Chapter One: the unexpected opportunity in all this job market change is a freedom to forge a new way forward.

Of course, to enjoy all these benefits you'll need to start building your adaptive professional brand. Let's start by reviewing the key components.

Break it Down: Your Personal Strengths
Your adaptive professional brand focuses on what strengths you posses as a worker. However, taking an opportunity to also define your personal strengths can indirectly help your brand by bolstering your confidence and helping you build a brand as a professional that is in line with who you are as a person. By knowing your strengths, you can choose responsibilities at work and at home that are in tune with your strong points.
To begin to define your strengths, write out a list of every strength you have as a whole person. This can include strengths you have as a professional, a parent, a child, a friend, or a hobby enthusiast. If you're having trouble getting started, check out this list of example strengths for inspiration:
  • optimistic
  • responsible
  • honest
  • intelligent
  • competent
  • precise
  • imaginative
  • loving
  • persevering
  • organized
  • enthusiastic
  • inventive
  • adventurous
Another way to approach building your strengths list is to think about an important moment or decision in your life (or more than one) and consider what strengths you exhibited in that story. What do your choices, behavior, or strategy in that instance say about your strengths and gifts? You can also feel free to ask your close friends, family, and even your coworkers what they see as your strengths to help round out your list.
Once your list is complete, reflect on each trait and think back to a recent time when it was on display. After you have acknowledged each trait, rank them in order, giving the most prominent strength you have identified the number 1. Pick the five top strengths and write them on an index card preceded by the words “I am . . .” These are your core personal strengths.

The Components of an Apb

There are some things that every finch has: beak, feathers, eyes, those foot things. These elements are not what make one species of finch different from another; in fact, they are what unify them as birds (rather than mammals, fish, or any other kind of animal).

What distinguishes one species of finch from the others are the specific characteristics of these common elements—how big the beak is, what color the feathers are, how close together the eyes are—and how they combine in the individuals of a species.

You can think of your adaptive professional brand in the same way: a set of basic components are common to all effective APBs. In fact, an APB wouldn't really be an APB without them. But the specific details and combinations of these components make each brand unique and differentiated.

The components of an effective APB serve two primary goals:

1. To help you outline your value as an individual professional
2. To help you stand out from the competition

The major components that support these two goals can be broken into three categories: presentation, offering, and mission. After we explore each of these categories in detail, we will use them to outline your own APB.

Presentation

The presentation category addresses all visual representations of your brand, and can be broken down into three subcategories: physical presentation, paper presentation, and digital presentation. Physical presentation has to do with things like hairstyle, fashion choices, makeup, hygiene, piercings, tattoos, and even how you tie your tie. Additionally, it includes things like physical poise, eye contact, and overall projection of presence.

I refer to the second presentation subcategory as “paper presentation” because it encompasses the items we mean when we say, “Well, he looks good on paper”—even though admittedly much of what falls in this arena is now digitized. Paper presentation includes not only the visual appearance (design) but also the accuracy, structure, grammatical correctness, and eloquence of your résumé, cover letters, e-mails, snail-mail letters, and even text messages. Depending on your industry, articles, summaries, briefs, reports, or other written documentation can also fall into this subcategory. The fonts used, letterhead, citation format, and tone of the writing can all influence how paper presentation works in the context of your APB.

The final presentation subcategory is digital presentation. As just noted, many of the items that fall into the paper presentation subcategory could now technically be labeled as digital presentation. So let's be clear that this subcategory really refers to your online presence (social media, website, and online pictures and videos). In our technological age, this subcategory of presentation is more important than ever for your APB, which is why we will be spending an entire chapter diving deeper into this part of your brand.

Offering

Within an adaptive professional brand the offering category refers to what many consider to be the heart and soul of an individual's value proposition: his or her skills, talents, and experience. This category includes the broad strokes—the companies you have worked for, the titles you have held, the degrees you have earned—as well as the particulars, like experience with particular clients, specific job tasks performed, and courses you completed for your degrees. The offering portion of an APB is the concrete proof of what you bring to the table as a professional and speaks to what matters most to your target market: performance and results.

Mission

The mission category of an APB is the most nebulous element but often the most powerful. It represents the grander, overarching goals and vision of your career. It is often referred to as a personal mission statement and can be explained as why you do what you do.

The reason the mission component is so integral to the APB is that, as business author Simon Sinek notes, “People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” His theory, called “The Golden Circle,” suggests that most individuals and businesses spend too much time telling their target market what they do and how they do it, throwing the why in afterwards. But Sinek observes that most successful leaders and corporations gain loyal followings by explaining why they are motivated and driven to do their work, and then explaining what they do and how they do it as a support for why.7

When it comes to your adaptive professional brand, your target market likely won't be driven into enthusiastic fits over what you have done or how you have done it. It is the “why” factor that pulls it all together and makes the most powerful statement of your value proposition.

Other Elements

There is a host of other elements that some people choose to include in their adaptive professional brand, like religious affiliation, educational affiliation, and professional association affiliation. I've had a few people consider including their hobbies and passions as components of the APB, or information about their family or upbringing. But unless that hobby or family story is specifically relevant to your field or can be understood in the context of a valuable professional experience or skill, I think such details can be irrelevant, distracting, or just unprofessional.

Each effective APB is a distinct recipe made up of these major categories of components. The secret to your “winning flavor” is how much of each component you draw from and what you put in those components. There is no specific formula for the perfect APB; it is something that is consciously crafted with each individual in mind.

Break it Down: Outlining your Apb
You can start to outline what components your APB will include by answering the following questions. I recommend you go through and answer all the questions, and then go back and review and elaborate on your initial responses.

As you review your answers to these questions, I want you to ask yourself if you feel this is the right set of pieces for your APB, of if something is missing. When you consider your answers as a whole, do you feel proud of or excited by the brand of your career, or does it just feel “blah”?

Your brand is what you are going to get up every day to advance, support, and promote. If it's not something you can totally get behind and support, then something has to change. If you are feeling “blah” about the sum of these parts, I encourage you to go back over and look at the responses to ask yourself what is not resonating with you. Maybe it's your physical presentation; maybe it's the clients you are working with; or maybe it's your industry. Whatever it is, just remember that you have the power to change anything. This is an adaptive professional brand, and if your career needs to be jazzed up or shift in another direction, then no worries—the work on your brand thus far can help support you in that transition.

Another possibility is that you might feel really energized by your APB but everyone else sees it as “blah.” One of our biggest challenges as humans is seeing beyond our own perspective to understand how things appear to others. Often what we think is great, appropriate, or correct is perceived by others to be the exact opposite. Let's be honest, we've all worn that shirt or got that haircut that we thought looked fantastic, only to receive bewildered stares or smirks from people on the street. But questionable fashion sense aside, navigating the gap between how we see ourselves and how others perceive us is never more crucial than when we are building our professional brand. Just like a corporation, we can't just roll out a product because we think it is good; we need to do market research to understand if our vision is translating appropriately to the consumer.

Break it Down: Workshopping your Apb
As a litmus test for how your draft APB is coming across, I recommend you ask one or two people to answer the following questions. Feel free to have family, friends, coworkers, or clients respond, as long as they have observed you in a professional capacity.
When you receive the responses back, I want you to consider where your answers and their answers do or do not match up. For the items that match up, congratulations: you are projecting that component consistently. The responses that don't match up indicate that either you aren't communicating your message correctly or how you want to be seen isn't where you are yet. The best way to figure out whether it is the former or the latter is to have a dialogue with your responders about their answers. Show them your response and then ask them to help you figure out where the breakdown is. If it is the former, there are likely ways you can tweak something to correct the communication, like not wearing your Mohawk to work, not misspelling the boss's name, or remembering to mention your experience at Habitat for Humanity.
If it's the latter, then no worries: the next chapter is all about ramping up your skills to back up the content of your APB. But first, we have to put it all together.

Putting the Pieces Together

Your responses to the questions given earlier in the chapter (along with the responses you received from others) can be seen as the building blocks of your adaptive professional brand. They are the components that will be arranged together in a way that shares with the world your professional value proposition and differentiation. But figuring out how to put them together can feel a little puzzling . . . that is, if you don't know the three keys of professional branding.

The three keys are a set of deceptively simple questions that can help you laser-focus all the components you just outlined into a coherent package, one that can be leveraged and promoted to advance your career in any economy.

Your Tagline

The first key asks, “What is your tagline?”

The tagline, also referred to as a brand slogan, is an amazing marketing tool that allows the value proposition of a product to be communicated in one short phrase. You have likely read or heard hundreds of taglines in your life, like Sprite's “obey your thirst,” Nike's “just do it,” or—my personal favorite—”the truth is out there” from The X-Files (love you, Mulder!). Like these examples prove, when you get them right, taglines are memorable, easily identifiable, and inextricably attached to the product in the minds of the target market.

Four Ways to Build the Credibility of your Apb
1. Create a website. The first and most important thing you can do for yourself to establish credibility online is create a professional website that outlines your APB. I recommend a blog format that includes a résumé section and an “about me” section. A good way to organize your site is to model it after another professional site you find visually appealing.
2. Join an industry-relevant network. There are hosts of professional organizations around the country that focus on connecting professionals in every job function imaginable. Do a Google search with some keywords and your city name to find out where and when your peers are connecting.
3. Participate in blog discussions. Another person's blog is an excellent place for you to gain exposure. To find blogs on topics in your field or industry, simply follow the search suggestion above using the word “blog” instead of “network.”
4. Attend industry-relevant fairs, shows, and exhibitions. Professionals go to conferences and industry fairs to observe the latest in their craft but also to meet their peers and competition and make professional contacts of all kinds. If you are feeling confident in your skill level, think about participating in one of these gatherings. Bring your business cards and a pad and pen to jot down any tips or tricks you hear, any names and numbers that aren't printed on the cards you collect, and general impressions about what you see and whom you meet.

For members of the Fittest, a tagline that captures the essence of their APB can be an effective way to communicate their brand through specific channels like business cards or social media profiles (which we'll discuss more in Chapter Five). Several styles of taglines can be employed, depending on what you are working to communicate with your overall brand. I'll list them below with actual examples of taglines from the Fittest (if you can guess which one is mine, you'll get a prize—just kidding):

Coming up with your tagline is arguably the most fun part of developing your APB because you get to play big-firm copywriter for a few minutes. But building your tagline is also enjoyable because to a big extent you are crafting it for your personal benefit and private use.

More than any other part of your APB, your tagline can be used as an easily accessible touchstone to remind yourself who you are, what you want, and what you are doing as a professional. Sure, it will be used in various places online and in print. But it won't be spoken aloud or used to introduce yourself to others in person (imagine the Nike CEO using his company's tagline to explain his value proposition at a cocktail party—doesn't work). So aside from its print uses, the tagline is yours to add to your personal crawl line of positive self-talk.

However, this self-serving aspect of your tagline should not encourage you to settle on a tagline you think is mysterious or cool; to everyone else, it may seem cryptic or nonsensical. For example, tagging yourself as “The One” might seem like a witty nod to The Matrix and a reflection of your superiority among your industry peers. But to everyone who doesn't know you (that is, your target market), it likely translates as an incomplete or presumptuous assertion. “The one” what? And why?

As the old marketing adage goes, it is always better to be clear, not clever. Here are some other parameters for developing your tagline:

Crafting an effective tagline not only allows you to communicate your APB quickly and effectively to others but also provides a way to easily reinforce your core message to yourself. That can come in handy when someone asks you to respond to the second key question of APB marketing: your story.

Your Story: Short Version

“What is your story?” The opportunity to present your APB won't always be prompted with this exact phrase. Other questions that ask for the same response include “So, tell me about yourself” and “So, what do you do?” Earlier we talked about how we are perceived by most of the world as just a few choice descriptors: smart and successful, lazy and irresponsible, cute and friendly. People define us in these terms not necessarily out of indifference to our complexity as individuals but because it is in our brain physiology to filter and categorize those around us—think of it as a vestigial survival mechanism or a kissing cousin to confirmation bias. In an interview on 20/20, John Dovidio, a psychology professor from the University of Connecticut, noted, “When you are a social animal, you need to be able to distinguish who's a friend and who's a foe. You need to understand who's a member of your pack, who's a member of a different pack . . . . We categorize people automatically, unconsciously, immediately.”8

Yet we all know from our own experience that the one thing that suddenly brings depth and dimension to an individual we've categorized and filed away with descriptors is hearing that person's story. The guy who lives down the hall from you is just noisy and unfriendly in your mind, until you hear the story about how his wife left him for his brother and hasn't let him see his daughter in years. Suddenly, that man no longer fits neatly into that descriptor box; he is a human being that you are more aware of and sympathetic to.

While members of the Fittest don't go around telling every employer, job prospect, or client their entire life story, they do recognize the value of sharing their professional story as a way to stand out from their competition. By themselves the components of your APB are just pieces of information; someone might use them to refine the descriptors they give you. But on their own, they won't make you stand out. It is how you weave the pieces into your story—the story of your adaptive professional brand—that brings them to life and out of that descriptor box.

This is why I feel it is so valuable to make the third component category—the mission—a foundational element of your brand. If you are struggling to understand what your professional brand is all about, I recommend you frame it a little differently in your mind as “What is my professional mission, and how do my offering, presentation, and goals support that mission?”

You should have two distinct versions of your story on tap: a two-minute version and a fifteen-minute version. The two-minute version is the “elevator speech” of your APB. The elevator speech, so named because it is supposed to last no longer than an elevator ride, is a way for you to introduce the highlights of your value proposition to someone in your target market—be it your boss's boss, a potential employer, or a prospect—in a short, impressive blurb. This version is meant to whet the appetite of the person you are speaking with so they want to learn more about you. It is not a rambling monologue about all your qualifications or special skills but instead a few sentences, presented in a conversational style, that touch on the highlights of your APB and the value they provide to your target market.

When it comes to preparing the two-minute version of your story, I recommend sitting down and actually writing out a draft or two so you can wordsmith it to hit all the highlights of your APB. The average person can hear words most comfortably at a rate of about 150 to 160 words per minute, so your draft elevator speech should be about 300 words total, or two midsized paragraphs.9

When you draft your two-minute story, keep these guidelines in mind (you'll note similarities to the guidelines for writing your tagline):

In addition, be sure you are using accessible language that works with appropriate vocal inflections and hand gestures; the language you choose should allow you to put yourself across naturally and dynamically. Remember, the point of the two-minute story is to share as much about your APB as possible and leave the target market wanting to learn more. Here is a good example of an elevator pitch from a member of the Fittest:

I use my training in psychology to consult with and coach corporations and entrepreneurs in the Northeast about how to use creativity strategies to improve their problem-solving and team cohesion skills. Over the last few years, I've spent the majority of my time working with several government taskforces on developing creativity-based resilience training for homeless vets. This project is really close to my heart, because the reason I was drawn to this field of work was watching my uncle, a Vietnam vet, suffer with reintegrating into society after his tour of duty. You know, I remember being ten years old and wishing so badly that I could help him in some way—that's why it was such a dream come true for me when I was accepted into Princeton's psychology PhD program after completing my BA and Master's at Boston University.

After I finished my doctorate, I had an amazing opportunity to spend two years researching creativity and resilience in London with my dissertation advisor. While over there, I met my husband who was at the time the CEO of a boutique accounting firm, and it was through getting to know his staff that I realized how applicable creativity strategies are to effectiveness in business. When we got back to the States, I immediately started reaching out to my friends in the business community about their teams' needs around problem-solving and cohesion and began to develop a coaching program that was built based on common themes and needs that emerged across the 16 initial companies I surveyed. Ten years later, I've had a chance to work with over 100 companies across 8 major industries and can tell you that problem-solving is problem-solving, whether you are welding steel or trading on Wall Street. I just find it so fascinating that while modern technology has offered new ways to approach these key business issues, the methods at their core remain the same.

What's good about this elevator speech is that it speaks about what the individual is offering (coaching and consulting services), about her field (creativity and business), her target audience (corporations, government agencies, and entrepreneurs), how she stands out (PhD, government task force, business application of psychological skills), and why she is in the business (because she has a lifelong passion for creativity and see its relevance in the modern world). What could be improved are the length and complexity of the sentences; when the speech is read aloud, the long, complex sentences are easy to stumble over. As you craft a two-minute version of your own story, try to hit similar content points but break them up into shorter, simpler sentences.

The other element that cannot be ignored about a speech is the presentation of the content. Is the person making eye contact? Is he allowing for appropriate pauses between sentences or rushing from one thought to the next? Dos she use gestures, or is she stiff? Is he inflecting his voice or raising and lowering the volume at appropriate places to convey emotion and keep it interesting for the listener? Does the presentation feel authentic, or forced and overly rehearsed? You may have the best content in the world, but if the presentation component of the APB isn't showing up, the words of your elevator speech will translate more like elevator music. After you draft your text, be sure to practice it in front of the mirror or with a friend to maximize its effectiveness.

Your Story: Long Version

The fifteen-minute version of your story dives deep into the key facets of your adaptive professional brand. It is what you use when a person in your target market invites you into the office to sit down for a few minutes. This version of your story should make an irrefutable case for you as a professional and be the most irresistible display of the services you provide. It should also anticipate and answer the most vital question that can be posed to a professional:

“Why you?”

The two little words that make up this question—which is the third key question—are packed with subtexts that go way below their surface meaning:

The fifteen-minute version of your story should be crafted to meet and answer these and other versions of the “Why you?” question.

Unlike the two-minute version of your story, this version is meant to be more of a dialogue with the listener. Talking for fifteen minutes straight about yourself and your value is one sure way to lose your audience and whatever opportunity they bring with them.

Instead of drafting an entire speech for this more dynamic presentation of your story, you should outline a set of clear talking points that you can work into the dialogue at any opportunity. The best way to identify these points is to go back through your APB diagnostic survey and focus on two or three pieces of information from each APB component (presentation, offering, mission), with which you will be able to confidently respond to any of the likely “Why you?” subtext questions. I recommend that these focus points include facets of brand name recognition (high-profile schools, clients, or employers), skills and experience, mission, and a few “fun facts” people might not know about you as a professional (like unique certifications, awards, or languages you speak). For each point ask yourself, “How does this component or piece of information communicate why I am the best choice for my employer (or job prospect, or client)? And what does it say about my adaptive professional brand?”

Your answer to “Why you?” doesn't all have to be about how you are better, stronger, or faster than your competition. As we learned from our friends the finches, “Why you?” should also be about the minute variations and unique combinations of APB components that make you compelling. The nuances of variation and differentiation are what survival of the fittest is all about, not blunt aggression and domination.

Break it Down: Your Brand Statement
With these three keys in mind—”What's your tagline?” “What's your story?” and “Why you?”—I'd like you to take some time to answer the following questions as a way to solidify your APB:
One of the things I found most helpful when I was working on my own APB a few years ago was writing down answers to the above questions and then condensing them into a one-paragraph brand statement. It was written in the first person, using simple language. I printed out that statement and keep it posted above my computer monitor as a reminder to myself of my professional story, my worth, and my differentiation. I see it almost every day when I sit down to work, and it reminds me to leverage my mission and communicate it to my target market. I have found it invaluable, and I recommend you do something similar. Here's mine:
My name is Nacie Carson, and I am a professional development author and career evolutionist. My professional mission is to provide thoughtful, inspiring, and action-provoking content of the highest quality and integrity to American professionals interested in professional evolution, authenticity, and entrepreneurship. My passion for this work comes from my own experience as a young professional trying to find her way in the workforce and build a career that is fulfilling, successful, and supportive of my personal values. The promise I make to my target market is the presentation and explanation of both accurate and mission-driven strategies for directing and building a career, and I deliver on this promise by focusing and blending business and lifestyle with equal weight.

I shared some of these APB exercises with Emily, whom you met earlier in this chapter. The questions came at an interesting time in her career, as she was in transition from not just one job to another but one industry to another. After four years working in support and marketing positions at a global healthcare management and solutions firm, she started working as a producer for a boutique postproduction company that specializes in creative editorial for advertising and cinema. When she encountered my material, her challenge was to separate her brand from her organization and to craft an APB that can travel with her through different roles and industries over the life of her career. In reflecting on her experience working on her APB, she made a comment that I think summarizes the entire branding experience perfectly:

“If you'd asked me what my professional brand was a year ago, I might've said my brand is focused on helping improve access to and quality of healthcare in the US and abroad. But having recently changed careers entirely, your questions forced me to think about what my brand is, and what traits and professional skills make me valuable to both companies. The cornerstones of my brand are creativity, hard work, resourcefulness, and positive thinking. I thrive in situations that challenge me to solve a problem without experience or preparation—I enjoy educating myself on the fly and finding a solution that fits the context. I am intuitively a hard worker, so finding a solution always motivates me to find another—I don't stop when one job is done; I look ahead to see what else can be done to improve things for the future. Believing anything is possible and that no job is too small comes intuitively to me. As I mature and grow professionally, I'd like to continue to reevaluate and define my brand in a way that stays true to who I am but also helps guide my professional direction in a way that makes me happy.”

Well said, Emily. However, being able to communicate and project our brand is only the way to package our professional value and differentiation. In order to really leverage them, we need to have the confidence and capability to deliver on the promise of our adaptive professional brand. Are you ready to work up a skill-strengthening sweat?