Your Reputation DOES Not Precede You: Take Charge Of Your Personal Brand

While Olivia Pope may have had a miserable personal life, professionally, she was expertly branded! 

Her tagline, "it's handled" is just as recognizable as Nike's “Just Do It." But more than that, she’s a prime example of the phrase “your reputation precedes you.” Her undeniable ability to get the job done is the ultimate clap back to any attempt to insult or undermine her. 

She is the best at what she does, and she knows it and owns it— and anyone who matters knows it too. If you haven’t yet, I really encourage you to consider your branding. 

 First of all, let’s expand your idea of what branding is and who can use it. Take a minute and jot down a few brands that come to mind. That list might include your regular household products, items on your grocery list, or appliances in your home. Try adding more items and you might start thinking about tags on your clothes, or the logo on your phone. But what else is there?

Eventually, if you play with this exercise for a while, you’ll notice that you start listing — well — people. And I don’t mean celebrities or influencers only. I mean people you personally know. That might be a particularly impactful mentor or a colleague you especially admire. It might be the friend you know who’s great in an emergency, or who gives the best pep talks. As you make this list you’ll start to think about the qualities, actions, or even phrases that you strongly associate with the folks in your life. And guess what: those associations are what branding is all about. 

Put it like this: at the most basic level, your personal brand is simply your reputation. It’s the cumulative impressions and associations you build over time and throughout your networks. So whether you know it or not, you’ve already been developing and establishing your personal brand. The issue then becomes 1) whether you’ve been developing it on purpose, or leaving it to chance. And 2) whether your brand is doing the work that you actually want it to do. 

Your reputation might be more or less strong, more or less accurate, and more or less positive than you want it to be. The deciding factors boil down to this: your intentionality, your awareness, and your strategy. Remember, your brand will speak for you when you’re not in the room. So you don’t just want to know what it’s saying. You want to write the script! 

Now, I’m an advocate for authenticity. I do not believe in suppressing yourself or stuffing yourself into boxes to fit just any old job description, or to fit expectations that are out of alignment with who you are. But I will absolutely acknowledge the power of perception, and the necessity of addressing and influencing how you are going to be perceived. Because those perceptions, without a doubt, will help or hinder you as you pursue your professional goals. That’s why it’s so vital to identify the gap between your personal brand as it is right now versus how you want it to be. And then, you need a strategy to close that gap. 

If developed and leveraged intentionally, your brand will open doors for you that you’re not even aware of. That means less work for you in terms of finding the opportunities that match your skills, your values, and your genius. That’s why, coming up soon, I’m launching a NEW workshop, dedicated to helping you develop your authentic personal brand and positioning strategy. Stay tuned for updates!