Personal Branding: How To Turn Yourself Into A Success
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William Arruda – There’s a woman called The Kick Ass Coach. She’s a coach and she’s just like any other life coach who works with her clients except she’s all about tough love; she’s more of the Dr. Phil style of coach. She doesn’t just stay on the other end of the phone and say things to you like, “Hmm, and how does that make you feel?” She just says, “Get out of your own way! Here’s what you’re doing wrong!” and she’s got this incredible in your face kind of style, but it’s at the same time, warm, and she’s really given herself permission to be more of that and it separates her a lot from the coaching community where there are lots of coaches who all seem to be replaceable by any other coach.
Dan Janal – I’d like you to comment on this strategy—I’ve noticed a bunch of people lately in their newsletters are talking about their personal lives—conferences they’ve been to, their cats, their kids, hassles about Halloween—stuff to reach other people as human beings first, and then they go on and they deliver their newsletter kind of article. What do you thing about that kind of approach? Does that help?
William Arruda – It absolutely, in fact, all branding is about is it’s about creating emotional connections with people. Even the dullest product in the world, the person who’s buying that product actually makes the buying decisions based on emotional attributes. IBM once did a study where they talked to IT executives who were buying middle wear, the most dull thing in the world, and IT executives who are known for being somewhat conservative, and they learned that that the attributes that tip the scales in favor of one vendor over another were actually emotional ones. When you can start to create those emotional connections with your clients, you’re going to go far. A woman did this survey on the Web—she typed in quotes, in Google, “I love company name,” so “I love Ikea,” for example—and I hate Ikea—to see how much emotion there was connected to certain brands. The most successful brands in the world are the ones that really stand out, like Apple and Ikea and Target, all showed up, they had the highest love quotients. Even if Ikea can get somebody emotionally connected to them, we, as individuals, as personal brands, have a much greater opportunity to do that. Being a little bit of who you are with your prospects and clients is great. You need to temper that. If you talk about your cat all the time, it may not be the ideal thing for your business.
Dan Janal – Let’s do one more thing about the preamble here, about setting up the whole idea of brand. Is a brand the same thing as an elevator pitch or a positioning statement? And if not, how does it differ?
William Arruda – A brand is more…your elevator pitch is a part of your brand, and it’s a way to describe your brand. But your brand is actually; it’s your unique promise of value. By that, and each of those words is really important, it’s unique because it’s differentiated from your competitors or peers. It’s a promise because it comes from you and you can authentically deliver it, and it’s valuable to those people who are going to buy it from you—those people who find it valuable. Your elevator pitch is often the way you describe your brand. It’s that brief statement that tells people who you are, what makes you unique, and what makes you relevant and compelling to them.
Dan Janal – Let’s look at the whole bottom line here. Why should we be concerned with brands?
