PERSONAL BRANDING JOURNEY
The work of deciding what you are known for, and putting it in writing.
Most leaders arrive at this with a reputation they did not write. It was assembled by other people out of fragments, over years, and it usually describes an earlier version of the work. That only becomes a problem when the invitations start arriving, or a transition is coming, and what is said about you has to be accurate.
The Personal Branding Journey closes that gap. Over about three months we run eight sessions with you, interview three people who know your work, and produce your Personal Brand Positioning and your Personal Brand Story. The research, the drafting and the follow-up are ours. What we ask of you is the time in the room, and candour while you are in it.
IF PERSONAL BRANDING IS NOT FOR YOU
Trying to get recognised for something is not the same as promoting yourself.
When people say personal branding is not for them, they usually have one version of it in mind: posting every day, speaking often, and a good deal of talking about your own success. Some people do that well and it serves them and the causes they care about. It is simply not the only way to be known for something.
For most leaders the difficulty is more ordinary than that. The work has taken up the time. You have spent years doing the thing rather than explaining it, and no occasion has ever quite required you to put into words what you actually care about, or why it has held your attention for this long.
That is the gap this closes. The work starts from what is already true about you, tests it against what colleagues and clients say about your work, and ends with an account you would be willing to defend in a room full of people who know you.
WHAT YOU END WITH
A framework and a narrative.
Personal Brand Positioning
This is the framework. It defines why you do what you do, how you do it and for whom, and what makes you the right person to be doing it. Each of those is settled on evidence rather than aspiration, and each is testable against what people who know your work already say about it. It also sets out the themes that are yours to hold and the ones that are not, so that a decision about an invitation or an article has something to be decided against.
Personal Brand Story
This is the narrative. It is your own story told through the positioning: the same life and the same work, selected and ordered around what you have decided to be known for, in your voice and in language you would actually use. It answers a practical question, which is how the story needs to be told if that is what you want it to say. It is what a biography, an introduction from a stage or an opening paragraph is drawn from, and it is the version other people can repeat when you are not in the room.
Both are working documents rather than presentations. They are written to be used, revised and quoted from.
Four situations we see most often.
A position never named
Twenty or thirty years of substantive work, and no articulated account of what it amounts to. Common in owners and principals, and almost never a failing of achievement.
A visibility that has outrun its brief
You are being asked to speak, comment and appear, and the invitations have arrived faster than any decision about what you are there to say.
A change of chapter
A succession, an exit, a new mandate, a new audience. The old description is accurate about the past and wrong about the present.
Known for something you did not choose
You are known for something, and it is either out of date or was never chosen. Correcting that is a different task from building from nothing.
In each of these the same question is waiting, and it has not yet been answered: are you known for what you want to be known for?
Eight sessions, about three months, two documents.
We agree scope, timing, and who else we will speak to. You will also hear how we work, and what we will not ask of you.
Long, recorded, and considerably deeper than a briefing. This is where most of the work happens, and it is the part clients tend to say they did not expect to enjoy.
Named by you and approached by us. What colleagues, clients and peers already see is evidence, and we would rather have it than assume it.
Delivered in two parts, because it does not survive being compressed. We put what we have found in front of you, and you agree the direction or you do not.
Drafted by us, presented on a call, and finalised with you on that call rather than in a round of comments afterwards.
Drafted, then read aloud with you before anything is fixed. Hearing it is the fastest way to find the lines that are not yours.
A closing session on what to do with both documents, and what the first months of using them look like.
WHAT WE ASK OF YOU
Your time, three names, and candour.
Eight sessions
Scheduled around you, and held at a desk in a quiet room, with time either side, rather than from a car or an airport.
Three people who will speak about you
Named by you, approached by us, interviewed for an hour each. Colleagues, clients or peers, and ideally not only admirers.
Candour
The work is only as good as what you are willing to say in the room. Nothing said in a session leaves it without your agreement.
WHAT IS NOT INCLUDED
Where the journey ends.
Your organisation
The Journey covers your personal brand. Where your organisation needs positioning, messaging or content strategy, we are glad to scope that separately.
Performance
It is not media training and it is not presentation coaching. We work on what you say and what you stand for, rather than on how you deliver it.
Design and production
It is not a visual identity, a website or a photography commission. Those are separate pieces of work, and they go better once the position is settled.
What comes after
The Journey has a defined end. Ongoing work on the brand it defines sits under the Personal Brand Retainer.
THE SERVICES WE OFFER
Start your journey in a team or individually.
Personal Branding Workshop
Personal Branding Journey
Personal Brand Retainer
If this is the right next thing, a proposal follows.
It sets out scope, timeline and fee for your Personal Branding Journey. The conversation before it takes about thirty minutes, costs nothing, and commits you to nothing.