Ep 202: Reinventing Your Personal Brand at Midlife

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week . We're going to continue on with our refreshed episode series , and this one is a good one .

This one is about your personal brand , and that is a passion area for me , because I've spent my corporate life being a brand strategist and so I'm fascinated by the fact that corporate brands are a lot like people and people are brands . We just don't usually think about it that way .

So what I'm going to talk about today is how do you take some lessons from how brand strategists in the corporate realm structure the strategic foundations of those brands , so that those brands some of your favorites , like Apple , starbucks , target , you name it , whatever your favorite brand is there's a reason why you love it , and it's those brand strategies that

sit on the corporate side that are thinking about all of those little , tiny things that you value and treasure so much . They don't happen by accident . Someone is thinking of those and being very diligent about not only bringing those to life , but making sure that those brands are able to deliver on those things . Again and again and again , you are the same .

You are the strategist of your life . We just aren't taught this . I really feel so strongly that this is something that we should learn in school . These are courses that we should take and this is how we should be approaching our life , and I'm going to make a very special offer at the end of this episode .

So please listen to the whole thing and , if you don't follow me , go over to Instagram at the Purposeful Career and follow me and watch my feed , because I'm going to be announcing a series of masterclasses on this very topic .

So give the episode a listen and then head on over to Instagram and follow me , because later today , I'm actually going to announce that I'm offering these classes and give you some times to sign up , and I hope that you join me because this will be a one hour live class that I think you'll really get a ton out of .

It's going to have a great workbook and we're going to walk through a blueprint for recreating or creating from scratch your personal brand , and that will chart a new course for the rest of your life . So enjoy the episode on how to create a personal brand .

Today I want to talk about something that kind of parallels between the things I do in my corporate job and some of the things that I work with my clients on .

I thought it was going to be an interesting juxtaposition and hopefully it'll give you some food for thought as you look at your own life , to ask yourself some questions around the topic of a brand narrative .

Now , you may not know what that is , so I want to talk about it first from a corporate perspective , and when I'm walking through the descriptor of this , I want you to think about a favorite brand that you have , something that you're just a diehard fanatic about .

Like , maybe you're super loyal to Apple or Starbucks or Amazon or some of the big consumer brands . I want you to think about this when I'm telling you what a brand narrative is and all of that , and then we're going to take it over and talk about it through the lens of a person , so through the lens of your own life .

So first , get that brand in your mind , about the one that you love . That is your ride or die . And I want you to hear , like through the lens of a brand strategist , some of the things that help the brand resonate so much with you . So , first and foremost , brand resonates so much with you .

So , first and foremost , when you are a brand strategist in one of those companies , there are strategic elements that form the foundation of the brand and those tend to be separate things , separate statements , let's call it , or attributes that you spend time getting really clear on . And you usually do that through the lens of three things .

You look at the competition , so the other brands you're competing with in the space . You kind of do a market scan and you take a look at that . You also look at it through the lens of your customers , so who are you trying to attract and appeal to ? And then you also do it through the lens of your own company . So what are you good at ?

What are some of the things that you are best at ? So you use those we call them the three C's the competition , the company and consumer and you use those three things to get clear on some of the different elements , and those elements are things like the brand vision . So where's it trying to go and say five , 10 years ?

The brand mission how does it plan to go after those things ? Right , how does the plan to go do it ? The brand promise so what's the experience the brand is trying to create ? What's it promising to do for the customer ? The brand positioning how is the brand different from all the other competitors in the space ?

And then , most of the time , it will also translate that out into a set of values that the brand has , usually four or five things that really make up the components , the values of the brand , like what do they stand for ? What's important to them ?

From there , they generally take those four or five different elements and they translate those out into between three and five pillars . What are the strategic things that the brand is all about ? You know , is it about innovation ? It'll vary by brand , but there's usually a set of three or five things and they call those the pillars .

So those things the vision , mission , promise , positioning , the values and then those pillars , those three to five pillars those are the foundational elements of the brand . Some brands call them a brand house , some brands call them a brand foundations . It doesn't really matter .

Most of the components for different brands are the same and those are the guardrails for the brand . It's really the strategic underpinnings , if you will .

And in theory , if the brand implements against it really well , it starts to guide everything for the brand , not just the marketing activities or the advertising strategy , but even , like the product strategy , the experience it's trying to create and the way that the people show up when they're interacting with customers , either live or on the phone or whatever .

So all the experiences , all the different products and services . So those are the strategic underpinnings . But you know , if you just leave it there , those things can kind of fall flat because it's hard for people inside the company to really stitch it all together because those are different elements and they're all important .

But really what the company needs to do is to create those things into a brand narrative , into a story . When you can take elements into a story story , when you can take elements into a story , people start to really get , when they work for a different company , what they need to go do as it relates to what they do every day to bring that brand to life .

Everyone has a role to play and it's important to be able to look to something like a story , to stitch it all together so they get it . Our brains work better when we can anchor to a story . That's how we like to think . That's how you get into more of an emotional space .

If you just leave it at all of the different separate strategic underpinnings like the vision , mission , values , positioning , things like that they're helpful , but you memorize them . It's hard to distill it all down and the best brands come down to not only a brand narrative , but I like to go even further and bring it down into one or two words .

You really need to get it down to that level of essence , because then you're really clear . It's very clear not only what you need to go , do and how to appeal to the customer , but also the things you say no to or yes to when it comes to , like your product pipeline and things like that . Like what are you even trying to do ?

If you can get it down into one or two words , it's super , super clear . It's super super clear . So that's kind of what a best practice brand will do when it comes to forming its own kind of strategic underpinnings and all of that it gets it into the level of a brand story and what the brand story does for them .

It doesn't become the thing that they're out there talking about overtly to customers , but it's the galvanizing story that they use to craft everything from really compelling content or messaging strategies to the products and services that they use . It's really the idea that everyone anchors to every single day .

It's incredibly important and when they have that level of clarity , what happens for the customer is that they're looking at that brand and their experience of the brand whenever they interact to it or consume one of its products or speak to one of its representatives , and they're never disappointed because they understand what the brand's trying to tell them , they get

what they're about and it's all through the lens of what's designed to resonate with them . So that's how a brand crafts who it's intending to be and lives that over time . So it sounds easy . It's actually incredibly .

It requires a lot of discipline , you know , and I would say like we may or may not think of it that way , but we all have our own brand narrative and our own brand foundations . You have a vision , a mission , a set of values that you're living by . If you want to take it all the way in . You've got a brand .

You know visual identity , you've got an image that you present to the world and the way that you dress , the way you carry yourself , the way you walk into a room you just may not be intentional about it . We all have a narrative and that narrative is formed at a very young age .

It is formed at the very beginning of our life , in our family of origin and the people that raise us in the environment we're raised in the religious upbringing we have the ethnic upbringing , we have the socioeconomic environment we're raised in even our birth order and our gender .

It starts to become like all of these inputs we get from our environment , from our caregivers and even as we go through our schooling years , through educators or people who interact with us and the experiences we have .

Those form our default way of looking at ourself , our self-image , which is translated into kind of a story that we tell ourselves about who we are , what's possible for us and what we're trying to do in the world . And I think we're young , like we're right out of schooling years high school , college , whatever and we're making our way in the world .

That's a very can be a very unsettling phase . Right , we're shedding the world we've always known , which is the learning world , and we're into the first years of implementation , like who are we going to be ? What path do we set for ourselves ?

And as we get started on that path , that starts to form a secondary level that probably reinforces the default narrative that's been building over our life . Very few of us will get to any age , whether it's our 20s , our 40s , our 60s , whatever and really stop to think about intentionally what is my vision ? What mission am I charting for my life ?

What are my values ? Now , the values might be very anchored to your religious upbringing or the values of your family or whatever , but it's like have you really stopped to think about what are those things ? If you had to articulate four or five of them , what are they and are you aligned with them ?

Are they someone else's values that really you're not aligned with

? You get to choose . This is your life . You get to decide what your vision is . You get to decide how you want to go after that vision . What's your mission ? You get to decide what's your personal brand positioning . How are you different than other people in your type of role at work ? How are you different from your colleagues .

How are you different from other parents , if you want to take it into parenting realm , how are you a different kind of friend ? How are you a different kind of sibling ? How are you a different kind of spouse ? Whatever , what is your brand positioning ? Have you ever thought of that ? Brand positioning is defined as how you're different from others .

How is that true ? That's really important to know if you're in the corporate realm and you're out in a job search . Being able to articulate how you're different is critically important .

Being able to know what your vision is and your mission , so that if you're at a place where you're trying to figure out what's your next step , you want it to be in the direction of what you want , not what you think you should want or what other people tell you you should want , or the path you've been on to date .

You need to start making decisions based on where you want to go from here , not necessarily where you've been if that's not a place that's appealed to you , and I would say to take it into the tangible aspects .

It's like your personal brand identity , like how you present yourself to the world , the persona that you create when you step into your closet or you get yourself ready for your day . What is that image ? I mean , image isn't everything . I think the underpinnings , the strategic underpinnings , are critically important .

Knowing who you are , knowing what your values are , knowing where you want to go , knowing how you're different all of that's incredibly important . But also , how do you present yourself in the world ?

Is it purposeful or are you just flinging yourself together and not really putting much thought into it , because your focus is on everyone else around you and not necessarily on yourself ?

I just want to talk for a minute today about what if you hit pause on your life for the next week or two and really stopped all of the default narrative that's going on in your brain about what's possible , what's not possible ?

Like who you think you are , like what if you just stopped all of that noise and just said you know what , for the next 14 days , I'm going to figure out if I could just hit pause on everything , if I could just not be a person with the past I've had , if I could just look forward for the next 40 years , 50 years . What do I want ?

If anything was possible for myself ? What speaks to me ? Who am I , and not necessarily who am I through the lens of what everyone's told you your whole life , but through the lens of who do you want to be ? Who is that person that you want to be ?

Not that everyone's told you you are , but you , the thing that resonates with you , and here's why it's so important . I feel like we don't talk about this enough , and if we do , it's through the lens of reading a self-help book and we play with it a little bit .

But really most people get to a place where they're just articulating the things people have told them . I want you to not do that .

I want you to think about five years from now , 20 years from now , 40 years from now , and assume anything is possible for yourself and really paying attention to what are the things that speak to you , what matters to you , what do you care about , and articulate that first through the lens of all of those foundations I was talking about , like for a corporate

brand . So what's your vision ? You know , what are you trying to go do ? What's your mission ? How are you going to go do it ? What's your brand promise ?

What kind of experience do you create for the people who interact with you , whether it's your children , your spouse , your friends , your coworkers or the strangers you run into when you're interacting with customer service people or the grocery store ? Who are you ? Who would people say that you are when they interact with you ? What is that experience ?

Have you ever really thought about that ? How do you show up in the world right ? What are your values ? What are the things that are truly important to you in terms of how you live your life and how you show up every day ? Not through the lens of your religious upbringing , necessarily .

It can be if those things resonate with you , but not the things that people have told you , but the things that you truly care about . If you really spent the time thinking about it and then it's like your visual identity , like , do you like how you show up in the world ? Do you like how you put yourself together ? Do you like how you walk into a room ?

Do you like how you take up the space in your own life ? Do you feel like you have a presence about you ? That is the one that you want .

For most people it's not necessarily fully true , because I don't think most people spend the time articulating that . And when all of that is done , like if you went through that exercise , how do you translate that into your own brand narrative ?

Not the one that's running on default with your inner critic , full of self-doubt , full of naysaying , full of all of the memories of your past failures and all of that crap , but the one that would come out of this new brand foundations that you would create for yourself . What would that story be about ?

Who you are in the world , and the reason why this is so important is that , just judging from all the people I've coached , and even sometimes coaching myself Because even when you're very purposeful about these things and self-coaching every day , it can be really easy sometimes in a challenging time period in your life or whatever , to really forget what you're trying

to do with your life and to just default back into what's comfortable , which is all of the things that you've heard about yourself the whole life . It's easier to believe that than it is to really press pause on that and choose something entirely new , which is what I'm talking about .

It's about deciding on purpose who you want to be for the rest of your time on the planet , and what would your life be Like ? Let's just think about the duality of that .

What if you were to just press pause for 14 days and choose something entirely new , not based on anything other than what you actually want , not based on anything that's happened to you , anything you regret , any of your successes or failures or anything anyone said to you , but entirely 100% on what you want .

And let's play that out and imagine what that life would be . Certainly it's going to be 50-50 . It's going to be full of successes and failures , as lives are . But imagine where you would go for the next 30 , 40 , 50 years . And then let's imagine the other one .

Let's imagine the path you might be on right now , which would be something more like it's running on default . You're thinking the things that are the result of what your life has been up to the date and everything that people have told you about yourself and the inner narrative that's currently running . And then let's think about the next 30 , 40 years .

Of that . That's probably two very different lives , both of them 100% possible , both of them 100% in your control . It's just . One is a default and I would say a safe choice and maybe even a comfortable choice because it's something you're used to .

It's based on a narrative that you've lived with since the beginning of time , and one might be more exciting , more intentional , more possibilities oriented , but probably also more uncomfortable , because it's created entirely new from day one .

Being today forward , where you're working to purposely undo all of those old thinking patterns that have been running on default and you're creating an entirely new set and believing something entirely new about what's possible for you , showing up in the world as someone who you want to be , in the persona you intend to present , not the one you're used to Imagine

what would be possible for your life . I want you to think about it . We all are here on this planet and why are we here ? Like human design , like I don't guess any of us will really know that until we're on the other side . But I would just submit to you that we're not here as , like , the human race isn't all just a bunch of homogenous people .

We're all very different . We're different ethnicities , we have different , we have a different look , we have a different personality , even people within their own family , like we are here for a reason .

You came into the world with your own set of challenges and advantages , with your own set of skills and abilities , with your own personality set , and you're intended to be here to do something right , and it isn't just to buy a bigger house every five years or a new car every three years , or even isn't just about raising your children or making a contribution

at work . It's all of it . What are you here to do ? What is your unique thing ? That you're meant to contribute , not only in the career realm , but on the planet every day , to the people you interact with , to your family , to your friends , to your family , to your friends . What is that role and what do you want it to be ?

Don't settle for like what someone told you it should be , or that you just are , because you can be anything you want to be , and I think you know we were looking at the duality a minute or two ago . How much more exciting is life going to be if you make yourself just a little uncomfortable every day ?

How much further down the road would you get versus just going on autopilot ? How much more exciting would it be if you were to reinvent yourself as a new you in 2023 ? What would happen , not only for yourself in 20 , 30 , 40 years , but for your children , but for your business , all the people that are in your world ?

What would that be like and what kind of inspiration would that be for everyone who comes into contact with you , especially your children or your spouse .

Like we don't have to settle for who we've always been and we don't have to settle for for who other people think we are or have told us we are , and we don't have to settle for living out the net result of all of our past failures and experiences .

We can just hit pause and look purely into the future and go within and say and go within and say who do we want to be , who do we intend to be , and really define that into a set of attributes , a vision , mission , positioning , promise , values , and also into a visual identity , which is your persona and how you present yourself to the world and start living

your life on that . That path is definitely going to be more uncomfortable because , especially at midlife , because , if it for 40 , 50 , 60 years you've been living in one way and then you intentionally decide to live the rest of your life , not on default , but in a very intentionally purposeful way that you create , what could that be ?

What does that life look like ?

And doesn't that sound even though it probably will be a bit uncomfortable , doesn't that sound more exciting than maybe another 40 , 50 years of what you already have , being a little uncomfortable on purpose , because you're very purposefully shaping what the rest of it's going to look like and who you're going to be every day as part of that .

I think that seems kind of exciting . I think that seems kind of exciting and I think it's something that is never done , because as you start living that and stepping into that , you become continually someone new , and as you become someone new , in two , three , five years a bigger vision becomes possible for you .

So I'm not someone who believes that all the good stuff happens before the age of 65 . And then we just shut it down and live our life out on the golf course or in book club or whatever , like you can do .

You can live your life however you want , but there is zero reason why we can't always be looking for the next 5 , 10 , 20 years and saying what do we want that to be about ?

Who do we want to be in that part of our life and how do we want to take not the pain or the bad stuff from all of our past failures and experiences , but all the lessons from that to really power us ahead . So I wanted to talk about that today because I don't think .

I think you know , even on this podcast I've talked a lot about our inner talk track and the voice of self-doubt and all the ways that that can hold us back , but I haven't really spent a ton of time talking about the strategic underpinnings of who you as a person intend to be .

And I want you to know , just like I've gone into numerous brands and been a part of reshaping and evolving , those brands are always evolving and so are people . They're the same . In fact , when I go into a brand , and even sometimes for fun , I like to look at other brands and I like to guess their word , because I think the best brands are so clear .

You distill it down into one word , one or two and I like to guess what those are . And I also believe that brands have ages . They're like a person and they're like a stodgy . You know , 60 year old , or sometimes they're a very youthful brand , even brands that have been around a long time .

You know , 60 year old , or sometimes they're a very youthful brand , even brands that have been around a long time . So you have to be very intentional when you're a brand person about what's the vibe you're trying to create . And that is exactly the same opportunity that's available to you as a person .

This is your life , and what if you looked at it as you're still , like a piece of clay ? You can shape your life and you into something that you want to be , not something that you just think is true about yourself , because you've thought it since you were at the age of two . Right , and it's been reinforced and that's been your filter for the world .

What if you developed an entirely new filter for your world ? That's what's available to you . So I wanted to talk about this today because I am going to make an invitation to you . I am getting ready to do a series of masterclasses on shaping your personal brand , and it's going to be all of the things we talked about . So vision , mission , values , experience .

We're going to go through all the different elements and we're also going to turn that into a brand story that can become your new day one , like if you were looking to exit 2023 as someone new . Do it not just by buying a new wardrobe or losing 20 pounds or getting a new haircut or changing a job .

Do it by redefining who you are in the world based on who you choose to be , and create that into a narrative that becomes a new filter that you can use when you're thinking about the things that you want to go do every day or in the next 10 years , or in the next 30 years .

That's what's available to you and I think it's a much more exciting , possibilities oriented way to live . It's a much more exciting , possibilities-oriented way to live and it is the absolute foundation for what it means to have a purposeful and intentional career in life .

It should be about what you want and who you're intending to be , and even more , it should be about what you were born to do and to contribute and why you're even here on this planet . And it is so easy as people and I , by the way , I love houses , I love cars , I love all the material trappings too , just like you probably do .

But it isn't about that really . That's the fun part of it . You know we get to live into that , but it's really about what kind of hole are you leaving in the world if you don't step up to what your real purpose is , and you're the only one that can figure that out . People can't tell you that .

You have to do it , and it's really fun , it's not scary . Do it , and it's really fun . It's not scary and I would love for you to join me . So , if you're interested in this , I want you to watch my Instagram , because tomorrow I'm going to make an announcement , put up a sign up .

I'll have a couple of different options for you in terms of times to attend , and it's just going to be a live workshop . I think it's going to be really fun and it's something that you'll walk away from it with a new idea about what could be possible for your life . So I hope you join me for that .

Check out my Instagram feed tomorrow for the link , and I'll be promoting it over the next couple of weeks .

So choose a time that works for you and please join me , because I think it's a really exciting way to look at not just the rest of the year , but the rest of your life , and as a way to really step into everything that you choose to be on this planet .

And I think when you do that , you're doing your best to do your mission , to fulfill your mission , your soul's mission on this planet , and that's what I wish for each of you . So watch my Instagram tomorrow , sign up , and I hope to see you at the class and until next time , make it a great week

. My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside , we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level .

Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .