Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

What's your brand, what do you do, what service, experience, expertise will you provide, what problems will you solve or what objectives or goals will you achieve?

Today, as a physician, your brand revolves around your practice. You're a skilled surgeon, an expert diagnostician, your patient skills are exemplary, your bedside manner is envied. But, overall, you're an expert and a problem solver. 

However, while all those attributes are admirable in a practicing physician, how do you translate surgical skills into management skills or product development skills or team leadership... ? First, you realize they do translate. Most successful people have a common failing, that is, a failure to realize the broader value and complexity of what they do so regularly, so effortlessly, so well. 

That's where personal branding comes into play. From your Career Diagnosis, you listed various skills and areas of knowledge and personal interests, perhaps even passions. Those elements provide the basis for your branding. By drilling deeper, by explaining skills, knowledge and interests with examples, and by moving away from simply what you did, to the reasons you did what you did, to how you use certain skills and knowledge, and to the outcomes of their use, you paint a stronger picture of action, of accomplishment. The key to defining your brand is to define your accomplishments from a value perspective.

Consider your branding like a political campaign. You establish a basic message and then you consistently support that message through various media and materials. And whether your career objective is to find a job in an organization or to build a consulting based activity or business, the process and the value of branding is consistent with whatever pathway you elect to follow.

Branding elements range from your resume to your business card, a web site or marketing materials, Once we refine your brand definition, we will select media and materials that are appropriate to support how and what you present to those you want to work with or for. However, to return to the political campaign analogy, if you summed up the strength of nearly every political campaign, it's not about policy papers, not about endless speeches on important subjects, or fancy brochures or email pieces - It's about what politicians call their stump speech. That 30 second sound bite that catches attention and succinctly tells the listener, this is my brand... this is what I'm about. 

As I develop client materials, I will always say the two most important items I will produce is first your Stump Speech and second, your business card. Those two items are what you will almost always use to first present your brand. Everything else is secondary.