Think about any decision you made in the past week, and it was probably influenced by a brand. Whether you were choosing between airlines, restaurants, shoes, medical providers, pens, colleges for your children, hotels, general contractors, or what books to read, you factored in the brands of the options, even if you didn’t consciously realize it. You considered who or what was behind each option, how likely it was that the thing or person would deliver on what they promised, whether you had heard of the option before, and what information you could obtain easily about your choices.
We’re all familiar with the idea of brands for companies, but less aware that people also have brands. The way people think about you and talk about your expertise is your brand.
You have a brand whether you actively developed it or it arose on its own. What do people ask you about most often? Do they consider you for projects and engagements that match your skills and experience? Or do they overlook you, or pitch jobs that are far afield of your area or level of expertise?
If you’re being overlooked or misunderstood, it means your “default” brand does not accurately reflect who you are or what you have to offer. It can also mean that your existing brand is weak. This makes it difficult for people to know why they should contact you or how you could be of service to them.
Your brand can be a tool that empowers career growth or that limits your opportunities. When you are living in “default” mode, you don’t have input into how people are perceiving you or the conclusions they are drawing about you.
Not actively defining your brand results in hoping that people will someday understand your value, and being frustrated when they don’t.
By taking control of your brand, you get to shape the narrative so that it’s a good reflection of you. You can avoid the trap of being pigeonholed by telling people, “This is what I know about, these are the skills I have, and this is how I can help you.”
“Personal branding” is the term for the process of developing or refining your personal brand.
Many “personal branding” resources are aimed at placing people into a small number of pre-defined buckets based on singular traits:
What follows from this is the list of things that someone with your new brand has to do, which may feel very uncomfortable because they don’t take into account anything about you. For example, you may be told to seek out public speaking opportunities regardless of the fact that delivering speeches to large crowds is your own personal hell. That doesn’t matter, though, because the point of these models is: You are in Box X, so you will do things 1, 2, and 3.
Thankfully, most people are more complex than this, and this model doesn’t work for them. They end up feeling worse than before they started exploring personal branding, because now not only do they not have a solid personal brand, but they feel like they can’t have one unless they become someone else.
This is the exact opposite of what a personal brand should be. It is not becoming someone else; it is helping the world understand who you are. A personal brand should give others a fairly certain and accurate perception of what they can expect from you. It highlights your unique qualities and communicates in the ways that are best-suited to you. If your personal brand starts to feel like a costume that you are putting on, something is wrong.
There are an infinite number of brands that can exist in the world. Trying to fit yourself into someone else’s brand will make you deeply unhappy and cause others to be confused about who you actually are. This confusion tends to lead to feeling that there’s something amiss about the person, which in turn leads to a subconscious mistrust of the person. In attempting to emulate a successful brand, you have instead alienated people.
A common assumption about personal branding is that quiet people won’t have strong brands, or that people who are more vocal about their accomplishments will have easy brand success. Neither of these are a given.
People who are naturally introverted, shy, or quiet may find certain components of brand-building challenging, but they thrive in other areas. For example, someone may not enjoy public speaking but is a prolific writer who effectively promotes their work.
Conversely, the person who dominates every conversation with loud recaps of their latest accomplishments is not necessarily developing a brand that will serve them well.
An effective personal brand spotlights your qualifications, achievements, personality, and capabilities. It acts as a way for people to easily understand why they should know you and work with you. Below we expand on some of the reasons a personal brand is so important for the development of your career and your firm, especially now.
It comes as no surprise that other people are overwhelmed with demands on their time; just think about how you feel in any given day. Clients, projects, employees, family, friends, community members, professional colleagues, and vendors all vie for your daily attention. News and social media are constantly waving their proverbial arms in the air to capture what brain power is left. The easier you make it for them to understand what you’re about and what expertise or services you can offer them, the better.
Even in times of economic uncertainty, there are opportunities awaiting you and your firm. Personal branding helps you become stronger in business development by answering the question, “Why should I hire you?” Much of the decision of whether to pursue a business relationship is made before you ever meet or even speak with a prospective client. If they can’t at least partially answer the question of why they should hire you in advance of your first conversation, that first conversation may never take place. On the other hand, future clients who recognize you as a subject matter expert are not only more likely to hire you, but to heed your advice and guidance.
Through 2027, approximately 11,000 Americans a day will turn 65 years old, currently the country’s minimum age for retirement. While this “silver tsunami” doesn’t mean that every architect who turns 65 will immediately step down from the firm, the Boomer generation has tended to take leave their firms earlier rather than continue to work until they are no longer able or they hit their firm’s mandatory retirement age. This out-migration of senior architects can create leadership gaps in firms. When leadership considers who will eventually take over the firm, they want to see demonstrable evidence of capabilities. Especially in larger firms, it’s imperative that upcoming leaders identify their strengths in ways that will resonate (i.e., develop their personal brand).
You may have intended to stay at your firm until you retired, but they just announced that they are being acquired. The parent company’s culture and service lines aren’t a good fit for you, so you’d like to explore other options. This becomes more difficult if you aren’t “known” for anything. A well-established personal brand changes the conversation from, “We want Firm X to design our hospital,” to “We want Architect X, whatever firm they’re at, to design our hospital.” The same thinking holds for things like speaking engagements. Organizers rarely say, “We want someone from Firm X and we don’t care who”; they say, “We want someone with an expertise in Y subject matter.” This isn’t about stealing glory from your firm or being disloyal. It’s about making sure that you are establishing your own identity that is currently part of your firm, but could stand alone if needed or desired.
Architects are highly susceptible to “impostor syndrome,” a feeling that regardless of your achievements and credentials, you are actually not qualified to be doing the job you have and eventually everyone will find out. (Contrast this with the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people with little to no demonstrable skill in a particular area nonetheless believe that they are extremely skilled.) Personal branding tells impostor syndrome to quiet down by framing all of your talents and abilities in a way that you can accept them instead of dismiss them.
Personal branding isn’t one-size-fits-all, so the plan and strategies will change from person to person. After all, if everyone did the same things to develop their personal brand, there would ultimately be no differentiation. It’s important to look at your goals, achievements, strengths, and even hobbies to create a unique plan for you.
It’s important to build your brand in a way that feels authentic to you at a pace that feels comfortable to you. You don’t need to – and shouldn’t – go from completely unknown to recognized authority overnight.
Start small by sharing an article you found interesting, comment thoughtfully on someone else’s social media post, or update your online bio to better highlight your expertise. As your confidence grows, so will your comfort with extending yourself. Stepping a little bit outside of your comfort zone is part of the process, but moving too fast can lead to burnout. Consistency beats intensity every time, so make sure to grow your brand at a pace that works for you.
