“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.” – Dee Hock

Brand building has now become increasingly more important priority to professionals as they navigate through their careers. Until quite recently brand was considered the domain of product and service providers. This was further reinforced by the annual brand rankings of global brands. Apple and Coke always remained the top brands with a huge brand equity that bolstered their companies’ market caps. Although some confuse a company’s logo as their brand, it is actually a symbolic reminder of that brand. Building a company’s brand takes focused efforts by developing a singular reputation that speaks for that brand by virtue of what it stands for and the consistent promise of value—or lack of it—it delivers.

Building a brand creatively in your professional career takes similar efforts and that brand identity is mostly derived from a combination of who you are (your genius) and how you create consistent value using that genius. Verbal branding is your ability to translate your genius in words that speak to that brand equity. This brand equity flows from how you deploy your genius in various tasks that you do and how they consistently create value for those who are your “customers.”

In the professional world there are many ways you can communicate your brand. One is by your own reputation and another is by how your message communicates it. A résumé or your LinkedIn (or any social profile for that matter) can be good vehicles to communicate your brand.

In my coaching practice I have developed a résumé writing process that uses your genius to build your leadership narrative based on the stories of your successes in how you create value, based on this innate gift. We all have this gift, even though many are not aware of its existence and how it manifests in your everyday work life. For many this genius remains elusive and hidden in plain sight, often throughout their life!

Identifying, discovering, and owning your genius take hard and diligent work using focused tools to help you develop that verbal brand grounded in your genius. From that work you can then develop your branding statement. So, once you get a handle on your own brand it is much easier to then build on it and make that brand increasingly stronger; it is a virtuous cycle once you get a good handle on your own genius.

Building your brand entails the following six steps:

• Identifying and articulating your brand
• Demonstrating consistency in how you claim your brand
• Growing your brand
• Managing your brand narrative
• Staying true to your brand, despite temptations, and
• Knowing how to move into your Genius Zone

Identifying and articulating your brand: Working with over 6,500 clients globally I have now developed a structured process of building your Aha! stories that allow you to converge on your genius as these stories start developing a common theme. Threading through the themes of these stories provide you an opportunity to verbalize your brand using different verbal combinations to create a cluster that speaks to how you create unique value in a particular direction. For example, Product Managers will have a group of such statements that uniquely define how they differentiate themselves from others in their own profession. Similarly, User Experience pros will uncover their own unique cluster that will do the same for them in how they present their message (résumé). Such verbal clusters typically contain a verb-noun pair describing how that pair shows your unique approach to getting things done in the space in which you ply your trade.

One way to tap into your genius and to verbalize it is to dig into your Aha! stories that describe your work. I have developed a structured approach to narrating these stories, which allows anyone to apply this tool to develop their verbal brand based on their innate genius. This verbal branding language forms the centerpiece of your résumé and all the stories that capture your Aha! contributions anchor to each of these branding phrases. It is transformative once you understand its power!

Demonstrating consistency in how you claim your brand: This step is then reinforcing your claim of what you do differently from others consistently and with increasing effect. Applying the power of your genius in different use cases allows you to build on your claims and make those claims stronger with each application of your ability to differentiate yourself. In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell exhorts about hitting the 10,000-hour mark to excel in your own chosen field. Recent studies, however, have shown that merely doing the same thing for that time is not enough; you must exert increasing effort to up your own game each time you apply your skills and do one better challenging your own previous efforts and outcomes; it is diligent effort, not the same effort at each turn.

Growing your brand: Taking the previous notion of diligent effort further you can further grow your brand by extending the reach of your abilities to attempt new vistas to conquer. In so doing failing a few times reminds you if you have gone too far and if you need to scale back your reach until you can find your sweet spot and the rate at which you can keep extending your reach.

Managing your brand narrative: In any profession there are detractors who will go out of their way to tarnish your brand. Staying true to your brand requires great clarity about what you are and what you are NOT. This latter part is often difficult for some to grasp. Staying away from activities peripheral to what your brand stands for can cause confusion and distraction in your own pursuits. So, managing your own brand narrative in clear and consistent ways is one way to maintain brand focus and its purity.

Avoiding temptations: In any pursuits and business temptations to grow, make more money, go after different markets often seduce people to pursue things that result in set backs that can damage their brand. So, before you venture out to expand your brand’s reach make sure that the above four factors have been considered before you take any risk of damaging your brand and your image. Such setbacks are difficult to repair.

Knowing how to move into your Genius Zone: One way to get into a creative space and find time to create the Ahas! I mentioned early in this write-up (see the Dee Hoc quote at the top) is to get yourself in the Zone, where your creativity propels you to create breakthrough results. In the following discussion imagine that there are four different “Zones” of your activity levels.

In the Mediocre zone you produce mediocre outcomes because the tasks you do in this zone are not in your sweet spot. Such activities must be outsourced and managed by you to create the outcomes you desire.

In the Competent zone you are producing outcomes that are competent but since you are in your Zone in these tasks you can progressively get better at doing them, and with the 10,000 hr. rule mentioned above you can become truly world-class. But, by stopping there you would be doing disservice to yourself. You must enter the Genius zone and create breakthrough outcomes by tapping into your genius in everything that you do within your sweet spot. This is where you create your Aha! outcomes.

If you follow this prescription of getting to work within your Genius zone then your brand will follow everything that you do, your everyday “work” will cease to exist and you experience Bliss!

Try it and see it for yourself!

Good luck!