Personal Brands built on your authentic self is the most powerful tool you have in creating your own opportunities in work and business.

In this interview with Mike Loder, Kath answers the key questions:

• What is a personal brand?
• Why do you need a personal brand?
• What happens if I don’t have a conscious personal brand (and how it leads to unaligned and unfulfilling work-life)
• Why is it important people are fulfilled?
• How can people find a more aligned work life by understanding their unique contribution?

 

 

Transcript below:

Mike Loder: All right as usual, there is a lot going on in the world right now and today we are fortunate enough to speak with a couple of guests, working hard to create and to educate with new ideas and tools that look to improve our businesses, our lives and hopefully our future is to Ticker insight starts right now.

Hello and welcome back to Ticker Insider. I’m your host, Mike Loder, into our latest story for now.

And Kath Clarke is a personal brand strategist, helping people create a fully aligned personal brand so they can build a work life around their life’s work. It’s my pleasure to welcome Kath into the studio, thank you so much for your time. 

Kath Clarke: Thank you for having me.

ML: It’s always nice to have people face to face once again now that things are back to normal, but let’s start off simply. What is a personal brand?

KC: Thanks for asking. A personal brand is essentially a conscious curation of the public perception of you. So that might sound a bit contrived, but in a way, we’re selling ourselves in every moment and in every interaction. So you want to sort of take control of how you’re perceived. So yeah, so it’s not, not everyone needs one, but but that is really what it is, is taking control of the external perception of you. 

A personal brand is essentially a conscious curation of the public perception of you. Click To Tweet

ML: And this just goes beyond social media, Tiktok, all those kinds of things as well? 

KC: 100%! But encompasses all of it.  People might get lost in the way you present yourself, your personal styling, but really as I like to encapsulate it in the idea of your unique contribution which is a packaging of all of your principles, your values, how you present yourself, so that you’re a complete and authentic package. People know what they’re going to get. 

ML: They’re more likely to engage with somebody who’s honest and truthful. 

KC: That’s right. Exactly. 

ML: So why do we need one? Just based off what — algorithm?

KC: Well look, I mean, you know, I love to think that everybody should do a little bit of personal brand work, even if they don’t necessarily need one for a monetization reason. So monetization will be you’re a coach, a consultant, a business leader, a corporate leader. But doing a little bit of personal brand work for everybody is a nice way to tap into it. Just getting a bit more aware around how you come across to people because that can only make the world a better place if you’re sort of you know, putting yourself out there with a bit more awareness. But essentially, the people that need them are someone who is going to monetize them. 

ML: Right. So what happens if I haven’t got one and there’s a little equation here: 

unaligned = unfulfilled = great resignation.

Can you explain this? 

KC: I can, I can give you a bit of an idea. Yes.  So look, if you don’t have one, then you’re really leaving it up to chance, how you’re perceived. So I really believe so the women that I work with and I primarily work with women. It’s not exclusive, but it tends to be, that’s how it works out. So the people that I work with  come to me usually because they don’t know how to articulate what it is that they’re actually a genius at, they might have been in the in a work role for 15, 20 years by the time they come and work with me and they may have built a career path around and and it can be a business or their own, you know, a corporate career path around one version of themselves. 

unaligned = unfulfilled = great resignation. Click To Tweet

ML: Interesting…

KC: And so then they sort and it happened to me when I worked in television, I sort of was very good at being a production coordinator, kept going down that path even though I wanted to jump over to the creative side. But once you’re pigeonholed as something that you’re good at, it’s hard to kind of get out, you know, sort of draw back from that and then repackage yourself. So I like to work to start with the sort of whole self, that authentic self, what is it all that life experience — the tapestry brings it all together and package it up as one unique concept.

ML: So why do you think it’s important that people are sort of fulfilled that sitting amongst all of this? 

KC: Sure. So if you, again, I mean, like I said, I ended up being unfulfilled in a sexy thing, television, right? 

ML: Good Gig, Yep!

KC: Yes, so I “should have been fulfilled” and this is what’s happening for a lot of people — “should have been”. And I think this is how we’ve ended up in the great resignation. I’ve got a good job, I should be happy with the work perks, this that and the other, but the end of the day, because they haven’t built a brand aligned to that whole self, that whole authentic self, they can’t really present all of themselves at work and therefore they’re leaving parts out and so they’re coming to work and only being part of who they are and and it leads to unfulfillment and a lack of alignment to that sort of the, the opportunities that start coming their way are unaligned to where they want to go. So, I think when you get a grasp of who you are as a whole person and bring that into the branding exercise from the beginning, then you’re really aligning yourself to the right opportunities coming across your path.

When you get a grasp of who you are as a whole person and bring that into the branding exercise from the beginning, then you're really aligning yourself to the right opportunities coming across your path. Click To Tweet

ML: Does that extend a sort of disassociation with yourself and who you are? And there’s sort of more of a mental health thing there as well in terms of burning out because you’re not over a long period of time?

KC: That’s exactly right. I think, like I said, if you begin with one version of yourself, then you are on a fast track to burnout and I truly believe, I mean, I was just reading a poll today by the Female Lead — over 70% of C suite executives say that if they could they would swap jobs right now because of that burn out there on that pathway. It’s exhausting and it is an epidemic at the moment.

If you begin with only one version of yourself, then you are on a fast track to burnout. Click To Tweet

ML: So how can people possibly sort of find more alignment in their day to day lives and maybe take a step back and go, “I need to sit on the beach for a bit and work out who I am”?

KC: And that’s it! A lot of people do, they sort of you know, crash on the couch or maybe they’ll take a sabbatical or a career break to sort of give themselves that time. Or you know, Covid gave us that time to sort of reflect, reconnect, work out who we truly are. And at the core of that now, people are sort of re-emerging and saying, you know what, I don’t want to be a cog in a wheel anymore. That and a lot of them are also searching for more purpose in their everyday life like in that 9-5 period of time. So that’s that’s a big challenge for the companies as well. You know, they’re really gonna have to sort of start seeing bringing that whole self to work and starting to create rolls around who you are between nine and five and what you can offer from your outside life and bringing that into that nine and five as well.

ML: You have single handedly explained a greater understanding of the great resignation that I’ve come across.

KC: Oh Great!

ML: So that was very clever from you. Just another side to it. It was really quite cool. But thank you so much for joining the program, in studio, unpacking it.

KC: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me!

You have single handedly explained a greater understanding of the great resignation that I've come across. -- @MikeLoder7 Click To Tweet