Investing in You: Discover your natural strengths to create your personal brand

How do you discover your personal "brand"?

It emanates from your most authentic self.

Branding oneself sprang into the business lexicon with management guru Tom Peters' Fast Company article, "You Are Your Brand." Since the contract between employers and employees is broken, we all must differentiate ourselves to survive.

"You don't 'belong to' any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any particular 'function.' . . . Starting today, you are a brand," Peters wrote.

So, how would I develop a strong personal brand? Heck if I knew.

I spoke with Lisa Penn, managing director at SEI Private Banking, who is adept at coaching employees and friends into playing to their strengths.

"Your brand is in your natural strengths. Ask other people, your coworkers: 'What am I good at? What do you come to me for? What information do I give you?' "

Penn, herself, is a customer of Gallup's StrengthsFinder, a division that helps employees/employers pinpoint strengths (www.gallupstrengthscenter.com).

"For myself, my top five strengths are empathy, belief, connectedness, a developer, and individualization," she says, citing studies showing that "you're never more engaged in your work and in life than when you're in your strengths."

You land on your brand when you're in the zone.

"Think when time flew by, when you could go back and say, 'I was in the flow, and people told me I was doing a great job.' That's when you were using a strength," Penn explains.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is another personality assessment, based on Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung's work. Its four dimensions: introversion vs. extroversion, sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling, and judging and perceiving.

"Knowing yourself is the foundation of your brand. Nobody else is you," Penn says.

Among her coworkers, "there's a guy who, as he's describing a problem, is already formulating a way to help. It's very natural for him, and clients love it. They know when they call him, he's going to help."

Another coworker "is amazing at coming up with ideas. Ideation is his strength - in two minutes, he has three ideas." Conversely, "if someone's struggling with a career situation, even a client, I have coaching qualities. As a result, client meetings are easy for me."

Her brand? "I create an experience of active listening, thought-provoking questions. I do it with my clients, my family, my colleagues. When I wake up, it's the same brand all day."

Entrepreneurs and websites are making businesses out of helping you create your brand. In 2010, Eva Longoria partnered with nonprofit TwitChange to raise money and help reconstruct the Miriam Center in Haiti, a home for children.

With the support of more than 100 celebrities (Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Shaquille O'Neal), TwitChange used two powerful tools - fame and Twitter. Celebrities auctioned Tweets on eBay, where fans could bid on the chance to be followed, mentioned, or re-Tweeted by their favorites. The charity gets donations. The celebrities build their do-gooder brands.

Meg Hagele (pronounced like bagel) grew up in Mount Airy and settled in Seattle for nearly a decade.

"I opened an artist workshop and gallery, had a leather bag-making business, was a personal organizer, but always made my living as a barista. In 2000, I opened and operated a café there before moving back home to Philly," she says.

Hagele realized that her passion (ahem, brand) was coffee. In July 2005, she opened "the mother ship," High Point Café on Carpenter Lane.

"Our village was just the Weavers Way co-op and the dry cleaners. Having grown up here, it was easy to see that this corner was the right spot for my community-centered café," and it took off.

First, her coffee brand: "Ours had always come from True North Coffee Roasters out of Seattle. The owner, Maine Hofius, was a regular of mine when I was a barista in Seattle."

They joined forces to develop a drip blend, now the High Point Blend. In 2008, Hagele opened a second location, in the Allens Lane train station. And in 2013, she raised more than $350,000 - from her customers, naturally - to open a wholesale pastry and roaster business at 6700 Germantown Ave.

"We created an ownership-equity investment offering, and I just sort of sent out a newsletter to our regular customers and talked about it across the bar," she recalls.

"We had people over to my mother's house and made a presentation and raised ownership-equity investment exclusively from customers. It is incredibly humbling to see the kind of confidence and enthusiasm we have created."

Confidence and enthusiasm? That would be her brand.

Ellevate, a global professional women's network, says 354 people responded online to that question. (Numbers were rounded.)

11%

Developing a strong social media presence.

25%

Being great at

my job.

11%

Looking and

dressing the part.

38%

Framing myself

as a thought leader.

5%

Heck if I know.

3%

Personal brand?

Who has the time?

6%

other

SOURCE: EllevateEndText