{"id":1126,"date":"2017-03-01T14:14:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T03:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.agilitycommunication.com.au\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2017-05-23T12:41:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T02:41:41","slug":"experience-personal-branding-first-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.agilitycommunication.com.au\/experience-personal-branding-first-series\/","title":{"rendered":"My experience of Personal Branding -The first in a series"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The view from my house – who wants to commute to Melbourne?<\/p><\/div>\n

Personal\u00a0<\/span>brand is something that has excited my thinking for a few years now. I have worked with entrepreneurs, artists and business people on their personal brand and I love that it is one of the services that I offer.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t always thus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seventeen years ago I moved from Melbourne to a small farm just outside a busy tourist town 100 or so km\u2019s away. For a few years, I commuted to my job as PR Manager for a national\u00a0<\/span>organisation\u00a0<\/span>creating and implementing strategies along with my team of five.<\/p>\n

After a while, I\u00a0<\/span>realised\u00a0<\/span>that although I had moved to paradise, I spent very little time there and knew few people, because the bulk of my time was\u00a0<\/span>travelling\u00a0to or from my Melbourne job. So, I took a plunge, left a well-paid job to start up on my own. Something that I had never considered doing before.<\/p>\n

Ascend Public Relations and Communications was the result and for a\u00a0<\/span>while\u00a0<\/span>my previous employer kept giving me work that I could do from home so I was in a good position while I started the planning and marketing process.<\/p>\n

My business moved forward very slowly. So slowly, sometimes it felt like I was going\u00a0<\/span>backwards. I was unknown in an industry where word of mouth is very important and where, at least in the immediate area, most businesses were small and on tight budgets.<\/span><\/p>\n

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My major concern was income. I had a mortgage, 20 acres, cows, and horses \u2013 and they are expensive!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This was the background to my first BIG<\/strong> mistake in personal branding. I was encouraged to tender for some community consultation work for the local Shire. It was work that I was skilled at from a long and varied career, I jumped at the opportunity \u2013 a chance to meet the community, a chance to earn some income. I loved the project and soon after tendered to do the same thing in another town in the Shire.<\/span><\/p>\n

What had not occurred to me was that this was the work the public were seeing. This is what they thought that I did. They had no way of knowing that this was a stopgap for me. Good honest work, but not what I\u00a0<\/span>did<\/span><\/u><\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The next mistake was that while looking for work, I offered my services for little or no cost to community\u00a0<\/span>organisations. \u00a0I still do this, it is very much a part of my \u2018brand\u2019 but I am more discriminating about where my effort will have the greatest impact and how much I can do without compromising my paid work or undervaluing the work that I do.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

None of these things occurred to me when I was thinking of my brand.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was to go on and create a second business, same services, different audience about 5 years later, potentially very confusing to my audience. But I had learned from these experiences and mitigated the confusion wherever possible. And, I built a much stronger personal brand in the process. <\/span><\/p>\n

My Key Learnings:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n