Five steps to building your personal brand story
Avoid the blah factor with a story that adds drama to your unique journey
Creating a personal brand story can feel overwhelming. Where do you start? What do you put in and leave out? And how do you make a potted career or business history look like it was one free-flowing, meant-to-be journey that led you to where you are now?
Fiction storytelling techniques are your answer. Use them, and you’ll have a story that:
- captures what makes you you
- captivates people’s attention
- conveys how fabulous it is to work with you.
Boring stories are linear and fact-based
Recently, I was slated to host a panel with guests who were telling their personal stories from the startup world. We met in advance to get to know each other. One guest told me he had jumped ship from the corporate world. He explained his boss’s challenges, the incredible work the company was doing, and the adrenaline-pumping chaos of a rapidly expanding company.
But something was missing: his story. I couldn't gauge anything about his feelings, stumbling blocks or growth from the story he was telling me. It wasn’t a story at all.
We started again using the five steps for personal brand storytelling. Once we were done, we had a smashing story: successful corporate man navigates shock over life as a startup employee during COVID, before ultimately rediscovering himself and his purpose.
Here’s how we did it, framed as advice for you if you’re re-telling your story.
Steps to build a unique brand story
1. Bring yourself to the story.
I’m not talking about the current fad for ‘authenticity’ in business. Today, ‘authenticity’ seems to have translated into using social media to tell your audience every personal element of your life, whether it’s a mental health breakdown, relationship challenge or political opinion. You don’t owe your audience everything; in fact, you have a right to protect your most personal experiences and share them only with the people you love and trust. Unless you’re a personal coach, baring your soul and your secrets can make you appear inward-looking, spark sympathy (which is all about you!) and do very little to advance your professional interests.
Storytellers are in service to others. That means you need to tell your story in a way that has value to other people. To do this, spotlight the way you experienced a moment in time/event/milestone that could be relevant to others. Find that point of recognition and universality and use it to connect with your audience. Also make sure you don’t let yourself get lost in other people’s stories or be overshadowed by events that happened around you.
2. Connect the dots with your values.
If you’ve had a diverse, even rollercoaster of a professional journey so far, you may be worried that it all looks unrelated and makes you seem less credible. There’s a little trick I like to use with values to overcome this! I call it ‘connecting the dots’.
Firstly, pinpoint what you stand for or want to be known for. Then, sit down with and map out your past employment history, volunteer work, projects you worked on or led, and hobbies. Now, find five values that were there in every encounter. Was it compassion? Rage? Hope? What made you come alive? These values are the thread connecting everything you’ve done up ’til this point. Reference them in your story.
3. Add a little drama.
Think about the flow of a story — whether it’s a book, film or tv show. It usually has a beginning, middle and end. Every teen Hollywood romance movie from the 80s and 90s roughly follows this structure: boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again (on behalf of all the studios, I’d like to apologise for the lack of inclusion for LGBTQI+ people). That middle bit is where the drama lies.
If you want to get a little more complex, you can shape your story around Donald Miller’s definition from his epic book, Storybrand:
‘A character who wants something encounters a problem before they can get it. At the peak of their despair, a guide steps into their lives, gives them a plan, and calls them to action. That action them helps them avoid failure and end in success’ Donald Miller, Storybrand.
What challenges have you faced? Who was there holding your hand (or saving your sanity) through them? What steps did you take? What was the positive outcome? All these ingredients can be sprinkled into your personal brand story!
4. Capture your moment of transformation
Stories always include a ‘threshold’ moment — a crossroads in our lives; or a turning point. Story does not exist when a character simply flatlines through the plot with no emotional twists and turns. A story is only a story when there’s change and growth.
Not long ago I met a talented young woman who had just launched a solo tech comms consultancy. Before this, she was on a very different track in corporate-land. How did her life change? She won an impressive award for her environmental campaigns. She should have been ecstatic. But as she accepted that award, she was asked to explain to the crowd what winning it meant to her. And guess what? She had zero words. She was tongue-tied. In that very moment, she knew she wasn’t where she was meant to be. She walked away from it all, retrained, and is now helping drive awareness of the emerging world of s*x tech (yes, really!). That moment when she was asked the question was her ‘threshold’ moment.
Your own trigger does not have to be this epic, or public, to spark change. It could be as simple as a word, an article, or a feeling that suddenly brings your whole world into focus in a completely new way.
5. Play to the crowd! (AKA know your audience)
There’s no story without an audience to experience it. In fact, the earliest stories captivated listeners around ancient fires and forums, and were intended to pass on values, memories and histories.
As you’re framing your story around the four points I’ve outlined here, remember to keep in mind your ideal audience. What are their challenges and desires? What do they need to hear from you to be inspired into action? Select the details you share in your story, and interpret their meaning, in a way that shows you see them, understand them — and might even be their solution!
If you haven’t refreshed your personal brand story for a while (whether it’s on LinkedIn or your website) — go back and read over it. Are you taking us (your readers) on a emotive journey that tells us why you tick? Will we care? If you can’t be objective about your own writing, test out your current story on a colleague. Then use the tips I’ve shared here to tweak it and re-imagine your story as a journey we want ’d love to know how you get on!
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