I’m a big fan of quotes by Farnam Street. One of the quotes says ‘Direction is more important than speed’.

And then I thought, how can this have implications for your personal brand?

When we are ‘speed-dialing’ on making our brand known but in a showy manner, we often lose traction in the long-term.

Think of your personal branding journey like a marathon, with ‘sprint spurts’ that define your pivots and new thresholds, so that you can navigate the storytelling effortlessly (big word? Yes. Effective and in flow? Always).

You see, direction is our brand’s GPS – that always delivers on the promise of our North Star ambitions. Whereas speeding up on things can sometimes derail our actual progress in the facade of ‘things moving for the sake of business stakes’ and not ’advancing’ on what we call our personal growth and development goals.

So how do you know that you are in the right direction of your personal branding journey?

  1. You live by your values and principles that seed in every content you write.
  2. You have your own social proof – yes, you approving you for every mandate and challenge ahead of you. How? By building educational content that defines your creative prowess and brand personality.
  3. You maintain a meaningful social media presence. Your write for people, not smart algorithms. You’re vulnerable, but that’s how you live in your work.
  4. You are a confident and humble person. This is not contrarian thing to say, but a beautiful melding of what your audience expects from you: when you rise to ground yourself in who you are, unapologetically but respectfully.
  5. Join like-minded yet diversely opinionated communities to have a fresh perspective on what lies ahead in these unprecedented times.
  6. You trust the process and underpin your efforts with reading books that guide you with the right direction when the monopoly of leadership populace put their learnings into practice. They help you save time on doing things in the right manner with the ready tools, practices and strategies.

How are you advancing in your personal branding journey?

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash