You have envisioned the personal brand you want for yourself. You formulated a plan to make it happen. You work hard to turn your vision and plan into a reality.
Life, however, is not perfect. Despite all your planning and hard work, you get off track. Somehow, some way your words or deeds are not consistent with how you want to be known.
Life is not an endless succession of forward progress
It may have happened completely inadvertently. Or it may have happened when you did something (or failed to do something) that had unintended consequences.
• You want to be considered as reliable. Something happened, however, and you are not able to meet a deadline.
• You want to be deemed altruistic. You are in a stretch, however, where time and resources leave you short of what you want to contribute.
• You want to be thought of as hard working. A series of circumstances, however, you were not able to lend a hand as you always do.
Whatever the case, these things happen. Life is not an endless succession of forward progress and establishing a brand is not an event but rather a process. There are going to be setbacks along the way – both minor and major.
Brand building is a process and any process encounters setbacks
You have to remember that championship teams lose games from time to time (and even have bad seasons). The world’s smartest people do not get all the right answers (and can do some awfully dumb things). Even the most beloved companies have a bad year (or years).
These setbacks do not change who they are and what they strive for. Likewise, neither should your setbacks. Whatever the case, it is never too late to get your actions back in lockstep with the vision you have for your personal brand. It is never too late to get your brand back together.
Author:
Frank Agin is the founder and president of AmSpirit Business Connections. In addition, Frank is the author of Foundational Networking: Building Know, Like and Trust To Create A Lifetime of Extraordinary Success and the co-author of LinkedWorking: Generating Success on the World’s Largest Professional Networking Website and The Champion: Finding the Most Valuable Person in Your Network.
