An excerpt from Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur:
You are an amazing, smart, kind, savvy fempreneur! Do you shout it from the rooftops? No? You’re not alone. Another area in which female entrepreneurs often need a Mindset Shift relates to branding and building presence. When you launch a startup, you must begin by establishing your own presence which is crucial because it’s the very thing which gets your company off the ground. This is the entry ticket for just about every new business endeavor today. Unfortunately, a recent study revealed that women are much less inclined to self-promote than men.[i] Another study found that “women find it harder to trumpet their accomplishments.”[ii]
This chapter will guide you in how to achieve the fifth Mindset Shift related to branding and building presence through topics such as personal branding, networking, and building visibility- in other words, growing you and then showing you!
Personal Branding
According to a Harvard Business Review article, “personal branding has some unique challenges for female professionals. Research has repeatedly shown that women are subject to a phenomenon known as the ‘likability conundrum.’ Gender norms presume that women should be agreeable, warm, and nurturing, and when they violate these norms — such as when they step up to make a tough decision, share a strong opinion, or promote themselves — they’re often penalized for that behavior in a way that men wouldn’t be.”[iii] Since personal branding involves self-promotion, this can be an additional challenge point for new female entrepreneurs.
It can be tricky for women to talk about their accomplishments, particularly in the workplace where we are judged in a harsher light than men for doing so. Many women eventually realize, at some point, however, that they won’t get the opportunities that they deserve without telling others about their strong performance and accomplishments. I’ve lived it and made that transition myself. This section will help you to make the Mindset Shift to begin to develop your personal brand—which showcases your expertise, experience, personality, philosophies, thought leadership, and more—through brainstorming and research into the most effective way to present yourself digitally.
Personal branding can be intimidating at first, but like so many of the things that we’ve discussed before, it comes down to planning and execution. Perhaps the best place to start is to brainstorm about and begin to develop your personal branding angle. Everyone needs a personal brand today (particularly entrepreneurs), but the concept of a personal brand was first introduced by Tom Peters. Now widely quoted, Peters said, “Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”[iv]
Personal branding encompasses all of the marketing and promotion of yourself including the qualities and traits that you bring to the table. Your personal brand highlights and showcases your expertise, experience, personality, charm, philosophies, thought leadership, and more. It’s your job to take control of how you want to be seen and how you want to present yourself and a critical aspect of this 5th Mindset Shift. As business and marketing author expert Seth Godin famously said, “People do not buy goods and services, they buy relations, stories, and magic.”[v] Tell the magical story of you- your own unique blend of charisma, skills, experience, and that little something extra (lagniappe– as they say in New Orleans) that no one else has. If you need some personal branding inspiration, look to some of the personal branding masters like Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, or Martha Stewart.
Want to read more? Check out my book Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur.