In This Chapter

Defining a valuable brand

Coaching with authenticity

Realising your true worth

In this chapter, we explore the characteristics and mind-sets that enabled individuals, such as Victoria Beckham and her equally successful husband David Beckham, to build a personal brand worth millions.

In Chapter 8, we explore how to define your values and purpose. In this chapter, we explore these subjects at a deeper level.

Enter Personal Branding

A brand is a ‘promise to deliver’. It’s like a bank note that promises to pay the bearer the value on the note; it’s only worth the face value if people trust that it will be honoured.

Business brands have generated considerable significance and interest in the 21st century. Who could have guessed 100 years ago that today one of the top 20 brands in the world, ranked number 7 with an estimated brand value of just under £5.6 billion, would be a luxury clothing and leather goods retailer? Burberry sells luxury goods, and although it may be one of the most counterfeited brands in the world, its story of exclusivity and quality keeps it in the top-20-brand list. However, although its work to challenge the counterfeiting through legislative change is successful and ongoing, it’s background noise. The really interesting brand news is Burberry’s ability to sell its craftsmanship and its ability to customise goods as a result. In a world where the Burberry brand is potentially seriously compromised, Burberry has developed a niche within a niche.

Advisors to Burberry no doubt developed grey hair thinking about the counterfeit issue and the associated risks to brand. Yet the key strategies seem to have been to focus on dominating the highest-end luxury goods market and developing an online market that still offers customers exclusivity, quality and service. It is bizarre and brilliant that in a world where the sale of quality counterfeits is on the increase in the mass market, Burberry is selling a luxury handbag at £20,000. This is a clear example of an organisation retaining a positive business outlook in challenging circumstances, taking a decision to stay with the brand values to maximise quality, craftsmanship and exclusivity.

Another exciting 21st-century development is that of the personal brand, the individual who is able to exploit and showcase his talents and package them in multiple ways. Victoria Beckham rose to fame in the 1990s with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice. When she announced that her ambition was to be a brand as globally recognised as Kellogg’s, a lot of people sniggered. How she has proven them wrong!

In the past decade, Victoria has become an internationally recognised fashion designer, style icon and businesswoman named top entrepreneur of 2014 by British business magazine Management Today. The Victoria Beckham label was named designer brand of the year in the UK in 2011. The brand was built with the assistance of music impresario Simon Fuller, famous for first discovering the Spice Girls and for creating the Pop Idol television franchise. Fuller’s XIX Management owns one-third of the Victoria Beckham business, which is reportedly worth more than £300 million. First launched in 2008, her fashion business now includes dresses, luxury handbags, makeup and fragrances with annual sales of almost £50 million with an exclusive store in Mayfair, London and her range of products available in high-end retailers around the world.

The only apparent difference between corporate branding and personal branding is that instead of marketing a product or service, a person is being promoted. The common denominators that define all stand-out successful brands whether corporate or personal are

• Quality
• Distinctiveness
• Consistency
• Relevance

Developing your own personal coaching brand ensures that in the modern business landscape where few have expectations of jobs for life any longer, and it’s more important to be employable than to be employed, you can showcase your own unique brand of coaching and mentoring so you’re counterfeit proof and have a thriving coaching practice.

Defining How Brands Work When They Work Well

Branding, marketing and selling are not synonymous. Three distinctions are apparent:

• Branding is a promise to deliver an experience.
• Marketing is building a relationship with your target audience, finding out their needs and communicating that you offer a solution to these needs.
• Selling is helping potential customers to make a decision.

A brand defines:

• Who you are
• Why you do what you do
• What you do
• Who you serve
• What you give
• What you get

Your personal brand guarantees a client a particular experience that is only of value if you deliver. The promise to deliver is made up of many component parts, including your own name, your history, your talents, how you present yourself, your logo, your coaching style and your after-coaching support. In addition, the better you know yourself and how you operate and are perceived by customers, the better you can define your brand and realise your true value as a coach.

Your brand is your reputation and your promise to deliver. This brand is valuable and can open doors and keep them open when it’s built upon solid foundations of trust.

Building a Brand on Purpose

Consider your personal brand as a project that never ends. It evolves over time, adapting as you more clearly define who you are, what you do, whom you serve, what you give and what you get in return. Corporations are always redefining themselves as market conditions change and customer needs alter, but underlying the redefining, their core values and purposes for being in business remain constant and give the business a sense of direction.

Anything that’s going to be exceptional is worth spending at least a day working on. Some coaches spend more time designing their business cards than examining who they are, what they do and who they serve. Invest time in building your business on the solid foundations of purpose and you will reap the rewards.

Keeping the business intact and your values on track

With a defined purpose, take time out to consider your values: ‘What’s important to you’. Keep the list of values together with your purpose. (See Chapter 8.)

Think of purpose as the Northern Star giving you a sense of direction and values as the inner compass system that lets you know whether you’re on track or veering off course.

When all business decisions and your actions align with purpose and values, you’re said to be congruent. A good indicator that you’re congruent is that what you do and say feels right and often seems easy. When incongruent, it feels wrong and can seem like an uphill struggle.

This exercise is called the ‘Tell it to the lamp post’ exercise, where you get to practise saying out loud your purpose and values until they feel and sound natural and congruent. Follow these steps:

1. Take your written purpose and list of values and write a short paragraph that defines these.

   When you have a paragraph that sums up for you why you do what you do, go tell it to the lamp post. The lamp post will not question or critique you.

2. Keep practising saying the mission statement out loud until it feels natural and right.
3. Write your mission statement down and put it in places to remind you of who you are and why you do what you do.

Here is an example of how congruent purpose, values and mission should look when written down. When said out loud, after some practice, it will sound and feel authentic and natural:

• Purpose: My purpose is to be an inspirational teacher and trainer to others so they can live fulfilling, happy lives.
• Values: Love, fun, honesty, variety.
• Mission: My mission is to inspire business professionals to enjoy their working lives, learning to love what they do and do what they love, and challenge them to be true and authentic to themselves.

Figure 13-1 shows the levels that combine to make up a brand. ‘Why you do what you do’ is built up from first defining purpose, values and mission. The ‘what you do’ is built from the marketing, selling and defining of your products and services. This is represented by first defining goals and objectives, putting plans into place and then allocating and doing the tasks to achieve the goals and objectives. (The ‘what you do’ is covered in Chapter 8 where we explore developing visions. In Chapter 9, we look at turning visions into workable plans.)

All the actions you take, what you do, whom you serve, what you give and what you get in return are defined with purpose, values and mission in mind. With this approach, you create a brand that can inspire you every day and distinguish you from those who are simply doing a job.

Looking in the Mirror of Self-Critique

‘For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘if today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose’.

–Steve Jobs

There are two common insights that clients get when they do the exercises in the previous section:

• We are already aware of purpose, vision and mission, and our actions are all in alignment with them. (This is rarely the case.)
• What we do isn’t in alignment with purpose, vision and mission, so we must change what we do (which brings up the opportunity to do some valuable coaching).

The next two sections contain exercises to practise first with yourself and then with your clients. They can assist you to define and change ‘What you do’ in order to be the brand. Begin by asking the question, ‘What quality (or qualities) would I need to cultivate in order to conduct myself (or corporation) if I were fully aligned with purpose, values and missions?’ What you’re looking for is what’s missing, what’s not there, what can be done better. Both techniques are designed to give clear messages to your unconscious mind that ‘this is the way I am and this is the way I want to be’. They’re hypnotic by design.

When you do these exercises and make comparisons with others, you don’t do it so you can criticise yourself and feel bad; that’s called having a ‘pity party’. Rather the purpose is to honestly reflect on what can be better and set an intention to change. The only person to measure against is yourself and how you have improved.

Presenting Yourself with Style and Substance

The purpose of developing your personal brand or the brand of your clients is so you get noticed and get on the shortlist. Then, when customers make a decision, they choose you. It’s important to get noticed for the right reasons because every communication you make gets processed; you can easily make the wrong impression and find it not so easy to change it. In Chapter 15, we cover how to engage, inform and influence people to say yes. How you’re perceived is a complex process, but your brand stands out from the crowd for the right reasons if you commit to always

• Doing your best
• Raising your standards
• Being authentic

Remember that phrase ‘fake it till you make it’? Consider what this phrase really means. It’s about pretending to be what or who you’re not. Nobody likes a fake so, instead of faking it, use the ‘stepping into a brand-new you’ exercise as a reminder to practise how you would like it to be until the practice becomes habitual.

Recognising When Incongruence Strikes

Four thousand years ago, the Toltec nation of southern Mexico had a group in its society known as Naguals. They were spiritual masters who developed a set of principles designed to help people be ‘better people’. These principles have been handed down through the millennia and offer an ancient way to achieve modern-day results. They provide an effective way to check whether you’re presenting yourself as the best you in alignment with purpose, values and mission.

The Toltec four agreements are:

• Be impeccable with your word: A great brand delivers its promises.
• Don’t take anything personally: When you get feedback, listen to it, learn from it, don’t take it personally. It’s a gift from the person who gave it, so use it to improve.
• Don’t make assumptions: Ask people what they really think about you and what’s needed to improve. Be willing to ask and hear the perceptions of others, and don’t be blinded by your own point of view.
• Always do your best: Set the intention to be excellent, and if you fall short, see the second agreement.

When a brand doesn’t work, it has violated one or more of these agreements. It has failed to deliver, failed to listen to feedback, made assumptions about customers’ needs and wants and failed to do its best.

This exercise, ‘Practising daily ancient wisdom for a lifetime of modern excellence’, can help you put into practice the agreements for creating your brand.

Choose an agreement for the day. Commit to demonstrating and practising this quality throughout the day and notice how useful it can be for guiding you to present yourself with style and substance. Commit and make a promise to do the exercise (see agreement 1). If you make a mistake, don’t make it about you (see agreement 2). When you do the exercise, don’t assume you know what you will experience (see agreement 3) and do your best (see agreement 4).

Valuing What You Have to Offer

The department store John Lewis has a tag line ‘Never knowingly undersold’. Its website (www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk) explains that this tag line means:

• Quality: ‘We have the very highest standards when it comes to product quality, plus we regularly benchmark John Lewis-branded products against the competition to ensure that we’re not just market-leading in quality, but also on price’.
• Price: ‘We set highly competitive prices for all our products, with a dedicated team regularly checking them against other high street competitors’.
• Service: ‘John Lewis staff are partners in the business, and are highly trained to offer helpful, impartial advice on all products. Our service doesn’t end with your purchase – we provide excellent after-sales and a great choice of expert services to help you, from delivery to installation’.

They provide a valuable service and deliver to standards of excellence, and they value what they do and charge appropriately for it. When you operate your coaching business to similar standards of excellence, you can rightly and congruently charge for it as John Lewis does.

Many coaches, especially those new to the profession, often struggle with valuing what they do and charging for it, often underselling or discounting to get work. The strength of your brand and how it’s perceived affect your price. Also, the price you charge can affect your brand in a negative way. A low price suggests that you’re not in demand and are therefore not good at what you do.

Value your brand, and price based on the difference you make and not the time you spend, and you will earn well.

Realising your value

The perceived value of your brand equals the sum of the difference you make to your clients and the uniqueness of your products and services. This approach to appreciating and realising your value is shown in Figure 13-2.

There are three principles to consider when deciding your value:

• Principle 1: Value is determined by the difference of what you do makes to the customer and the uniqueness of what you have to offer, compared to the competition. The more difference you make and the more unique you are, the more valuable you are.
• Principle 2: People buy solutions to their needs. The more desperate the needs, the more value your solutions have. Make your business solutions focused.
• Principle 3: People value specialists and experts. Position yourself and your brand as a subject specialist and you add value.

Positioning your brand

In the restaurant trade, two extremes are evident – Michelin star restaurants and burger stands – and a whole range of choices can be made in between. Each caters to a distinctively different market and prices accordingly. They both meet the desperate needs of the hungry, and there is a place in the market for both of them.

When deciding where to position your brand, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are my ideal clients?
• Are they looking for the coaching equivalent of the Michelin star restaurant or burger bar experience?

Use Figure 13-3 to determine where your brand fits best and ensure that you price according to the sector you fit into.

If you choose to offer the burger bar experience, aim to offer the best burger bar experience possible. Some amazing street food vendors are out there who offer outstanding quality of food and service, run respectable businesses and have queues of customers who keep coming back for more and refer the business to their friends.

Promoting Yourself with Shameless Humility

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

–Marianne Williamson

This partial quote from Marianne Williamson’s book A Return to Love sums up the approach of far too many great coaches. They play small out of fear. They undervalue what they do and the difference it makes. During the recent recessionary years, a commonly used word was ‘austerity’. The theme for governments and businesses was to cut back and save. Money stopped flowing, and business began to grind to a halt. Only so much can be cut back whereas what can be created and generated by business is limitless. As a coach, you have the privilege to assist businesses to create and generate wealth and to flourish and thrive. Think of it as irresponsible for you not to shamelessly promote your services when it serves the greater good.

When a business is service-orientated, its focus is ‘How may I be of service?’, it provides the solutions to the desperate needs of others and when no fear is evident around charging, the business will flourish financially.

Follow these simple rules and flourish and thrive:

• Be service-orientated and ask ‘How may I be of service?’
• Know your mission by heart and welcome any opportunity to get into a conversation about it.
• Have your business cards to hand and make sure yours is the one people remember because of the way you present yourself.
• Always answer your phone when it rings. It’s someone waiting for you to take his order.
• When people enquire about your services, don’t tell them about what you do; give them an experience that demonstrates the difference your coaching makes. Give them a ‘Wow’ experience.
• Never assume that a client can afford you or not afford you. They all can or will find a way when you demonstrate that you have the solution to their needs.
• Ask for the business. It’s been said that a ‘yes’ lives in the land of ‘no’. Even of a client says ‘no’, turn the ‘no’ into a ‘know’ by asking why and learning to get better at engaging, informing and influencing clients to make the good decision to coach with you.
• If the business isn’t right for you or the client lets it go, always work from a win-win perspective. Enough clients are around to keep all coaches busy. When you work with clients who are a good fit for your business and inspire you, you’re being true to your brand; you’re no longer just doing a job – you’re doing inspired work.

Lighting Up the Room When You Walk In, Not When You Walk Out

Have you ever walked into a room and picked up the tension in the air? No one needed to say anything; you just naturally knew something was up. A principle comes into play here called harmonic resonance. Harmonic resonance is an extraordinary phenomena observed throughout physics where two seemingly separate systems (in this case, two people in a room) interact and exchange energy, and both take on some of the qualities of the other. They are said to resonate in harmony. Humans experience this phenomena at a physiological level. Imagine two pianos in a room. A note is played on one piano and the same note vibrates on the second. Physiologically, we do the same. If an extreme state such as fear or anger is evident, the neurology picks up the signal through ‘mirror neurones’ and resonates.

Consider two scenarios, one where a coach walks into a networking event. He has done all his branding work, is competent and capable but is worried about how he is perceived. Then think about the same coach with the same competencies but not thinking about himself and instead thinking about how he may best be of service to this group of strangers. Here you have two different thinking styles, two different states and two rather different harmonic resonances.

Before entering into any situations where you get to present your brand, set the intention to be ‘the best you’. Your state of mind then affects others in a positive way, and when the business cards get swapped, yours is the one that people recall as making them feel good. Because you’re in a good state, you are in a better psychological frame of mind to see and hear the opportunities to get into conversations that can lead to business. See Chapter 10 on state management.

Leaving a Legacy Footprint

Experts have estimated that the average person spends 90,000 hours of his life at work; that’s an average of 11,250 working days or 2,250 working weeks, and what is there to show for it? Perhaps the mortgage is paid off, the children are put through school and university, some holidays and all the other things that make up the sum total of the average human life. In terms of leaving a legacy and making an impact on the world, deciding how you spend your valuable time is important. Doing the exercise in the ‘Defining your purpose’ section earlier in this chapter, where you got to hear your epitaph, will help you reflect on the difference you made with your time on planet Earth. What if the epitaph you heard was that you worked really hard? Maybe it would get you to reconsider what you are currently doing and whether it makes a difference in the world.

On a coaching seminar, the trainer asked the group a question: ‘How many people have had a near-death experience and how did this experience affect how you treated the rest of your life?’ The purpose of the question was to get people to ‘wake up’ and enjoy life. Perhaps there was a different question to ask: ‘How many people have had a near-life experience? That’s when you get to the last day on planet Earth and look back and go, ‘damn I wished I’d done it differently’.’

Bronnie Ware is a nurse turned author who spent several years in palliative care working with people in the last 12 weeks of their lives. In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, she lists the common regrets people have when they think about how they spent their valuable lives. In order of biggest regret first:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish I had let myself be happier.

When you define your personal brand built on purpose, aligned with your values and only choosing to do work that inspires you, you’ll spend those precious moments being true to yourself. You’ll be well on the way to becoming one of the few people who can put a line through the first most common regret.

As a coach, you get to make a dent in the universe and to impact people’s lives in powerful ways, the full consequences of which often show up in time and in ways you can never predict and often don’t share. Your purpose-driven brand leaves behind a legacy footprint of empowered individuals, teams and organisations that in their own way make a positive difference.

You are not in the business of rescuing people. Coaching is about making a positive difference. Keep this idea in mind and remember the value you add by what you do.

Remembering that You Have No Sell-By Date

Branding demands commitment to continual reinvention; striking chords with people to stir emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.

–Richard Branson

Retired footballer David Beckham recently announced he is taking up acting. Beckham’s business interests include a large stake in his wife’s successful clothing company, Haig Club (Whiskey) and Miami FC with a range of Beckham-branded products to his name. He provides a great example of a brand known for delivering results. With a great work ethic and a commitment to excellence, his brand has evolved over time and will undoubtedly continue to evolve even beyond his acting career.

The uniqueness and worth of each individual changes over time. As you develop as a coach, you gain more experience and have more to offer. With a solid personal brand underpinning what you do, you get the chance to repackage throughout your career.