Car People it’s a new month and it’s time to Clarify WHAT you want so you can commit to taking action. There are two ways to approach taking action...

Move away “from” something [and] move “toward” something

A "move away from" is where you are attempting to get away from something you do not want.

A "move toward" is where you’re wanting to head toward something you want to achieve.

The issue you will eventually encounter when you’re trying to move away from something, is that at some point you get far enough away from that which you don’t want, then you think that it will never happen again - and the motivation stops.

This creates inconsistent results in your life and career...

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An important distinction must be made before you begin extracting your personal brand, and hat is understanding the difference between conformity and consistency.

Consistency is a critical step in branding. Your company doesn’t want a bunch of conformist. Innovation is a necessity to survive in business today.

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When developing your personal brand, there is an important piece of the process to consider [and] that is understanding the difference between a commodity and a brand.

Commodities compete on price. Think in general of a mid-size car; one Honda Accord is interchangeable with another. Same for vehicle maintenance intervals – one oil change service interchangeable with another.

But when you think about a brand, it is unique. There is something about it that’s special; so much that you will pay more just to have it.

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If your goal is to position your best professional self in a manner that will differentiate who you are from anyone else who does what you do. The only way to do that is through developing your own personal brand.

Many people think branding is about creating an image for the outside world – it’s about having their own website or blog. Many automotive professionals believe it’s about the number of followers they have on their social media sites [and] nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, true brands – successful strong brands are based in authenticity.

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Where do I start? What do I say? Who should I connect with? These are among the most common questions I get asked from professionals looking to develop their personal brand.

First it's important to understand that the process of personal branding has nothing to do with self-promotion. Too many automotive professionals position themselves to conquest customers, yet completely disregard their ideal target audience.

A couple things occur when this type of strategy is used.

Don't over thinking your strategy. In order to build a strong personal brand; one that supports your best self, start thinking about the things you have in common with your favorite clients.

In this coaching exercise you will define your three P's to strengthen your personal brand.

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We’ve all been there. That moment on the freeway where you look ahead and see nothing but brake lights. As our conscious mind begins to rationalize what on earth could be happening, we then begin to notice the “road construction” flags. Next we see the monstrous electronic sign, throwing out arrows telling us to merge right! The once fast and flowing four lane freeway, has now become a one lane cautionary path with a three mile an hour speed limit.

This is called a bottleneck; a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or restricted number of resources.

This same phenomenon occur within you and me. Our language patterns create a bottleneck with our internal operating system.

In this coaching exercise you will practice postitive language patterns.

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A few years ago, while standing in the coffee line at my neighborhood Starbucks, I came to recognize my part in Howard Schultz’s big vision. He’d dreamed of creating the third place - for those of you who aren’t familiar with his story - he believed that people needed a place between work and home; and that place would be Starbucks.

For whatever reason that morning felt different...

In this coaching exercise you will define your personal meaning to four common words used in the automotive industry.

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The goose that laid the golden egg is a fable many of us are familiar with. A poor man gets a goose that lays him a golden egg each day. He sells the eggs and makes a lot of money. He becomes rich. But he’s not content with the riches; he wants more and he wants it fast. So he kills the goose, foolishly thinking that there would be many more golden eggs inside. But to his surprise, the Goose differed in no respect from any other Goose. The foolish man, thus hoping to become rich all at once, deprived himself of the gain to which he was assured each day.

Although the moral of this story is simple - “don’t be greedy” - the cause of his greed is never discussed. Why didn’t the poor man experience contentment?

In this coaching exercise you will extract your personal values (aka; your operating principles).

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About once a week, someone will reach out and ask if I could help them setup a new social networking site. They go on to say their primary goal is to get a bunch of fans, followers and connections so they can build their personal brand. It's at that point I kindly, but directly advise them that creating a strong personal brand does not begin with social networking.

Don't get me wrong, social networking should be at the top of your professional priority list. But in order to be effective at it, you must first start with:

This strategy requires personal introspection, followed by intentional actions.

In this coaching exercise you will take a close look at how you think you're showing up vs. how other people percieve you.  

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You are the only expert in your life. No one knows you better than YOU. From the time you were born, you began to record your life experiences into your personal navigation system. YOU decided what you liked, and what you didn’t like. With a little help from your family and friends, you learned how to determine what was good or bad, positive or negative, and right or wrong.

All of this information translates into your story. 

In this coaching exercise you'll need to grab a mirror. It's time to have a face-to-face conversation with your inner expert, and get the facts straight about the story you've been telling yourself.

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