Don’t Let Your Personal Brand Go the Way of the Weeds

Your personal brand will naturally deteriorate unless you do this.

I’m going to talk about managing your personal brand in a roundabout way, by making two statements that I think almost everybody will agree with. Hopefully you do as well.

Statement number one: The natural state of the world is weeds.
Statement number two: Everybody already has a personal brand.

This common knowledge is almost cliche, but the intersection of these two statements is a synergy that creates an overwhelmingly powerful argument for building, maintaining and growing your personal brand.

Let’s start with that first statement. If I am Farmer Brown and I plowed a field and I intended to plant corn but instead let that field lie fallow, it will grow a wonderful harvest of weeds without any effort on my part. That is where the world will naturally go. When the ideal thing, the intended plan, the hopeful prospect isn’t proactively and diligently worked, the natural state of the world takes over and the weeds arrive.

Now, statement number two. Pre-digital age, your personal brand was only well known by friends, family, your neighborhood, your church. Those that were physically in touch with you were able to know whether you had a valuable brand or not. They knew what your brand stood for because their experience was direct, physical and obvious.

That’s not the same today, by virtue of the fact that you are even reading an article like this. If you have any degree of social media presence–LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Medium, whatever mechanism you use–you have a personal brand. That can be established and still unmanaged if you are not putting thought behind your brand.

So, what is it that these two statements have in common?

Combined, these two obvious “cliches” say that if you don’t tend to your personal brand, it will go the way of the world. It will turn into something nearly unmanageable, an annoyance, cluttered and unwanted. Yet you can’t get rid of your personal brand without a lot of hard, diligent work cleaning it up. Skip all of that by paying attention to it and actively engaging with it regularly from the beginning.

Here’s a third statement to accompany the others, albeit less obvious and learned from experience: If you do not, as a corporation, define your brand as you wish it to be, your competitors will be quite happy to do so, always to your detriment.

Don’t let the natural state of the world revert to weeds. Don’t let the universe, “other people,” define your brand. And certainly don’t let your lack of productivity and diligence and consistency define your personal brand for you.

You have one; what you choose to do about and with it or not defines how important that is to you and frankly, therefore defines your personal brand.

As you go forward, plant your “social media field” if you will, rather than letting it lay fallow. Tend it, have it grow into what you want it to be; purposeful and proactive. That will lead to a harvest of opportunities for you in the future. Don’t let your brand be either defined by others or fall into the natural state of the world; weeds.

Aaron Webber is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Webber Investments LLC, as well as a Managing Partner at Madison Wall Agencies.

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