YOU make an impression by how you look, influence by what you say and make an impact by what you are. Your life, relationships or work only become better if you continuously improve yourself. When people look at you, they interact with your personality, they form opinions on what you are on the inside. They can make conclusion as to what kind of person you are basing on how you look.

What you are on the outside is nothing more than a manifestation of what you are on the inside. To change your brand, you do not just need to look at your outside but be more inside looking and change the forces that shape the outside that people see. Lasting personal and organisational change comes from the inside, moving onto the outside.

Do not look at the symptoms and expend your energy there. To achieve an effective personal brand, you need to deal with your internal paradigms, your belief system, your convictions, your assumptions, your thought patterns, your attitudes.

You also need to deal with your value system, your strengths and weaknesses, your deep desires, your principles and your preferences and align them with personal, social, professional, organisational and general standards of behaviour or better Personal branding is about dealing with these underlying foundations of behaviour to produce a positive image, becoming the kind of person you really want to be, the ideal you.

When the inside is aligned, the outside makes a positive impression. Personal branding entails dealing with what you really are and making it better, not what other people think you are.

You cannot hide your negative attributes for too long a time from people. Sooner or later they begin to manifest and begin to affect the quality of your relationships.

To build a good brand, your level of self-awareness has to be very high. You have to be true to yourself.

In short, know yourself to change yourself. Do not flatter yourself, if you have bad attributes, confront them and correct them.

Branding is all about working on your personal attributes and becoming a better product. Take for example the attributes of a Volvo, it's known for safety (do people feel safe around you?). A Mercedes-Benz has stability (are you a stable character?), what are your attributes, what is your value proposition to yourself, your organisation and the world, what have you got to offer? Volvo guarantees safety, BMW guarantees speed, what about you? What should those who interact or see you expect from you?

If you were an animal in the jungle, what animal would you be? List the attributes of that animal and adapt them to yourself. For example, if you want to be like a cheetah, this might imply that you may want to imitate its speed and by this it may imply that you want to do things fast. If you want to be a lion it may mean you want to be powerful or maybe a chameleon it may mean you want to be adaptive to different situations like it does by changing colours.

You have to be always aware of your current weaknesses to build a strong brand.

Personal branding is about expanding your strengths and improving your weaknesses until you are personally effective, not hiding them. Personal branding, unlike grooming, deals with the inside, polishing the very attitudes, belief and thought patterns that cause someone to be scruffy every day. The awareness of your personal brand determines your success at positioning yourself in the world.

To build a good brand, work on the facets of personal branding. These include your mindset, your attitude, your physical, your spiritual, your financial, your professional, your intellectual, your emotional, your social and most importantly your character, which is what you really are.  Strive to be a positive thinker, stop thinking like a victim or failure. Remember success is a mindset and a skills set.

Your attitude, much of failure is a result of a bad attitude. Your spirituality, the Bible says, defines what a person is, it says man is a spirit, has a soul and lives in a body. Thus you are a spirit and hence you need an active spiritual life, the more you identify with your creator who is a spirit, the more the quality of your life becomes better.

Focus on all the facets, how you spend your money; money takes the personality of its owner, it is not as evil as it is said to be.

Hope you were inspired to be a powerful personal brand, remember to be the best. Just be the best!

About the author:

Pascal Nyasha is a leadership expert, management consultant, motivational and conference speaker. He is an author of five books on the subjects of leadership, motivation and success. Pascal is a syndicated columnist with over 200 articles published across Africa. An award winning public speaker, Pascal is the founder of Pascal Nyasha Seminars, a training and development organisation focusing on leadership development, motivational speaking and capacity building for organisations of all shapes, sizes and focuses

The SME Times Guest Author can be contacted at pascalnyasha@gmail.com.