The Life Purpose Podcast on Life Signatures Radio

Perhaps one of the worst things you can do about your personal brand is to veer away from its authenticity. The second that someone senses that you are inauthentic with your brand, that is the moment that they lose interest in you. Your perception of people's eyes is important. That is why it is wrong to think that the barrage of marketing ads will mitigate an inauthentic brand. Woe to you if the person you have employed to market your brand is not passionate about it. Listen to this

A personal brand is both about the front end as well as the back end. The front end is critical because it is what forms the perceptions. However, that front end is just about 5% of the personal brand, using the analogy of the proverbial iceberg. In other words, if your focus is only on the front end of your brand, you are doing it wrongly. Here is why

Creating a personal brand can be a fun activity. It is also a very delicate activity. Everyone with a heartbeat does have a brand and therefore they can create one. However, with the increasing changes in society, people are becoming increasingly selfish and self-absorbed. Consequently, the creation of personal brands is riddled with so many misconceptions. One of these misconceptions is that a personal brand is created primarily for the sake of making a sale. Find out why this is wrong.

In moments of uncertainty, we can always revert back to our aspirations. In fact, uncertainties can help create aspirations that basically spell the opposite of what we are experiencing. The fact is that we can grow and can get the fuel to our development and growth from our aspirations. When we keep reaching out and having a picture in our minds of our dreams and desires, we are fueling our growth. Listen to this.

There are quite a number of misconceptions that people have in relation to personal brand building. We all know that brand building is increasingly becoming one of the most important things that individuals can do. However, the idea of having a brand is not to have a brand just for the sake of having one. Brand building has to be done correctly, otherwise, there is no point in having a brand in the first place. Listen to this.

The world has changed so much in the past several decades. It is interesting to note that one of the most important needs of a human being is to work. When the industrial age came, we thought that we all would work there. So we skilled ourselves by the multitudes. Now, we find that there are fewer traditional jobs and there is a flood of qualified people. However, there are people who are doing unconventional gigs and are making headway in life more than those who are schooled. The answer is that the traditional CV is no longer the currency in the job market today. This has been replaced by a personal brand. Listen to this.

📣 In crafting personal brands, people easily make some common mistakes that can be avoidable. It is better not to have a personal brand than to have one with glaring issues. A personal brand should passionately reach out to an audience with authenticity and should offer value and solutions primarily because you care. In other words, you are putting the audience first. If this is not the reason for creating a personal brand, you have already started on a wrong footing. Let's discuss some of the mistakes in creating personal brands.

A personal brand done well will go a long way in creating value and distinction with your audience. It will help your targeted audience to know who you are and to know how to refer their friends and loved ones to you. A personal brand poorly done will cause the opposite effect. It is even worse than not having a brand at all. When you claim to have a brand, you are held and treated with a higher standard. Therefore one great mistake in personal branding is to not make it professional. Listen to this.

The greatest mistake you can make with your personal brand is to pass on the message that you do not care about. Once that vibe goes around your audience, once they realize that you are selfish, then you are done. People normally come up with marketing gimmicks that prey on unsuspecting members of their audiences. They use the greed and fear pillars to lure them. This is the ultimate degree of selfishness. Once found out though, that will be the beginning of the end of your brand.

The greatest casualty of upheavals and uncertainty is dreams. Even though our dreams are one of the most powerful things we possess, one of the strongest assets we have, they are also delicate. Every time our worlds are shaken, our dreams are affected. We tend to bench them and start operating in the survival mode, thinking that the dreams are auxiliary and lofty, and yet those dreams could mean heaven and earth in our very lives. Listen to this.

Nokia has been used as an example all over the place about the importance of moving with change and swimming with the currents. The truth is that we also can be exposed to the same danger that Nokia had and totally miss the opportunity that is available to us through changes that are happening. As such, our personal brand has to stay current and has to be flexible and responsive to the trends. Listen to this.

Momentum is a friend. A friend to everyone. Whether nature of humans. It brings in great rewards. Someone said that one ten units of effort will give you one unit of results. However, due to momentum, one unit of effort will start giving you ten units of results. This is also true with personal branding. Therefore, one big mistake that people make with their personal brand is inconsistency. Listen to this and find out why.

Success in anything is a result of concentration. Failure at anything comes about because of broken focus. In building a successful personal brand, one of the biggest mistakes that people make is to have a broken focus. They start something and immediately change to something else totally different from what they were passionate about a few months back. That kind of outlook will not help with building a successful personal brand. Listen to this.

You have probably heard the phrase, "all hat and no cattle"...it is a devastating phrase if it is applied to personal branding. In fact, for the most part, that phrase applies to personal branding. Of the mistakes that people make about their brands, one of the greatest of them all is what Jesus referred to as "whitewashed tombs". Having a semblance of finesse at the outside, but rotting on the inside. You and I need to be on the lookout that we do not have this kind of lousy brand in our lives. Listen to this.

We can make many mistakes in life and get away with it. One of the things that we should not make a mistake about is our personal brand. Why? Because chances are that you and I might not necessarily get away with it. Perhaps the greatest thing about a brand is how well it has been crafted and built. When the audience perceives that no cost has been spared in building a brand, they get to respect it and they want to identify themselves with it. The same applies to a personal brand. Listen to this.

As a personal brand becomes increasingly important in our day and age, one of the greatest mistakes we can make with it is to lack clarity. A personal brand has to be on the cutting edge of value addition and productivity and that cannot happen for as long as we are not clear at least in the eyes of our audiences. Listen to this.

Knowledge applied is power. Clarity of just about anything is important if we are to be on the cutting edge of anything. That is why personal branding is important in personal development. There are very many mistakes that are made with personal branding. What we need to realize is that we all have brands. We all are brands, whether we are individuals or organizations. Therefore, the very first mistake that a lousy personal brand makes is not to know that they are a brand. Listen to this.

The world today has seen changes. Long gone are the days where people, individuals actually, mattered less. The world today provides opportunities for individuals to be relevant. I believe that more and more people will be engaged in life to the degree that they have a personal brand. It is no longer about academic papers for they form just but a fraction of a personal brand. It is therefore important for us to start learning how to build a personal brand. These episodes will start teaching us how that is done. Stay tuned.

There is nothing that catalyzes growth and development like when you go head to head with someone that is much, much, much more experienced than you are. You see, if you keep playing a solo game, doing your own thing in obscurity, you will always be doing what you know and what you think is enough. Consequently, you can never reach your potential. However, when you expose yourself, especially when you expose yourself to an industry titan, there are very many benefits that will accrue from that exposure. You will only stand to gain. Here is a summary of the six ways that you will gain when you pit yourself against a great.

Exposure is a great thing. It introduces you to many advantages. One cannot get exposed unless they intentionally decide to pit themselves against the industry greats. Soon enough, you will learn that there is a need for professionalism. You will see the importance of honing your craft so that it can be an internationally recognized entity. If you do not pit yourself against the very best in your industry, you remain local and unexposed, and that is your undoing. In turn the titans and professionals in your field cannot associate themselves with you. Listen to this.

When you are doing your own craft in obscurity, there is no knowing what you are doing right or what you are doing wrong. There is no knowing if that if the best that you can ever do However, when you start doing it as you gauge yourself against other movers and shakers in your niche and industry, you start to realize that there is so much to learn from them. In essence, they form a benchmark against which you can compare your works on an occasional basis, and thus you get to improve and become a better sharper, and more productive person. Listen to this.

A rubber band is an interesting tool. Perhaps in all its usefulness, no one ever used it when it was not stretched. The same thing happens with our potential in life. It is possible to have potential unutilized for long periods of time. Until a catalyst in the way of going against a titan in your niche or at least gauging yourself against them that you are now stretched to the core. This is important for growth and development that it would never have happened if you did not pit yourself against the greatest in your niche. Listen to this.

We grow in different ways. Perhaps one of the greatest catalysts of our own growth is the realization that we are not as good as we thought we were. This only comes about when we go against the greatest and the best of the best in our industry. We realize that our efforts in our own growth are not good enough. All of a sudden we learn to arm ourselves with new motivation, urgency, focus, and determination. As we do this, we automatically engage a new and higher gear of growth in life. Listen to this.

We can be doing our own thing in obscurity and actually see some great progress. We can improve when we race against ourselves and push ourselves beyond our own limits. However, there is totally different feedback that comes to us when we pit ourselves against a giant or a titan in our industry. All of a sudden we realize how far we need to go. We realize what we are missing. Someone said that feedback is the breakfast of champions. Let us see just how this works out as a catalyst for our growth.

One of our greatest psychological needs in life is growth. It is a permanent thing when we are young. We grow even when we do not want to, at least physically and mentally. It gets to a time where growth is no longer automatic, but intentional. And at times we find ourselves pushing ourselves in our own way in order that we can grow one aspect of our lives or another. Whereas that is beautiful, there is one major critical and crucial catalyst that is missing. We need to have that added to our personal growth endeavors. Listen to this.

The world has changed. It will keep changing. Gone are the days where major brands will encamp at universities waiting for qualified people to employ. Today, they are in droves, as common as table salt. You will be engaged in life today to the degree that you have a personal brand. Academic certificates alone will no longer work, they will no longer cut it. That is why we need to learn how to craft a personal brand. In this bonus episode, let's see how important a personal brand is, and how we can create one.

The constant thing about life is change. That means that our contexts are always going to be subjective. What needs to stand like a rock is our content. In matters of fashion, someone said, swim with the currents, but in matters of principle, stand like a rock. What can we do when our contexts are subject to change each waking day? Listen to this.

There is lots of power in taking care of the physical body. Think about it. Is it possible to do anything here on earth apart from the physical body? Now that we are all home, or at least, most of us are...what is it that we can do so that we can continue being productive? You guessed it. We need to intentionally take care of our physical body because there is a lot of benefit to that. Listen to this to learn how important it is, and what three activities we can do each week.

It's a paradox we are living in. Man is primarily supposed to be productive. For that reason, we are here on earth. The bad thing is that we have always thought that productivity is something we do under someone's leadership so we can be paid. Nothing can be further from the truth. And now that we are experiencing lockdowns and closures of businesses, like never before we are being introduced to the importance of self-leadership. It is the highest form of leadership there is, and thank goodness, it is the one thing that is going to help us tremendously as we navigate through the Corona Virus Pandemic. Listen to this.

When all is said and done, a human being finds fulfillment from his work. This work can either be paid for or otherwise, but for as long as a human is productive, fulfillment comes. So what happens when one is jobless and one is sent home due to the Corona Virus pandemic that is forcing lockdowns around the world? We have to remain productive. The question is how do we do that? And the answer is that we need to install personal weekly agendas. So what exactly are we going to put in those weekly agendas? That is what we answer in this series that culminates with this episode. Listen to this.

Let's face it: there is no way that we can become productive during a lockdown if we do not have a weekly agenda, or an agenda of sorts for that matter. There has to be some level of intentionality in what we are going to do, whether we will be paid or not. The underlying thing is our productivity. We must remain productive. One might ask: What in the world will I put in my weekly agenda? Consider what's the most important thing to you. Consider what matters to you the most. What are the non-negotiable activities that you must do each day to crop up what matters the most to you? That's what you put in your weekly agenda. Listen to this.

The human being was created to be productive. Our greatest need, all things being kept constant is productivity. I think one of the misconceptions that we deal with daily is that we have to be paid to be productive, or that after being productive, we must be paid. Well, what if we are jobless or what if there are lockdowns and curfews? Does that mean we put our products on the back burner and start being waiters? We wait until things change so we can go back and be productive? Nope. Luckily, there are several things that we can do to keep our productivity going. One of them is working on our own projects, our own ideas, even if we will not get paid from them. Listen to this.

In moments of crisis, when our world has been interrupted, one of the most affected things is our productivity. We've always thought that to be productive, we have to go somewhere and log in, work and then get paid. But now that we are facing lockdowns and curfews, what do we do in order to continue being productive. It is a fact that if we do not keep our personal productivity going, we can get depressed, for we are creatures who are identified and fulfilled through productivity. One of the things we can do is to leverage our personal development through this season.

During the lockdown, we have to remain productive. I shudder to think of the people who have nothing to do as they wait for the lockdowns around the world to end. This is probably the same thing that you will go through when you retire if you are a public servant. The point of existence is not to be employed but to be productive. That means that we can be productive at all times, not just at work. When we are crafting our agenda for productivity for the week, there are some things that are important so that we not only remain productive but we also are fulfilled and effective. One of the things that we have to work around during the lockdown is our own character, our attitude and ultimately, our brand. How do we want people to perceive us? Such a thing does not come arbitrarily, it has to be intentionally worked on. Listen to this.

Having an agenda for your productivity is essential especially when you are working at home or have no job to work on. You will be shocked that you can have a loaded agenda if you were up to it. Having a productivity agenda is not necessarily for the sake of churning out activities. When you are crafting your agenda for productivity, there are certain important pillars that we need to use so that at the end of the day, your productivity is effective and fulfilling. That is why one has to organize their agenda around what really matters to them and what really matters to life. Listen to this.

The entire world is on virtual lockdown. Airports have their activities grounded into a terrible lull. The world as we knew it is not the same anymore, neither does it promise to go back to "normal". What we need to answer is what can be done in order to stay productive especially at the individual level. There is one silver bullet that I have taught jobless people to use that I think comes to relevance at this point in time. This simply is self-leadership. Self-leadership doesn't look at what you are going to get at the end of the month, week, day or project. It looks at what you can do to contribute and to expend your personal potential. Listen to this.

The most important thing when going through a slump or when you are broke is your mental state. It goes a long way in cementing the actions that you will take as well as creating a psyche with which you will operate. When you are broke, it is not just the physical absence of cash that will bother you. Something much more powerful and negative is happening in your mental state that directly affects your psyche. It is good to make sure that you keep that mental state healthy and the psyche unperturbed in terms of knowing that your self-esteem and self-worth and self-concept are not negatively affected. How? Listen to this.

When you are broke, there is a greater propensity to think that you are useless, worthless and that the situation will stay for a great foreseeable future. It robs you of your essence, your motivation and even inspiration to do anything. You start looking to be helped because you wrongly think that you cannot help. If the situation pervades, what suffers the most is your mental state, something that is the most lethal weapon you need at such an hour. How do we overcome this moment? Listen to this.

When we suffer a slump of some nature, the lie is that anything and everything we do must result in a direct respite. That is not necessarily the case, especially when facing a financially broke moment. One might be under the illusion that they cannot do anything because whatever action they take does not immediately or imminently solve the problem, so they wrongly refrain from acting. This refrain does the exact opposite of offering a respite. It cements it, at least mentally, sending signals of failure and despondency, painting a picture of permanence when it is only an illusion. How do we overcome it? Listen.

How do you deal with a personal slump? How do you deal with a moment of broke-ness? You are feeling like you are useless and cannot contribute. That feeling can weigh you down so much so that you do not want to leave the house, neither do you want to do anything constructive. How do you handle that situation? I think one of the things that we were created to do as humans is to be solutions, providing help to this world one way or another. Therefore, I do suggest that when we are broke, we can still find a way to give and in so doing, we shall gain immensely. Listen to this.

All of us get to that moment in life where we experience a personal slump of some sort. For the most part, it is a financial crisis, and we are in a momentarily broke situation. The options are binary. Either we can sit back and out-wait the situation, depending heavily on what is not in our control for the situation to change. Or, we can decide to take that which is in our control and do something, even though there is no promise of an immediate respite. Listen to this.

We all go through moments in life of a personal slump. At times, it is a personal financial slump where we are so broke. The problem is not the slump, the problem is how you interpret that slump. If you are not careful, you will have feelings of illusionary inadequacy, foreboding, uselessness, worthlessness, and purposelessness. You will feel like you are not needed here on earth. You might consequently make wrong decisions that will actually cement that season of a slump. We need to learn how to snap out of that situation and snap out of it fast. Listen to this.

Life gives us ups and downs. One of the most critical "downs" that we face is that period just after success. It is called Re-entry. How you handle a moment of reentry is important in determining how you will move on with your life. There are several things that one can do in order to handle successfully a moment of reentry. A reentry simply means that you are dealing with a low moment that is characterized by the fact that you are coming from a very high moment. In other words, you went out there and succeeded. Now, you are not experiencing that aura of success anymore and you are missing the grind. What do you do? Here are five ways to handle a reentry.

Reentry in a visionary's life can be something so daunting. Remember Neil Armstrong? What else did he do after coming back from stepping on the moon? That low feeling of lack of purpose after stretching yourself so hard and attaining a worthy goal can be debilitating. That is why we need to learn how to handle a moment of reentry every once in a while. In trusting ourselves, we can easily navigate a reentry moment in our lives. We can know that there is another masterpiece where the previous one came from. Listen to this.

At times when we succeed like crazy, we tend to want to identify with that success for the rest of our lives. The downside is that we rob ourselves of the opportunity to even do greater things. That is one aspect of success reentry, where we have to handle "normal life" after coming back to reality from a season of success. How do we handle that reentry? One of the ways to do this is to link up your just concluded success to your "body of work", detailing that your identity is not in a one-hit-wonder. You are the total of everything that you have put your efforts on. In dealing with re-entry, let's learn to isolate this success and analyze it in the view of the totality of life. Listen to this.

In order to successfully handle a reentry moment especially after a bout of success, it is critically important for us to learn how to practice detachment. Inherently, we tend to get attached to what we have just "given birth" for lack of a better word. In so doing, we rob ourselves of the power to keep going and accomplishing even greater and mightier things. Perhaps the greatest pain of heartbreak is the lack of strength to move on. The same can be said about a previous success. This is where detachment comes in. Listen in.

A re-entry is that moment where you have to deal with a low after a considerable high. Probably you have just shipped out a project and there is "no work" to do anymore. How you handle a re-entry will be critically important in terms of having your momentum of productivity well managed. In so doing, you will experience refreshing and recharging. It is no longer something that you and I can keep ignoring. Reentry happens even to the best of us. That is why we need to be on the lookout. One of the easy ways to handle success reentry is simply this: Take a break. Listen to learn how you can do this.

Life gives us ups and downs. One of the most critical "downs" that we face is that period just after success. It is called Re-entry. It is that moment where you are dealing with a low or for lack of a better word, a "normal" just after you have succeeded. We all come to that moment in life where we have to face a re-entry. In fact, nearly every human faces a moment of re-entry. No one is exempt. If we are not careful, it can have very detrimental effects on our success and our progress. We, therefore, need to learn how to handle the moments of re-entry. Listen in.

Success is available to everyone who wants it. It is not arbitrary. There has to be a wanting. Without it, it becomes elusive. That's why Jesus said that the poor you will always have them with you. What a controversial thing to say, but it is the truth. God wants everyone to succeed and to make it in life. However, He has designed it in such a way that each of us has to be responsible for our own success so that we can amicably own it. That is why the success principles are universal and available to everyone. However, success is personal and cannot be detached from someone's own application to process. Listen to this.

We are all entitled and even marked for success. All of us. However, success is not arbitrary. That means that it will not come just because we were born. One of the secrets to attaining success is discussed in this episode. That so called secret is not a secret anyway. It is a secret because not so many people know how powerful it is. Urgency is one such a powerful force in the success equation. There is no visionary worth his salt who was never urgent with his life pursuits. Listen to this.