Branding

I was working on ‘branding’ for my company A.L.P. This is of course personal branding because I am my company, right? At first when I started thinking about this I was put off because this is all about what people think of you. Didn’t I spend the majority of my life trying to erase the memory of overhearing conversations about me when I wasn’t supposed to be listening?  Didn’t I spend like the majority of my adult life telling myself that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of me? Well, apparently when it comes to branding – what people say about you when you’re not around matters.  Since I can’t really know even if I were to ask I imagine people must think I’m a dreamer.  Nothing but a dreamer (well, can you put your hands in your head, oh no!).  Sorry, had to.

I’ve decided to make that my brand if possible.  I am a dreamer who makes her dreams come true and my dreams are to write and produce and make things happen.  I’m still working on it ok.

I found this slide show about how to do it.  Lies!  By “found” I mean my new career coach sent it to me.  Why am I so embarrassed to admit I can’t live my dreams without help?  Anyways, I digress.  In this document it said I needed to know/define a couple things: talents, values, purpose and archetype.  3 out of the 4 were kind of easy.

Talents: Writing, improvising and making things happen

To arrive at the above conclusions, I had to think of 6 or 7 times when you felt “good, meaningful, when you felt you were succeeding, happy achieving”.  1.  Whenever I sit down to write I feel amazing 2.  All the times I ever went to Chicago to improvise 3.  All the times I ever improvised in Toronto 3. Music 4.  When things came together with Nobody’s Idol.  The rest were more personal victories.

Values: Imagination, Sincerity, Playfulness, Compassion, Curiosity

This was a lot harder to narrow down because I looked at a list of over 400 and they all sound good.   Put me down for 1 of everything I want to say.  I know some of the above are pretty similar.  But to me Imagination represents the idea and playfulness is the way in which to get to the idea.  Sincerity to me is akin to authenticity and kindness.  Curiosity is the weirdest one for me to choose but I have this curiosity about the world that I just can’t shake.  Nor do I want to.  And of course compassion is important.  Isn’t that like when a beauty pageant contestant says she wants ‘world peace’.  Of course I want world peace who wouldn’t?  Of course I have compassion for everyone.

I arrived at these values with a question that asked me to list 20 people I admired.  The highlights were:

1. Joss Whedon because he writes and is able to bring his ideas to life

2. Oprah because well she’s Oprah is there any other reason? And she seems to have a lot of compassion and I’ve learned so much from watching her shows throughout the years.  Thanks Oprah for like raising me!

There were more. but Those were like my top 3.

Purpose: this was the hardest one.  The best I could come up with was – making stuff up and then making it happen.

Archetypes

This was difficult too because all them sound so cool.  I’m not sure if the ones I chose are because I actually have them or because its what I want to be.  These are the ones I thought best described me:

The Ordinary Girl “ok as she is, connects with others”

The Creator – “compelled to create and innovate”

The Magician – “transforms situations” (I definitely like this one but am not sure if I truly transform anything)

The Jester – “has a good time but convey a serious message” (I want to be the jester but am not convinced I sincerely am the jester)

That’s all I’ve got to say on this subject for today.