How to Become a Rock Star Entrepreneur

Do you stand out among your competitors or colleagues? Can you pick and choose the clients or cases you want? Can you command higher fees? Could you walk into virtually any law firm and land a position? If you answered “no” to any of these questions, then perhaps you don’t have a public persona that stands out and gets the high-profile positive publicity. The lack of a strong personal brand often causes a lawyer to lose the deal to a persona with a more distinctive style and greater name recognition.

I’m not suggesting you go out and portray yourself as something you’re not or become a drama king or queen. But you can’t be a wallflower, either. You can’t be “just another good entrepreneur.” If you are, you’ll wither on the vine. Leader branding is about getting name recognition. You can’t get that by being “average” or “fitting in.”

Being a Good Isn’t Good Enough. Even being a GREAT isn’t good enough.

It used to be simple. Just get a good idea, get financing, work hard, get customers, provide outstanding customer service and you were pretty much set for entrepreneurial success. Ah…the good old days…

But a combination of corporate scandals has caused people to view professionals with a more discerning eye. According to an April, 2006, survey conducted by my company, professionals with a public persona and a distinctive personality are perceived to be more credible, more trustworthy and more intelligent than their counterparts who are of equal (and in some cases even greater) competence. Post-Enron people insist upon knowing more about leaders of corporations. They also are insisting on knowing more about the personalities – not just the qualifications – of the lawyers who represent them.

Here’s the real surprise: even professionals who were perceived to be a little bizarre in their public personas had higher credibility than “vanilla” professionals. The reason? Clients say they view leaders and professionals who have distinct personality styles to be more “real” than professionals who “act like a suit.” As one survey respondent put it: “If they are acting too corporate or too professional, to me that says they have something to hide. For some reason they’re obviously not comfortable in their own skin. Or worse yet, they don’t know who they are. In either case, I don’t want someone who doesn’t have a sense of himself representing me, my product, or my company. And I certainly won’t buy from him.”

Personality Pays
Competency alone won’t get you clients. But a strong personality can increase your lifetime earning potential.

In fact, according to one UCLA study, only 15% of any company’s ability to attract high-quality, lucrative clients is based on its competency. (Competency being defined as the number of years in business, the type and amount of formal education of the employees, the average IQ of the firm’s employees and the past successes of the company.). What accounts for the other 85%? An organization’s ability to effectively and publicly COMMUNICATE its competency through the distinctive personalities and high profile status of its key employees. The most effective way to communicate your competency is to develop a distinct personal brand and, most importantly, a distinct style of communicating that is uniquely you.

How to Develop a Powerful Personal Brand that Will Skyrocket Your Career

An effective executive branding campaign consists of four key steps:

n Excavate. (This involves conducting intensive assessments to discover what is truly your unique persona and what aspects of your persona should be brought to the forefront in a campaign and which ones should remain in the background. Most people think they know who they are and how they portray themselves to the world. But often in our assessments we find that the brand the professional believes he or she is portraying to clients is far different from the brand actually portrayed to, or perceived by the clients. ) You can do your own quick survey by asking 10 people whom you work with every day and 10 friends or family members to write down five adjectives that describe you. Compare the lists. If the adjectives on the two lists are different (your friends describe you one way and your co-workers another), then you don’t have a strong personal brand. If at least three of the same adjectives are not listed on EACH of the 20 lists (10 from friends, 10 from co-workers), then you don’t have a personal brand either.
n Create. (Once you know the essentials of your unique persona, it’s time to develop the five components that must be present for any personal brand to work effectively: (1) Mental real estate – which is NOT how you dress, but rather is the subconscious impression people immediately get of you within the first five seconds of meeting you based on your demeanor, body shape, face shape and even your height!); (2) A dominant conspicuous flaw (either a physical or personality fault that will be developed properly to help you gain allegiance and mass appeal) (3) Your “sacred cow,” or what you really stand for in life; (4) A distinct vocal fingerprint that aligns with your personal brand and (5) A signature communication style, or manner of communicating, that no one else will have. These five components are the “create” phase of personal branding.)
n Communicate. (Just having a personal brand image isn’t worth anything unless you can communicate it to your intended audience through the most appropriate channels and media for your particular brand. The communicate phase also involves deciding what type of clients you want to turn off. That’s right; knowing whom you want to annoy will lead to higher profits. By turning off the kind of clients you don’t want you’ll automatically attract the kind you do want. Too many professionals try to attract too wide of a variety of clients.)

Communicating the personal brand also involves staging your brand. Finding the right voice to manifest your unique leader brand is difficult for many. Will be you direct and blunt like Dr. Phil? Will you be empathetic like Oprah? Will you be brash and abrasive like Howard Stern? Will you be exacting and particular like Michael Jackson? The voice you choose depends upon several factors but perhaps most important is who you are at your core. Whatever voice you choose, you have to use it all the time – in both your personal and professional lives. If you don’t, people will think you’re a fraud. But you do have to have a definitive voice. The consistency in brand staging is a real challenge for many of my clients.

n Perpetuate. (Be the brand in all things you say, do and write both professionally and personally. This is the step that trips up most professionals.)

Professionals and companies that don’t effectively execute the “perpetuate” phase come off as schizophrenic.

Avoid Being a Schizophrenic Company

There are a lot of businesses that do not portray a consistent brand image. I call them the schizophrenic firms. So often I see organizations that have one personality “officially” and another one “unofficially.” I’ll enter the office and see monstrous mahogany desks, dark, conservative colors and leather chairs. Then I’ll sit down and talk with some of the people and find them to be cutting-edge, engaging and maybe even a little flamboyant or slightly off-the-wall. Or I’ll go to the corporate website and read nice, bland information about the firm’s services, specialties and leader bios, and see pictures of all the professionals in dark, pinstriped suits. Then I’ll click on a link to a blog where one of the executives has a witty, “push-the-envelope” commentary on some current topic related to his or her field. Which firm personality is the client to believe?

Does this sound like your firm? If so, your firm is schizophrenic.

Same thing with individual professionals. If you have one personality when giving speeches, and another when you are in the office, and still another when you are out with friends, your personal brand is schizophrenic. Yes, you do need to be professional when working with clients and I am not suggesting otherwise. But to be believable, you have to BE your brand. At all times. No exceptions. Your personality has to come through in everything you say, do, and write and even in the type of people you hang out with. This is part of the perpetuate stage: making sure your brand is portrayed in every aspect of your being.

Entrepreneurs who master all four stages can achieve rock star status in their field.


Putting it all together: How to achieve Rock Star Status an Entrepreneur.
OK. So how does all of this leader branding stuff work in real life to gain notoriety, worldwide recognition and, most importantly, paying clients? Allow me to introduce Evan Schaeffer.

Evan and his wife run a small two-person law firm in Godrey, IL (population 16,974 at last count). For a couple of years now Evan has been writing a blog that has steadily increased in popularity. In his blog he writes just as he speaks. If you met him at a bar I’ll bet he would sound much the same as he does in his blogs and podcasts. He has a strong personal brand and a very distinctive voice. And strong opinions. And sometimes even strong language.

One day Evan received an e-mail from a female reporter at a London daily newspaper who had read his blog and liked his style and his blunt perspectives. She was writing a story on Brad Pitt’s desire to adopt Angelina Jolie’s children and wanted to know why adoption is more legally binding than marriage.

Evan sent her an e-mail response saying basically that while a person may be able to quit being a spouse, he or she can never stop being a parent. He predicted Brad and Angelina would marry.

A few days later, the newspaper ran a story with Evan’s quote, saying he was a lawyer at – get this-- “famed American law firm Schaeffer and Lamere.”

“Famed American law firm”?! In Godfrey? Well, if it wasn’t before, it certainly is famed now.

Being a former news anchor myself, what happened next didn’t surprise me. That one little story in the London daily caught on. The story ran in newspapers in India, Asia and Africa. Other web sites and blogs picked up the story. Evan could even be seen in the grocery store checkout lane when In Touch magazine ran a story on Brad and Angelina with Evan’s quote. All of the articles referred to Schaeffer’s firm as a “famed American law firm.”

Schaeffer then ran a hilarious self-deprecating podcast on the whole event which, of course, generated even more interest and attention.

You can’t buy that kind of positive publicity! I am sure hits to his blog and his website skyrocketed during the news coverage.

Other lawyers who have developed unique leader brands have also found the personal branding to be beneficial in attracting interest from potential clients. Attorney Francis Pileggi, Esq. of Fox Rothschild LLP says about his blog: “… I have had clients indicate that they have seen my blog. It may be similar to writing articles in that it may not be the only thing that makes their decision, but it is definitely part of the mix.”

Blogs and podcats aren’t the only means of communicating your personal leader brand. The channels and vehicles you use are entirely dependent upon your goals, the brand you want to portray and the types of clients you want to attract. But a strong leader brand –if developed carefully—can land you some big (free) media coverage.

The key point to remember with communication mechanisms –whether they be blogs and podcasts or simple newsletters and e-mail updates-- is that they are not stating some boring, tow-the-line firm position; they must be creative, unique representations of the personal brands of the individual professional, entrepreneur or leader. If you’re going to blog you will do more harm than good if you sound like a news reporter talking about technical issues rather than a real person with real views. It’s the personality that attracts readers to your blog or your newsletter. And listeners to your podcasts or teleseminars. And clients to your business.

We’ve just scratched the surface here on individual personal brands and signature communication styles for entrepreneurs. If you’d like to find out more specifics on how to put together your own personal branding campaign – or if you just want to develop a compelling speaking signature style – feel free to visit my website.



How to Become a Rock Star Entrepreneur - To learn more about this author, visit Vicki Kunkel's Website.

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