The Core Branding Question: “Who are you?”

“Who are you?”  asked Andy, my partner in this personal branding exercise.  I had ten minutes to rattle off and ramble about who I was.  Child, daughter, friend, mother, wife, marketer, persistent, creative, funny, energetic, loving, aloof, disconnected, connected, busy, lazy, persistent…..

This was hard.  Finally, the ten minutes were up and it was Andy’s turn (thank GOD).  He started: Dad, daddy, husband, father, which is different from daddy, engineer, baker, creative, designer… and so on.

Here was the real payoff.  “I think I know more about you in these ten minutes than I know about people I’ve been close to for YEARS.  Maybe even my wife.”  Andy said.

The same was true for me.  I had only known Andy for about 3 minutes (the time it took to exchange contact info so that we could do this exercise from the seminar).  But I felt like I knew him.  I knew little bits about what made him a full and complete person.

The feedback he gave me about the list I rambled off was priceless.  His impression of me (even with the bumbling and the discomfort of talking about myself for ten whole minutes) was so much bigger and better than I could have imagined.

Who are you?  Ask a stranger – ask a friend.