Why Some Stories, and People, Get Remembered (& others don’t)...

Imagine you see someone on the side of the road. Their arm is outstretched and thumb is up in the air - they’re hitchhiking! You turn to your partner in the car and start pondering why the person is there, traveling alone, without a vehicle of their own. Perhaps they are foreigners, exploring your area in an old-fashioned way. Maybe they recently became homeless and don’t have any other way to move from city to city. Or perhaps they are a documentarian, collecting stories of all the people they meet as they hop from vehicle to vehicle. 

Now imagine you pull over to pick up this hitchhiker. As it turns out, none of your stories were true, instead, they’re a local beekeeper who happened to be out checking on their bees by bicycle and got a flat tire on the way home. They need a lift around the corner to grab a tire pump and catch a ride back out to the hive. 

All of these are stories. And it is in our nature as humans, to use story to understand the world around us, whether the “story” is being told to us by the subject itself, or we’re making it up in our minds to fill in the gaps.

It might feel like a dry pivot to now start talking about “personal brand”, after telling an exciting story about a stranded beekeeper… but that’s the whole point! Your personal brand IS a story, and an exciting one at that.

The “professional development” world, and musty career services conference room where you first heard the words “personal brand”, did us a disservice when they put personal brand onto a bullet pointed powerpoint.

What is the point of a personal brand? To be REMEMBERED.

What gets remembered? Stories. Exciting, unexpected and simple stories, at that.

I’m here to tell you that there is ONE thing that you need to know about telling a good story that you also need to know when crafting your personal brand. 

If you're wondering how your personal brand will help you make a good first impression, I have a whole blog post on that here.

Stories, and brands (which are stories, after all), are remembered when they tap into your emotions. When there is a connection that moves beyond the intellectual recognition of a fact, list or identity, and gets into the ~feels~. Yes, I said it, the ~feels~. 

So how do you start to take this knowledge and embed it into YOUR personal brand? Get real. Share what REALLY motivates you, and why you’re so inspired to do the work that you do.

If you need some help getting started, I have a great resource for you that you can download here.

For me, I grew up in a culture where women were just as likely as a man to carry the canoe on their shoulders through a wilderness portage. AND where women’s feminine strengths (like getting our first periods) were celebrated with rituals. I saw the power of harnessing female strengths as assets, rather than weaknesses, and I’m passionate about coaching women (& men) to embrace their inner drives, strengths and desires to build lives and careers they are proud of and nourished by.

So, what’s your story? What is your WHY? How can you tap into your feelings, your real true motivations, and communicate that to the world so they remember your name? 

Download my free personal brand guidebook, “My Confident Core”, to start the process of identifying what makes YOU truly unique, and how you can use your personal brand to get the job, impress the connection and be remembered, confidently.

And, as always, slide into my DM’s on IG, comment on this post, or shoot me an email if you want to discuss personal brand, storytelling, or YOUR confident core.

Your coach,

Julia