Our class was fortunate enough to have an inspiring lecture from Joel Solomon, the chairman of RenewalFunds; a 98 million dollar mission venture capital firm and also sits on UBCs Board of Governors. Joel’s story started from when he was a young boy and how his luck, values and ambition got him to be the billionaire he is today. He explained that his (unfortunately constant) flirtation with death due to his kidney disease made him become passionate about health, people and leaving behind a legacy. Joel was wonderfully engaging to listen to and represented a person we all wanted to be – a billionaire. One of our classmates asked him in the discussion on how students like ourselves without trust funds or family money could live a life like his; where he admitted that luck and inheritance had a lot to do with his personal success. However, he mentioned one of the most important elements we do have control over is out personal brand. He claimed that personal branding was one way to make us stand out and would help us greatly throughout our careers, and that we must stay true to what we are passionate about and to fight for it.
Personal branding made me think immediately to my linkedin profile, then to my resume and finally to my instagram account. And I wondered which one really communicates who I am and would get me a job. I also questioned how a personal brand could make us billionaires.
What I’ve discovered is that marketing exists everywhere (this has been ingrained into my head from my favourite teacher Tamar Milne), but it also exists on a personal level, and every social interaction is an opportunity to market oneself. The most important aspect about marketing is having a purpose, a why, or a value proposition. So as individuals we must find our “why” and work on self discovery, identification and discover our passions. Yet in this day and age we’re constantly representing a small portion of our lives and selves on our social media channels and often we are marketing an inauthentic version of ourselves. I say this as we usually post about what we like, wear, eat, drink, and who hangout with and much more. But do we really speak to what we believe in and talk about our values? Should we have a business instagram account and a private one? One that represents our most passionate, professional selves? And one where we can post the pics from nights out at the Pit? Is that personal branding?
In this age of constant media communication and self expression, one has to wonder where the fine line of self expression and personal branding intersects, and how we can use these medias as a way to make ourselves known by employers and our targeted audiences. I also question what employers want to see and how we can leverage ourselves against our peers through personal branding on our social platforms.
Personally, I have gone on to test this theory; of having two accounts one I consider my ‘brand’ and one account I use to post anything I want to in a private space. My public account is about my adventures, hiking, passions, values, photography; and I use it to work with clients and create sponsored posts as a content creator and influencer. This account is dedicated to what I believe in and I am able to market myself to companies as an influencer. I have found that this platform has been excellent for getting jobs and delivering my value proposition and has created a brand out of myself. However, I also found I needed to make a private personal account is for pictures from my iphone of friends and family as I felt I was no longer able to share my everyday story when it came to my brand, and felt pressure to post pictures exclusively taken with a professional camera.
Thus, I wonder how it is possible to integrate these two elements of my life into one; or if it is strategic to separate the private and public. Most of all, I wonder if this is what Joel Solomon meant when he said our most powerful asset if our personal brand…
