Personal Brand Worksheet

For this weeks blog, I completed a Personal Brand Worksheet and wanted to share this work with you all. I know this is a bit more lengthy than my typical blog post but I felt this might be interesting for you to read. I hope you enjoy!

Personal Brand Worksheet

Step 1: Identify your Target Audience

    I'm not sure where I want to work as far as geography, however I do know I want to work in financial services, specifically as a financial advisor and most likely at Northwestern Mutual.

    When looking for skill sets, experience and type of candidates, I found out that recruiters often look for people who are good with people, able to communicate and present well and who are self-driven. The experience required is not not much, mostly companies would just like to see that you have some kind of college degree, although the specific field of study is not necessarily a concern.

    Common keywords related to a search of "financial advisor" include; empathetic, communicative, self-driven, detail-oriented and analytical.

Step 2: Determine your Vision and Purpose

    In a few months from now, specifically any time after May, I see myself working as a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual. I see myself accomplishing the licensing exams required to offer guidance and make recommendations around investment opportunities for my clients and it feels good to know that I am beginning the career that I believe I will be successful in and can also help other people with.

    My personal vision: I want to be someone who is a leader in my field, someone who can help new advisors find the same success I hope to have one day. I want to help my clients find financial security, as I know people have too many other things that they worry about and if I can help others to not worry about this, they can focus their attention on the other things in life that matter to them. I want to feel accomplished, but not get full of myself or my success and always keep the thought that I am where I am because of the people that trusted me enough to become my clients. I want to be generous and help foundations that are in search of things bigger than individuals, such as finding a cure for different forms of cancer as this is something that has personally affected my family. I feel like giving back is the best way of keeping myself grounded and humble. I want to have a family that I am going to be proud of and able to support. I know that I am going to be the main influence in making this vision come to life and the only way I am going to be able to achieve this is through hard work, dedication and the willingness to go the extra mile to truly achieve the heights of the goals and visions I have set for myself.

Step 3: Determine your Values

    I have chosen a list of ten values that I believe describe what I align with most. This list includes accountability, responsibility, authenticity, community, growth, security, happiness, meaningful work, leadership and success. These words all have individual meaning which I believe can be interpreted in different ways depending on the person, however I would like to share my interpretation of a few of these values.

    Accountability: This values is especially important to me because it is something that I have been following for as long as I can remember. From my parents to various coaches in sports, I have always been taught to hold myself, as well as those close to me, accountable for our own actions. This is something that I never want to forget and believe that accountability will be one of the greatest influencers on the level of success I achieve in life.

    Authenticity: This value is fairly simple but is one of the values I have always been a strong believer in. I want to always be my authentic self, regardless of who I may be around or what situation I am in. I believe that life is better when we are authentic with each other. It allows for bonds to be created stronger and reduces the stress we put upon ourselves when we try to be someone other than our true, authentic selves and I believe this is one of the biggest keys to finding happiness in life.

    Community: Community to me has always been important and I believe there are many different sizes and scales of communities that we are each in. For me, community simply represents a group of people with common interests, connections or goals. For example, my family is a community, but I also would consider my lacrosse teammate a community. Community is an important value because it is what brings us together as one. Communities unite groups of people where the individuals could be extremely diverse with one common goal. I want community to be a part of my life as I move forward in life because I believe having people around you to support you, as well as for you to support, keeps us determined to be successful as well as offers you a place of support when the success we are chasing seems like it is getting farther away rather than closer.

    Growth: Another simple value, but I believe it is important to always be bettering myself. If I am not growing, I am losing, plain and simple. Growth can be seen in different ways, and it is important for me to find the growth in myself regardless of the situation. After my most successful day ever, it would be easy for me to say I grew in a number of areas, but what is important to me in my success, is to be able to find growth in my darkest times.

    Happiness: I love being happy. I know happiness is not something that is around all the time, but I also believe it is infectious and any situation is what you make of it. So this is an important value for myself because I don't ever want to reach a place where I am rejecting happiness. I know sometimes times may be tough and happiness may be harder to find, but I want to be a light in the darkness for others and bringing an infectious happiness may be the difference in someones day when they feel at their lowest.

    Leadership: This value is a special one to me because it ties in a few of my other values. In my life I obviously want to create success for myself, but I think it is more important to bring those who have supported me along with me or take that knowledge to the next generation. Whether that is something as simple as happiness and being a leader in creating a positive workplace or something more in depth as growth where I can find ways to help others grow in ways that I have. I want to be able to help others find success where I am because I believe a trophy is always more exciting when its shared with a team rather than celebrated by yourself and I find it important to myself to be a leader of that hypothetical team as we try to achieve our trophy.

Step 4: Determine your passions

   A few of my passions include competition, helping others and being successful. These passions have shaped me into who I am and what I want to do with my life. For example, competition is a passion of mine because I am an extremely competitive person and no matter what I am doing, I want to compete to be the best. This is something that has aligned with my school and career so far as I have always played sports growing up and playing lacrosse here at ONU offers me the opportunity to compete with the best and work hard to make myself one of them. This is also seen in work as I have started my career through an internship program that will turn into a full-time position upon graduation where I was indirectly competing with 500+ people for 25 available positions in the internship and once I achieved that, I began competing with my 24 other interns to be the best over the time period and I can proudly state that I am currently in the top 3 of the interns remaining who are looking to go full-time in May.

    Helping others is also a passion of mine and this can be seen through my schooling as in my time here at ONU I have been apart of multiple Ada community days, volunteer when I am available and have taken a leadership role within the lacrosse team. I also have pursued this passion through my career choice. In financial advising I am given the opportunity to help others every single day as I try to help people understand their financial situation and help them to achieve financial security in whatever stage of life they may be in.

    Finally, the third passion I have chosen to write about today is being successful. While I feel that this passion is more self-centered than many of the other values and passions I have, I still feel that it is important to myself to be successful in life and in whatever I may be doing. This is seen through attending ONU as I chose this school because I believe the education I have received here will help me to be as successful as I can be in my personal life. This is also seen through my work life as I have worked hard to put myself in a position to start my career at the highest financially rated firm in my industry which I believe will help me to achieve personal success through competition, while being able to help others.

Step 5: Determine your Goals

1-year goals:

    - Win the OAC Championship in lacrosse

    - Graduate from ONU

    - Start career and hit my first 6-month milestone within the company (40 clients within the first 6 months)

5-year goals:

    - Reach stability within my work (400 clients)

    - Buy my first self-funded car

    - Move into my own place (Buy my first house)

    - Get married

10-year goals:

    - Start a family

    - Become an intern director at work

    - Buy a "high-end" car (BMW, Mercedes, or Audi)

    - Do something to give back to my parents (Mom's dream car, vacation for parents)

Step 6: Determine your Brand Attributes

    After talking with my parents and roommates, and getting through the obvious jokes they started with, the 4 adjectives used most often were: Leader, Outgoing, Easy Going, and Competitive.

Step 7: Determine your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

Strengths:

    - Leadership

    - Communication

    - Mentoring

    - Hard-working

Weaknesses

    - Over-talkative

    - Distractible

    - Procrastinating

Opportunities

    - Good position to start my career

    - Ability to take new roles within my company

    - Ability to choose what career field I work in

Threats

    - Potential to fail

    - Lack of strong salary to start

    - New technology that allows potential clients to attempt to manage finances without professional help

Step 8: Determine your Competition

    Competition within my field would include the other companies that offer similar services. One major differentiator between my company and our competition is the rates we offer for the services we provide. Many of our competitors are also fee-based where as we do not charge clients and potential clients simply to meet with us and have conversations around their financial planning. Through my linked-in search, I believe the main attribute I bring to the table over some of the older advisors is my youth. Many advisors are reaching the age of retirement and in financial planning, 80% of clients are within 5 years, above or below, of their planners. Youth is a key asset I bring to the table, because within the time I graduate, everyone else who graduates within a few years of me in different fields become potential clients and being within a similar age range as these potential clients provides an advantage over the more senior advisors who no longer look for clients in my age bracket.

Step 9: Identify 3 Words that Best Describe You

    Three words that reflect my personal brand would be trustworthy, fair, and dedicated. The reason I chose trustworthy is that in my profession, people have the ability to choose who they would like to be their financial advisor. There is no automated selection service where you are assigned an advisor and are forced to work with them until you die, therefore, I find it important that my potential clients see me as someone they can trust with all facets of their lives because I want to be able to provide assistance in any way I can. If my clients can trust me with their money and retirement plans, I want them to feel as though they can trust me with anything in their lives.   

    I chose fair because I believe it is extremely important in financial planning to be fair with potential clients. I do not want to come off as pushy because I want to sell a certain product that a client may not need simply because I can make money off of it, but I want my clients to see that I am fair and reasonable with my recommendations I have for them. Everyone individual's situation is unique and I want to be fair with everyone I speak with and offer them the most fair rates and services for their individual story.

    Finally, I picked dedicated because this is a field I am truly passionate about and am ready and willing to literally dedicate my career to this and I want my clients to be able to see that dedication. So far in my career I have worked up to 60 hours in a week, made time on Saturdays for clients who can only meet then and spent a countless amount of time and energy into crafting unique plans tailored to each one of the people I have spoken with and if there is one takeaway from the each of the meetings I have, I want nothing more than for my clients to see the dedication I have put into my work.