3 Ways to Identify YOUR SUPERPOWERS (ep.220)

Wondering how to build your personal brand? Executive communication coach Andrea Wojnicki walks you through three exercises straight from her upcoming book to help you identify your own unique and valuable personal brand themes. Learn how to organize your strengths using the three Cs, clarify exactly how you make money, save money, solve a problem , and how skill stacking your abilities can make you distinctive.

CONNECT WITH ANDREA

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/
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🟣 Talk About Talk on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503
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📺 Talk About Talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube

RESOURCES MENTIONED

🧭 Take the Archetypes Quiz: TalkAboutTalk.com/ArchetypesQuiz
🎧 Episode 179 with Christina Wallace, The Portfolio Life and Your Personal Brand: TalkAboutTalk.com/Portfolio-Life-179
📖 The Portfolio Life, by Christina Wallace: https://amzn.to/4czgBFZ

TRANSCRIPTION:

Andrea Wojnicki: You are in for a treat with this episode. I am really excited about this one. It’s gonna be a short one, but I promise it will deliver impact. I’m gonna coach you through three brand-new exercises that I share with my executive coaching clients in private coaching and in workshops. These are exercises that will help you develop your own unique and valuable personal brand.

Sound good? Let’s go. I want you to think of this podcast episode as a private coaching session just between you and me. Are you ready to work on your personal brand? Then you are in exactly the right place. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please, just call me Andrea.

For the next 15 minutes or so, you can consider me your personal executive communication coach. I coach ambitious leaders like you to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can achieve your career goals. You can learn more about Talk About Talk and everything that I do if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com.

You’ll see information about keynote speeches, corporate workshops, masterclasses, online courses, private coaching. It’s all there. There’s also plenty of free resources. So I encourage you to explore, and while you’re there, sign up for my free email newsletter. That’s more free coaching.

Okay, now I have something exciting to share. I am writing a book. This may or may not be news to you, but it’s not on the website yet, and it will be soon. It’s due to be published in 2027, and I have to tell you, it is way, way more work than I expected, but it’s also way more enjoyable. The title of the book is Let Me Introduce Yourself.

As you can probably guess from this title and from the topic of this podcast episode, the book is about how to introduce yourself with confidence and how to build a strong personal brand. Writing this book has pushed me to think in an even more disciplined way about how I coach people through this process.

And as I’ve been writing, a few things have bubbled up, you could say, and I just wanna share these things with you now. Three things, in fact. Today, I’m gonna walk you through all three, and I’m gonna coach you on how to use each one to help you identify and develop your own unique and valuable personal brand themes.

How to Identify Your Personal Brand Themes

First, though, I need to provide you with a little bit of context. When I work with these clients, these leaders, whether it’s one-on-one private coaching or in a group workshop, our goal is to build a succinct list of between 10 to 15 personal brand themes that are positive, unique, and resonant things about you that you wanna reinforce as part of your personal brand.

I use all kinds of exercises and prompts to help you build that list. And the most popular of these exercises is the Archetypes Quiz. If you go to talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz, you’ll find it there. It’s absolutely free, and it will help you identify which one of the 12 archetypes is your default. This output will give you confidence, focus, direction, and a real sense of identity, not to mention a whole new way to think about yourself and talk about yourself.

Okay, context is set. You now know that our goal is to come up with between 10 to 15 personal brand themes, and you know one way of doing so. It’s through the Archetypes Quiz. I’m gonna take you through three more. 

The Three Cs: Credentials, Character, and Context 

The first one I call the three Cs. As I was writing my book and describing this personal brand building process, something struck me.

The list of possible personal brand themes is so extensive, it’s actually exhausting. It can feel overwhelming. Think about it. We’re talking about your industry expertise, your functional expertise, your sector, your current title, your educational credentials, your past jobs, your archetype, your personality traits, especially where you’re off the charts, your leadership style, your geography, where you live and where you’re from, your hobbies, your family, and on and on.

You get the idea. Overwhelming, right? So when I was writing the book, I asked myself, “Is there a better way to organize all of this?” And that’s when I came up with the three Cs. The three Cs are credentials, character, and context. So here’s your exercise. Grab a piece of paper or open a document and write these three words across the top: credentials, character, and context.

Then, under each heading, brainstorm the positive, unique, and resonant things about you that belong there. Under credentials, you include things like your title, academic achievements, awards, certifications, past positions, and so on. Under character, you would include things like your archetype, which I just mentioned, and you can find a link to the quiz in the show notes.

You would also include your personality traits, your leadership style. You get the idea. These are your character traits. And then in the third column, under context, you put your family role, your stage of life, where you grew up, where you live now, your hobbies, and so on. Simply categorizing this previously overwhelming list can help you think more clearly and more strategically about which themes belong in your personal brand.

It might even surface something that you’d otherwise overlook. Okay, so that’s exercise one, the three Cs: credentials, character, and context. 

Make Money, Save Money, or Solve a Problem 

Moving on to exercise two. This exercise comes from a quote from a very good friend of mine named Sharon Ma Jin. You may have heard me mention her before. I’ve even had her on this podcast a few times.

She is a very successful executive recruiter, and we’ve worked together in workshops and coaching sessions to help people identify their professional identity and personal brand. And she is adamant about this, and I love her for it. Here’s her quote. Sharon says, “You need to know how you help a company make money, save money, or solve a problem.”

Say it with me. Make money, save money, solve a problem. Think about that. Here’s your exercise. Write those three phrases down. Then for each one, brainstorm the specific ways that you do this and include real examples and real experiences wherever you can. This exercise has a way of illuminating strengths and personal brand themes that people don’t even realize they had.

Okay, so that’s exercise two. Make money, save money, or solve a problem. Thank you, Sharon. Okay, we’re already onto the last one. We’ve covered the three Cs. Do you remember what they are? Credentials, character, and context. And we also covered Sharon’s suggestion of identifying how you help a company make money, save money, or solve a problem.

Skill Stacking: Find What Makes You Unique

And now onto the last exercise. I’m gonna be honest here, this one is my personal favorite. Have you ever heard of skill stacking or talent stacking? This concept is credited to Scott Adams. Yes, the Dilbert cartoonist. His idea is that you don’t need to be exceptional at any one thing. Instead, if you can combine two or three things where you’re, say, in the eightieth percentile or so, this combination will make you truly exceptional.

I like to think of this as a Venn diagram. Picture two or three circles, each representing your different skills. Where they overlap, that is uniquely you, and that is how you, my friend, are exceptional. I spoke about a related concept to this back in episode number one hundred and seventy-nine with Harvard Business School professor Christina Wallace.

Christina wrote a book called The Portfolio Life. I’ll leave links to that episode and her book in the show notes. Christina encourages us to create our own personal Venn diagram. Sound familiar? Consider three or so of your skills. Each of them is a circle, and where they overlap is magic. This is similar to skill stacking or talent stacking, isn’t it?

For Christina, her three circles are entertainment, technology, and business. Now, I have to say, there is nothing unusual about someone with business experience and expertise or someone with a tech background or someone in entertainment. But how many people do you know with all three? That is Christina’s sweet spot, and that is her brand.

For me, my circles are, I would say, marketing and branding is one, communication is one, and teaching and coaching is another. So now, when I work with clients who feel like their value proposition isn’t distinctive enough, like they’re just not unique enough to stand out and get noticed, skill stacking is the exercise that changes everything.

Think about the finance expert who’s an AI pioneer and also happens to be a genuinely collaborative leader. Or imagine an HR executive with an entrepreneurial mindset and a passion for data. When you combine these skills, suddenly you really see these people as unique. Do you see what I mean? So here’s the exercise I want you to try.

Identify your two to four unique skills. I’m gonna say target three. Make sure these are your distinct strengths and stack them. Then, craft a short phrase, even just a sentence, that captures the unique value at their intersection. That is your skill-stacking statement, and it might just become the cornerstone of your personal brand.

Your Personal Brand: Three Exercises to Try 

So there you have it. Three new exercises straight out of my upcoming book, Let Me Introduce Myself, to help you identify your personal brand themes. Let’s do a quick recap. One is the three Cs: credentials, character, and context. Organize this overwhelming list of themes into something meaningful. Two, make money, save money, or solve a problem.

Get crystal clear on the value that you bring. Thanks again, Sharon. And three, skill stacking or talent stacking. Find the magic at the intersection of what makes you you. Now, I’d love to know which of these three resonates most with you, and I have an ask. If this episode gave you even one useful insight, please share it with someone who could use it.

It could be a colleague, a friend, someone who’s navigating their career, or maybe they’re building their brand. Yes, I am asking you to talk about Talk About Talk. I had to say it. And if you haven’t left a rating or a review for Talk About Talk yet, now would be a great time. It takes you about 60 seconds, and it costs you nothing, and it makes an enormous difference in helping new listeners find this Talk About Talk show.

I gave you three exercises for your personal brand. I’m asking you for one review. Sounds like a fair trade, right? Okay, you got this. Thank you for listening, and talk soon.

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