Building Your Brand - It's A Marathon

Welcome to my Weekly Content Rundown, where I shine a light on the best content from LinkedIn business influencers over the past week. These folks are creating content that's unique, thought-provoking, and relevant.

If you want to start creating your own content on Linkedin, check out my free eBook The Daily Post: Build Your LinkedIn Audience Every Day.

This Week's Rundown

Are you using your Linkedin presence to promote your company instead of showcasing your personal brand?

One of the biggest opportunities I see people missing out on is being intentional about their personal brands while their careers are going well.

So many people relax when they have a job they love, and they neglect building their own brands altogether. When these folks post on Linkedin, it's about the companies they work for. We're hiring, great place to work. Company swag. Look at our booth at this conference.

When you're finally ready to look for a new job or ask for that promotion, or whatever it is you want - your personal brand needs to be ready for showtime. And that's not a project you can throw together quickly. Developing your personal brand takes time and consistency, and lots of TLC.

So if you're in the camp of folks promoting your company over yourself, you're in good company. But I'd like you to consider using Linkedin a bit differently. From a personal branding perspective, the company you work for is far less relevant than your experience, skills, expertise, and opinions.

With a strong personal brand - when you change jobs, your brand carries on with you. And your professional identity doesn't depend on your place of employment. See the difference?

Bottom line: Don't wait to build your brand until something is pressing on the horizon. Start now, and get in the habit of nurturing your reputation on a daily basis.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. And in this race, the turtle wins. Because he keeps going, inching every day toward his goals. Building.

So this week's rundown is about career advice - a good dose of wisdom to download as you navigate your career journey with your most powerful weapon: your personal brand.

This week's Linkedin content comes from Sascha Fogel, Arley Nevar, Larry Trenwith, Ali Mujeeb, and Carlos Hidalgo. Here's what we're covering:

• New career goals for 2020? Here's a checklist.
• The most powerful tool you can put in your career arsenal
• A chef's tip for saving time
• Listening, as an activity
• Ultimate goals > daily distractions
• 22 habits to boost your routine
• A reading list for professional growth

Let's dive in to the content!

Linkedin Content

If you aim to be more intentional about your career path in the year ahead, this is an excellent checklist to follow. Whether you're looking for a promotion, changing directions, or just want to earn more money, all of these recommendations will increase your chances of success.

In case you're feeling lost on where to start, I have an early Christmas present for you. Well two, actually: Madeline Mann and Austin Belcak. These are the best people I know who regularly share tips on HOW to actually accomplish the things on Sascha's list. Tactical advice you can put into action right away. Sascha Fogel is new to my feed, and she's also sharing tons of great advice daily.

Follow these people, and soak up the knowledge.

This post makes me feel all the warm and fuzzy pay-it-forward feelings. Mentorship can be the single-most powerful thing in your toolbox as you navigate your career. If you don't have a mentor yet, I can't recommend it enough for you to prioritize finding one (or more).

And the icing on the cake about mentorship is that good mentors have a trickle down effect, which you can see here. They breed more, and the benefits to all multiply and carry on.

This is excellent advice for sales strategy, but it's a great message to consider for general career strategy too.

In my life, especially professionally, I've wasted time when I wasn't clear on my destination. The more I drill down on what I want exactly, the easier it is to focus - and therefore avoid wasting time. It becomes easier to filter out the noise and say no to the things that don't carry you on to your desired destination.

When I am working with clients and it comes time to listen to their sales calls, I can almost always predict what I'm going to hear. LOTS of talking at prospects. Average sellers do a ton of talking, hoping that they will say something to the customer that magically seals the deal. They are focused on getting every minute detail and feature out in the open. STOP.

Great salespeople listen. A lot. They ask questions, they peel the onion back layer after layer. They are constantly looking to find that problem or challenge that their solution can fix. When you're talking, you're not discovering problems. When you're listening? That's where it's at. Whether you're in sales or not, if you build your brand as a listener, your career will accelerate.

It's very easy to ignore the long-term consequences of our everyday activities. Bad habits. We fall into routines, particularly with work, that can add up to something very different from what we intended.

A lot of people reach out to me for career advice, particularly when they have a job offer or are in the interview process. Most tend to focus on the money, the options, the benefits.

Yes, those things matter. But I'd vote that they're secondary to the ultimate goals. Not the title or the salary. What's above and beyond that? And how can we be more intentional about supporting our ultimate goals over the daily distractions? Carlos' post gave me a lot to think about.

Content Beyond Linkedin

As you consider driving big goals with improvements to your routine, this article is sure to come in handy! It's full of great ideas and suggestions to help you focus and maximize productivity.

Remember to start small. If you could introduce one or two of these ideas into action, that would be a win. So don't read this and try to do them all. You'll be setting yourself up for failure. Pick one, and make it happen.

I love this reading list from David Cancel over at Drift. Radical Candor and Atomic Habits are especially helpful as you consider the personal branding goals you want to accomplish and how you want to go about it.

This concludes this week's Content Rundown. If you have any feedback about this project, drop me a note at hello@theofficialjustin.com or shoot me a DM on LinkedIn.

You can also find me around the web at:

• The Official Justin Website
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• LinkedIn
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Cheers,

Justin