Be You, Be Real, Brings in More
Truth is, when you live your passion in your work, all aspects of your life get better. We’ve been taught to separate our personal and work selves. Be one person during the day – and someone else at night and on the weekends. We keep ourselves ‘professional’ at work, not letting our personality or personal preferences ‘bleed over’ into our professional image or persona.
Integrating your personal and professional selves may be the best thing you can do for your business and for your personal happiness. It’s a new world and social media particularly has been a game changer – blurring the lines between personal and professional. Social media has changed what we want and how we think about the people we do business with.
Here are a few of the benefits you might realize when you integrate or align your personal and professional selves:
You become a ‘real’ three-dimensional person to the people you do business with.
Instead of being the ‘widget’ you’re now a real person, who does what you do: reads books, love dogs, adores cats, fishes, knits, drinks coffee, grows a garden and has bad hair days. You’re not just a product or service provider who’s all buttoned-up and two-dimensional. It makes you interesting and intriguing and above all real and authentic.
You attract people who resonate with your interests.That makes it more fun for them and for you.
You get to work with like-minded people and you create common ground. Even the simplest connections make business happen. I had a client who chose a designer because she liked to tango. Really. All the sites she was looking at were more or less the same and all seemed good. She read about one designer would danced in her free time and she liked that – it made her real and interesting, even though she didn’t tango herself. See what I mean?
You add dimension to your brand and how you are perceived. Your personality and uniqueness comes through to your audience through your personal passion and it gives you ‘mindspace’ in your clients’ consciousness. It’s easier mentally for all of us to ‘hang on to’ personal attributes and quirks than it is to facts.
You add purpose to your business because it’s not just another cookie cutter, me-to operation. You create another dimension that has meaning and people like to support businesses and people they understand and connect with.
How to Be You, Be Real, Bring in More Business
Talk about what you care about. Be real. Be authentic. Don’t be in your face opinionated – avoid politics perhaps (unless that has to do with your business), but connect to your passion and share your interests. Don’t hold back thinking it’s ‘unprofessional’. Change the rules of your game.
Be identifiable. If you’re the business owner who is crazy about helping kids and doing things for your community, talk about it! It’s not blowing your own horn to talk about what you love, where you go and what you do. People will support you because of it. Wouldn’t you rather spend your hard earned dollars with a business that is giving back to the world in a way that’s meaningful to you? Be that person!
Being you will build your brand, make you stand out from the crowd and will make a more fulfilled, happy, integrated you.
The result? A healthier bottom line and a smoother, easier life that you feel better about because you feel more real and authentic.
