It All Starts With an Idea & Your Personal Branding Action Plan
Successful Brands start with an engagement plan (+founder’s personal branding action plan), providing obvious direction, & actionable brand development items.
This is part 2 in a 7 series brand discussion: See Part 1 , Essentials of Startup Branding Strategy.
Why the plan is essential.
Unfortunately, with so many though, is that they make a business or personal branding action plan business branding plan & have usually have really great ideas, but then those plans get boxed away, in an email, or just in their heads…
- We all have done it & a big as the plans are, many time we just don’t follow through.
- We see it all the time with people looking to us for brand strategy consulting & support. More often than not there is always a “Really Good Reason” why they can’t get started.
It could be lack of cash to get them up and running, or not enough time, sometimes it’s just a plain old confidence issue or a lack of knowledge needed. I’ve got to tell you honestly… They Are All Excuses!
Let’s look at some examples and see if it rings true.
Using the reasons mentioned above, as they are common personal branding action plan mistakes.
*Low Self Confidence
- People who would love to Take Action but are worried that they’ll do it all wrong, they’re not sure of themselves or their ideas.
- That’s understandable, but if they don’t Take Action, How will they ever know? So part of their PLAN could be to research if their idea is feasible, to see if there is a market already established for their idea and how well it’s doing, to ask on forums for thoughts and opinions.
- They could even take action and have a trial run with their idea and see what happens. All of this would provide valuable comments, and based on those comments they could gain confidence to know that they have a good idea or at the very least discover that it wont work.
- The point is that if they Took Action, they would eventually resolve the confidence issue one way or another, which would allow them to move on…
Make better Plans and Take Action.
*No Time
Next we have people who have some great ideas, have made a plan, and then realize it will take time they don’t think they have.
Now I’m going to sound harsh again…
Some people in the world really don’t have any time. They work far more hours than we do, get home and do chores or have a second job to go to and then sleep.
Anyone who has time to be on the internet, and has learnt enough to formulate a plan, must have some time. Therefore I would suggest they next need to establish what they’re doing with their time and prioritize it.
A little less TV, a little less surfing and browsing, or time in chat rooms or playing games… I’m sure they could find half an hour or more to devote to their own success wouldn’t you agree?
So the next part of their Plan would be to Take Action in analyzing their time and managing it better!
*No Cash
This is always a difficult subject to talk to people about.
First – do they really have nothing to invest in their own future? How are they paying for their internet connection? Could they Plan to give up a few coffees to raise a little capital? You can see where I’m going here can’t you?
If the plan is a good plan, there is usually always a way to find the cash needed to get it off the ground.
BUT… There will always be someone who says they have done that and there really is nothing available to them!
For those I would say make a Plan to research free ways to get things started. It can be done; it just takes a lot more time.
Is it worth the effort? That’s not for me to judge, But if I had a plan that I knew would lead me to a growing successful business, I would want to Take Action in whatever way possible and regardless of how long it took me, to get me to a position where I could implement it and start enjoying the rewards of me Taking Action.
*Lack of Knowledge
As with any new venture a certain amount of knowledge is required just to start implementing a business or personal branding action plan. Not to start due to lack of knowledge would be a shame, after all we are on the Internet!
The biggest library of knowledge known to man!
So with a plan in place, the next stage would be to Take Action and learn the skills needed to get under way.
Again there are ways and means of doing this, one would be to spend the time required searching and studying the web to find as much info as possible, then filter through it to get to the relevant and useful pieces… Granted it takes time, but without Taking Action, nothing else will ever happen.
Another method would be to find a Mentor, Someone who is already where you want to be and is prepared to save you all the time and struggles researching what you need to know, helping you Take the Action you need to and short cut the learning curve to catapult yourself to success. I’ll talk more about finding a mentor at the end of this eBook.
So you see, whichever way we look at things, if we want to join the Successful Marketers who are making a full time living it can’t be done without Making A Plan, and then Taking Action on it.
A final thought to add is for the procrastinators… The people who always find a reason why they’ll start tomorrow, because they just need to ensure their Plan is spot on before they get going…
*Nothing is going to happen until You Take Action*
Here’s an interesting fact for you.
When NASA first went to the Moon, it was because the President had made the commitment to Take Action.
They made their Plans; they had the best Mentors in every aspect of achieving what they wanted to do…
Yet, without Taking the Action of launching, they would never have achieved the goal of a moon landing… This is the really interesting part…
“For 98% of their journey, they were off course!”
Can you imagine that? Yet the fact that they Took Action allowed them to “Course Correct” as they went. Had they waited until the Plan was perfect and they knew they’d be 100% right, they would probably never have taken the action they needed to.
They took Action, and the rest as they say, is history.
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