#BeYourSelfOnPurpose – Be Your Self On Purpose and build a strong personal brand (ep.184)

#BeYourSelfOnPurpose: Five words packed full of meaning. Andrea shares the power of developing your strong unique personal brand by doing two things: 1) being yourself, 2) on purpose. You’ll also learn three specific contexts when you can put this mantra into action.

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TRANSCRIPT

Recently, I hosted a live virtual webinar on personal branding—and I have to say, it went really well. Now, my corporate workshops and webinars usually go great, but this one felt different. I was vibing, and I could tell by the audience’s reactions and questions that they were really getting something valuable out of it.

After the webinar, I received a ton of positive feedback. One message stood out: a woman messaged me on LinkedIn almost immediately. She told me she takes her dry erase whiteboard very seriously—it’s where she puts her goals, meeting notes, follow-ups. After the session, she erased everything on it and wrote just five words: Be Your Self On Purpose. Then she sent me a photo. I was floored.

A couple hours later, I posted the webinar video on LinkedIn, and a senior executive I deeply respect commented with a hashtag: #BeYourSelfOnPurpose. That’s when I knew—this concept really resonates. It’s clear that being your self on purpose is an idea that sticks.

So, in this episode, we’re going to double down on those five powerful words: Be Your Self On Purpose. You’re going to learn what it means, why it matters, and how you can apply it to build a strong, unique personal brand.

Welcome to Talk About Talk – Episode #184: Be Your Self On Purpose

Hi there! I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I help ambitious executives communicate with confidence and clarity so they can succeed and reach their career goals.

You can learn more about me and all the coaching and resources I offer—one-on-one coaching, small-group bootcamps, corporate workshops, this bi-weekly podcast, and my newsletter—at TalkAboutTalk.com. And if we’re not connected yet on LinkedIn, I’d love to change that.

Let’s Talk Personal Branding

Before we dive into what it means to Be Your Self On Purpose, I want to briefly revisit the roots of personal branding and share a few definitions.

In 1997, when I was a brand manager at Kraft Foods, I received a physical copy of Fast Company magazine. The cover looked like a box of Tide laundry detergent—but instead of “Tide,” it said “You.” The headline: “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters.

This article blew my mind. Peters didn’t invent personal branding, but he brought it into the corporate mainstream. He suggested that everything we apply to marketing products and services—differentiation, target markets, brand values—can and should be applied to ourselves. Personal branding was born.

Fast forward to my time teaching MBA students at Rotman. At the end of every branding course, I would dedicate a class to personal branding. Why? Because everything we learned about branding applies directly to you.

Another powerful definition comes from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon:

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

That’s a great thought experiment. Ask yourself: what are your stakeholders—your clients, your boss, your team—saying about you when you’re not there? If their perception doesn’t align with how you want to be seen, that just means you’ve got some work to do. That’s what personal branding is for.

Then, during a podcast interview with marketing legend Seth Godin, I asked h