This is something I have finally come to grips with as a critical aspect of  coaching. Subconsciously, I have always made this a priority. It was not until recently that I actually realized how important this was for compensation and job security. 

What is a brand? A brand, by definition, is the sum of how a product or business is perceived by those who experience it. How do people perceive you? Better yet, how do you want them to perceive you? You may want to think about this because it will determine how much someone will be willing to pay you. 

Your brand is the sum of how you are perceived by those who experience you. So the first question is who experiences you? Coaches that are hiring, athletes you are coaching, S&C Coaches you work with, administrators you interact with, and support staff you collaborate with are all people that experience you directly. The concentric circle grows out from there to people you worked with previously or athletes you coached previously. We take the concentric circle out wider to social media or any media you produce such as podcasts or blogs. A big question is what does each say about you? 

What part of the narrative do we have control of in regards to our brand? We can control our actions, but we cannot control how that will be perceived. There is a term within good brand management:‘brand consistency’. This essentially means you are intentional with what you do and say in regards to your brand. In terms of having control of how people experience your brand, being consistent is a good place to start. 

Consistent with what exactly? For one, you can elect to take a cerebral coach approach if you want people to recognize how intelligent you are in regards to training. This could easily come off as pompous or arrogant. You could elect to be the grinder that is humble and earnest. This could come off as simple and limiting. 

You will hear a lot about being your authentic self in regards to your brand. Is this good advice? What if your authentic self is not what your ideal employer would want? How much does maintaining your brand integrity really mean to you when you are faced with not being what something you covet really wants? 

Your brand ultimately determines your worth. What someone will pay you, both in a team or private setting, will be determined by how much they value your brand. If your brand comes off as low quality, then your value will ultimately match that. One metric we can use to determine what you are worth is how much people are willing to pay you. 

We can leverage a further indicator of social media reach as your perceived value. This can be a convoluted measurement considering that it is really hard to equate reach with willingness to purchase. Social media reach is an inflated currency to evaluate one’s value. The bigger question is not what you have for engagement or impressions, but what is the monetary value obtained from that? 

If having a 100k followers on social media gets you more per hour when working with clients, then yes, social media is correlated with value. If that same level of engagement does not get you an interview with a head football coach at a university you want to work with, then maybe that correlation to value is not as high. 

We need to align our brand’s identity with our goals. The old adage ‘don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want to have’ is a great metaphor for brand identity. What do you want? Your brand is your resume to get that. Being consistent with the overall tone and message of what your brand represents is the first step. Being in line with what you ultimately want is the second step. 

The final brand component is brand intensity. There is a certain feeling with someone that is amplifying their message. The willingness to take risks with your brand is something that comes to mind. Saying polarizing things for engagement, saying things that will stimulate argument and controversy, or promoting your brand through boosted posts and paid ads can be huge aspects of brand intensity. 

Strategy is important. Everything has a balancing force, and burnout from excessive posting from the brand itself or the people experiencing the brand will occur. How much people can, or will, tolerate excessively promoted brands is hard to gauge. We can easily say that anecdotally such and such pushed their brand really hard and it paid off, but what was the second order of that? Social media and engagement is a challenging entity to manage and stay motivated with long term. You are detaching from reality and expecting it to solve all your problems. The reality of any brand is how to leverage it effectively. Balance with life relative to who you want to be and what you are willing to do is essentially what good branding is. We can brand ourselves into something we want, but that has to be relative to something we want. Changing who we are because we don’t like who we are will ultimately fail. If you take a second to evaluate that focussing a brand towards something as opposed to away from something else changes the entire premise of your brand. If you only take one thing from this post: Have a plan with your brand, and let that brand create the world you want.