Personal Brand | Melissa Dawn Simkins

The Importance Of Having A Personal Growth Strategy: The Why & The How

December 2, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

What is a personal growth strategy?

Ask yourself this: how do you plan to stretch yourself, out of your comfort zone, so that you are pursuing improvement each and every day?

Without a personal growth strategy, and answers to the above question, our progress can become fall off, or be put on the back burner.

It may feel like a more difficult time of year to get yourself motivated… and you may just feel like right now is all about trying to manage the status quo, and keep it all together… my hope is that you can use this article for some future planning and motivation, as we head towards a new year.

Because while simply managing life is necessary, I’m here to remind us all (including myself) that if that’s ALL that we focus on – the day in, and day out tasks – that it can actually derail personal growth progress, also dragging down our value in the process.

How Can I Improve My Personal Growth?

The solution? Getting a growth strategy into place.

This doesn’t need to be complicated, or even time-consuming, but getting a PLAN into place to ensure that you aren’t staying stagnant, or becoming complacent, can pay off dividends in the long-run. A great place to start is asking yourself a simple question:

Where in my life do I want to grow?

Remember, personal growth can mean A LOT more than just career aspirations and progression. Other areas of personal development growth that you can improve upon include:

Relationships
Mental wellbeing
Physical wellbeing
Personal development (i.e. learning new skills, hobbies)

All of these are great areas to look at and evaluate when you take the time to start defining where you want to grow.

What are Personal Growth Strategies?

Next step?

Let’s define HOW you will grow. Keeping the areas that you identified in mind, what are some activities, exercises, or even experiences that we can pursue for continued growth?

As you start to think through the how, I would encourage you to look at some of the unexplored or unexpected areas. Have you recently been forced to pivot in an unexpected way? What were some changes made across your year that you weren’t initially planning on? How have you had to step up as a leader, when it wasn’t expected?

Think about it… while many scenarios in 2020 may have felt very forced, last minute, or frantic in the moment… how did some of those situations actually contribute to your own personal growth?

What opportunities do you currently have across your life, that you could potentially use as opportunities for personal growth? The answers that you come up with may surprise you.

The Importance of Personal Growth Strategies

At the end of the day, personal growth can be uncomfortable, and even scary. But oftentimes, when you move forward anyways, and do it scared, it can allow you to fail forward, learn from the results, and stretch yourself to grow your brand worth in the process.

Some outcomes of growth can look like increased productivity, stronger or more consistent skillsets… ultimately elevating your personal brand value.

Speaking of elevation, do you want more help building confidence, and elevating your brand value? Check out my free tip sheet!

The 4 Most Important Questions To Package Yourself For Success

October 29, 2020October 23, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

Package Yourself For Success

Right now more than ever, there’s an expressed desire and urgency behind the need to give underrepresented populations more opportunities. Leveling the playing field, and looking for talent that may need to be elevated is at the forefront of many company’s minds.

So, knowing that the question of ‘where are the opportunities to elevate talent’ is on the mind of many… today I want to talk about what you can specifically do to package yourself, and elevate your visibility.

Why Package Yourself?

In this very moment, someone out there is searching for the exact skillset and offerings that you bring to the table. Think about it. So many people out there who are looking for someone with your skill sets, simply do not yet know who you are, and what value you can bring to the table.

So what can you do about it? How can you elevate your brand visibility, and package yourself?

Let’s start by listing out four KILLER questions (that I often default to) to help prepare you, and package yourself, so that you’re ready when the opportunity hits.

Define Your Difference With Your Personal Brand

Let’s start with this important concept to keep in mind: brands are all about difference. The uniqueness that your brand’s package brings to the table is a good thing, so don’t hide it.

Capitalize on what makes your personal brand, and your presence, different from others.

How will you show up, package yourself and your value, in a way that differentiates you from the competition?

Packaging Strategy Question #1: Why you?

What is it about your and your brand that makes you different. WHY do you stand out?

Now there are a lot of answers and routes that you can go with this, so I would encourage you to take some time to sit down and define your own brand story.

Package Yourself, Question #2: Why now?

Why are you relevant, right now, in this quarter, in this year? One of my favorite quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

At the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you.

In other words, it’s not simply about having a message for your brand. It’s about having a message for the moment that we are in. What is it that you can do, and how can you potentially repackage yourself, to show relevance right now?

Brand Packaging Question #3: What’s your track record?

This is an important one to remember at when packaging yourself. You must be able to quantify and qualify your results.

How has your brand made an impact?
What is it that you did differently?
What was the outcome after the fact?

If you are able to demonstrate your results, and show that story through testimonials and support, this is another huge step in packaging yourself and your track record.

Package Yourself, Question #4: What’s next?

Just packaging and elevating yourself isn’t enough. What will be the next steps, what will be your follow-up?

This might look like requesting a meeting, following up with a proposal, perhaps time to pitch your message, setting time to get feedback, or even to start a negotiation process.

Whatever it is that is the logical next step, make sure to take that time to follow up. This allows for clarity around how things will (or perhaps, won’t) move forward.

Packaging Yourself For Success

In order for you to package yourself well, and step-up with your personal brand, I hope you’ll take time to answer those four questions. They will help give you more direction and clarity than you realize, and ultimately prepare you for the next opportunities that come your way.

Do you want more helping elevating and defining your brand visibility?

Grab my free Brand Building Tool to help Elevate Your Visibility, and Perfect Your Pitch!

Silencing Your Inner Critic: Stay Centered On Your Brand Worth

October 29, 2020October 14, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

Silencing Your Inner Critic

We live in a loud world. A world full of voices that always seem to be telling you something, no matter where you turn…

Yet today I want to talk about a particular voice that has an immense amount of power over us; the voice in our head, or our inner critic.

What Is Your Inner Critic?

Your inner critic is that small voice, in the back of your head, that too often tells you that you aren’t good enough, or you aren’t worthy.

It’s what causes that imposter syndrome that tends to show up during the most inconvenient moments and times of your life.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you’ve been discounted, or overlooked… that voice tends to show up.

We all have to live with that voice, that inner critic, but the key is learning how to silence it.

Inner Critic Examples in 2020

Being the challenging year that it’s been, we might often find ourselves in situations where we feel like we are losing our strength, and to start to feel defeated before we even show up for the battle.

2020 is forcing us to confront more hard, discouraging situations than ever before. Yet what I’ve personally learned through hard times, failing forward, and silencing my own inner critic is how important it is to push through those hard situations, and difficult times.

Because pushing through, and enduring hard situations, gives you the courage to know that you can do it again.

It establishes a track record that proves, if you’ve made it through x, then you can certainly make it through y too, building up that confidence through the process.

Now, let’s break down some simple steps on how you can talk back to your inner critic, and silence it, so that it no longer derails you.

Steps To Silence Your Inner Critic

1. Recognize that you have worth

Remember, your worth is bigger than your job title, or a recent promotion, or your social media following.

Your worth is defined by the unique value that you have, and your sheer existence. Protect it, and treasure it.

2. Recognize that you are there for a reason.

When you find yourself in a situation where you might not be confident, or that inner critic might be starting to creep in… start with a simple first step: just show up.

Sometimes, just showing up is enough. So many others end up quitting, or giving up before even taking that first step forward, allowing their own inner critic to overwhelm them.

Not you. Take that first step, show up, and it can make a world of difference.

3. Tune into the voices that will inspire you, and give you confidence.

What do I mean by that? It doesn’t have to be literal people, it can be anything material that you have on hand, to help sideline that inner critic. Some examples that I frequently use are:

Theme Songs
Favorite Quotes
Books
Journaling

Any of the above help to keep my mind centered on the positive, and remind me who I am, and where I’ve come from.

These are just a few examples that work for me, you might have a few of your own that are better fit. If you do – do me a favor and comment below, let us know what brand centering tools work best for you. Sharing is caring!

Silence Your Inner Critic, For Good

We’re in this together. One of the first steps is making yourself aware of when that inner critic might be trying to cause you to stumble, or fall off track.

So start by showing up; there’s work to be done, plenty of opportunities to be had, and when you finally push through the hard part… there’s a fight that has been won.

I hope you deliver on a few of these small actions this week, and stifle that inner critic that is telling you otherwise. Remember… you got this!

Have you been struggling with your personal brand value? Grab my free Brand Building Tool to help Elevate Your Visibility, and Perfect Your Pitch!

Packaging Your Personal Brand Pitch: 3 Simple Tips

September 23, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

How To Package Your Personal Brand Pitch

How do you build a personal brand of recognition?

This is a question that I get asked often, and it might even be one that’s weighing on you as you read this.

Where do you start, if you don’t have a strong social media following… or a massive email list?

Building a brand of recognition may seem like an impossible task, and many of us struggle with where to even start. Today I want to dig into three simple steps that you can take to help get a plan into place. It all starts with building out your personal brand pitch.

3 Steps To Building Your Personal Brand Pitch

Let’s start by taking a look at the three steps, and then dive deeper into each one.

Defining your message
Choosing the medium to share your message
Establishing consistency with the process

What is a personal brand pitch?

A good way to help illustrate specific steps that you can take to define and maximize your personal brand pitch is to walk through my own journey.

When I first decided to move from the corporate world into the entrepreneurial world, I knew that my true passion and purpose was rooted in people. With that in mind, I wanted to create a space to help define personal brands, instead of the product brands that I was used to at that point. This knowledge is what helped me to define my message.

Next came the medium, and I decided to communicate my personal brand pitch through a book, entitled ‘Brand Me’ that was released in the early 2000’s. The book wasn’t an immediate hit, but eventually gained traction when I decided to repackage my personal brand pitch into a different medium… an opportunity to speak and promote my personal brand pitch on CNN.

Personal Brand Statement: Evolving Mediums

The speaking opportunity went well, and I realized that it was a better time than ever to once again repackage and repitch. I turned parts of my Brand Me book into a CD, which was then passed on to a TV Producer that gave me the opportunity to have my own TV segment called ‘Morning Motivation’ on CNN.

The repacking of my pitch continued, and I was eventually able to host the ‘Brand Me Minute’ on Essence.com.

And what you’re now reading and watching today? Melissa Motivation is just another example of the repackaging of my initial personal brand pitch (the book), presented and consumed through a different medium.

Personal Brand Pitch & Establishing Consistency

What you also might notice through this journey is that I never stayed stagnant; the repacking and reintroducing of various mediums allowed me to remain consistent with my personal brand pitch, never allowing it to fall off.

I stayed true to the steps that would help me continue to build my personal brand pitch, which where:

Finding my message, consistently, decade over decade, which was always centered around personal brand.
Continuously shifting my medium, by listening to my audience, and building on my strengths, which allowed me to use use the knowledge that I had to the best of my ability.
Finally, I was consistent with my brand pitch through all of the medium changes. This led to building my audience, credibility, expertise, and confidence.

Owning Your Personal Brand

Don’t let the above steps intimidate, let’s start this week by looking at what you have:

A Message
Opportunities to communicate the message
The discipline to do this consistently

It’s that simple. Master the three steps, and your personal brand will become one that’s in demand, and valued.

Not only that, you’ll give yourself the chance to elevate to doing what you love, and getting what you’re worth.

Need more help helping to build out, and define your personal brand pitch? You can download my free tool below!

Keys To Mastering A Successful Pitch

September 16, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

Mastering a successful pitch

Let’s kick off today with a little known fact about me… when I was younger, I actually used to compete in pageants!

The reason is, when I was growing up I was super shy, and would struggle with public speaking situations. So pageants actually gave me an opportunity, at a young age, to practice presenting my message, ultimately leading to me understanding what a successful pitch looks like.

This week, I want to revisit something that I learned back in my pageant days; how to master the moment, before the moment.

What does this mean in relation to building a successful pitch?

In the moment, in the midst of being with all the other girls on stage, I knew I only had a few seconds to walk up to that microphone and say something memorable. And those moments only began to improve when I made sure to take the time, beforehand, to prepare a successful pitch.

What do you say in a pitch?

Let me clarify that your pitch can be much more than a simple work pitch about yourself, or a pitch during a pageant. Preparing your pitch can be getting ready for a big work conversation, meeting, or presentation. It can also be a discussion with your spouse, or a family member… or positioning yourself for a raise at the office.

A great concept to keep in mind whenever you’re preparing for a successful pitch is that everything in life is a negotiation. So how will you convey your value, and set yourself up for future success?

Key to delivering a successful pitch: mastering the moment

A huge key to mastering the moment for a successful pitch is making sure to do your own research, ahead of time.

While preparing for the conversation, bring into consideration the time of day that it is. This can affect what the audience’s mindset may be during the pitch itself, and understanding not only who you’re connecting with, but what they might be feeling in that particular moment.

Delivering your pitch with empathy and consideration ultimately helps make your message stick, as well as leaving your as a likeable person. So even if your message isn’t immediately received, or you’re not instantly given a ‘yes’ – you’re still setting yourself up to get that next conversation.

Takeaways to building a successful pitch

The next time you’re preparing for a big conversation or meeting, ask yourself these questions:

How will I prepare?
How will I think through and provide relevant content?
How will I connect and relate to my audience?

A successful pitch has all three of the above thought-through and ready to go, ultimately creating advantage for you and your own personal brand. Or in cases that you are working remotely, this also works to increase and improve your online brand presence.

Do you want a free “Perfect your Pitch” PDF sheet to help you prepare for any speaking situation? Click the button below!

Simple Steps To Build A Better Future

September 2, 2020August 25, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

Simple Steps To Building A Better Future

Question: Have you been sitting on the sidelines recently?

Regardless of what your title might be at work, or how your daily personal life might be going, odds are, you’re currently in your comfort zone.

I’ve been there, so many of us have. Comfort zones are cozy, and warm, and we feel great there. But here’s the reality… growth and transition doesn’t happen in comfort zones.

Building a better future doesn’t happen in comfort zones.

How To Start Building A Better Future

In order to begin to stretch ourselves, and kick-start that growth process, we must look forward, lay a stake in the group, and decide what it is that we truly want and desire.

But here’s the key to building your future; we must take action ourselves, instead of sitting, and waiting for permission from someone else to do this.

How To Make Your Future Bright

There’s a chance that you not might even realize that you’re being complacent about your future, it’s an easy spot to get stuck in.

Here’s a simple way to run through a check:

“Is what I’m doing today, truly designing the life and the career that I want?”
“Am I spending the precious time that I have doing what fuels me, what is drive by purpose, and what allows me to be my best?”
“Am I working with the people and the teams who encourage me, support me, and believe in me?”

Build A Better Future: Evaluate.

Have you answered the above questions? Good. The next step is to take that evaluation, now knowing where some holes or needs may be, and ask yourself,

“What do I need to do to stand up for the life that I want, and that I deserve?”

This is a powerful question, yet answering it, and acting on it, can truly help to build the future that you truly desire.

A tip to keep in mind as your walk through this exercise is that your work and your life must coexist. You are the same person leaving your house who is walking into your workplace, and if you’re able to blend these two worlds together, while building a future that is making an impact, this ultimately is going to allow you to bring your best to the table.

Building A Better Future: Are You Living Below Your True Potential?

In order to truly live our best lives, build better futures, and be a potentialist, we must challenge ourselves, for ourselves.

Read that again. If you do not do this for yourself, then it’s not going to work.

Identify the future that you want, as a leader. Then stand up, and say, “This is what I want.”

This empowers you to own your voice, as well as your decisions, and the choice to move into the future and life that we desire.

I hope that this encourages you to stop waiting on permission from others, and instead, to go after it. Put that stake in the ground, make the changes that you want to see, and do it on your own terms.

Want more help planning, and building for a better future? Download my Personal Brand Action Template here!

Dealing With Transition (How To Get Unstuck)

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

Dealing With Transition

It can be daunting to start something new, and dealing with that transition period when you may have a lot to learn, and work through. So intimidating in fact, that we often see many people start the process of transitioning… but never finishing it.

This example can apply to new jobs, career aspirations, life changes, even marriage.

Why is this?

The reason that we see so many people starting, but never finishing, is because they get stuck. The transition period weighs down on them, overwhelms them, and ultimately slows them down.

This is often why the word ‘transition’ too often gets a bad rep.

“Ah, they’re in a transition period,” is never necessarily a phrase that’s shared in an upbeat tone.

It’s unstable, uncertain, and projects the mindset that you just aren’t ‘quite there yet.’

How To Get Better At Transitions

So let’s shift your transition perspective. Are you in the middle of a shift or transition right now – big, or small?

Instead of seeing the transitional time period as negative, or heavy, try instead seeing it as a time period of opportunity. When used to your advantage, transition can truly be a gift.

Transition periods are the opportunity for us to step back, reflect, redefine, and determine what we truly want in that next phase. This concept is actually one that we don’t practice often enough, and can be useful to help provide some fresh perspective.

Instead of frantically running on this treadmill called life, pause for a moment to ask yourself:

“Am I on the right path?”

“Am I doing what I want?”

“Are we getting our value?”

Dealing with transitions of all kinds

Stepping up and making the best out of all transitions, of all shapes and sizes, is a leadership skill that we should all be working on. Not only does it give time to reflect and be present, but to also let go of some things that we can’t control.

How can you start letting go, and reflecting?

I would encourage that you start by simply stepping back. Sit quietly in this particular transition period, and identify what it is that you want out of it. What do you want things to look like, post-transition?

Then identify that first step, or single action that you can take to start moving that agenda forward. Before you know it, you’ll be moving out of the transitional period, and into a brand new, blooming stage of life.

Do you want more help with transitions, and creating a 90-day plan around it? Sign-up below for my free Personal Brand Action template, let’s get to work!

Speaking Virtually: How To Improve Your Online Brand Presence

October 29, 2020July 27, 2020 by Melissa Dawn Simkins

How To Improve Your Online Brand Presence

The topic of public speaking is one that can make a lot of people out there shudder. It’s intimidating, and a skill that many spend years trying to master. Yet in the midst of 2020 and the many shifts that businesses and teams have been making to go fully remote, I want to touch specifically on the topic of virtual public speaking, and how mastering it can help to improve your online brand presence.

What is online brand presence?

Many of us have been on remote teams for a while now, or some just for a few months. At the end of the day, I think we can all agree that there has been a shift that is likely here to stay. Even post-COVID-19, we are going to see many businesses and teams continue to stay remote because of the benefits some have seen from it.

With this shift, there are now more opportunities than ever before to package, perfect, and present your message for your personal brand. And while you may not want to hear this… one of the best ways to elevate and grow your online brand recognition is through public speaking.

Brand Awareness & Virtual Public Speaking

To quote Mr. Warren Buffet:

“By public speaking, you can elevate your value by at least 50%.”

That’s powerful when it comes to building your online brand presence.

In 2020, what does public speaking look like? A lot of us might be separated by screens, and be more distanced that what we are used to. Yet that doesn’t remove the intimidation that might come with public speaking. Speaking into a phone or computer screen to a group can feel just as weird… yet if done correctly, these moments can be just as powerful as in-person.

With that in mind, let’s use this time to improve and maximize your online brand presence. To start, take a look at these 3 tips.

The Moment
The Message
The Method

Let’s break down each of these listed items, and dig into how they can help maximize your online brand presence.

Building Online Brand Presence: The Moment

Whenever we think about how we are going to deliver a message – virtually or in-person – it all boils down to what you are planning to deliver, and how.

The secret sauce to truly connecting with your audience through screens is being present in the moment.

What does this mean?

Take time to soak in where your audience is currently at, look at the feedback they have given you leading up to this, how are they potentially feeling, and then put yourself into that seat.

Think about how your specific brand’s message needs to resonate with them, relative to what day of the week, time of the day, or current state of the world. The exact moment you are in is important.

In other words, a good virtual speaker is present, and thinking about their audience first.

Building Online Brand Presence: The Message

We all have a message that we want to share, and heading into any virtual meeting or webinar, we typically know what we are going to say ahead of time.

But pause and ask yourself this, “How are you catering that message to what is relevant right now?”

This correlates with the ‘moment’ point that we just touched on.

How can you work to put a twist on your message, that helps to make it more appealing, more relevant, or generally just more relatable? This will look differently depending on what the virtual meeting or calls are about.

Building Online Brand Presence: The Method

Every single day, we are bombarded constantly with messages. Which means that right now, your biggest competition is time.

So many people just don’t have the time or bandwidth in their head to be present, and to hear what you might be trying to convey from behind your camera. So it’s up to your personal brand to anticipate that, and pivot.

How can you get their attention? Do you need to start off the call with a joke? Maybe some relevant statistics, or stories?

Repackage a mundane experience to be more engaging, by utilizing your own online brand presence and voice. Do this intentionally, and it will enable you to deliver a powerful message, in a short window of time.

Virtual Speaking & Online Brand Presence

To wrap-up, here are the three areas to keep in mind next time you have a virtual speaking engagement:

The Moment
The Message
The Method

If you are able to clarify and maximize all three, you will see pretty powerful results.

Last thing… because this is a topic that I’m specifically passionate about, we are starting to put together a virtual online training that will focus on delivering your keynote in the virtual world.

If this is something that you would be interested in, head here to learn more information and we will make sure to keep in touch!