Welcome to the final in my series of blogs on personal branding for lawyers (earlier blogs here). This last blog deals with building your brand. Building your brand is a huge topic and is the subject of countless articles and books. My focus in this blog is on three fundamentals, which are the necessary foundation for successfully building your brand:
- Developing the right attitude
- Having a plan
- Asking for help
A is for Attitude
It is said that “For success, attitude is equally important as ability”. This is certainly true for building your brand. To successfully promote your brand, you need to commit significant time and energy to it on an ongoing basis (ie not just when the pace of work slows). This time and energy is required not just at the outset, but throughout, your career. As you advance in your career, it is easy to become complacent about the need to promote your brand. Nowadays, however, when there is a surplus of lawyers and faltering demand for legal services, maintaining one’s brand is a strategic imperative for all lawyers.
Successful brand promotion requires not merely a high level of commitment, it also requires grit/stickatiness as well. Promoting a brand takes time – you cannot expect, or get discouraged if you don’t get, instant brand recognition.
Have a Plan
As important as attitude is developing a plan to build your brand. The most successful brand-building plan, like a brand itself, fits you as an individual and aligns with your strengths and interests. There is no one size fits all plan. That said, when thinking about your individualized plan, you might consider:
- Developing a succinct and powerful way to describe what you do and how you provide value (sometimes referred to as a personal branding statement or an elevator speech);
- Identifying and pursuing opportunities to showcase your brand (eg. writing or speaking);
- Planning the networking you will do to build your brand (what associations you will join, what conferences you will attend, what prospects you will contact);
- Specifying what further learning/skills development (eg. on alternate fee arrangements, presentation skills) would help you better promote your brand;
- Selecting roles/tasks that you will either delegate or pass on because they are outside your brand; and
- Deciding how you will use social media to foster your brand.
Without belabouring the obvious, developing the plan is only the first step. A plan is only as good as its execution (again, you cannot let the pressure of work get in your way).
Ask for Help
If I could offer one piece of advice to lawyers, it would be to ask for help when you need it. That includes getting help to build your brand. When asking for help, remember that general requests for help are difficult to respond to. You are more likely to get the help you want if you are very specific about what you want and why you need it. For obvious reasons, it is also a good idea, when asking for help, to think how you might help the person whose assistance you are seeking.
What kind of help might you seek?
- Ideas on how to promote your brand, or how to promote your brand more effectively, from mentors, colleagues or a coach;
- Advice from someone who has successfully built a brand, that you admire or want to emulate, as to the secret to their success;
- Feedback from clients or prospective clients as to how effectively you are promoting your brand and how you might be more effective (do they find your monthly newsletter helpful?); and
- Asking a third party to promote you (eg. through word of mouth, references, testimonials), which is much more powerful than you promoting yourself.
The right attitude, planning and getting support are the keys to successfully building your brand. If you would like to learn more about building your brand, please contact me at hilary.clarke@potentiacoaching.ca