I studied two degrees and yet didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do when I finished university. Seven years later, I’m still figuring it out!

Funny thing about the Spanish university system is, you have to create a final project in order to graduate. Which meant I had to create two final projects. Ouch.

Thankfully the way things were set up meant I didn’t have to do them both at the same time, but let me tell you, by the time I had to choose my second one I was lost.

I’d already exhausted my brain trying to find a project for my first degree (I ended up creating The Perfect Gift, a business plan for a concierge gift service with my friend, Ainhoa Boix), and I didn’t really want to create an advertising campaign for my Advertising degree.

Figuring out what was under my nose all along: Personal Branding

At the time, I’d started getting into Personal Branding (if you can call obsessively reading about it online, purchasing every book I could get my hands on, and attending any workshops I could find, “getting into”) and I often found myself annoyed that the books I was reading talked at length about how important it was to develop your personal brand, but none of them really taught me how. The best one in that regard was Catherine Kaputa’s You Are a Brand! (still one of my favourites), which had some exercises, but I wanted something practical.

“I’ve bought the book, clearly I’m on board with the importance of Personal Branding” – I reasoned. “I don’t need two thirds of the book to convince me of that. Just get to the good stuff!“

(With the experience I now have, I understand the authors were directing the reader to coaches and workshops where a third party could help them with developing their personal brand, since it can be a bit of a daunting proposition. Definitely useful, but I don’t think it’s necessary, especially if the tools are provided freely.)

But the lightbulb had lit. I knew exactly what I would build for my final project: a practical guide to personal branding. I would flip it on its head – I’d stick with two pages of motivating the reader, and make the remaining book 90% exercises (I did need around 10% to explain the concepts the exercises explored, but no more). Because what use is personal branding if you can’t apply it to your life and see results?

The Practical Personal Branding Guide

I was on fire. It was tough to put together – I had to explore exercises and concepts from personal branding, marketing, psychology, coaching, business management, and some I came up with by trying out my method with (mostly willing) friends and family – but it was so worth it.

I can’t remember defending my project, it’s all a blur (although my mother snuck in and insists it was fabulous) but I clearly remember meeting my mentor later that day. The university had proposed jointly publishing the project, and I wasn’t sure what to do. There was a whole foreword to explain the methodology, which I didn’t think anyone would find interesting, and it wasn’t quite yet what I knew it could be.

My mentor told me to hold off. “You’ve got something great here – make it yours and when it’s ready, get it published.”

Fewer people would have access if it was published as a final project, and I wanted as many people as possible to have access to it.

Personal Branding should be easily accessible to everyone. It should be taught in high school, in university, at work. You shouldn’t need a fancy coach, or a paid course, to get the tools to live your best life.

So I decided to follow her advice.

The Practical Personal Branding Book

Seven years later, the book is almost finished, and it’s changed a lot – I’ve trimmed, rewritten and reorganized as I learned more and helped others with their personal brands, and I’ve enriched it with what my professional experience has taught me. I’ve led workshops, 1-2-1 coaching, and guest lectures that have helped me refine and expand the process. I’ve applied these principles to my career too – in five years I’ve gone from a new grad to a Lead role within IBM, and to Programme Manager in seven, in no small part thanks to Personal Branding.

I still have tweaks to make (a more-than-full-time job doesn’t leave much time for writing, especially when it competes with wedding planning, preparing workshops, travelling the world or surviving the pandemic with my sanity – but not my waistline – intact) and if you want to be notified when it comes out you can sign up la presentación.

But I couldn’t wait that long to share Practical Personal Branding. That’s where this blog comes in!

The Practical Personal Branding Blog

I’ve long shared exercises in my website, and offered guest lectures at universities, but this is a new level in sharing.

One of the things I don’t like about Personal Branding is that it’s filled with jargon and new sales-y names for the same old concepts. I get that in business we tend to use fancy terms (we leverage a best practice, instead of sharing and repeating what works best, because the former sounds a lot more impressive) but it just makes it harder to understand. Personal branding can be intimidating, and this doesn’t help! While I may use ten words where two could have worked, I make sure to keep things as clear and simple as I can.

You can read more about my personal branding philosophy here, but the three key things to understand are:

1. It should be practical – what’s the point if you can’t put it into action?

2. It should focus on building a life that works for you, not just on getting you a pretty profile or 10k twitter followers

3. It should be easy to understand – think KISS; figuring your life out is hard enough without adding more complications to the mix!

I’m following those principles in this blog, and you can expect plenty of posts with exercises, explanations, and questions to get you thinking about your personal brand. And the occasional motivational post, of course, or around organization and productivity, since they often go hand in hand.

If you have any questions around personal branding, organization or productivity, please leave them in the comments or drop me a note – I’ll be more than happy to answer them, and you never know when they’ll spark a new post!

I’ll be mainly following my three-step system for personal branding, but it can be applied to any approach you want.

My Personal Branding System