People come to personal branding from many different paths.

Some people come from a place of dissatisfaction – they don’t feel aligned to their careers anymore, and they want a change. Some people come from a place of wanting to grow, or to find the path to help them reach their professional goals. Some people come to it from a place of curiosity about their own motivations, goals and values.

Some approach it as a short-term band-aid – I’ll do this personal branding thing while I’m looking for a job, but once I get it, what’s the point? – or as something reserved for media personalities.

And that’s a shame.

Those people are missing out.

Personal branding is a way to help build a life that will make you happy. It’s an amazing tool to help you live a life that is aligned to your values and goals, to help you find and attract the right opportunities, to make it easier to say no to things that will not fulfil you because you have clarity on the things that will. It’s a way to dispel the fog that lack of clarity creates – it helps you identify your real goals, and define the steps that will help you get there.

People who see personal branding as just a communication strategy, who jump straight to how to showcase your expertise on social media, are missing that crucial first step (Find) where you use analysis, self-reflection and other exercises to obtain clarity on who you are, what you value, where you are and where you want to be.

Some people think personal branding is only relevant if you own a business or are self-employed, or if you’re looking for a job.

While personal branding can be immensely powerful in all those scenarios, it misses a huge group of people who would benefit from practicing personal branding in their lives – those working for an organization. If you’re employed by others, you may not be able to use your own typography, or brand colours, but that is just one of the myriad of personal branding tools at your disposal. All the others are still there to help guide and propel your career in the right direction.

So to the question of “Who is Personal Branding for?”, the answer is easy. It’s for everyone.

There is no one who would not benefit from clarity, from purposeful alignment of their career to their goals and values, from self-knowledge and action plans that help move them closer to their goals.

Personal Branding is a framework for happiness. And happiness is for everyone.