One trend you see on social network groups like LinkedIn lately is a trend of understanding your personal brand. Knowing what it is that makes you tick, what things you most enjoy doing and what skills you bring to the table that you really excel at. The trick to understanding your personal brand is knowing where these items collide. This post is to explain my brand to those that don't know me. Not because I am looking to market my brand, but because it will help anyone that ever wonders what it is that I do, understand me a little better. People have asked my wife before what I do and she usually references Chandler Bing from the TV show Friends. Chandler leaves for work and comes home, but no one really knows what he is doing the whole time. So here is my chance to help anyone that has ever wondered, understand my brand.
A Numbers Guy
This is a phrase that people have used to describe me for quite some time. When I was a car salesperson I would typically out maneuver people to win the monthly bonus, not because I was a better salesperson but because I understood the numbers behind the bonus board. You didn't have to sell the most cars if you sold the right ones. When I became a sales manager I learned to love ratios to track performance of my team. Marketing to lead, leads to appointments, and appointment to sales ratios were tracked constantly to drive sales. Knowing where the numbers should be for each lead type helped me to know where my team needed more focused training. I seemed to be the only one surprised that accounting kept coming up as a good option for me when I took career profiles, I saw accounting a s a dull use of numbers. Using them to track dollars and cents that have already been spent.
The Administrator
The second thing that makes up who I am is an administrator. I learned about this gift as part of a church wide campaign to learn about our spiritual gifts. I ranked so high in the administrator category that it drowned out some of my other gifts. An administrator is someone that can see an organization, and understands how the different processes of an organization work together to make a cohesive unit. Its a keen understanding of how things work in a business environment. I have always known I had this gift, but I didn't realize that everyone else was not as able to do this as I was. Right now at work when there is a new process that needs to be implemented, it is brought to me (if not brought up by me) because I understand how the different pieces work together. If fact where I work currently I have, over the past 5 years, redesigned the way organization and information flow in our business. In order to collect and analyse the numbers that are derived from business.
Lover of Small Business
This is one that not everyone would know about me. I absolutely love working in small business. The things I love about it are the ability to give input that directly can be implemented and start making a difference. Things are changing all the time so processes need to be tweaked and adjusted to account for the change. It keeps the creative part of my brain happy. Doing the same thing over and over again would cause monotony and make me go crazy. Some people love that kind of monotony, I am not one of them. There are downfalls to small business. I could probably earn more at a larger company, and the benefits might be better. But there is something to be said for working 5 minutes from home, at a job you love, in an industry that is changing.
Finding the Sweet Spot
So now that you know some of the parts that make up who I am, how does that relate to my personal brand. My personal brand is in what I call the sweet spot. Finding the place in which all three things that make me, well me, intersect. Here is a visual for those that need it:
There are many people who are numbers guys, many administrators, and many people that love small business. The sweet spot is where all three of these things combine to give me the unique combination that I have. When I went back to school to get my MBA, I realized there was a kind of accountant that is called a managerial accountant. The difference between a CPA (which is what most people think of when they hear accountant) and a managerial accountant is huge. Here is a basic analogy, a CPA is a bean counter, they let you know precisely how many beans you have at what time. A managerial accountant helps a business, understand how their beans are being spent and how to create more beans. Both are important, but both bring different skills to the table. Big companies have both. Small businesses have neither. They have a CPA they count on to help with their taxes, but most do not typically a employ a managerial accountant. They likely either don't understand the difference, or can't afford to employ one.
My Brand
So here is my brand. I am a managerial accountant, that is fortunate enough to have found a small business owner with multiple business that allows me to use my administrative skills to develop processes inside these businesses. Process that feeds data to the numbers guy, so he can track business efficiency, measure profitability and give back reports to the administrator to recommend improvements or changes. In a company small enough to be able to implement these changes if management agrees the change is necessary.
I hope you enjoyed reading about and learning about me. Each one of us have been given a unique combination of skills, gifts, and experiences that make us who we are. We each have our own brand. If you don't yet know your brand I would recommend that you work through a process like this one and help understand who God made you to be. When you find out who that is, find your way to the sweet spot and enjoy using the gifts, it makes the giver happy to see you using them.
Now don't misunderstand me. We love our children and we are excited to be adopted again, but it was the last thing we wanted. We wanted to settle in to our little routine and live comfortably, make enough money to pay the bills, struggle occasionally (probably because of an unwise decision on our end), and raise the kids we have. We wanted a pool, and chickens, we wanted everyone to have their own bedroom and to have a master bathroom. The problem is, that was what we wanted it wasn't what God wanted for us. And that was a reality that we had to face, look square in the eye and say, "Really?".
So that is why we are fundraising, because we don't want more kids. But God wants more kids for us and the one thing our family wants more than chickens, or a pool, or even a master bathroom is to do what God wants our family to do. We want our children to soar with wings that only God can give them. The only way to encourage this is to show it, to let them know that living outside our comfort level and to seek after God's will is important to us and should be important to them.
