How to Build a Personal Brand: Step Two Mission

If purpose is the entire reason for staying in business, mission is the more current, immediate target to reach a new level on your business' growth journey. Mission is the complete opposite of purpose because it is entirely attainable and it is so within a realistic time period.

Wes gave me the right tools to find my mission and then evolve it many times over. He got me to read Scramble and Zag by Marty Neumeier which changed the value I placed on brand positioning. It made everything else seem irrelevant. Why? Because when you have a solid brand, you have a super power. A super power that enables you to never stop pursuing your dream.

Everything else just requires you to learn it or experience it. Need to understand business? There are a million books, courses, and online resources. Want to perfect a skill like public speaking? Do it every single day until enough experience equates to mastery. 

The actual will needed to do those things however? You can't simply wake up with it consistently for an extended period of time. Not without a small amount of delusion and a set of beliefs that make the process feel like a heroes adventure. That's the real deal: if your dream doesn't make you feel like the star of an action movie saving the world, or the main lead of some grand Lord of the Rings adventure, you have not got the brand right.

This also links back to our last post with why purpose is so important. In this post though, we are looking at the mission.

Mission

What is the mission?

Please do refer to it as THE mission. Whatever you decide it is. It should take up a high level of priority in your life.

Mission statements are the outcomes you want your business to provide to your customers. Pen Forge Collective's mission statement at the time of writing this is to, "help individuals and businesses build undeniable authority through strategic writing and publishing."

Until it changes, I will get fired up every morning, thinking about how I am going to help someone and their business increase the power and authority they have. I know I am going to do it through writing strategic content that elevates how people perceive them and their business. If they're able to, I'll even get them to own their writing through publishing.

So a simple formula for a mission statement is to articulate your service/product and include the sprinkle of value they bring to the customer inside it, making its relevance to the customer AND the business crystal clear.

How do I get my employees behind it?

Behind it? I'd say it's actually more about getting them to believe in it. Sometimes, people mistake this for surrounding yourself with people who only think the same as you. I've worked at my best with people who can share my vision (next post), mission, and purpose whilst also challenging the way I think.

If my employees and business partners disagreed with me at every major decision, that would be excessive. When discussing business strategy, I value people who can show me the same outcome through other means and different outcomes with the same means I just presented. It's like having a fortune teller on your side. You can only strategise with the current biases and information you have on your own. Adding new people who can show you strategies with different biases and new information will only benefit your ability to form a strategy with a much higher chance of winning. All this without fully rewriting your proposal and derailing your plan.

So, how can you work with someone like this who can also be reliable? They need to believe in your personal brand just as much as you do. They should be aligned with the organisation like you are. That's the qualifier. Not how many certifications this person holds or how many years of experience they have. Especially at the early start up stage.

Succession

Finally, your dream is backed by a powerful mission. Also, you have a reliable business partner giving as much effort and passion as you to complete it. But if that's true, there is no doubt that you will achieve mission success.

The last important consideration for your mission therefore, is its succession. Why not just celebrate mission accomplished? Well, how do you think you'll feel when the mission is over? The drive and motivation you had won't exist anymore. It needs updating and the update should be prepared before it's needed or else the motivation to create it might not even arrive.

It might not be obvious or it might look too far away. It might even be closer to your vision (read the next post) than a mission. Even so, set a new mission for your company to replace the old one when it is reached. Take into account the many different directions your business could go in as well. 

For example, if Pen Forge Collective was to lean more into its publishing activities, our next mission statement could be to turn founders into New York Times best selling authors.

Take some time today to think it through. What will your first mission be?

Location: 48 Bilsdale Grove, Hull HU9 3UP, UK

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