I was listening to an episode of the Her Spoken Image podcast about authentic networking, and she mentioned why you need to be in tune with your values before you set out networking. I would take it as far as to say you need to be in tune with them for every aspect of building a personal brand.
In the episode, she recounts a story of when she had plans to go across the country for an event and it started to feel icky, and she listened to her intuition. She cancelled the plans, and it turned out she had an even better situation right at hand.
This story made me realise how different we are as people, because I’d have handled it a different way. There is no better or worse way, except when it comes to you. If you pick something unaligned to yourself, there is a wrong way. But this is why it’s key to know what you value.
1: Values are your compass in decision-making
My top values are Pleasure (enjoyment, happiness, satisfaction) who’d have guessed, Financial stability (stable income, financial freedom), Beauty (aesthetics, attractiveness), Wealth (money, material goods, luxury lifestyle), and Health (well-being, fitness, not being sick).
I get a lot of pleasure from travel, so cross-country travel for an event sounds like a dream opportunity. Another thing that gives me pleasure (tell me you’re a Sag Venus without telling me you’re a Sag Venus) is being open to possibilities.
Like April, I don’t make decisions about where to go from an agenda, and so if I had chosen to go to that event I’d have been open and excited to find out who I was going to meet and what opportunities came my way, or just have a good time because I get a buzz from big events anyway.
Different people and phases in life have different needs
I’m a newly divorced child-free woman, so I make different choices than a mother. I can say now that I don’t think I will stop valuing that if I had a child, but I don’t know. Motherhood changes your brain quite literally, for a time anyway.
Even people who have known to value travel a lot over the years have seasons where they value staying put. And if I had a new partner in the future, my values would have to account for the preservation of that relationship if that’s how I feel about it.
It’s wise to keep revising where you are at, what beliefs you hold and what you can let go of, and let your self-concept grow with you organically.
2: Values connect you with the right people
I want to be around people I feel are expansive, so I don’t like to spend time with people who complain a lot, have a scarcity mindset and feel pessimistic about everything. I’d happily hold space for people to vent when they need to process things to let them go and get down to doing something about it, but at times even my best friend makes me disengage.
The way people carry themselves, whether it’s their social media copy or attitude and energy in person, attracts the people who resonate with that. If you’re clear on what you want, you are more likely to naturally gravitate towards situations and people who have it to offer.
For example, I connect with a lot of people in the wealth creation space, mostly women who come to it from a divine feminine energy. I love to talk strategy and business containers and all the Saturnian things, when they are in service of the energetic flow of our magnetism. I want to dismantle the patriarchal capitalism built on puritanical ideals that we live in (the old paradigm), because I believe we are worthy of more than living to work.
But if these women did not speak from what they stand for, I would now know to connect.
3: Values help refine your brand storytelling
I had this conversation multiple times consulting with people over what to do with their brands. There is an internalised expectation that, especially if you show up on social media, you need highly produced perfect videos to be visible. That’s true if your goal is reach, but if you are a small business owner not earning on from content creation itself your goal is to connect with the right people, and the numbers you need are smaller depending on your overall objectives (which go back to your values).
If your brand is iconic, high end, top of the line, I got a front row seat for Yoshiki at Milan’s Fashion Week then yes, you need that level of output or there’s an energetic mismatch. But if you have different goals, that kind of branding may actually hurt your chances to connect with the people you’d love as clients.
Every small detail of the image we project when we show up anywhere carries an energy, and that energy speaks to people, who then project meaning on it. It’s like the horrid behaviour most of us witnessed in our university days: insecure guys who in order to still score a one night stand in a club hit on the friend of the girl they really wanted. They see the prettier one as unapproachable and like they’d never go for a guy like them, so they’ll settle for the one they see as more reachable.
If you don’t want your brand to be that aspirational and unapproachable then you make yourself look approachable. There’s no right or wrong brand as long as the decision is intentional and aligned with the goals you genuinely want to meet. Which goes back to what it is that you value.
