Beyond the Bare Minimum: Set New Standards & Build a Personal Brand People Actually Remember
What if building a memorable personal brand isn’t about doing more, but setting higher standards for how you work, communicate, create and deliver?
We can’t always control the way our personal brand, business or professional performance is received. But we can control the standards we set for ourselves to ensure we deliver the best brand experience possible.
Your personal brand standards are much more than how you show up consistently for your customers, colleagues and social circles. They quietly form part of your brand promise. Instead of simply putting your ideal brand promise on paper, develop the standards that put your promise into action.
1. The Lead Indicators
Controlling the controllable is a powerful concept for your personal brand. When so much of your personal brand is about how others perceive you, experience you and remember you, setting standards allows you to take control of your personal brand. To be intentional about how you move and show up.
One of my biggest takeaways when I read the book The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington was the idea of lead versus lag indicators. From my experience as a manager in marketing and communications and sitting around many leadership discussions, I was already familiar with the term. However, I still believe it’s an undervalued concept in both business and professional development. Most business, team and professional objectives tend to eventually fall back to outcomes they can’t control. When the real value lies in the upfront work and standards.
Lead indicators focus on what you can control - the effort that produces the results.
Lag indicators show you the results of those efforts.
You can hope for positive performance evaluations and colleagues’ feedback, 5-star reviews, recommendations, and repeat purchases, or you can make them more likely through the experience you deliver.
Consider Ritz-Carlton. Its famously polished guest experience isn't left to chance. The company has codified its approach into its “Gold Standards”, including specific service behaviours such as warmly greeting guests, anticipating their needs and providing a fond farewell. The lesson for your personal brand? If you want to consistently create a particular experience, don't just hope you'll deliver it. Define the behaviours that create it.
2. Surprise & Delight
The bare minimum standards trend that swept TikTok had the right idea in setting minimum expectations in relationships. It highlights what should be non-negotiables. Apply the same thinking to your own personal brand. What are the bare minimum standards for the service you want to deliver? For example, thinking like a brand delivering quality customer service, this might be:
I respond to all emails within 48 hours.
I respond to all texts within 24 hours.
I return or acknowledge all phone calls within 2 hours.
I greet all customers within 15 seconds.
I send a thank-you email or text after every external meeting or event.
I send an agenda before every meeting.
I send follow-up actions within 24 hours of the meeting.
I include a reference in all content I create.
But the most memorable brands don’t rely on the bare minimum. They deliver above and beyond what’s expected. They surprise and delight. With this in mind, your personal brand standards might be:
I deliver on projects a minimum of 2 days before the established deadline.
I deliver an extra element beyond the agreed project scope.
I ship products to arrive at least 2 days before the expected delivery times.
I include a complimentary bonus gift with all products.
I pay for the coffee at meetings or social catch-ups.
I bring a gift for the host.
I give something to my guests to take away.
I send a handwritten thank you card after attending major events or after collaborations.
Between your bare minimum and your surprise and delight standards, develop a set of approximately 12 service standards for yourself. Remember your standards establish your baseline. Your signature standards establish your distinction.
The better your relationships with others, the stronger your social capital - a concept I explored in my blog, The Power of Social Capital: The Theory That Still Shapes Careers, Personal Brands and Professional Success.
3. Set Creative Rules (and Break Them)
A co-founder of Random House, Bennett Cerf, once bet a writer $50 that he couldn’t write an engaging children’s book using only 50 different words. The writer, Dr Seuss, accepted the challenge — and went on to write one of the most iconic children’s books of all time, Green Eggs and Ham, using exactly 50 unique words.
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote Gadsby, a 1939 novel of more than 50,000 words written without using the letter E. Wright even tied down the E key on his typewriter to prevent himself from using it.
The standards and rules you set for yourself and your personal brand don’t need to be dry and boring. They can be creative and challenging. They can interrupt a default pattern to spark new ideas. As a mega creator, YouTuber Ali Abdaal popularised, you can even simply set the standard of creating 1% better every time.
As I shared in my earlier blog, Practice Isn’t Always Progress: What Most People Miss About Mastery, practice needs to be a little painful too in order to interrupt your default settings.
But as most creativity is inclined to do, rules are designed to be broken. When the brand experience you deliver starts to feel too routine or mundane, break the rules. Brainstorm creative ways to set new standards, reimagine your service and set new expectations for your brand experience.
Set the Standard
You can’t control how people perceive your personal brand. But you can control the experience you create.
Set the minimum standard. Look for opportunities to surprise and delight. Create rules that make your way of working distinctive — then be willing to rewrite the rules to keep things fresh. Because your brand promise isn’t what you say people can expect from you. It’s what you consistently deliver and what others actually experience.
