When Passion Meets Expertise Your Brand Succeeds - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

When Passion Meets Expertise Your Brand Succeeds - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career The more and more I reflect upon how Ive used social media to grow my own personal brand (as well as observe others), the more Ive come to realize that there are two things that are required for success: passion and expertise.   Passion is your excitement and enjoyment around a certain activity that interests you and expertise   is your knowledge in a particular field.   Expertise is typically based on experience and talent, which is accumulated over time, whereas passion comes natural and from the heart.   The idea of marrying passion with expertise is one of my big messages from the point forward.   Ive started mentioning it in my speeches and it will appear more and more in my other materials because its why people are becoming successful in this web 2.0 world.   They are discovering that they can build expertise around their passion and you can too! Passion and expertise Passion: You cant be extremely successful without passion in what you do because its too easy to quit and change jobs or career paths.   Passion is the fuel youll need to put in the necessary workload in order to achieve your dreams.   When youre passionate about what you do, obstacles and criticism wont get you down.   Instead, youll remain focused and excited every time you wake up in the morning.   People will want to join you based on mutual interest and the energy that will be radiating off of you (which is more visible online than you would think).   A lot of people succeed without passion, but there definitions of success are different than mine.   My definition of success if making money doing what you love.   If you arent passionate, but youre making a lot of money at a company you hate, then, from my perspective, you arent successful. Expertise: If you dont know what youre doing, you wont be able to accomplish much of anything.   You can be the most passionate person in the world, but if youre unable to service your customer or clients, then you wont make money regardless.   Since we all need to make money to survive, expertise becomes just as, if not more, important than passion.   Its easier for us to gain more expertise in a shorter time period if were passionate because we can accumulate more experience and skills by working a hundred hours per week instead of just forty.   Expertise is what goes on your resume, while your passion is the anxiousness and smile you bring to your interview. 5 steps to unlocking both 1.   Reflect on the work experiences youve had in the past, as well as all the activities youve participated in and how theyve made you feel.   While you participate in activities, work-related or not, there is a certain feeling youll get inside when you enjoy them.   Whether its a major project youve worked on or a particular sport that youve participated in, the same feelings, emotions and excitement are there.   2.   Get a piece of paper and jot down your skills and passions in order from strongest to weakest.   Writing things down makes you remember them and keeping a list makes you more organized.   You can always refer to this, especially as you gain more experience and accumulate more interests throughout your life. 3.   Draw a line between the skills and passions that closely align. By viewing both your passion and expertise on a single piece of paper and drawing a line connecting them, you will have a better sense of your (possible) future.   Draw as many lines as possible because options can never hurt you.   You can also interweave the lines to connect more skills to a specific passion you have, etc. 4.   Do some internet market research to see what niche might be available for you to claim.   Based on the keywords representing your passion and expertise, you should conduct a variety of Google searches.   See how many results for each keyword you get, what the competition is and how you can position yourself relative to both your passion and expertise in a niche area. 5.   Use 1-5 words to describe the connection between your passion and expertise and form a personal brand statement for positioning purposes.   Once you grasp the niche you want to claim, summarize it in one to five words maximum and use it as a personal brand statement, that expresses what your passion/expertise is and the audience you want to serve.