I almost felt like I was living the 12 days of Christmas at a recent networking meeting;
12 Mortgage Agents lending,
11 Realtors listing,
10 Financial Planners investing………
You get the idea. When you have a large event there will always be multiples of businesses, vocations and specialties. So when that is the case, how do you stand out?
Meet Donald Lofthouse of Keybase Financial Group. He likely had that same thought and approached the meeting differently, as you can see above. Of course I had to stop and ask him – his strategy worked.
The pouch that the pig was being carried in was a seed bag – he was a farmer sowing the seeds of wealth and knowledge. It was noticed, prompted a question, became memorable and it was fun – I loved it! After that the “peace of mind”, “security” and “freedom” from the other financial planners paled in to the background.
Then when I went to check out his online profile the fun came through in this sentence on his bio;
“My humour has been described as “Wise Wit”. I make your head laugh while I slip a message into your heart.”
Donald gets it, he understands his personal brand and more importantly knows how to use it to get his message across, he follows the 5 R’s (rules) of brand communication.
He approaches the 5 R’ of personal branding.
- Relevance – is it right for you and your target audience?
- Resonance – does your target audience see why?
- Relation – is there a connection?
- Remarkability – does it stand out, will it be noticed?
- Real – is it true to you?
Does your personal brand answer the 5 R’s?