When it comes to health and alternative solutions, one of the most prominent people in this area is Dr Oz. Followed and watched by millions he has built a personal brand that is envied and copied by many.
With a large number of people he has a credible and obviously very visible brand. However many people also question his ethics around some of the products and remedies he recommends, particularly where they feel these are a conflict of interest or even where it goes against the hippocratic oath.
He has over 3.5 million followers on Twitter alone, which is where he turned this week to ask people to pose questions that he would answer on his website using the hashtag#ozsinbox. Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly the Twitterverse turned more toward the negative aspects of his personal brand and called into question those more controversial areas, even attacking his morals and values. You can read more on this and some of the questions by CLICKING HERE which are still being added to at a rate of several per minute – or read the updated stream HERE. by now it could even be trending as a top ten trend on Twitter.
For your personal brand people associate the positive AND negative attributes of your brand and build up their perception of you based on how you communicate those attributes, skills and experience. Before you start to communicate your brand you need to be very clear about your core personal brand foundation. One of those core pieces are your values. As Dr Oz has discovered, when your values are questioned the backlash or damage to your brand can be quite significant.
Your values are the operating principles that form the base of your belief system. You take your values with you wherever you go.
Knowing your values is crucial for making decisions in career, business and life, because it helps you recognize whether you and a particular organization, client or project are a good match.
To better understand your values, take note when something occurs that bothers you and ask yourself why it makes you upset. Or look when time flies by and something feels so natural and easy. Either way chances are one or more of your values are the root of either the dissatisfaction or the excitement.
I am assuming that Dr Oz believes his intentions are pure and that he is being true to his values. The challenge is that his definition and my definition of a particular value may be very different. He has not chosen to delete or shy away from this feedback (at least not yet). Like any strong personal brand you need to be true to who you are and I guess he feels he is and trusts that the millions who do follow and admire him think the same.
There is an EvalYOUation values exercise as one of the key pillars of your personal brand included in a new program I have just launched which you can read about here called the Personal Brand Masterplan