Week #2: Establish Your Professional Purpose

Before you can tackle the creation of your perfect personal brand, it’s important to understand who you are, what makes you tick and why you do what it is you do.

Simon Sinek’s How Great Leaders Inspire Action TED Talk has been seen over 22 million times in large part because of his simple mantra: start with why. It’s a powerful but often overlooked first step towards success in any area of life.

Nearly all of us have to work to pay the bills, pay off university loans, save into our pension funds, shrink the mortgage, go out on occasion, take vacations and hopefully have a bit of fun while we’re not working.

If we know we have to work what might be a 40, 60, or even 80-hour week, there has to be more to what we’re doing than just earning money. What helps us get out of bed in the morning? What helps us be better at what we do? What is it that separates a job from a career? What helps us live, strive and survive?

We need more than a paycheck.

We need a professional purpose.

Without purpose, there can be no planning, and we limit the possibility of channeling our future in the direction we desire.

How I Discovered My Professional Purpose

My story started back in school, when I realized I had a talent for acting, singing and writing. School plays, music festivals and talent shows all saw me pouring my heart and soul into something I knew I was good at. Drama at university was an obvious next step; the bright lights of London theatre, TV, and film beckoned after three years of honing my craft.

I then spent six years selling teddy bears at Harrods and failing miserably at getting real acting jobs. I decided, at the age of 29, that I needed a new career. The Internet was pretty new, so I did a course in HTML and managed to conjure up an editor role at the search engine directory LookSmart. My job involved writing 55 website reviews every day – short, punchy descriptions of what users might find if they clicked on a link. Soon after, I was promoted to traffic manager helping our European sales people get display ads live across the LookSmart network.

LookSmart folded in 2003 and I spent some time at a digital agency. Soon, Microsoft came calling and I spent the next (and best) seven years of my career evolving into an evangelism role. This meant more writing, speaking, video creation and other ways to communicate to an audience looking to be informed and inspired.

It was during those years I discovered what truly made me tick. My desire to act and write had little to do with being famous or earning loads and loads of money. What I really enjoyed – what got me out of bed – was the love of communicating, inspiring and educating people and businesses to do their very best work.

I wanted people to have a great experience.

I wanted to help people.

I wanted others to be successful.

And so my professional purpose was born:

To inspire and educate people and their businesses to be successful by applying digital marketing strategies that focus on Social Media, Digital PR and Personal Branding.

That’s it.

Past Signposts Define Your Future Path

During my time helping executives and professionals with their personal brands, I’ve talked to some who aspired to be architects, but now build successful businesses. I’ve met some who felt working with children was their calling, but they’ve turned out to be exceptional people managers or HR directors. And there are others who, while they were young, wanted to be engineers because they loved tinkering with things, but have now found successful careers as journalists, uncovering problems and making sense of the world for us through their detective work.

In order to establish your professional purpose, you need to look back at your early education and career and trace back the steps to where you are now.

Then consider these questions:

• Why is it you do what you do?
• Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
• What thrills you about your current job role or career?
• Why don’t you do something else?
• What does a great day look like?
• What is it you don’t enjoy about your job and why?

Answer those questions (and a few more of your own that you may uncover during the process) and you’ll be well on your way to identifying and articulating your professional purpose.

Knowing why you do what you do and being able to succinctly articulate it is as crucial for your internal wellbeing and growth, as it is an external badge.

Start with why, and when you figure it out, I promise you, the answer will be far more satisfying than any paycheck.