September 28, 2021 - The journey of transformation at Gonzaga University in the Organizational Leadership (ORGL) program was critical to finding my story brand and passion.

Hi everyone. Kyle again, Interesting thoughts. Today, I’m back on the trails, and I wanted to talk about building your brand image. I had a fascinating discussion with a dear friend colleague and alumni of my Alma Mater Gonzaga. Justin Slagle, this guy, he’s fascinating, he’s a senior VP at 6crickets and TEDx speaker, global traveler thought leader, and just an amazing person on stage.

He’s directed, he’s acted. He’s done a lot and I love getting up on stage and having a chance to speak with this guy. So he’s also on one of the other channels if you want to check it out. So Justin and I were talking about building your brand. Now that’s a weird thought because well, you know, businesses have brands.

But as the individuals, we also do. This is a critical element in the new world, the future of leadership, right? People more than ever have the tools and technology to work from everywhere. And part of being able to be successful is having a robust portfolio. It’s not a career in the traditional sense where you work in a sequential fashion in positions within an organization or switching within that same career field to other organizations.

You know if you’re very successful at doing that maybe it’s a portfolio versus a traditional career where it’s sequential you move from one to the next. You’re not balancing a whole book of stories so to speak. And that’s where we talk about story brand. And the thought that I have is, okay, what is my story brand?

And how have I been building it? I realized it goes back about five years where I have identified the stories on my shelf: the things, the passions, I have what I enjoy learning about, focusing on, they’re your passions right? But where it becomes your brand, is what you do about it. That’s important.

It’s the action to you take to create or engage with community, that matter, that becomes your story brand. And I’ve got my shelf that I’ve been working on last couple years actually since what 2013–2012 actually, that is when I really had the opportunity to emerge and start the next chapter, right?

Going from the failure to the learner and there’s a shift right there. That was my first shift and I started exploring all these different ideas things I enjoyed. And there’s some that drew me closer there. Others. That pushed me away. So that’s how you start exploring. It’s a critical step discovery of your story and, you know, over these years, I built up these these concepts these brands, you know, the ideation and futurist in me kind of lays out.

What would this look like? That’s a business. That’s a focus. That’s what I do day to day. There’s a particular story in there. The thought that we have to do everything we enjoy every single day, which I’ve come to learn isn’t the case. It can be a passion of yours that you explore, and you continue exploring.

That’s okay. So the question for everybody is what is your story? And how do you tell it to yourself? What are the passion you have in order to practice you put in place to grow them to excel, to create community, to grow community of other individuals. I have a passion for the same thing and you can do in so many ways but I’m curious to hear what all you’re thinking.

So leave a message posted to your favorite social, put up a video, drop some audio, whichever way you want to do it and tag it leadership daily because I want to come find out and have a good conversation. I’ll be bringing in somebody on at least one to talk.

Want to hear more about your story. All right. Well, thank you everybody, until I talk to you next time, you have the mic.