Okay, so quick blog on the importance of finding your why.

The “Find your Why” process came from Simon Sinek. He talks about the importance of clarifying your why before you start marketing or communicating – or even really building your business.

He has this great sentence: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”‍

So, if you want to inspire people to buy from you, to work with you; you need to be super-clear about why you do what you do and what you believe. Essentially, you can discover this understanding of your purpose by thinking back through your life to look at why things have happened and what impact they’ve had on you. This key point is what Simon Sinek’s Find You Why process does. Now, I read Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” book about a year ago. Ok, no – I read half of Simon’s book about a year ago. I got a lot out of it, but I thought I didn’t need to read the other half.

Eventually, I did read the rest – and, actually, it turned out that I did need that other half! I went straight on to read his “Find Your Why” to learn about how to apply this process of finding your why. I did this on myself – which he actually recommends that you don’t do (and I agree; it is way better to do this with somebody else) – but I did anyway. And what I discovered was that having that clarity of “why?” enables you to have a filter across everything you do going forward. So, it’s not only about your brand, but it’s everything that you do. With everything, you think: Does this feed in to my why? Does it feed into to my purpose?

Secondly, it gives you huge motivation when things are just not going that well or when things are frustrating. You’re struggling with something or something’s gone wrong – maybe you’ve lost a client. It gives you that motivation to know what your overall goal is and, even if you do lose something now, it doesn’t matter! Because your why is there, arching over everything you do. Your why is going to happen. And, while you get there, just that clarity – that knowledge that your why is going to happen – that gives you faith. You can get through setbacks and struggles because you have that faith. Of course, your why isn’t just about your own motivation.

The other thing is the marketing side of things. So, once you’ve got clarity on your why, you then know what you believe and why you do what you do – and that filters into everything you do – the clients you want to work with, the products you want to create, the branding, the communication, the content – everything filters down from your why, because that is your overarching theme. This so important. It’s important because, if you’re trying to distinguish yourself online, having that clarity of why, which is personal to you, is a really strong way of setting yourself apart from other people. Think about the people you follow – you follow them because they’re unique; the world doesn’t need more generalists, it needs more specific people, specific niched people who really cover something that’s missing.

So, you’ve got an idea you think is missing from the world and you want to fill that gap? That’s awesome! But make sure that you communicate that really well. And I believe that that starts with really getting clarity on your purpose – on your why. I am a really strong believer in this. My six week personal branding program, “Powerful Branding” takes you from the starting blocks to completely ready to grow your brand, to talk online, to be established as the leader that you want to be – and it starts with this process. Finding your why. It is integral to your success.

So, I’m hoping these few reasons have helped to make it clear why I believe that getting clarity on your why is so important – before you start to build your personal brand. I would really advise reading Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why”, and then I recommend finding a partner to help you (not like I did!) to really discover your why. Watch how it gets you to really examine your current job, previous jobs and your future going forward – I promise, it will make an enormous impact. It will change your life.

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Read more about the One Thing holding most people back from building their personal brand.