Personal Brand and the Love Train Wreck

I’ve had reason to contemplate personal “branding” recently, and I don’t mean the kind you do with a red-hot iron.  It reminded me of something I posted elsewhere…

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I had an interesting branding conversation with a friend a few weekends ago.   We’ll call her Rachel.  Rachel has a good friend…a good, beautiful, fit, beautiful, gorgeous, magnetic, beautiful friend…who is very beautiful, fit, gorgeous, and magnetic, yet she keeps finding herself in train-wreck after train-wreck when it comes to her relationships with men.  Rachel couldn’t understand why her friend winds up in these situations. My response to her was simple: it’s what she advertises. Rachel didn’t seem to take too kindly to this, thinking I was implying her friend somehow “asked for it.” I told her that I wasn’t necessarily going “The Law of Attraction” route. Instead, I found myself thinking more about what I went through creating a brand for myself at work. I told her that her friend isn’t secretly wishing for these things to happen (she has relationship issues with her dad, but that’s not the point), but what she is doing is dressing provocatively (did I mention she is very beautiful, fit, and gorgeous), acting flirtatious (that’s where the magnetic part comes in), and playing the “damsel in distress” card (which, of course, is attractive to most over-protective men). That, in a nutshell, is her brand. And her marketing plan? Nothing more than advertise at the local bar. So, her brand, in essence (and unconsciously) is “Young Hottie Looking for Macho Man,” and her market is guys at bars. Who exactly is surprised that these relationships are train-wrecks?

I am, by no means, a relationship expert, but my comments did give Rachel something to think about. What the whole interaction did for me was confirm something that I have known for a long time: that people advertise who they are, what they value. Working with a personal coach as part of my professional and personal development has just made it that much clearer to me how important branding yourself can be…both at the water cooler and at the local “watering hole.”