E32: What is Your Personal Caregiver Brand?

What comes to mind when you think of a brand?   Do you think of big name companies?  Each of these companies have a strong and purposeful brand.  

• Apple is known for its innovation, simplicity and support
• The Amazon logo was created to represent the message that it sells everything from A to Z (the arrow connects the two letters) and also represents the smile that customers would experience by shopping on the Amazon.com Web site (the arrow becomes a smile) 
• Target's brand position is “design for all.” Although Target never says this directly, it communicates it consistently through its personality, which is cool, fun, trendy and fresh.

There are Three Types of Branding

• A corporation or company brand.
• A product brand.  When you think of a specific product, what comes to mind?  
• Maybe it’s coca-cola or a shoe brand or a health product

• A personal brand.

What is Your Personal Brand? Your personal brand is how you promote yourself. It is the unique combination of your skills, experience, and personality that you want the world to see you. ... You use your personal branding to differentiate yourself from other people.

You're representing your personal brand in your professional role or your business, with your family/friends  and now caregiving.    

Branding is so much more than the way you look (but that’s an important part).  It’s also your personality, delivery of your message and more.  

Today I want to talk about you, the caregiver and your caregiver / personal brand.  

When you look at yourself through the eyes of being a brand and most importantly who you are today?

• What do you see?
• What do you hear?
• How do you feel about yourself?
• Do you want to spend time with yourself?

Your personal caregiver brand is the unique combination of your expertise, work experience, caregiver advocacy, your loved one’s interests and personality that, together, make you who you are. It’s how you present yourself to the world.  And now that world is to doctors, nurses, family, friends, your loved one, and work and/or business clients.  

It allows you to build trust and empathy with them.  

Developing a personal caregiver brand gives you many advantages:

• Builds trust with your loved one’s caregivers - doctors, nurses, therapists, other help
• Builds trust with your friends, family, work partners and your business clients
• Creates an understanding of who you are and what season you are in.  
• You create a much higher perceived value
• You are known as the “expert” in your caregiver field or the person trying to figure it out with optimism, confidence and grace
• You stand out because of your actions

My hope is this podcast episode will get you to reflect on your appearance, actions, thoughts and abilities to form YOUR ideal personal caregiver brand.  Each of us are unique and different. 

This caregiving journey has taken your personal brand and is forcing and pushing your normalcy.   You can’t continue to be the same.  How could you?   Think of all that has changed?

• Time 
• Location 
• Relationships
• Emotions/Stressors
• Relationships
• How/When you work?
• Your personal time

If you have others, email me at [email protected]

I want to talk about 5 tips to help you create your personal caregiver brand or transform it

1. How can I be my best self in this season?

• What does my personal caregiver brand look like? 
• What are my limitations?  Or healthy boundaries?  
• How do I show up?  
• How do I respond?  
• What brings me joy?  

NOTE:   You have to commit to your own self-care to be the best self in this season.   You can’t give and give and give.   

2. How am I going to manage this journey based on my own personal values? 

Personal values are the things that are important to us, the characteristics and behaviors that motivate us and guide our decisions. 

What choices are you going to make when challenges occur?

What mindset will you take when you are faced with overwhelm?  

This one may take some time to think through.   What things you valued in the past may have to be adjusted but others you may be able to stand firm on. 

3. How to I Transform and Define my Caregiver Personal Brand  

This of a butterfly.   

One day, the caterpillar stops eating, hangs upside down from a twig or leaf and spins itself a silky cocoon. Within its protective casing, the caterpillar radically transforms its body, eventually emerging as a butterfly or moth. ... ink about what happens inside a cocoon?

Most butterflies and moths stay inside their cocoon for between five to 21 days. If they’re in really harsh places like deserts, some will stay in there for up to three years waiting for rain or good conditions. The environment needs to be ideal for them to come out, feed on plants and lay eggs.

Your transformation may take awhile to master.  It’s a mindset shift.   

Recognizing my new normal is the first start.  Then you have to adjust and accept your new reality.    

Think through 

• What obstacles have you overcome? 
• What desirable goals have you reached or am in the process of reaching in this challenging time? 
• How have you changed for the better?

Talking this out with someone else can be extremely helpful to get a little distance from your caregiver reality. If you want to try it by yourself, imagine someone on an interview asking, “Give me the whole story -- how did you get to where you are today?”

4. What is your caregiver character personality.

Your personality is an essential part of what makes you, you. Without her perseverance and passion, J.K. Rowling would still be the author of Harry Potter, but she wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or memorable.  

As a working women, caregiver your own personality traits are unique, diverse, and amazing.  When others are engaging with you in person, online, via email and on the phone, their perception is formed. 

Think about 5 adjectives that best describe you.  Write them down.  

• Optimistic, determined, joyful, caring, resourceful 

If you are unsure, ask your loved one, friends or family  

Obviously, some of the time, we are not at our best because of the situations but how we are in those moments of overwhelm may just be our caregiver personal brand.  

Don’t run the risk of expressing an inauthentic or ineffective personal caregiver brand. 

5. Capture your brand statement.

Once you’ve gathered all the above information, it’s time to identify and write down your brand statement. Just one or two sentences that you’ll refer to internally to remind you of who you are and what you value when things get really rough

Why you say….  When things are challenging, you can pull this out to remind yourself.  

Think of this as if someone was asking you how you are doing or what you do?  

When I meet someone and they ask me what I do.  I tell them I am grateful to be a  caregiver for my Loved Ones fighting cancer.  I  also have a business and podcast called The Caregiver Cup where I help amazing, busy women manage  their overwhelm so they can find joy in their caregiving journey.  

Last, but not least

This Caregiver Life is unpredictable and there will be moments when you need to adapt. Your personal caregiver brand is your compass for how to live your life and take care of your loved one, but every once in a while you'll take a detour for the good of your loved one or the good of yourself, for some unavoidable reason or just because sometimes we have to do things in life that we don't want to do. This doesn't mean you've failed, and it doesn't mean you can't get back on track. It means you're human, and life's not perfect. Just remember that defining your personal caregiver brand is your way of saying, this is who I am, this is how I manage this caregiver life, and I don't have to apologize for it.