Developing your Personal Vision
Your personal brand is a combination of your pursuits, actions, and reputation. It’s how you’re recognized and perceived by other people. Your personal values are important ingredients for constructing your brand. Personal values direct your actions, behaviours, and opinions. Values determine what matters most to you. Understand and prioritize your values and you’ll know how to create your personal brand vision and mission.

Why do values matter
Values help us develop our moral compass and our belief system which helps us to distinguish what is right or wrong, ethical and determine the principles which govern our actions and decisions in life. It is important to apply our values against our objectives, achievements and outcomes in our daily lives and in work. When our endeavours align with our values, we likely achieve personal brand happiness. 

Where to start?
Recognize what guides your life, purpose, and sense of happiness. Is it your family, friends, community, work? What’s on your list? 

Review and articulate your values
Rank their importance
Review your company’s values
Know what they care about
Do your values align with your current role?
Review your personal brand at work

Sharing similar values with your employer will enhance your work-life commitment, loyalty, and satisfaction. Aligning your personal brand values will make your professional life better. Work will come more naturally, it will be easier to connect and care more deeply about what you bring to the table. Be on brand, and you’ll experience greater satisfaction in your work.

Where can you apply your personal brand?
Your personal branding is already applied inherently in many things you do… your tone on the phone, your writing style, what you post on social media. From a professional perspective, there are many ways to hone your public digital profile to ensure you are conveying your key attributes. Consider opportunities to remain on-brand through photography, content you share and how you position your work. From a public relations and influencer perspective, consider creating opportunities by attending conferences, speaking engagements or building your online social media presence to demonstrate your values in action.

As the cannabis industry continues to grow across North America, many people are asserting themselves as thought-leaders, influencers and authority figures by demonstrating their personal brands on social media. Influential people such as Gill Pollard, Abi Roach, and Jacqui Childs have developed their personal brands, gaining credibility and trust with thousands of followers across social media. Cannabis influencers demonstrate their personal brand and convey their values on social media by posting relevant content, participating in thought-provoking conversations, and using their platforms to communicate their stance on pressing topics to convey their beliefs and resonate with their followers. Above all, they convey what is important to them through their actions, behaviours and opinions. You understand what they stand for.

So what do you value most? Kindness? Honesty? Courage? Learning? Creativity? Excellence? Fairness? Originality? Philanthropy? With so many values to choose from, it’s time to determine what’s important to you and how they reflect on your personal brand.