It was as literal a brand as any former engineer could develop.

While it makes a great joke now, that clip art logo launched Career Benders into the world. It was far from perfect, but it taught me the most valuable branding lesson: start where you are.

That scrappy start has evolved into a brand that reflects my mission in business and the core values I bring to it.

It represents me.

Personal and business branding are intrinsically intertwined—particularly for those of us in coaching, consulting, or entrepreneurial roles where we are the brand.

So, what is a brand anyway? And how does your personal identity influence the way your business is perceived?

Let’s explore! 

What Is a Brand, Really?

A brand isn’t just a logo, color palette, or catchy tagline. While those visual elements support the brand, the true essence lies in the experience you create. A brand is the emotional connection people have with you or your business. It’s how they feel when interacting with your website, hearing you speak, or seeing your LinkedIn posts.

For solopreneurs, the line between personal and business branding is often blurry. Our authenticity, values, and personality are woven into our client engagements and become part of our business identity and reputation. 

Even in larger businesses, a leader’s personal brand can significantly impact the company’s culture and public perception. Think of household names like Richard Branson (Virgin Atlantic) or Steve Jobs (Apple)—their personal brands became business brands.

This symbiotic relationship between personal and business branding isn’t just a coincidence; it’s a strategic opportunity for differentiation. 

The Foundation: Personal Branding

Your personal brand is the starting point for any business branding exercise. It’s who you are, what you stand for, and how you present yourself to the world.

Here’s how to craft an intentional personal brand that aligns with the strengths of your business and sets you apart:

1. Define Your Values

Your values are the guiding principles that inform your decisions, messaging, and interactions. Start by asking:

• What’s most important to me, personally and professionally?
• What values do I already embody, and what carries over to my business?

For example, if you prioritize authenticity and empathy in your personal life, those values will likely show up in your business messaging and client interactions (even without trying!).

2. Find Your Voice

I might sound like a broken record, but be you.

Don’t try to be me or any other colleague. If you’re more formal, your content and engagements may be more polished. Your content may be more conversational if you’re a little more casual. 

One tone is not better than the other as long as it’s authentic to who you are. A mismatched voice can erode trust – and zap a ton of energy! – but cohesion can also create clarity and connection.

3. Build Your Reputation

Your personal brand is built as much on action as on intention. Share content that aligns with your expertise and values, network authentically, and deliver on promises. Show up as promised and in the way people expect, and you’ll resonate where you want – and should!

Extending Personal Branding to Business Branding

Once your personal brand is clear, use it as the foundation for shaping your business brand.

1. Align Your Mission

Your business’s mission statement should reflect your personal values. For example, if your personal mission is to empower people to thrive, your business mission might articulate how your products or services achieve that goal.

2. Design with Purpose

When developing visual branding (logos, websites, social media profiles), let your personal style guide the design. Think of these elements as extensions of your personality – you’ll look at them every day, possibly for years! You not only want them to feel like you, but you also want to feel personally connected to something so intimately you. 

3. Create a Seamless Experience

Consistency is key. Ensure that messaging, tone, and visuals align from your LinkedIn profile to your business website. This cohesion helps build trust and reinforces your brand’s identity.

I just went so far as to recraft each image for the items in my feature section to be sure they were consistent and brand-aligned. Look at me, listening to my own advice.  

4. Let It Evolve

Brands, like people, evolve over time. As you refine your niche, skills, and business goals, your brand will grow with you; your core values remain the anchor. 

Embracing the [Brand] Ride.

Your business will not look like it does today three years from now. Neither will you.

If my journey from clip art to cohesive brand identity taught me anything, it’s that branding is a process. You don’t need to have it all figured out on day one. Start where you are, build intentionally, and allow your personal and business brands to grow together.

The more you infuse your values, personality, and authenticity into your business, the more your brand will resonate with the people you’re meant to serve.

So, what’s your brand story?

It’s time to connect the dots between you and your business – all you have to do is start where you are, and the rest will follow.

Your Friend and Coach,
Angie Callen, CPRW, CPCC

The post From You to Them: Connecting Your Personal and Business Brands appeared first on PARWCC.

We’ve reflected, renewed our commitments, and set new goals for the coming year, but I have one more challenge to throw at you as you plan for the next 365 days of business growth. 

• How will you innovate this year? 

Goals are great, but pushing yourself is even better. We’re really good at setting safe goals – ones we know are doable or just so barely out of reach they might as well be doable, and this year I’m challenging you to set a BIG HAIR AUDACIOUS one that requires you to approach problems and business differently. 

Luckily, I’m here with a few ideas on how you can redefine your approach to business growth and challenges to unlock new opportunities in your coaching and writing practice – all by thinking just a little differently!

Meet: Systems, Design, Blue Oceans, and Disruptors. 

These are four problem-solving methodologies that you can apply to business to reveal new potential. It’s quite possible you already naturally gravitate towards one of these, but knowing your strongest approach to problem-solving can help you intentionally look at things with a new lens. 

Here’s some food for thought: 

Systems Thinking

Thinking about the whole. Systems thinking is about taking a big picture look at the broader impact of a decision or a solution. In other words, everything we do in our business is interconnected, so looking at downstream impacts can be beneficial.

The same goes for our clients, where we often work to address more than an immediate concern by understanding how various elements of their professional and personal lives interact. 

For instance, when a client struggles with work-life balance, you might explore how their job demands, family commitments, and personal interests intersect and define the parameters of their search. This approach allows you to suggest comprehensive solutions that could involve setting clearer boundaries or adjusting work hours, thus creating a more sustainable balance.

How can you do the same in your business. If you add a new service line, how will it impact your other high-revenue offerings? Will it help you build capacity or cannibalize a strong revenue generator? 

Looking at your business as a system, instead of the ad-hoc, “hey, maybe I’ll try this today,” can add a layer of intentionality that drastically changes future possibilities. 

Design Thinking

Thinking about the human. This is the one I gravitate towards and will likely resonate with many of you who have gone through Build Your Business where we focus on developing solutions to meet a specific problem. 

Design thinking focuses on human-centered solutions, which is a perfect match for client-focused services like coaching. This methodology encourages you to empathize with your clients, define their core challenges, ideate solutions, and then see how those solutions resonate with the goal audience. 

If you’ve never sat own and evaluated how your offerings align (or don’t!) with the audiences you specifically want to serve, this is a great exercise for you. It’s kind of like tailoring a client’s résumé to the job at hand: present a clear value proposition that solves a problem. 

Yep, it applies to you, too!

Exploring Blue Ocean Strategy

Create a new space. Imagine stepping away from a fiercely competitive market (“red oceans”) and to create or discover your own uncontested market space (“blue ocean”). 

For a career coach, this might mean identifying a niche such as helping clients transition into non-profit careers—a less saturated and highly specific market; it could also mean specializing in government résumés or helping teachers transition out of the classroom, but it doesn’t just have to be a niche-specific strategy. 

They sky is the limit – and you’ll push your creativity – when you start thinking about what makes you unique in our space and how you can leverage that to be different, in a great way. 

I don’t know about you, but I like being different!

Innovating with Disruptive Innovation

Think about the next big thing. Disruptive innovation involves integrating new technologies or approaches that fundamentally change how a service is delivered. This could be everything from using (or developing) technology to assess, track, or monitor job-search related data, or it could be a proprietary framework you’ve created to help a client discover the goals for a career change. 

Where can you innovate? Just because everyone else isn’t doing it (yet), doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for it, especially if you create it!

This is an area where I’m particularly excited to push in 2025 [teaser?]! 

One of the most fun things about being an entrepreneur is the ability to create, try, fail, try again, and see what works. Why limit yourself? Having autonomy and freedom are two of the reasons we all started businesses, so don’t force yourself into a box! 

Step outside of it and have fun this year. 

As you reflect on these methodologies and their potential applications in your business, consider how you can incorporate them into your strategic planning for the coming year. Challenge yourself to think differently, not just in terms of what you offer but how you approach the very problems you aim to solve.

You never know what “next big thing” will come out of that brain when you workshop in new and innovative ways.

Here’s to a great year!

Your Friend and Coach, 

Angie Callen, CERW, CPCC, CPRW

The post How Can You Break Ground in the New Year? appeared first on PARWCC.

Let’s face it, while we excel at advising clients on building networks, we often neglect our own. 

It’s time to practice what we preach and craft a circle that mirrors the ambition and expertise we encourage in our clients and supports our growth as professionals and people. 

Assessing Your Network 

If you coach clients on networking for a job search, you probably tell them to start by assessing who is in it. 

“Who are the first five people in your Rolodex?” is usually my prompt for initiating brainstorming. 

So, who are yours?

Map out your network. Who do you currently rely on? Do you have a mentor? A peer who challenges you? A protégé for you to mentor? People who inspire you? Push you? Make you better?

Identifying these roles is just the beginning of understanding your network and identifying the holes in it. 

→ Action Item: Catalog your network across these categories to see where you’re strong and where you are lacking: Mentors, Referral Sources, Peers, Industry Thought Leaders, Ideal Clients, Client Advocates, Industry Connectors, Domain Specialists, Supporting Non-Professionals (Family and Friends), and other Entrepreneurs (of varying industries). 

Diversify and Fortify Your Connections  

Surrounding yourself with people like you is beneficial in many ways, but so is the diversity in perspectives that come from different points of view, whether it be demographics, industry-specific, or another form of diversity – let’s mix it up! 

Enrich your business with the advice, counsel, and expertise of people beyond your industry, outside your community, with different skin colors, income brackets, and geographies. Find people who can challenge your thinking or introduce you to new concepts. 

Whether it’s a coach you let behind the curtain of your business world, a VA who can freshen up your content, or a serial entrepreneur – networking outside your immediate circle will make you a better business owner and coach. Period.

Action Item: Analyze the network map created in Step 1 to pinpoint at least one type of connection you lack, and set a goal to bridge that gap. Who can you engage to fill the holes, diversify, and round out your network? Is it a specific person or “anyone” in a particular category? Where would be a great place to get in front of your targets? LinkedIn? Through your existing network? Elsewhere? 

Taking Our Own Advice

We know the theory of networking, and we even know its execution. It’s time to apply it like the pros we are! 

It’s time to go to work and be where you’ve deemed most advantageous for meeting the people filling your network. Whether attending targeted events, engaging in online forums, strategic messaging on LinkedIn, or volunteering, build your strategy – just as if you were a job seeker prospecting a curated hit list of companies. 

Remember, it’s about quality, not just quantity, so you don’t have to spam the world or show up at every Meet-Up on the planet, but you have to get yourself out there, in the right way, and in the right places.

Action Item: Identify an upcoming event where you’ll likely meet the potential contacts you want to add to your network. Similarly, craft an engagement plan to nurture similar contacts via LinkedIn or online communities. Whether in-person or virtual, focus on building a relationship and be ready to follow through with a clear call to action.

Rinse and Repeat for Ultimate Network Growth

Don’t start by filling just one hole! Set the intention to expand your network strategically and consistently so you’re never left with a hole again! Set specific, measurable goals for how you will conduct your networking efforts, and set a stretch goal for yourself to engage with a thought leader or influencer who seems just a little bit out of reach. 

You never know what doors will open or new opportunities will present themselves when you network intentionally and strategically, but I can promise: you’ll be pleasantly surprised! 

A strong, supportive network is critical to our success as entrepreneurs. Obviously, we need the direct business results from referrals, target clients, and client advocates, but there’s so much more to gain with a rich network. 

Entrepreneurship is 80% mental, and building the right community can be the difference between feeling lonely and siloed in business and being pushed to grow, build resilience, and collaborate. 

I challenge you to commit to taking one concrete step this month to enhance your network. 

You won’t be sorry!

Your Friend and Coach, 

Angie M. Callen, CERW, CPCC, CPRW

The post The Sum of Your Circle appeared first on PARWCC.

Did that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up!? With 61 days to go until the new year, we’ve got a great opportunity to reflect and set ourselves up for success in 2025. 

Our clients have performance reviews to prepare for and résumé to update, which forces a look back at the accomplishments and achievements of the past year, but we don’t have that forced accountability to take stock of our progress. 

Consider this your nudge  

Here’s how you can dissect 2024’s experiences to celebrate your wins while planning how to push your business forward in the new year.

1. Conduct a Comprehensive Review of 2024

If you don’t know your numbers, you can’t monitor your progress, so start by gathering data. 

→ What services did you offer most? 

→ Which offerings were most profitable (accounting for your time as the “cost of goods.”)?

→ Which services were surprisingly over (or under) performing?

Reviewing how your services perform will be eye-opening; I remember the first time I went through this exercise and realized that my most frequently selling service also took most of my time! Yeah, I made some adjustments after that. 

In addition to the quantitative review above, I recommend pulling the analytics on client interactions, feedback, social media engagement, and other qualitative outcomes to see: 

→  Which services received the highest praise?

→ What services drew your ideal client type?

→ Who is that client type, and where did they come from?

→ What marketing channels drive the highest engagement and/or best leads?

The goal here is to identify trends and patterns that can tell you where your strengths lie, how your marketing is working for you, and what might need tweaking.

2. Learn from the Analysis

Understanding your business outcomes is one of the best ways to guide your focus in 2025. You never know—maybe it’s time to drop what’s lagging – when you didn’t even know “it” was lagging while doubling down on something surprisingly effective or profitable. 

→ Which of your marketing efforts paid off? 

Maybe your blog drove more engagement, or LinkedIn posts got more shares. Use this data to refine your marketing strategy and decide where to invest your energy.

→ What adjustments from 2023 did you make that led to the biggest wins? 

Was it a new service package? A pricing adjustment? Recognizing positive changes can help you replicate those outcomes at the next level!

→ What fell flat? 

We’ve all been there. Group career coaching programs have been my Achilles heel forever, and I just had to admit that it’s a service that doesn’t meet the expectations of my audience. 

These realizations aren’t failures but learning opportunities that help us work smarter, not harder! 

3. Set Clear, Achievable Goals for 2025

Whether you want to work through a formal SMART goals process or take your insights and turn them into goals, the big picture review will help you set realistic expectations for 2025 – and maybe some stretch goals, too, while reverse-engineering those goals into milestones, quarterly activities, and monthly actions that will stack up to get you there. 

Here are a few examples: 

→ Revenue Goals: Based on this year’s earnings, set a realistic yet ambitious revenue target for 2025 – make it at least the same percentage growth you saw from 2023 to 2205, and break it down quarterly to make tracking easier. 

→ New Service Offerings: Iterate, enhance, and optimize your offerings based on what you’ve learned this year from the market, résumé trends, new coaching tools, or other outcomes that highlight what makes you competitive and relevant.

→ Professional Development: As a coach, your growth is as crucial as your clients’. Plan to attend at least two professional workshops or seminars in 2025 to keep your skills sharp and network active. [Thrive is a clear no-brainer ;)]

4. Roadmap Your Year

Here’s where strategic planning gets real (and fun, if you ask me). 

Step 1: Block out time on your 2025 calendar for all the personal commitments you know about ahead of time – vacations, Fridays off (if you’re me), holidays, kid stuff, you get the gist – this ensures you maintain a work-life balance that keeps you at your best.

Step 2: Rough in and schedule major Launches and Events by planning major business milestones ahead of time. This could be introducing a new service, starting a new marketing campaign, or even onboarding a new technology – timing them right (and intentionally) can maximize impact without completely disrupting regular business operations (and life)!

Step 3: Set aside weekly or monthly time blocks for regular workloads, such as client consultations, content creation, and administration. Regular slots build a routine that you and clients can rely on, and also help you anticipate your maximize client load to be sure you’re filling that schedule with consistent revenue (while also not overdoing it, either)! 

In Summary

Reviewing the year behind can reveal some amazing insights to help you streamline your business and maximize the potential both it and you have. 

Get ready to make 2025 your most successful year yet!

Your Friend and Coach, 

Angie M. Callen, CERW, CPCC, CPRW

The post Year-End Reflection: Uncover Your Hidden Business Gems appeared first on PARWCC.

Patience may seem like a luxury you can’t afford, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Rarity of Patience in Modern Business

Why do we lack patience? Our digital world has us moving faster than ever, and instant gratification has become a way of life.

If you’re not getting rapid results, you’re failing. Or at least that’s what the never-ending stream of mass-appeal “grow your coaching business to six figures overnight” ads on my Facebook feed want me to believe.

The pressure to perform, generate leads, and bring home the bacon can overshadow the need for thoughtful, sustained growth. We’re often so focused on immediate needs – chasing the next client or the quickest revenue spike – that we neglect the consistent, systematic efforts that ensure long-term stability.

→ Sounds like something we’d tell an anxious job seeker, eh?

The Necessity of Patience for Business Owners

While counterintuitive, patience for business owners isn’t just a virtue – it’s our best strategy, especially when it comes to marketing, lead generation, and building consistent revenue.

Here’s why:

1. Cultivating Relationships: Whether it’s with clients, peers, or mentors, building meaningful relationships takes time. Patience allows these relationships to mature into networks that offer support, business, and opportunities, but it takes time to build a consistent referral base that drives reliable leads.

2. Marketing and Lead Generation: There is no magic wand to wave or potion to concoct that will take your business from zero to six figures overnight. Trust, brand loyalty, and visibility take time to build, as do marketing and lead generation strategies that take time to percolate. Rushing these processes can lead to a big waste of money, but more importantly, impatience can set unrealistic expectations that have you jumping from channel to channel without truly cultivating any one potential source.

3. Revenue Growth Expectations: When starting a business or in the early stages of growth, revenue can come in waves and be unpredictable. This is normal – and it’s normal for even the first year or two. What you don’t want to do is have one great month and say, “Great, I made it,” make big decisions based on that spike, and then you’re starving (literally and figuratively) for the next three. Don’t get me wrong, we want great months, but one doesn’t mean you know how to reproduce it, so take one great month and turn it into three back-to-back. Then take that three months and do it all over again, and now you have your formula for consistent revenue – see how important patience was to that sustainable growth?!

Patience in Practice: A Closer Look at Business Growth Areas

In addition to setting realistic expectations and goals for the revenue side of business, patience, and forethought can do a lot for other areas of your business. Speaking from experience, I naturally fall into the “I have an idea; let’s do it NOW” trap that can end up taxing teams or giving initiatives too little focus.

After working with a coach (a coach without a coach is like a doctor who won’t go to the doctor), I learned how to put ideas into execution at the right time.

I learned to be patient.

Here’s what that can do for you:

Strategic Planning: Long-term planning is only possible with patience. Set your vision, establish your goals, and create annual road maps that include launching new products or services, your time off, and other milestones you can lock in advance. This will keep you accountable for the activities you need to do to make that vision a reality while also keeping those “I have an idea” impulses in check!

Client Retention: Securing a new client is an achievement; keeping them is an art. Patience in your client engagements – and giving them the experience they want instead of the process you think they need – allows you to understand, meet, and exceed their expectations. Don’t rush into writing the résumé if they need a coaching session; don’t rush to close a sale if they need time. Fostering loyalty is more profitable in the long run than new client acquisition. It’s also more fun!

Building Your Skills: How to Be More Patient

1. Establish Minimums: When deploying new marketing strategies, lead generation channels, or even launching a new product or service, give it time. Pre-establish a timeline to gauge the effectiveness of any single initiative.

Hint: Three months is typically needed to see if marketing or lead generation strategies will provide an ROI. This period allows enough data accumulation to make informed decisions and see trends while avoiding the typical knee-jerk reaction to short-term fluctuations or a week of crickets.

2. Set Incremental Goals: Break down your larger business goals into smaller, manageable milestones.

Hint: Go back to the suggestion above about planning out your year. This will make big, hairy, audacious goals less daunting by breaking them down into smaller chunks, which also means more opportunities to celebrate wins (and celebrating reinforces patience and persistence).

3. Reflect and Adjust: Set regular monthly or quarterly intervals to review your business strategies, goals, and current outcomes.

Hint: Knowing your numbers helps you adjust your approach to maximize efforts, and a dose of patience will ensure the incremental goals and activities remain aligned with your long-term objectives and market realities.

In Summary

Cool it. No, just kidding – but maybe back off the need for instant gratification a touch?

There’s a time and place to be fast, and there’s a time and place to be slow, methodical, and thoughtful. This is just another example of a time to look in the mirror and give yourself a dose of the advice we give clients every day: consistent, methodical action paired with realistic expectations (translation: patience) will get you the reward.

Turtles win races, too, ya know.

Coach Well!

Your Friend and Coach,

Angie Callen

The post Patience is a Virtue Most of Us Don’t Have appeared first on PARWCC.