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Für Elise

Für Elise, one of the most romantic classical music compositions ever written by Beethoven. Whenever I hear it, it does something to my gut because it feels so honest and full of love. Nobody really knows who Elise was as the composition was found 40 years after his death. So it’s a mystery.

But why am I talking about this? And what does this have to do with personal branding?
Gimme a minute to explain.
One of the things I don’t necessarily show or promote is my love and passion for classical music. It started in 1994 when I was a student sharing a house with a girl who loved classical music. At the time only pop music was in my CD player. But she introduced me to ballet music and hence my road to appreciating classical compositions started. One of my favorite compositions is Clair de lune by Debussy. And I love love love Lakme by Delibes.

What you focus on expands
Now I don’t find that it’s necessary to focus on this when talking about my passion for music, because it doesn’t really contribute that much to the story I am trying to tell. Often times women ask me what they should focus on when sharing their personal story. They say “I have so much that I love and I can’t choose”. My advise is to follow the red thread in their life and only pick out the most essential pieces that will add value to their story. For me classical music doesn’t really add to my story. My added value is that I talk from my own experience and artists that I have worked with. And unfortunately I have never worked with any of these classical artists ;-).

We live in a busy world and nobody is able to remember everything you will share. So it’s really important to focus your story on the goals you are trying to achieve. What is essential to your story? What kind of result do you really want? What do you need to imprint in people’s brain about who you are as a person and what kind of value you can add to their lives? What makes it really personal and therefore adds to the authenticity of your story?

The person who knows all about this is Buffi Duberman, check out her BrandedU video here. Learn from how she is sharing her story.

Last week we held our very first social drinks of the Harper’s Bazaar network academy in collaboration with BrandedU. You can read the article at Bazaar here. Even though it was social drinks we still wanted to add a learning part. So we were honored to have the lovely Lena Olivier (COO of Recruitz.io) as one of our speakers and she spoke about focusing on your own unique value.

I hope to see you at our next event: the High tea at The College Hotel on the 27th of August.

XOXO,
Nancy