Become a confident storyteller for your brand to stand out and sell more. I'm a Visual Brand Coach and Award-Winning Photographer (featured in NY Times, Instagram, Apple). I help badass women entrepreneurs own their stories, showcase their uniqueness, and create brands that are downright magical. Ready to make your brand sizzle? Get your hands on my free brand guide packed with five essential ingredients to create an unforgettable brand experience.
Good work does not always speak for itself
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Reader, I took my son to another business mixer today. No nudist community this time. 😂 Just a regular room full of people there to connect. And if you have ever walked into one of those rooms not quite sure where to stand, who to talk to, or how to start, you know the feeling. He walked in a little easier this time. He talked to several people, one of them an electrician who had just started his own business, after quitting a job that had turned toxic. He has an 18-year-old son and tells him the same thing I tell mine. I did not say I told you so. Or maybe I did. 😉 My son smiled because he has heard those words from me enough times that they are starting to sound less like his mom being annoying and more like something that might actually be true. And this time, instead of collecting cards he would probably never look at again, he connected with several people on LinkedIn right there in the room. That is the part of networking I think matters most. You meet someone. You hear their story. You find a reason to stay connected. It only happened because he walked into a room he did not really want to walk into, comfort zone and elevator speech included. Most of us have our own version of that room, where we walk in, introduce ourselves to strangers, and put ourselves out there when staying home would be much easier. My son joined LinkedIn in high school and now has more than 700 connections. I helped him optimize his profile in college so people can quickly see who he is and what he does. If your profile isn't doing that for you yet, tomorrow I'll share what I'd change. Alpana | Brand Strategist and Photographer P.S. Here's Rowan's LinkedIn profile if you want to see it in action. His About section used to read like this, from when we worked on it together a couple years back. I noticed today that he updated it and it is pretty cool :-) This is my son's LinkedIn banner with an AI image that ties his name into the work he does. It is never too early or too late to update your profile. I had my son set up his in high school, ahead of most of his peers. If you have a teen, you can do the same for them. |
The Secret Sauce is Your Story
Become a confident storyteller for your brand to stand out and sell more. I'm a Visual Brand Coach and Award-Winning Photographer (featured in NY Times, Instagram, Apple). I help badass women entrepreneurs own their stories, showcase their uniqueness, and create brands that are downright magical. Ready to make your brand sizzle? Get your hands on my free brand guide packed with five essential ingredients to create an unforgettable brand experience.
Dear Reader, I woke up pretty early this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I thought I’d edit a few photos. Somehow, I ended up rewriting an entire page of my website. That was not the plan. But once I started I realized the old page wasn’t showing enough of my recent work. People often come to me thinking they need one thing. It might be a LinkedIn photo or a personal portrait. But rarely do we create just one type of image. We usually create a mix of personal and professional...
DearReader, My son finally got a job. And I don't think I realized how much I was holding my breath for him until he did. Rowan graduated from UCSB a year and a half ago with a degree in data science. This is also a generation that went to college during COVID, when very little about college life was normal. Then they graduated into another shift. AI had taken off and the job market was changing.And a degree in a field that had seemed full of opportunity didn't necessarily mean finding a job...
Reader, Your profile photo might be an old version of you. I've been thinking about how often women step into a new chapter of their lives, but the way they see themselves, and the way they show up, hasn't quite caught up. They're still carrying an image of an older version of who they were, even though there is so much more to who they are now. I get it. Work, motherhood, caregiving, life and everything else in between. There's always something that gets pushed ahead of making time for...