Patrick Mosher walks through finding your personal brand by identifying your superpower. He uses a three-word exercise and journaling prompts about moments when you stood out, then validates it by asking people close to you what three words describe you at your best. Mosher's own superpower: cutting through ambiguity in executive rooms to surface one clarifying insight.
Chapters
The first one is thinking about brand identity. So let's talk about the strategy for developing your brand identity. And you've already done some work on this with identifying what your 3 words are, what is your superpower. You've said, here's where I've been max tapped into my superpower. Those are all parts of what is your brand. And knowing the people in this community, I'd love to have conversations with you about like, This is what I think my brand is, and I go like, oh, this is what I think your brand is. It's like, oh, those don't match. Oh, well, that's, that's real interesting. That's like, well, maybe, maybe I need to do some more work with that. So let's talk about discovering that superpower. So take some time right now and journal. Take those words that you had and journal How you're different than other people. How do you run concurrent to your, uh, countercurrent to how people are flowing? One of the times in your life you did something different that made you go like, oh, and people remember that. How do people remember you? They don't remember you from being in the masses. They remember you from being something different, from being positively deviant. So take some moments here and journal. How did you— how do you appear different in the world? And maybe think about how do your clients think about you? How do your clients think about you? And if you don't know, you should ask them. But how do people think about you? So write down, this is my superpower. How do people think about me differently than others? Take some moments. Take some moments. Cool. Just looked at the chat. Put some more of these words that you— that are you in the chat. I'd love to see those. Love to see those. So I'm gonna ask you to do— this is probably a homework assignment, but think about if somebody asked you What is your superpower? Or what's your personal brand? Or what makes you unique? Or what makes you different? Any of those questions, what would your answer be? What would your answer be? And I've been asked that question, and a lot actually. And I found, you know, as I honed this down and I figured out, here's my story, and I'd encourage you to have your own story, something that's unique to you. Nobody else would use this story to describe. So if you say, "I work really hard and I'm good with people," hmm, there's a lot of people on the planet that are like that. It's like, "Well, I'm really good with clients." I've heard that one too. "I navigate executives really well." Well, I've heard that one too. Here's how I describe my unique talent, and I've done this in front of clients. They've said, "So Patrick, what makes you unique?" I said, "You know, my superpower, my uniquity, my talent is that when there's a cloud of ambiguity, there's a cloud of ambiguity within a team like a group of executives and they're all coming at it from different points of view, different styles, and I have this unique talent of being able to go into that center and going like, "Is this what everybody's talking about?" And somehow most of the people in the room, if not all, go like, "That's it!" Somehow reaching through that, I've taken that cloud of ambiguity and created that drop that everybody can agree on. And I call that— I'm a great precipitator. I remember I was a chemical engineer, so this is relevant to my whole background, but I'm a great precipitator. This cloud of ambiguity, be it in orals when we're in front of clients and everybody's talking about different things, I'm like, "But is this what you're really looking for?" Yes, that sells. When I'm in a room with executives and they're going like, "We're trying to make this decision," it's like, "Is this what is confusing everybody? Because let's clarify this piece." And they're like, That's it. And they make it this multi-million dollar decision. Ah, being that precipitator, that's one of my superpowers. Be able to describe your superpower in a very unique way because that's your deviance. That's what makes you different. So, what's that story look like? And be sensorial when you describe that. When I talk about a precipitator, people feel the moisture in the air. They feel that cloud and it might be a little uncomfortable and then they go like, "Oh, but there's that precipitation, that little drop, that refreshing little drop that makes everything fresh." So that's mine. Hope that helps you to think about what story would you tell about what your superpower is. Now, here's a challenge for you and I love this challenge. So you came up with 3 words. About who you are, what your superpower is. About 3 years ago, maybe, yeah, 3 years ago, I asked about, I think it was 54 people. I just sent them an email and said, "Tell me what 3 words describe me being my best self." I sent that out. Family, friends, clients, collaborators, team members, I sent them to my kids. So I sent that out and people would send back 3 words. What was fascinating to me about this, and I encourage you to do this, my challenge for you, when I sent that out, I had 3 words that described me, that I thought described me. What came back? One, the top word that people came up with, I didn't even imagine. Would be the word that they came up with for me. So how I was out in the world was different than how I saw myself out in the world. Get the feedback from people. I asked this question and the top word that came out for me was compassionate. And I hope you think of me that way, which is great, but that was not one of the words that I had in my list, being compassionate. So ask your community, ask your peeps, What are 3 words that describe me being my best self? My family, that was incredible to get that from them, my brothers and sisters. And then the one that I love best that somebody came back with, 3 words to describe me, people get creative, they said legendary Jedi master. I was like, ooh, I'll take that. I'm a legendary Jedi master. That's so cool. So people will be— and it's such a— it's an ego boost, so it's cool for that too, but it makes you feel good about who you are, but it helps you clarify that personal brand of who you are. So that's my challenge for you.
