Standout Women: Personal Branding, PR & Thought Leadership For Visionary Female Entrepreneurs
How to Find Your Zone of Genius for Your Personal Brand with Humaira Akhter
Oct 13, 2023Season 2Episode 66
Michelle B. Griffin
What if the key to unlocking your full potential was already within you? And how do you exactly do this by putting yourself out there with a personal brand?
Answer:
In this week's personal brand therapy session, my expert guest, Humaira Akhter, a growth strategist for female solopreneurs, leaders, and non-profit founders is here to break this down in five easy steps with her Genius Operating System.
Learn the 5 steps, why you should think of yourself as a visible lighthouse, and how to stay in your zone of genius as you build your personal brand for professional growth.
Michelle B Griffin is a thought leadership-focused personal brand and PR strategist and founder of Standout Women Media who positions established women experts and authors into visible industry authorities.
If you're ready to up-level, a powerful personal & PR brand foundation are key. Become clear, confident, and cohesive in your branding, positioning, messaging, LinkedIn, and PR strategy in 30 days with my Visible Brand Authority Accelerator™.
What if the key to unlocking your full potential was already within you? And how do you exactly do this by putting yourself out there with a personal brand?
Answer:
In this week's personal brand therapy session, my expert guest, Humaira Akhter, a growth strategist for female solopreneurs, leaders, and non-profit founders is here to break this down in five easy steps with her Genius Operating System.
Learn the 5 steps, why you should think of yourself as a visible lighthouse, and how to stay in your zone of genius as you build your personal brand for professional growth.
Michelle B Griffin is a thought leadership-focused personal brand and PR strategist and founder of Standout Women Media who positions established women experts and authors into visible industry authorities.
If you're ready to up-level, a powerful personal & PR brand foundation are key. Become clear, confident, and cohesive in your branding, positioning, messaging, LinkedIn, and PR strategy in 30 days with my Visible Brand Authority Accelerator™.
Hey everybody, it's Michelle. Just pop it in real quick to tell you what today's episode is all about. You know, a lot of times you will hear me say on this podcast and I know, on LinkedIn put yourself out there. I'm always talking about the power and the payoff of doing so. Right Cause opportunities, everything comes out when you get visible and put yourself out there. But guess what, before you can do that, we have to be self-aware. Now, that's not a woo-woo word. It truly is something that you really need to know about who you are, who you're not and who you're here for Really foundational stuff I talk about all the time because that leads us to learning about our zone of genius, so we can really get out there, find that North Star and get out there and do the things we're meant to do and we want to do right To get to our full potential.
Speaker 1:
So I know you're going to love my conversation with Humaira Actor, who is a growth, who works with female soloponors, leaders and non-profit founders to get them in their zone of genius. She served 12 years in the corporate world, working from small startups to multi-million dollar brands, and she's worked at every stage of the spectrum and design, brand marketing and streamlining the process of managing reputation assets. Now she runs her own consultancy agency, is a mom of twin seven-year-old boys who keep her busy, and really loves bringing a transformative experience to unlock both personal and professional growth. So we're going to get into her zone of genius operating system. She's going to tell us about the power of visibility, why you should think of yourself as a lighthouse and that's especially good for those who really don't like to talk about themselves how to find and stay in your zone of genius and why owning it is so important. So there's a lot jam-packed in our short episode, but I know you're going to really enjoy it and have some takeaways. I know I sure did.
Speaker 1:
All right, let's get into today's conversation. Hey there, it's the brand therapist, michelle B Griffin, and welcome to your weekly personal brand therapy session. This is the podcast that helps solo experts like you get unstuck and get on your way with a brand that takes your places. I'm super excited you're here. Now let's get going with today's session. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode, another personal branding session. I'm the brand therapist, michelle B Griffin, and today we have an important topic. It's one you hear me talk about all the time when you're ready to put yourself out there but you face the roadblocks. Who am I to say and do all this? Who am I even to be the expert and who am I to be self-promotional? So many of us block ourselves because we think it's all the wrong reasons. So today's guest is going to help us dispel that myth. So, without further ado, I'd like to welcome my friend and zone of genius, finder Kumaira an actor. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for welcoming me, and I'm super excited to be on the show.
Speaker 1:
You're gonna help us and everyone listening talk this through because, as part of ask the brand therapist personal branding talk show, not only do I have solo episodes, but I bring an expert guest like you and you really are genius at helping people find their zone of genius. So tell us real quick about who you are, who you serve, how you do it, and then let's get into tackling that problem so we can get more people out there.
Speaker 2:
So thank you for that intro. I like to think of myself as the corporate escape artist, where the last five years been my life's work is helping people with experience and solopreneurs. Who are out there and the online world feels like everything's on a roll. But me, as a solopreneur who is raising twin boys and running a business, managing my time, creating new opportunities. It's a hard journey for a lot of people, but having to go through this journey has been so rewarding because you learn so much about yourself and being able to share that and hopefully I am inspiring other people to do the same is the journey that I'm really excited about.
Speaker 1:
You and I met a couple of years ago and we share a love of personal branding, but not all the fluff and the hype and all the hacks and all the noise we hear in that space. We both admitted that we have to use that word sometimes because that's like the search term and people get it. But you and I go deeper than that. That's how we bonded. You're almost the person people need to go to before me because you really help them bust through and find that self-awareness, that self-identity that is ultra important because female solopreneurs they wear a lot of hats.
Speaker 1:
If you don't have 100% alignment of who you are internally, the rest isn't going to matter. I always say internal clarity first all the way. So I know you through your podcast, your work and with your new framework. I'd love for you to tell us about that, because I'm such a geek about when people have frameworks right, because I think it helps us all just wrap our brain and make it so memorable. Yours is really around the zone of genius. Tell us why that's important and how do you do that with the framework.
Speaker 2:
It's funny because I've been an observer seeing that how people are taking action right, and why do we take actions? Where does it come from? Is it coming from an inspired place or is it coming from? I have to do this. I guess I have to be on camera. I guess I have to be on the show with you, michelle, because it's what people need. So what is that emotional attachment? Where is it coming from?
Speaker 2:
So the framework really evolved over the last few years. People coming to me hey, I need help with my brand or design creative assets. Can you help me create a consistency? I want to bring everything unified. I don't want to make it look like I'm scattered. I want to be more confident in how I'm showing up.
Speaker 2:
So we did that for many years and after a while, I checked back on a client one day and I texted her out of the blue and I said, hey, so just curious how things are going. What have you done since we've worked together? We did all this work for six months, trying to create a roadmap, building the strategic direction and everything, and you had the utmost clarity that you need. And that person is still stuck. Even though everything's been laid out, they're still stuck on implementing it. They're still stuck on whether it's good enough. They're still stuck on what if this doesn't work. So that's why I had to really peel the layers and look back and say what is truly missing here. And yes, there's a lot of mindset hacks and productivity hacks and all those. The market is just filled with noise. I always say the noisier the world gets, the quieter. You have to get inside, and when you can quiet the mind inside and create the space for yourself, that's when creativity actually happens. But you can't do that when you're, when you're doom-scrolling, you're constantly comparing yourself.
Speaker 1:
I love it. I did the same thing this past summer. It really happens to me every summer. The first summer a year ago, I I got sick and then I went silent and got even more confused. But this summer things changed because I purposely did it and I just started detaching myself. I had to get off LinkedIn. I just had to start listening for the answers, and what got me through was talking to other people too, because always fine when I talk to someone else, answers to start connecting, popping up and then connecting the dots.
Speaker 1:
But you're right, as I always say, the answers are inside. The answers were inside of me many years ago when I was stuck for five years wanting to leave my job, but I was looking for, just like you say, all the wrong things this course, this certification, this credential. I had it all on paper, well equipped, but I was looking externally for the answers, and so I think it's a little bit of identity and imposter syndrome To connect the dots on that, and when you have your clarity, it's like your North Star and it lights the way, and I know the lighthouse theme is something that you've been really talking about, unlinked done. So I want to get into that the lighthouse concept.
Speaker 2:
I threw it out there to see what kind of response I would get on LinkedIn and it was positive. A lot of people were like, oh, this is this refrain is so much healthier and better. A lot of women that I've spoken to and work with they hate the idea of being in the spotlight. It's very uncomfortable, very unnerving, to be someone if you've been raised in a certain culture, if you've been Told in some some ways where you know you're not supposed to be the loud one, you're not supposed to be the outspoken one, you're someone who sat in the meetings quiet. You never. You had all these ideas brewing but we're afraid to speak up. As I talk more and more with different type of Professional women, it seemed to be the theme. It goes back to their professional background, how they've been treated at Workplaces or how they've been treated by parents or culture. So we subconsciously adopted them but never questioned them. Are they really our beliefs or somebody else's?
Speaker 1:
beliefs, absolutely. It's all circling back to the self-awareness which you help people, self-idently, self-awareness and if you don't grasp that, then you start finding imposter syndrome. You listen to the noise, you do all the things that get you off track shiny objects you just become an hamster, will have a mess, because you truly are here with your expertise to get out there and share with the world, serve the world and Make a profit, make a bottom line impact, an all for everyone. But I get it. I've been there too. I have gotten on track so many times.
Speaker 1:
But when you self-correct like my framework is the brand GPS when you're going down the road and you have to recalculate and you have the same thing with your genius operating system, there's all the things we want to get out there, but we don't know who we are. Or we listen to all the wrong people and let that influence us. But we need to go back and figure out how do we build your perspective? That's number one on my framework too. What is my perspective on who I am? And all that because that will direct you out there the right way. So it walk us through the steps of the genius operating system.
Speaker 2:
I know we're not going to get into the details and crux of it, but Imagine there's the root, there's the tree. It needs different kind of nursery as it's in different stages, in different phases, and at the end you have this full-grown tree that is Living and energized and flourishing. Right the five phases that I walk people through is okay. What are your values? What are your principles? What is your manifesto? Are you clear on them? And it's not enough to just know them. Are you internalizing them and how is it internalizing and how is it? Sometimes it's so easy for us to have something cherry-picked for us and we haven't really quite questioned them, like, hey, does it really? Is it against my values? And that's where we get tested. It's not. Your values are not tested when you're in a good place, when you're in a bad place in life. That's when you get tested.
Speaker 1:
So number one is what the manifesto is there, like it's manifesto within it.
Speaker 2:
It's basically it's internalizing your principles. Okay, and phase two is uncovering your soul. Print is finding out that this is where we get into the self-awareness work and Just dissecting your internal lens and your external lens, how you see yourself versus how others see you, and that the third phase, which is the only superpower, understanding what are the skill sets that you bring and what are some of the stretch thing that you haven't quite explored and Interest that could really shape into something that you could become Number three?
Speaker 1:
is that what are number four?
Speaker 2:
and to get to the, the full-grown tree, which take time, by the way you're still, the process is ever, never ending. And and then the fourth is optimizing your time and energy. What are some of the energy sucking Activities, task that drains you, that includes people, that includes your community circle, all of those things. We're assessing that right and then finding anything you Systemize. And then the last step, which is the exciting phase, is the Creating this eco visibility, not just within yourself but externally. That visibility that comes with price, personal responsibility, but it also comes with Understanding that I'm not just doing this for me, but I'm doing it for the people who really needs my help.
Speaker 1:
Ultimately, it has to benefit somebody and so when you have complete alignment who you are and who you want to show up and stand out for and all that good stuff and then you're going the next mile with helping them, staying aligned Not all the shiny objects and just wasting time, energy and all the efforts on the too many things you get a laser focus. So yours is a tremendous framework for both personal and professional growth. I absolutely think that is so brilliant. As we wrap up today, I want to really get into the visibility aspects. You can't just pop off and be visible. It's process and you just walked us through all the components to get that self-awareness To identify who you are.
Speaker 1:
Let's do that imposter syndrome and just continuously stay in your lane because, as you say, it's not a one-and-done, it's a journey and it's an evolution. Really, you just keep getting better and growing and it's really personal development. So let's get into. This is a real Important part of my mission is always telling people put yourself out there, always say visibility is not vanity. Why is Visibility so important? When you're 100% aligned now on who you are and where you want to go, that's a very strong question.
Speaker 2:
If you're not visible, you owe something to someone, and that's someone is Waiting for you, and this is my coaches, my mentors tell me if it's not you, then who? If it's not now, then when? And the second thing is it's a form of self actualization. We have all this hidden potential that we haven't fully captured. So when we put ourselves out there, when we become visible, we're activating those sensors. We're actually practicing what we preach. That takes a lot of self-awareness. It takes a lot of genuine capabilities, genuine alignment within yourself. Not everybody is committed to do that. We're talking to the ones that are committed to doing so.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. I say I'd like to really help those who are ready to bet on themselves and those who are ready to better themselves, because that's exactly what you'll do when you get out there. So it's almost like you got to check yourself at the door Are you sure you want to go on this journey? I don't want to take you halfway there and you're like no, change your mind, because you have to be all in. But to bring this full circle, you're helping people realize that, yeah, I want to do it. But then you're like okay, let's make sure you're 100 percent internally checked in and then show you the way to get there and then save that time. One last thing, though.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, if we are not taking responsibility, we're not actually doing favors for the next generation. They're not going to be able to create new opportunities for themselves. So we do have a responsibility to break through the noise and be visible.
Speaker 1:
It's to leave a legacy. So, Kumara, thank you so much. I've been trying to chat for a while now on this topic. Today, just a recap we are solving the problem of self-awareness. Before you can put yourself out there, you have to be really self-aware of who you are and who you're not, and who you're here for. Through learning your zone of genius, you really can get that North Star to stay in your lane and get out there. Do the things you're meant to do, because it's truly bettering yourself and growing your potential. So thank you so much for being a guest today. We appreciate it. All right, everybody. That's a wrap for today's session. Thank you for listening. I'll catch you next week, Take care. That's a wrap for today's brand therapy session. Need help with your personal branding journey? Then head on over to the brandtherapistio and grab my free resources to get going today with your brand. Until next time, keep putting yourself out there. You have a brand to build, a message to share and people to impact. Take care, everyone. I'll talk to you soon.