Imagine receiving a call the day after you sent an application for a job you really want, or having your ideal client booking a consultation call with you after they found you online. Sounds awesome, right? The thing is: having a great resume, LinkedIn Page or website is definitely important, but to cut through the noise and get the career & business opportunities you want, you need more than that! You need a powerful ally! You need videos! To show you, not just tell you,

Personal branding has become a bit of a buzzword that is sometimes associated with the idea of being salesy and even fake, or a topic that only the rich and famous should care about. This could not be further from the truth. The truth is we all have a personal brand, otherwise known as our reputation. This is not about being liked by everyone. On the contrary, when you try to appeal to everybody, you end up appealing to nobody. However, ask yourself these questions: Are you a

When was the last time you took a moment to appreciate a team member, a client, a business partner or your boss in a genuine way? Last week I received some great testimonials from some of my amazing clients and it made me feel really appreciated. Appreciation is not about saying "great job" to someone because they’ve just completed a task or achieved a target. That's great, of course, but appreciation is a lot more than that. Appreciating someone is acknowledging them for who

While in the past, personal branding was perceived as a fancy term, mostly associated to celebrities and politicians, today professionals across industries and geographical locations recognise it as a tool to stand out, connect, inspire and progress in their career and business. Every time you walk in a room, speak with someone, write an email, shoot a video or post your thoughts and updates on social media, your personal brand shows up. Not only that, it stays there once you

Differentiation is key if you want to build your personal brand to stand out and progress in your career and business, but how do you differentiate yourself in a noisy, competitive and hyperconnected world? Differentiation doesn't rely on how many certificates or years of experience you have, though they are very important too. It's really about who you are, how you do what you do and why you do it. It's the perspective and personality that you bring in everything you do, whe

We know feedback is important because it helps us see how we are perceived by people around us, realise what we are doing great and identify what we need to improve upon. However, it's the quality of the feedback that makes it a useful and an effective tool to grow and build our personal brand. Depending on what kind of feedback you are looking for, you really want to make sure you are asking the right question because the quality of the answer you’ll get will also depend on

Personal Branding is about communicating your value, in other words, your Personal Brand. However, before jumping into action to promote yourself in your organisation, look for a better job, or attract clients, a very important part of Personal Branding, for it to be authentic and effective, is how you define your Personal Brand. You can't communicate and grow your Personal Brand if you don't know (or clearly articulate) what your Personal Brand is about. Defining your Person

A very important part of my job is to continuously learn and understand my clients' challenges and goals so that I can continuously improve how I serve them as their Coach. My clients are usually new leaders or professionals who aspire to become leaders. As I talk with them a lot, I've noticed 3 challenges they face, which are not always immediately visible on the surface. This is a series of 3 videos where I talk about each of these challenges. In the first one I talked abou

A big part of the work that I do with my clients is about communication, and something that often comes up in our conversations is how to be more assertive. The reason why assertiveness is not always as easy as it sounds is that there are situations that activate internal triggers in us. They let our emotions prevail and push us into an aggressive or passive approach. An aggressive approach can create tension and damage relationships. A passive approach can lead to low self-e

When you find yourself in the same old pattern of overthinking and analysing the details of your work again and again, with the result that you leave your work unfinished or you don't get it done in timely manner, very often that happens because of your perfectionism. Perfectionism can cause you stress and it can actually hold you back from reaching your potential and creating results. This is especially true for leaders and ambitious professionals who always strive for the b

This is the second part of my 2 introductory videos on Personal Branding. In the first video, I explained what Personal Branding means and why it’s important. In this second video I talk about how Personal Branding works. While there are different types of Personal Branding processes, this video summarises my approach to it, based on my studies and experience, and it’s divided in 3 phases: Define, Communicate, Develop. It also takes into account the fact that each individual

When I first started Step Up with V, I was working as an Image Consultant advising professionals on their image and personal branding, to help them look and feel their best while remaining their authentic selves. I often used to get the question "What's Personal Branding?". It wasn't long time ago but in today's world things and ideas move fast, and in the past couple of years I've seen how the concept of Personal Branding has gained substance, popularity, and credibility. It

What do you do when you are not happy in your job? Very often we go through the following 3 phases: 1. Complain. We complain with friends, family, colleagues (those who won’t tell the boss), our cat or dog, and the neighbours too if they have been so unlucky to meet us on our way back from work on a bad day! 2. Give up (for a little while). We realise everyone is bored of our complaints (our dog or cat included), we can’t go back home every day angry and stressed out, and in

Did you know that when someone Googles you, your LinkedIn page is most of the times one of the first pages that appears in the search results?. Despite LinkedIn being the largest professional network online, with more than 467 million members in over 200 countries, I still see many professionals only use it to apply for jobs. Otherwise, they don't even remember when it was the last time they updated their page, and they are rarely active on it. Let me tell you, if that’s your

You are at your 3rd or 4th job in your career path, you worked in different companies and locations, you are good at what you do, but you’ve been feeling for some time that this is not where you see yourself going forward. You want to change career but have no idea about what direction to take, and if someone asks you “what do you want to do?’’, you freeze and respond: I don’t know. When we are kids we get asked more or less the same question, just in a different format: “wha

The year end is approaching and it’s that time when 2 distinctive types of people seem to show up everywhere. Those who are excited about the new year, who make a huge list of resolutions and all the things they are going to do (and stop doing), and those who don’t believe in any of that, and think with a bit of distance (including a pinch of scepticism) ''let’s see what this new year will bring''. Whether you are in the first or second group, I’d like you to hold on for a m

The other day I asked a client of mine how many hours he had spent on a presentation he prepared for a company´s event. After a moment of hesitation he said ''too many''. This point came up during our usual update at the beginning of the session, which started with a simple question ''how have you been?'' and was followed by a simple answer: ''busy and stressed''. He then added he stayed up till 4am to work on it. Sound familiar? I totally empathise with that because it happe

Do you know the popular saying ‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life’?. There are times in our career when those words get in our mind as a morning wake up alarm that keeps getting louder, unless we finally decide to turn it off and get out of bed. Sometimes (just like it happens with the wake up alarm), we decide to snooze it (at least for awhile), other times we are more prompt to respond to it. When the alarm is about how we feel in our

Maybe it's the end of the summer and the post holidays blues, or maybe it's the time off that gave you space to finally pause and reflect. Almost without realising, between one ice cream and the other, you are thinking about your career again, and the conclusion is: I need a new job! You start listing all the reasons why you don't like your current role, your boss, your coworkers, your office, and yes, even that old coffee machine (because, hey, coffee is very important!). Be

In ´The Act of Personal Branding. Part 1: What It means and Why it´s Important´ I explained the meaning of Personal Branding and highlighted its benefits. It's now time to discuss how a Personal Branding process works. At Step Up with V, a Personal Branding process is composed of 3 phases: Define. Communicate. Develop. Personal Branding Process. DEFINE Let's start with phase 1, Define. Define is the foundation of a Personal Branding process. People often tend to start with co