Revealing Genius | Brand Strategy for Accomplished Leaders

Category: Tell About Your Personal Brand

Articulate your executive personal brand story/your personal brand message. If you can’t articulate it, you can’t establish it with others.

From Brand Declaration to Magazine (or Other Media) Placement
Executive personal branding supports a positive presence in your channels of choice.
A female co-founder CEO leverages her company brand declaration (which parallels her personal executive brand) each time she publishes her “Living Well With Laura Henshaw” column in Vogue magazine.
This excerpt introducing Henshaw’s Jan. 14 “Controversial opinion” column in Vogue also underscores what she and her Australian company Kic stand for—their “why.”
A recent study has found that 34% of New Year resolutions are associated with weight loss. It’s embedded in us, through toxic diet culture, that with a new year, we should strive to weigh less, drop a size, restrict our diet, “bounce-back.” The list goes on.
Aesthetic-based resolutions can be so harmful. That’s why at Kic, we’ll never condone before and after photos. Because essentially, we’re telling ourselves that our “before”—as we are, right in this moment—is not enough. But this is your reminder that your weight does not define your worth. You are enough, just as you are.
Notably, this is the message Henshaw communicates in every media interaction because she understands a Revealing Genius tenet: “The hallmark of every iconic brand is consistency.”
In keeping with this, Henshaw’s co-founder, Steph Claire Smith, recently leveraged Kic’s brand declaration and her personal executive brand in her Jan. 12 Marie Claire article, “Steph Claire Smith’s Tips to Stick to Your Resolutions on ‘World Quitter’s Day.’”
Smith expresses the big idea behind the brand very concisely in her bio on that piece:
Steph is the co-founder of Australian health & wellness app Kic. It was her personal experience with toxic wellness, perpetuated by social media and the modelling industry, that sparked a fire in her belly to make a difference, rewrite the diet “rule book”… and help others build a healthy and more sustainable relationship with food & exercise.
Going through the Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ process from Revealing Genius helped these two leaders clarify their personal and company brands, learn how to tell their unique brand stories and affirm their brands until they felt them in their bones.
In addition to supporting them in their media endeavors, the pair’s branding work also helped them rebuild the messaging for a Series A pitch deck to secure funding that will enable the two female founders to drive a global health and wellness movement through Kic.
During the excavate step of the process, the two discovered their two-word purpose statement: lighting the way. They continued to clarify their brand and tell it as they wrote this transformation statement: We inspire people to take care of themselves, so they feel confident in who they are and believe they have everything they need to be enough. And when you read what they write in the media, you can feel their conviction about what they are doing—which comes from the affirmations part of the process.
You, too, can leverage personal executive branding and your resulting brand declaration to support solid media appearances—and confidently go after funding for your start-up as well.
What Is This Foundational Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ Process?
The Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ process that Henshaw and Smith used is a bespoke methodology designed to be swift, thorough and energizing. It is built on many small and fun experiences and exercises uniquely positioned to help leaders excavate what they stand for and who they most want to serve; learn strategies for effectively telling others about their brand and exercises; and finally affirm their brand so completely that they can feel it in their bones. The process allows leaders like Henshaw, Smith and you! to choose whether to approach personal branding a little at a time or all at once.
Gaining consumer media visibility and obtaining critical funding are not the only possible positives that can stem from going through the Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ process from Revealing Genius. The methodology has also been used successfully by many leaders to get their dream job, obtain a board seat, become incredibly effective at public speaking, change careers (and create their dream job in the process), navigate uncertainty, write a winning business plan, develop a one-sheet professional biography or elevator pitch, make their LinkedIn page (and their social media presence overall) more purpose- and power-ful, and lead a highly engaged team. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Gain more insight into doing executive personal branding and developing your brand declaration using this time-proven approach! Get instant access to the free Revealing Genius 10-minute webinar, sign up for our Excavate-Tell-Affirm™ Brand Leadership Summit or take our online course. We would be honored to work with you 1:1.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
February 23, 2024
This Year, Resolve to Craft Your Impactful Narrative
Harness the transformative power of storytelling to shape your executive personal brand and drive organizational success.
For healthcare leaders, storytelling in the form of an impactful narrative goes beyond communication. It’s integral to shaping our executive personal brands.
Framing discussions with a relatable, impactful narrative becomes a means to convey information while emphasizing what we stand for as leaders. Sharing our signature story has a profound impact, inspiring others like no one else can.
Neuroscientific studies, including research by Paul J. Zak, show storytelling stimulates oxytocin production, enhancing information protection and strengthening connections.
Beyond communication, storytelling catalyzes community and shared purpose. Leaders using narratives to illustrate organizational values and examples of transformative care shape a cohesive workforce and cultivate a positive organizational culture. Our stories provide crucial context, particularly in healthcare, where decisions directly impact patients.
Whether it’s delivering a TEDTalk or a closed-door pep talk, publishing your first book or writing an important email, pitching for millions in funding or closing a sales deal, interviewing for a job or coaching a protégé, consider using your “story” for impact.
Astute healthcare leaders like us recognize storytelling’s transformative power. We all have a unique story. Revealing Genius can help you learn to excavate it and use it strategically to contribute to improved patient care, organizational success and a powerful articulation of our leadership values.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
February 1, 2024
Your Signature Brand Story Is the Only Thing Your Competition Cannot Duplicate
10 questions: clues to what you stand for
Excavating our signature brand story takes a bit of self-reflection, and we might have more than one. In our live, facilitated Summit and online self-paced course, we introduce disruptive questions to get us thinking. These questions have proven to uncover nuggets of gold. Set a timer for three minutes and try on one or more of the following prompts. You may be delightfully surprised at what comes up:
1) Tell me in your own words about you, what’s your story?
2) Tell me about your current state and future state: Where are you now? What are you striving for?
3) If you had one minute to offer three to five bullet points that summarize your strengths, what would you say?
4) What are one to three of your proudest accomplishments and why?
5) What is the big, relevant change in the world that you are passionate about? (For example, Arianna Huffington is addressing lack of sleep. She posits it is endemic to our society.)
6) What is your favorite quote or mantra that you live by?
7) What are three of your core values?
8) If you could do just one TED Talk, what would your topic be?
9) Who are your heroes (could be living, deceased, even a cartoon character) and most importantly, why.
10) What is your extraordinary why?
Once you have spent three minutes with one or more of these prompts, list a headline for a possible signature story that only you could tell, one that your competition couldn’t touch.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
February 1, 2024
Will We Position and Message Our Brands On Purpose This Year?
#messaging matters.
One of the fundamentals of brand leadership that we teach in our live, facilitated Summit and our self-paced online course is to get clear on our purpose and build our compelling brand narrative around it.
Therefore, this issue is chock-full of tools to direct our attention to being on purpose:
- Find your two-word purpose with this affordable 10-minute tool
- Invest in a Dream Book, the ultimate daily tool to remind us to lead on purpose (I use it every day and give it as a gift.)
- Listen to The Great Work of Your Life segment on the power of purpose and get jazzed
- Schedule 90 minutes to co-create your Brand Declaration and gain clarity, once and for all, on why you exist to serve.
- Check out Simon Sinek’s TEDTalk on Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action, one of the all-time most viewed in the world
#BrandOnPurpose
Being a steward of our executive personal brands is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have strategy for ourselves, our teams and our organizations.
That’s our wish for you, to pursue what rings your bells and message it in an authentic way so that it resonates with your “beloved avatar” (target audience) and brings you the impact and fulfillment you deserve.
#RiseAbovetheNoise
Your “what” is easier for your audience to understand when you know your “why.”
Do you feel stuck, not sure what to do next? Feeling just a little passionless or purposeless or totally overwhelmed? Maybe experienced a recent loss in employment and/or direction and recovery has been slower than normal? How about knowing for sure that you aren’t in the right place, but struggling to articulate what “the right place” looks like?
Then a Brand Declaration is for you. This is a bespoke process where you will join an elite group of people who have committed the time and energy to “give words” to their true north and calling. Arguably one of the most important exercises you will engage in for your career. A vital component of leadership and personal development, it will ground you in your core values and enable you to say yes to areas where you have quantifiable impact and say no respectfully to things that don’t serve you anymore. Even if “what” you do changes throughout time, you will always be guided by your “why.” You will leave with a succinct one-pager that captures:
- Your purpose (two words)
- Your “why” statement (one sentence)
- Your hows (up to nine)
Recent feedback on the Brand Declaration: “Appreciate this more than you can imagine. | I am excited for the first time in months about my future. | It is as if you awaken people from their slumber. | Today’s brand declaration went places that completely surprised me and “my why” is exactly my why, and has been for decades and I did not consciously know it. | Thank you so much for putting fuel into my tank.”

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
January 1, 2024
What Energy Are You Creating With Your Words?
When we are intentional, we can make beautiful music in the world.
What energy are you creating with your words?
Each word we speak or write has a vibratory signature that creates waves in the same way that a note of music creates.
Similar to musical notes, our words live amongst communities of other words and change in relationship to the words that surround them as well as how they are expressed. For example, legato is smooth and flowing and its opposite, staccato, is sharp, quick, detached.
Whether we’re speaking to our baby, our boss or to an audience of hundreds of our “beloved avatars” (target audience), our words have a powerful impact. If we are unconscious of the energy behind our words, we run the risk of creating noise. However, when we are intentional, we are capable of making beautiful music in the world. At Revealing Genius, that is our wish for you.
In this issue, you’ll read about: energy management vs time management, a way to instantly increase your energy, a new book on energy based on neuroscience and more. Thank you for being part of our community.
What You Say Yes to Speaks Volumes About Your Brand
At Revealing Genius, we don’t believe in time management, we advocate for energy management instead. What gives you energy? What detracts from your energy? Take a moment now and do a look back at your calendar for last week. What made you come alive? Look ahead to the upcoming week or month. What are you looking forward to (or not).
In our flagship online brand leadership course, we always start with energy management before we begin messaging any executive personal brand. Here’s a downloadable tearsheet from the course. It’s a powerful three-minute exercise called “More of this Please” that identifies what enables your natural energy to flow. You’ll be astounded at the insights this simple self-reflection reveals. We have clients who have said they have used this exercise for years to gain clarity and confidence on their way forward.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
October 1, 2023
Executive Personal Branding Can Change Fear to Excitement
Take these three steps to shift your mindset and face your next challenge with calm assurance and high performance.
Do feel afraid before you perform surgery? Before you lead an all-staff presentation? Before you go into a hospital merger negotiation? Doing executive personal branding can convert your understandable fear about such situations into the kind of excitement that can help you work with calm assurance and deliver your highest performance.
Fear Versus Excitement: What’s the Difference?
How much does it matter whether you’re feeling fear or excitement about your work? It turns out it matters quite a bit. While physiologically these emotions are the same, their impact on performance is quite different.
When you experience either of these emotions, your brain directs an increase in your breathing and heart rate, dilates your pupils, and makes your palms sweaty. But as psychiatrist Fritz Perls, M.D., the founder of Gestalt therapy is quoted in ScienceOxygen article as saying, “Fear is excitement without the breath.”
Most of us know from experience that fear can freeze us, taking away our breath and preventing us from doing our best work. In contrast, being excited about doing something can support calmness and excellence.
But how can healthcare leaders successfully convert fear into excitement?
“Individuals often feel anxious in anticipation of tasks such as speaking in public or meeting with a boss,” wrote Alison Wood Brooks, O’Brien associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in her 2013 Journal of Experimental Psychology article about reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. “I find that an overwhelming majority of people believe trying to calm down is the best way to cope with pre-performance anxiety,” she continued. “However, across several studies involving karaoke singing, public speaking and math performance, I investigate an alternative strategy: reappraising anxiety as excitement. Compared with those who attempt to calm down, individuals who reappraise their anxious arousal as excitement feel more excited and perform better.”
Personal branding can also help leaders convert fear into excitement. Let’s talk more about this in the next section.
Converting Fear to Excitement Using Executive Personal Branding
In the Harvard Business Review article, “How to Overcome Your Fear of the Unknown,” the top suggestion for converting fear to excitement is to “reframe your situation by focusing on the possible upside.” An article from the health service in Scotland suggests that “looking at the evidence” is another great strategy for converting fear into excitement.
In keeping with these ideas, the time-proven Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ personal branding process from Revealing Genius has already helped hundreds of healthcare leaders reframe their mindset into one of excitement and positive anticipation by looking at the evidence already present in their successful careers.
Let me explain this more fully by giving you more detail about each step in the ETA process.
The Three Key Steps: Excavate–Tell–Affirm™
During the excavate step of the ETA process, we offer healthcare leaders a variety of powerful exercises to do.
One of them is to write out their answers to key questions designed to help them unlock their unique genius. Spend a few minutes writing down your answers to the five below. Then consider which seem to resonate most with you.
1. If you had a minute to offer three to five bullet points that summarize your core strengths, what would you say?
2. What are your proudest accomplishments, and why?
3. What’s the big relevant change in the world that you are passionate about?
4. What’s your favorite quote or mantra that you live by?
5. What’s your extraordinary why?
The self-reflection involved in this step helps to drive away fear of a situation and invite excitement at the opportunity presenting itself. When you know you’ve performed at a high level in the past, it helps you believe you can do so again in the future.
During the second step of the executive personal branding process from Revealing Genius, tell, you are supported in articulating your positioning statement for your personal brand. This is a clear and concise way to authentically express to yourself and others what you are best at in the world—and why you do it. It’s developed based on everything you’ve taken stock in during the excavate step.
You can start by trying on this formula: I <action word> <beloved avatar/target audience> how to <get the achieve what they want most> so that <they experience a result/transformation.> For example, “I teach healthcare executives how to powerfully articulate what they do and why so they swiftly achieve the impact and fulfillment they desire and deserve in their careers.”
During the third and last step of the executive personal branding process from Revealing Genius, you’ll dive into various ways to affirm your burgeoning brand. A great thing to do during the affirm step of the process is to complete one or more science-based assessments. These tools will underscore what you are coming to understand about who you are and how you approach the great work of your life.
Ready to Try Executive Personal Branding?
Let’s go back to the examples we started with … a doctor getting ready to perform surgery, a top leader preparing for an all-staff presentation and an administrator thinking about the next steps in a merger negotiation.
Now imagine that each of these leaders has been through the Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ personal branding process. Because of that, each has clarity about their successful track record and knows how to articulate what they are best at in the world and why they do what they do. Many will have even used science-based assessments to affirm their brands. I think you can see how going through this process will help them transform any fear they’re experiencing about the task at hand into calm assurance that they can and will do it well … and in service of their larger professional vision.
Ready to join the hundreds of leaders who have already benefitted from going through the time-proven, bespoke and fun Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ process from Revealing Genius? Now is the time to sign up for our complimentary Excavate Your Brand webinar or invest in our newly released online course or 7-Day Summit. We provide 1:1 executive coaching options too.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
August 25, 2023
Make Your Brand Come Alive Through Sponsorship
When was the last time you felt so alive in your work?
The Senanque Abbey in Provence, France, is known for its hectares of lavender. When you visit, what stands out most is not just the color of the beautiful flowers but the dense humming sound of the thousands of bees, collecting nectar. They are too busy doing what they do best to care about tourists walking their fields. The bees are in flow …
When was the last time you felt so alive in your work? … When you were tuned in so much that you lost track of time, that you experienced a state of flow?
Looking back, you would describe the activity you were immersed in as fulfilling, knowing you were making a profound impact?
The Oxford Dictionary defines fulfilling as “making someone satisfied or happy through allowing their character or abilities to develop fully.”
At Revealing Genius, that is our wish for you, that you can pursue The Great Work of Your Life, do what you love, and love what you do, discovering what makes your brand come alive by engaging in what only you can uniquely contribute. Most importantly, you are able to clearly articulate your expertise and the “why” that fuels your brand in a way that is heard and attracts what you desire most (and deserve).
Here’s to branding on purpose.
The key to making your executive personal brand come alive? Sponsor someone else’s.
James Keller said, “A candle loses no light by lighting another candle.” We posit that a candle that lights another somehow seems to burn even brighter.
Note, there’s a difference between coaching, mentoring and sponsoring.
A coach helps to augment existing skills.
A mentor advises and offers guidance.
A sponsor advocates.
A sponsor often puts their own professional reputation on the line. It’s the highest form of support one professional can show another.
Beyond its inherent benefits and the personal satisfaction we fervently believe it offers, sponsoring will likely help you rise above the noise and elevate your personal brand.
Read this complimentary white paper to find out why inclusive sponsorship is the new measure of success.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
August 1, 2023
Writing That Sponsors Women in STEM
Lessons learned from female leaders in science
The author of many fiction and nonfiction books, Deborah M. Shlian, M.D., brings us Lessons Learned, the stories of 31 brilliant women in science, technology, engineering and math who overcame the odds to push science forward while paving the way for the women yet to come.
While women make up 48% of the workforce, when it comes to STEM fields, women hold only about 29% of positions, with the majority of those in the biological and life sciences.
There is no evidence that girls and women are not interested in STEM fields. However, research does suggest that cultural attitudes, including implicit and explicit biases, discourage women from entering computer science, engineering, mathematics and physics in particular.
One of the ways to increase that participation is to have role models who will inspire young women to consider STEM careers.
The Hope
“The hope is that young readers (especially girls) will find these stories so inspiring that they will consider a STEM career, and those already enrolled in STEM Ph.D. programs will aim to become leaders within their field,” says Shlian.
Order your copy today.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
August 1, 2023
In Executive Personal Branding, Transform ‘Target Audience’ to ‘Beloved Avatar’
Use the time-proven ETA process to boost your passion for your personal brand and help position you for the future.
When we at Revealing Genius help you do executive personal branding, one of my favorite moments will be when you realize who it is—deep down inside yourself—that you most want to serve.
That’s because knowing your “beloved avatar” will help you—like it has helped many healthcare leaders—go beyond the basic marketing tenet of “know your customer” to the kind of passion and big-picture thinking that will help you deliver on your executive personal brand and position yourself well for the future.
Audience Isn’t Quite Enough in Executive Personal Branding
This idea of knowing your customer certainly isn’t a new one in marketing. The best brands know their success is about deeply understanding their audience so they can serve customers better. They look at such demographics as how old their best customers are, where they live, what gender they are and how much they make. They look at psychographics, too—what their customers and potential customers value, what they fear and what attitudes they hold.
But when Revealing Genius supports a leader in doing executive personal branding, we take this key idea of audience a step further. We help our clients—experienced executives in healthcare—lay out details of their “beloved avatar,” that person for whom they would get out of bed at 5 a.m. every day to help.
Inspired Executive Personal Branding
You are likely those healthcare leaders who is already very good at what you do. You’ve mastered things like leading your team well, getting great financial results and regularly supporting improvements in patient outcomes.
Yet I’d venture that getting fuller clarity about who you most want to serve will inspire you to be even more passionate about your work.
Maybe you’re in your line of work because you believe deeply that you need to pay it forward. A medical company helped your five-year-old childhood friend overcome a serious illness, and now you’re driven to likewise help others. In that case, you might define your beloved avatars as young children with this disease and at risk of contracting it. That’s something you can get passionate about!
Or maybe you have an amazing ability to orchestrate healthcare logistics and compliance issues in your state in a way that makes it possible for fantastic blood cancer doctors to more often save lives. In this case, you might define your beloved avatars as highly trained, dedicated and field-leading hematologist-oncologists in your state as well as the patients they serve. Once you have clarity that these are the people you’re helping, you’ll get out of bed every day determined to clear the way for them to do their jobs better.
I have watched talented healthcare executives become even more passionate and driven to be the best at what they do after they articulate in detail exactly who they aim to serve. This could be you when you undertake executive personal branding using the ETA™ process from Revealing Genius.
ETA Process and Executive Personal Branding
Some healthcare leaders don’t undertake executive personal branding because it seems daunting. Fortunately, our time-proven ETA process breaks it all down into three big steps: excavate, tell and affirm. Within each big step in the process are multiple smaller steps for discerning what you do best in the world and for whom, plus helping you believe in your bones that you are making a big change in the world that only you can make!
You can get more on the ETA process from several posts on my blog.
Shifting from ‘Audience’ to ‘Beloved Avatar’ for Executive Personal Branding
It may seem ironic that another benefit of knowing exactly whom you most want to serve is that it can attract new opportunities.
For example, here at Revealing Genius, we are very clear that our beloved avatar is experienced healthcare leaders—and often healthcare leaders in transition. But when I tell other people about our target audience, they’ll often say, but can’t the ETA executive branding process also help me in my field? And I can honestly say, “Yes, we can!”
Let’s think about this in one of the healthcare contexts we discussed earlier in this post. If you’re a leader with logistical and compliance skills that help doctors in your state do their best work, what would you say when a healthcare system in another state asks if you could do the same for them? If you’ve zeroed in on your executive personal brand, you’ll have full clarity about what you do, who you serve and the transformation that you alone can facilitate. This knowledge will help you discern whether the out-of-state offer is something you want to take on.
Revealing Genius offers many ways to tap into your professional brand, including clarifying your beloved avatar. To get started, be sure to check out our Excavate Your Brand webinar, 7-Day Summit and daily email series. We look forward to working with you.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
September 27, 2022
The Importance of a Mobile-First Mindset for Your Professional Brand
The time-proven ETA process from Revealing Genius can help you make the shift.
Having a mobile-first mindset for your professional brand can boost your career.
A mobile-first mindset acknowledges that many people do almost all their business on their smartphones. If you want to talk about your professional brand with them, you need to do so concisely—both in a very brief amount of time and on a very small screen.
Just how much time do you have to communicate your professional brand?
It used to be that you might have a minute or two—in the proverbial elevator—to talk about yourself. But today, there’s no question that mobile rules the world, and most opportunities to talk about yourself will be digital. That means the time you have to communicate your message is dramatically shorter.
Consider these statistics.
Google User Experience Research says mobile phone consumers will move on to another site if they don’t connect with the one they’re on in two seconds.
LinkedIn says most visitors to its professional networking site form an impression of a person from their profile in as little as 50 milliseconds. That’s half a second.
Forbes suggests that all it takes for someone looking at your online presence to start determining your value is a tenth of a second.
And how much space do you have?
While it’s true that smartphone screens have been getting bigger in recent years, even the largest of today’s “phablets” are only seven inches from corner to corner. And most people carry a smaller screen than that.
So, what should you do?
Following the ETA™ process from Revealing Genius is a good option. The three steps—excavate, tell and affirm—help professionals in healthcare and other industries discover and then concisely communicate who they are and what they stand for.
When you follow this time-proven process, you will learn how to position yourself with purpose for the next milestone in your career—whether you aspire to a promotion, a job change, a board seat, a great presentation or becoming better recognized in your field.
Let’s talk more about each step.
Excavate Your Professional Brand
Creating your professional brand using the ETA process means first excavating what you are passionate about and who you most want to serve.
The ETA process offers a multitude of ways to get at what’s underneath the surface of what you do … to discover what makes you different from other hospital CEOs, doctors, or other executives in healthcare or other industries.
As examples, you can try right now three key techniques that we use to help leaders get at what they stand for.
First, list your proudest accomplishment—or maybe your top three. You don’t have to limit this to your professional achievements.
1. _______________________________
2. _______________________________
3. _______________________________
Next, write down what you consider to be your top three core values. Here you also can consider what you value in both your personal and your professional life.
1. _______________________________
2. _______________________________
3. _______________________________
Finally, ask yourself if you were going to give your life’s last presentation, your “swan song,” what topic would you choose? Write an outline for the main points you would cover.
1.     _______________________________
a.     _________________________
b.     _________________________
2.     _______________________________
a.     _________________________
b.     _________________________
3.     _______________________________
a.     _________________________
b.     _________________________
Once you’ve done all three exercises, look for commonalities. What resonates with you? What points to the core of what you stand for? When you work with Revealing Genius, we’ll be able to offer you many more exercises to help with excavating your professional brand!
Tell the Stories of Your Professional Brand
Excavating your professional brand is an important first step toward being able to tell your brand stories. Your brand stories are uniquely yours; no one else who seems to do what you do can tell the very same stories.
Revealing Genius can help you surface your stories and then develop brand assets that tell them well—in every setting, from the smallest smartphone screen showing your LinkedIn profile to a presentation to a group of peers to those few precious minutes in the proverbial elevator.
Can you say what you stand for in just a few words? We can help you do this incredibly well.
Affirm Your Professional Brand So You Feel It in Your Bones
One of the ways we at Revealing Genius help you effectively tell others about your professional brand is through affirmations. This may seem a bit “woo woo” at first. But the truth is, we use the results of science-based assessments to help you build your conviction that who you believe you are is in fact who you are! This translates into more confidence not only in telling your professional brand stories but also in going up for that next promotion, accepting that invitation to speak or … whatever your next right career step may be.
At Revealing Genius, we also help you affirm your professional brand through practice. For example, a key part of the ETA process is writing your transformation statement, which not only spells out what you do, but for whom as well as what positive change your work creates in the world. Once you have written your statement, we’ll help you affirm it with several simple but effective techniques, including encouraging you to say it out loud several times a day.
In other words, we’ll support you in your efforts to steep in your professional brand—until it becomes part of you and you can feel its power in your bones.
Just creating your professional brand can seem daunting, let alone sharing it effectively in a mobile-first world! But I’m here to attest that those who worked with us in the past have used the ETA process to find success. You can, too.
We look forward to working with you to develop a mobile-first mindset about your professional brand—and then to seeing you move your career forward, changing the world for the better.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE
An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.
July 12, 2022