You might have heard it said before, but it's true.

You are your brand.

Now, eventually you might be able to transcend that status, but when you're the owner of the business and the main person who is delivering services to your clients, well...

The public's perception of your brand rests squarely on your shoulders. 

And that's why what I'm about to tell you might be painful for you to hear, but it's something that needs to be said.

Why The Person I Once Was Never Had A Chance

When I started my first successful martial art school, I had already made a lot of mistakes. This was partially due to a lack of business knowledge, but also because I lacked certain of the skills and traits that are necessary to the success of a small business owner.

Well, maybe they're not necessary... but they are certainly helpful. For example, I lacked basic social skills, partially because of my background and partially because I'd always been a bit of an introvert at heart.

And, I lacked some of the more important personality traits that effective leaders typically have. Oh, I was charismatic enough, I suppose -- at least, I knew how to bullshit my way through a conversation. But, I wasn't dependable or decisive.

And to be completely honest, I wasn't very trustworthy, either. I'd grown up in poverty and had learned that you got ahead by any means necessary. You lied, you cheated, you fought dirty -- anything to "win." These were survival traits that had once served me, but I was soon to discover that they would work against me as a business owner.

Also, I lacked discretion in my personal life. I was more or less the typical young person, only interested in having a good time. And on more than one occasion, my personal life and professional life had intersected, causing me a good deal of embarrassment and the loss of customers.

Reaching A Breaking Point, And A New Start

Understandably, my reputation suffered due to all these character flaws and mishaps. At the time right before I started my first successful school, I'd burned too many bridges and tarnished my reputation such that doors began closing where once they'd been open to me.

Second, I knew that I needed to become the type of person who could earn the respect and admiration of others. I needed to be trustworthy. I needed to be honest. I needed to be respectable.

Therefore, I invested time and effort into redefining who I was as a person. I took a serious personal inventory and found that I was someone I simply did not like very much. And after coming to that conclusion, I decided to become a better person.

It's not like I went through an overnight transformation... far from it. But over time, I gradually became less and less of the person I had become in order to survive my upbringing, and more and more of the person I needed to be to survive in business.

The Work and the Results

I believe that transformation made all the difference in my success.

I stopped cursing in public, I stopped dating my students, and I stopped going out and drinking with my friends (who turned out not to be very good friends at all).

I also became more honest in my relationships and interactions with others, and I cleaned up my finances. For the first time in my adult life, I started paying all my bills on time, and I began to pay attention to my credit.*

I changed the way I dressed, the way I spoke, and the way I interacted with everyone around me. I cut ties with bad influences, I made new friends, and sought out people I wanted to be like to mentor me.

And without knowing it, I became someone else. I was still me, but a much better version of me... what I would come to think of as the "real" me. A version of me that I liked much better. Finally, I was proud of who I was and what I'd accomplished.

And along the way, I had become my brand.

The Raw Truth

The truth is, you might have to become someone else to get where you want to go in life. Because no one moves ahead by marching in place, and no one completes a journey without undergoing some sort of transformation along the way.

So if you're unhappy with where you are now as a business owner, consider this: 

When you're still doing the things you've always done and getting the results you've always gotten, how in the world can you expect something better to happen?

The answer is, you can't. And to believe that you can is a self-deception of the highest order. 

I used to think that what I'd always done would get me where I wanted to go, but I was wrong. It was only by looking back at the failure and wreckage I'd left behind me that I was able to come to grips with how much I needed to change.

Is It Time to Face Facts?

You may not be nearly as hopeless as I was when I started out. You may not be facing the same challenges I was, and you probably don't have nearly as many character flaws. 

But chances are still very good that you'll need to make some changes to get where you want to go. And if so, there's no better time to start than the present.

Because the bottom line is, you are your brand. That means that your flaws are your brand, as well as your strengths.

So, the first step to improving your brand and image is to take a personal inventory and decide what needs to be improved. 

That's the internal part of the deal. Tomorrow, we'll start looking at the external stuff.