The Visibility Mindset

3Building Your Personal Brand

Bernice Chao

You do not just wake up and become the butterfly. Growth is a process.

—Rupi Kaur, poet and author

When it comes to your personal brand, it will take time to develop your own story for how you want people to perceive you. For us, the personal branding we built for Asians in Advertising, a community to elevate Asians into executive positions, led to a feature in Forbes and to Wiley Publishing to organically reach out to us to see if we would be interested in writing a book to support Asians in the workplace. This is a great example where you never know where your personal brand can lead you. This chapter will teach you the importance of understanding what makes you unique, building your personal brand in a more strategic way, and crafting your own story in an elevator pitch.

Asian Americans are generally taught to downplay achievements and be humble about them. However, bragging about yourself in the western workplace is vital in your professional life. It's important to talk about your achievements to gain credibility and visibility with your employer or clients. Asians are known to be collectivistic, value humility, and tend to make decisions based on the common good rather than personal gain. On the other hand, their White counterparts are known to be individualistic, self‐promote by competing with peers, and make decisions based on personal ambition.¹ In other words, if you have two people of equal talent and one communicates ...