What is a Personal Enterprise, and Why Does it Matters to You?

Dec 31

How much of your value do you own? How much of it are you renting out to others? Do you know how to keep track of it?

If you don’t know the answer to these, keep reading…

First stop… What is a personal enterprise?

An enterprise serves two purposes - to protect the way the founder uses their skills to impact their community and to amplify the impact of the enterprise. A personal enterprise helps an individual look at and use their skills and resources similar to how a business would.

Depending on the individual it could be a north star, used as a perspective and/serve as motivation to continuously act towards the purpose. That’s up to you.

Next up… So why should this matter to you?

Having a container to help you be accountable, make decisions and manage your investments will help you stay on track with your resources.

We are currently in the fourth industrial revolution. It’s also called the digital age. The accessibility of technology blurs the lines of multiple things like access to education, professional options and personal lifestyles. Looking at your lifestyle like a business can help you avoid spending time and money on things you don’t need. Siloing the departments out in your life into multiple categories could be ineffective.

Here’s the departments I track in my life

Let’s start with your professional choices.

Technology is ever changing the professional marketplace. It’s moving employees to act more like entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs. It doesn’t matter which method you choose to use your skill set in the marketplace you need to protect how it’s used.

According to Merriam-Webster employ means to make use of. If you’re an employee, don’t let your employers be the only ones who know how to make use of your skills. If you’re an entrepreneur, don’t let your clients make the best use of your skills.

Do your research on your role and industry to evaluate where your strengths and weaknesses are. Figure out where you land according to pay, experience and skills.

Now that you know the landscape, let’s talk about how to build.

How do I start building?

Before you start acting, I need you to get in the game with how you see your skills. Start thinking of yourself as a brand and an enterprise.

A brand is a public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted or a characteristic or distinctive kind.
An enterprise is a unit of economic organization, a business organization or activity or a systematic purposeful activity.

Once you make that change in your mind, the way you approach what you do will be different because these are now part of your purpose.

Now it’s time to start pulling together your experience to evaluate.

Review all of your skills that you have.

What credentials do you have?
How much experience do you have from work and lived experiences?
Do you have hobbies?
Are you a part of any associations that give you credibility?

Once you do research on yourself you can use that to start using that information to communicate your value to the market inside and outside of your firm.

Compile your expertise into a personal brand

This concept is thrown around a lot lately. To be clear, a personal brand is how you communicate the influence you have with your skill set and worldview.

Choosing what to talk about in your life can be challenging depending on how much you want to share with people. It’s most common to share your professional portfolio but it’s more than that. It is how you speak about the investments you already made into your profession and the posture you carry with what you know and have. The container of your personal enterprise comes in handy to help you decide which parts of your story are beneficial to share.

Building a personal brand is an investment. It takes time to gather information about yourself, organize and promote yourself in a way that your audience can understand. If you don’t have one yet, here’s my branding worksheet I used to build my personal brand. It is how I organize all of the stuff that are frequently asked like “what do you do?”, my bio and my credentials. A pro tip would be to start a professional folder on your google drive to save this worksheet in and other assets as you build your professional portfolio.

Start tracking your progress

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at your current company or if you’re starting a new position. It’s never too late to start tracking your progress.

Knowing where you are keeps you competitive and aware of if the opportunities presented to you are a good fit for you. Remember the goal is to take control of how your skillset is being used. Deciding and tracking your own metrics is one of the ways to do that.

Get a general temperature of where you are to make real progress and to be intentional with your decisions.

Benefits:

moving from a reactive lifestyle to proactive.
It’s also your decision on how, where and on who you spend your value with.
It’s your responsibility to track it

If you want to take the guess out of tracking your career accomplishments, you can grab my free career game plan to get started. I designed this template to organize all of the moments of my career and access my information quickly when I partner with people for podcasts or apply for speaking opportunities.

It’s helpful for me to quickly update bios, grab social media URLs, event content and capture my own value at a glance for negotiations.

Take care of your journey with decisions and strategy. You are the only person who is going to care about your career as much as you do.

Manage your impact and abundance by building a personal enterprise.

Wishing you success and strategy across the departments of your life!

Christina L. Glancy is a charismatic global strategist who helps busy people find time for love, travel and joy without selling out or burning out.

Stay connected with her at the channels below.