Insights and Photos from Day 2 of the Personal Branding Workshop

We followed through with the success of Session 1 of the Personal Branding Workshop for Freelancers and Entrepreneurs, with the second and last session entitled, “Create Your Powerful and Irresistible Personal Brand”.

We met our old friends from session 1 – Aimee, Tin and Mike and we were happy to welcome new participants, who already have their own established businesses but wanted to take it a step further through personal branding.

I started the session by revealing more about my personal brand story, how I started Freelance Blend in 2014 and how I slowly but surely grew it to become a recognized brand in the freelancing scene.

I then dropped some knowledge bombs by introducing my plan of A-T-T-A-C-K, a step-by-step guide and life hacks on how the participants can create their own personal brands. To give you an idea, the acronym stands for:

A- Adapt To the Market

T – Think Different

T- Turbocharge Your Network

A- Audit and Augment Your Online Presence

C – Choose Your Audience and Your Niche

K- Kickstart Your Personal Brand

We dove deep on each step through compelling case studies and live demonstrations of web-based tools and resources such as Google Alerts and Feedly.

Meanwhile, here are the other highlights from Session 2:

– After the break, my mentor Ginger Arboleda — founder of Manila Workshops, serial entrepreneur, and pro blogger — shared her own personal brand story.

– The participants were tasked to create their one-page business plan, the Personal Branding Canvas.

– We introduced the Brand Experts – Makoy a.k.a. ShowbizBro of Machong Chismisan Podcast, Nikki Tiu of AskMeWhats.com, and Ginger Arboleda — and the participants had an opportunity to ask their most burning questions about personal branding.

The culminating activity was the presentation of the participants’ Personal Branding Canvas to the class where they got critiqued by the Brand Experts ala the popular TV show, The Voice.

Ginger, Nikki and Makoy were all so generous and honest in sharing their insights and feedback to each presenter.  I’m sure the participants got a ton of value since we, the Brand Experts, were all so excited to pitch in and help them solve their problems.  (In fact, we had to set a 10-minute time limit for each participant otherwise we would have ended very late. )

After closing the workshop with my usual “Action Steps to Take After The Workshop” and giving away free one-on-one mentorship sessions to all the participants through my program, Mentorship With Marv, we took the customary group picture (see above), closed the doors of the workshop room, and I heaved a big sigh of relief.

I was very exhausted but felt very happy. I looked back at the months of researching, brain-storming session, and sleepless nights crafting this workshop, which, in fact, almost did not push through.  It was all worth it.

But again I felt happy and fulfilled knowing that somehow in someway we were able to help a few people find their direction, push them towards building their own remarkable personal brands and put a dent in the universe.

Side notes:

– Thanks as well to my sister, DJ de Leon, for spectacular the photos above as well as the profile pictures of the participants from Session 1 below.  Please follow her on Instagram at @heymissdjdl.

– Thank you to Anya Santos-Uy of O2 Space for their awesome venue that you see in the pictures.

– Thanks to April Reyles of Manila Workshops, Brand Manager for the Freelance Pro / Freelance Blend series, for her tireless work for making this our most successful event to date.

– After coming home from the workshop, I was also surprised to find social media abuzz with the #personalbranding hashtag.  I knew I did something right. 🙂