#0018: Who are you going to be in 2025?

Hello, dear readers,

Welcome to CVB Weekly! For those of you who are new here, I’m [Your Name], a digital and growth strategist with over three decades of experience helping retail clients, consultants, and coaches unlock sustainable, long-term growth through the power of digital, technology, and marketing. At heart, I’m a teacher and coach with a deeply human-centered approach—focused on creating clarity, uncovering opportunities, and driving tangible outcomes.

This newsletter is my way of giving back—a free resource where I share actionable insights, strategies, and tools to help you align your business with the customers who matter most. Together, we’ll explore ways to spark growth, prioritize your resources, and create meaningful, lasting change.

In this week’s edition, I’m diving into the power of brands as a foundational driver of growth. To bring this to life, I’m putting myself in the hot seat, sharing two AI-driven experiments that helped me lean into courage, embrace authenticity, and uncover clarity in both my personal and professional identity.

These aren’t just personal lessons—they’re practical tools you can use to refine your brand story, differentiate yourself in the market, and align your growth strategy with your unique strengths.

Here’s what you’ll discover:
✨ Two AI experiments that helped me identify and amplify my strengths.
✨ Lessons on courage, differentiation, and authenticity.
✨ Practical steps to try these experiments for yourself.
✨ A bonus step: Turning your insights into a powerful capability statement.

Let’s dive in!

🔍 What’s Inside:

1️⃣ Competitor Comparison: How I discovered my unique strengths—empathy, execution, and optimism. Your USP (unique selling proposition) or secret sauce is fundamental to ensuring your customer knows why they should choose you over a competitor.

2️⃣ Personal Brand Reflection: Whether your brand is in its early stages or well-established, it’s crucial to reflect on which parts of your brand remain relevant and which have grown in importance as you adapt your messaging to meet your customer where they are. AI revealed my value as a leader who connects strategy, humanity, and growth.

💡 Key Takeaways:
✨ Courage is a practice: Showing up authentically takes repeated effort (and a supportive tribe along the way).
✨ Systems thrive on connection: People—not silos—are the foundation of growth.
✨ Differentiation is power: Embracing your unique story fuels sustainable growth.

Leaning into Courage and Authenticity: Seeing Myself a little More Clearly Through AI

As someone deeply embedded in strategy, growth, and transformation, I’ve spent 3 decades helping businesses uncover what makes them stand out. I guide clients to see their brand essence—the thing that moves them beyond competitive noise and makes them not just visible but unmistakable.

But somewhere along the way, I realised I wasn’t applying the same clarity to myself. I had become safe, filtered—what I call beige. For a strategist whose work is rooted in differentiation, this realisation was both humbling and eye-opening.

A Visual Analogy:

Imagine standing in a crowd, surrounded by fog. Each person represents a product or service, but in the haze, everyone looks the same. A brand acts as a torch, cutting through the fog and making it easy for your customer to find you.

This year, turning 50 gave me the courage to ask: Where is my torch? How do I step into a more courageous, authentic version of myself?

To explore these questions, I leaned into a tool I’ve been using with clients: AI. Not as a shortcut or replacement for creativity, but as a mirror—revealing insights I might have missed.

Experiment 1: Learning About Myself Through Competitor Comparison

We’re often told not to compare ourselves to others, but when done thoughtfully, strategic comparison can be a powerful tool for self-discovery. I selected a competitor I admire for their boldness and vision to better understand what makes me unique.

The Setup

1️⃣ Gathered 10 pieces of their content and 10 pieces of mine.
2️⃣ Asked AI to analyze:

• Their unique strengths.
• My unique strengths.
• Where we overlap.
• What I might be missing.

The Results

• My Strengths: Empathy, strategic execution, and optimism. My work is collaborative, customer-centric, data-informed and grounded in actionable strategies for sustainable growth.
• Their Strengths: Boldness, disruption, and trend-spotting. They thrive on shaking up norms.
• The Overlap: Vision. Both of us connect human behaviour, technology, and strategy to deliver growth.

What I Learned

This exercise reaffirmed that my strengths aren’t loud or disruptive—they’re about creating clarity, alignment, and enduring systems. It also challenged me to own my unique torch, shining it unapologetically, even if it’s different from others.

But it also highlighted where I had been holding back (there is an opportunity to shake things up more). I saw how much courage it takes to own your unique torch — the one that lights your path and no one else’s.

Experiment 2: Asking AI to Reflect on My Personal Brand

For this experiment, I turned the lens inward, seeking to see myself through AI’s eyes, free from my own biases. Full transparency: I’ve been investing in therapy over the past few years, which has provided me with deep self-awareness. It’s been invaluable, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. But that’s a topic for another newsletter!

The Setup

I uploaded strategy frameworks, reflections, and LinkedIn posts into AI and asked two key questions:
1️⃣ What are my unique strengths and value proposition?
2️⃣ Who am I?

The Results

• Strategic Clarity: Simplifying complexity into actionable frameworks.
• Systemic Thinking: Seeing connections between people, processes, and outcomes.
• Empathy-Driven Leadership: Aligning diverse teams through understanding and collaboration.
• Customer-Centricity: Focusing relentlessly on what customers value most, driving sustainable growth.

An Extra Step: Turn Insights into a Capability Statement

This experiment can go even deeper by using AI to convert your unique capabilities into a capability statement—a pitch that answers the question, "What do you do?"

Here’s how my statement came to life (the pitch):

I am a strategic leader and growth advisor who simplifies complexity into actionable frameworks that drive sustainable growth. By connecting people, processes, and performance, I create cohesive ecosystems that deliver value.

Rooted in empathy and customer focus, I align teams and strategies to meet customer needs while fostering long-term growth. My work is grounded in authenticity, clarity, and building systems that endure.

What I Learned

AI’s insights were validating and eye-opening. It showed me that my work thrives at the intersection of humanity and strategy. I create systems that empower others and center authenticity in everything I do. This reflection reminded me that courage isn’t about perfection—it’s about showing up fully, quirks and all.

My word for 2025 (inspired by one of our Amplify Voices community members) is courage. What's yours?

Why This Matters: The Courage to Place Humans at the Center

These experiments reaffirmed a belief central to my work: Humans are the veins of the strategic framework. They’re not separate from growth—they are core to it.

Whether it’s customers or staff, humans drive value when they are placed at the center. It’s not "customer-first" or "staff-first"—it’s humans-first. This philosophy is the foundation of the systems I build for clients and the lens through which I now see myself.

And this is my torch. What’s yours?

How You Can Run These Experiments

If you’re ready to step into authenticity and uncover your unique value, here’s how to start:

Experiment 1: Competitor Comparison

1️⃣ Choose a competitor you admire.
2️⃣ Gather 10 pieces of their content and 10 of yours.
3️⃣ Use AI to analyze:

• Unique strengths.
• Overlaps.
• Gaps or opportunities.

Experiment 2: Personal Brand Reflection

1️⃣ Upload your work (e.g., LinkedIn posts, strategy documents) to AI.
2️⃣ Ask:

• What are my unique strengths?
• Who am I?

3️⃣ Use the insights to refine your story and step into authenticity.
4️⃣ Take it further: Ask AI to create your capability statement and test how it resonates with others.

The Takeaway: Lean Into Your Torch

Courage and authenticity are practices. To see yourself clearly, you need the courage to step out of the noise and into your own light.

For me, these experiments were a journey of reclaiming what makes me, me. As I step into 2025, I’m embracing my torch—not beige, not filtered, but real, courageous, and human-centered.

What will you lean into this year? Let’s grow together. 🌟

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