Sidney’s story
When I caught up with the global brand specialist, Sidney Evans, he was in Canada, making an unexpected stay there thanks to COVID-19.
He had been there on a book signing tour when everything shut down. His energy boomed across the ocean and he told me his story
Sidney was brought up by his grandmother. He was devastated when he found out she was dying and went to and live with her in Florida to support her during her final year of life. Because of this, Sidney ended up going to university there. He did a degree in international business and then a Masters in business administration and marketing Communications at the Herbert Business School there.
From that moment on, his plan was to share his experience to help others win, and his whole personal brand has developed around this. He went to work for the pharmaceutical giant where he quickly became their top rep. As a result, he moved into corporate training there.
As part of that, he became a certified Disc trainer, which helps clients understand their behavioral styles and others to improve their success. He learned from Disc’s inventors, and it changed him a lot. Sidney explained Disc to me as an advanced Myers Briggs system. With Disc, there are four personality types; dominant people who are results people who are results orientated; steady people who provide the stabilizing elements; influencers who are the people-people and cautious who are the processors.
Sidney told me that doing the Disc training was lifechanging for him. It taught him how to speak to people on several levels, and he uses it both for business and his personal life. His rate of reading people in professional settings is high, less so personally. This is because people show more stress in private settings, and while you usually operate in your dominant type, the second type emerges under pressure.
While he was still working in corporate training, someone told him he should try out as a voice-over artist. It was pre-internet, so he scraped together six hundred dollars, got a proper tape made, and sent it into the agencies. He was signed by one of the biggest and hadn’t looked back. He was the Voice of Dodge for ten years and has done, he says, thousands of commercials, for a vast list of clients including Disney and ABC.
After ten years in corporate training, he branched out and became involved in other things that all pull together to make up his individual brand. These included his voice-over work, doing some real estate, and working for the Leadership Council World of Work in New York, for the World of Money, a non-profit aimed at giving disadvantaged kids a sound knowledge of money
The branding Consultancy
By 2017, Sidney was ready to set up his global brand, SidneyEvans. He spent two years living in Spain and delivering key-note speeches both there and in six other countries. He also spent a weekend in Sweden with google, mentoring younger entrepreneurs.
Sidney’s writing has been the constant throughout. Since 2013, he has been a creator and moderator for the branding magazine C-Suite since 2013. Doing this has involved him interviewing over fifty CEOs globally. He has also been published in Forbes, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Black Enterprise, and American Express Open Forum. He is also a member of the Forbes Council.
Sidney published his first book, “Run Your Own Race: 12 Steps to Building Your Own Powerful Personal Brand” in 2019, which was No.1 in business consulting on Amazon on its release, something he tells me he is completely humbled by. The book took three years to write, and he is now working on his next one.
While continuing to write and speak, he is currently doing a Ph.D. in marketing. He explained to me that he has never wanted to be just another brand consultant, but instead, he wanted to spend time accumulating the right information to share.
Sidney tells me he will be a professor shortly but couldn’t tell me at which University till it is formally announced. In addition to continuing his live events, Sidney is also launching a YouTube channel. There are also talks about some TV work.
Sidney core business offers a consultancy service to help business owners with strategic support to strengthen their brand, still using Disc techniques in addition to the brand strategies he has developed.
His mantra is #Dream #Create #Win
Sidney’s Brand Strategy Advice
When Sidney works with clients, he says he always starts by going straight to the heart. He talks to the staff, and he looks at the vision and the mission. Only then can you formulate a plan of both the message you want to get out there and how you are going to do it.
Sidney offers three top tips to nail your brand:
- You have to get absolute clarity on what your value proposition is and how sound it is. Success is a numbers game, and it is essential to understand that.
- You execute your plan flawlessly.
- You re-calibrate regularly.
Sidney explained that it is the re-calibration step that so many people fall down on. But if your consumer is not hearing or connecting with what you are offering, you have to step back and re-calibrate.
The problem, Sidney says, is that people fall in love with their business idea. Falling in love with a business idea is a lot like falling in love with a person. It can often be the wrong one. But we are inclined to keep staying with it in the hope that it works. It is hard to step back, re-calibrate and re-start falling in love with a new idea.
But it is essential. So these are Sidney’s three top tips to develop a successful brand: Clarity, Execution, and Re-calibrate.
Here is a story of another extraordinary American entrepreneur
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