Hello everyone, after such a long.....pause, here's the 2nd part.
I arrived in Malacca late, and we settled into Hallmark Inn hotel which luckily I booked earlier as Malacca was quite packed that weekend due to the school holiday. Everyone wants to go to Malacca. Who doesn't? It's one of the heritage city in the world. You can still see buildings dated many centuries ago being preserved well. I used to stay there for three years from 6+ to 9 years old. My dad was then, the principal of Muzaffar Syah boarding school. When he came, it was still SM Sains Melaka, but he requested to change the name to Muzaffar Syah, one of the Sultans of Malacca and the state government and the ministry agreed so, the name remains till now. By the way, if you ever come to Malacca, I strongly recommend this hotel. The staff are SUPERB, very kind, considerate and attentive. The pricing is also very reasonable. I'll definitely stay there again.
Hallmark Inn off Jalan Portugese
Well I was invited by UITM Melaka to give a talk to their final year students from the Business Faculty before they go out for their internship. Thank you to their concerned lecturer Pn. Nor Hamiza who saw the need for the students to rebrand their image before they step out into the job market or the entrepreneurial world (since they are students from business faculty).
So, the title of the workshop I was assigned to conduct is,
"Image Rebranding for the New Professionals".
My original proposal was:
"Brand Your Image, Up Your CV".
Anyway, either way, the objective's the same, to get these students to polish their image and rebrand themselves as a professional and indirectly that will enhance their CVs further.
The program consists of 2 parts. The mass talk and the hands-on workshop. The talk was given to about 100 students, where they were divided into 5 groups later for the makeover workshop.
We arrived (my partner & I) in UITM that morning still on time despite getting lost a bit. We saw this glorious 'Royal Purple' building from far. This was my first time coming to UITM Melaka. Well, I'm impressed with the facilities and the smoothness of their sound system as well as the projector and stuff. I don't have to worry about the set up cause with just one wire connection, everything's linked. For a techical challenged person like, that means a lot!
THE TALK
THE '3 Cs DIAMOND QUALITY' SYSTEM
There are many things I would like to share with them, however I summarized the whole thing into 3 steps process for developing your brand and image.
At the end of the day, you want to be seen as Credible, Charismatic & Confident and to do that you've got to have CLARITY, Know your CUT to create a distinct and standout visual identity, and identify your COLORS. Let's go through one by one.
A. CLARITY
Here's a thought before we proceed further:
These are a few questions to get you and others focus. In business it's always about creating your niche. It's better to focus then doing everything. Focus provides the clarity. If you don't stand out among the crowd and others are not sure what you're about, then you'll get drowned.
We can learn from American Idol. In the show, the judges, especially Randy, always stress to the contestants, "What are you about? We need to know who you are," or " I can't feel you..blablablabla" and the list goes on. It is so important for people to get you , and it is most important for YOU to get YOU! When you get you, the others will get you and a whole world of opportunity opens up..Why? Because when people gets you, they know who to go to for a certain something, and if you stand out the better because you don't have to work so hard to get people to notice you and to hear you out.
Let's see if you have the answers to these questions. This is a FOCUS TEST to give better clarity.
1. Who are you?
2. What are your values?
3. What do you do?
4. Why does it matter?
B. CUT
Create a strong visual identity.
- Know what's unique about you physically and use it
- Create/Identify a Signature look
- Find out your body shape & work with it
- Find out your Style Personality
I will elaborate further on this in my future post because it's quite a lot to elaborate on each point. For Muslims, we already have a strong visual identity to begin with, the ladies-our hijab and for men-the beard (I will have a post on beard later). These are our assets already, and it's already speaking for us without us having to open our mouth.
Now, look at the 2 prominent figures below and identify their visual identities. It's pretty obvious.
C. COLORS
I'm actually very passionate about colors because it's part of life. Imagine one day you wake up and your world is just black and white. How dull...Colours affect our emotions, our lives, our energy level.
In LANGUAGE POWERHOUSE, the language centre that I co-own, we have a room with multiple color curtains. This classroom is used when we want to do mainly lots of movement activities with the students. The furniture in the reception area is mainly in orange, beige and light yellow. Orange increases energy and positivity.
I'd like to share a video by one of the Personal Branding gurus , William Arruda. I think it's a brilliant video, "What Color is Your Brand". You can catch it on You Tube @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DohoPavchc
Then, you also need to find which color categories do you fall under. Are you warm or are you cool? The right colors will make you look younger, brighter, slimmer, and more radiant while the wrong colors will add age, make you look haggard, darker or drown you totally. Have a proper color analysis done. In my workshop, each participant will find out his or her color category and they will also learn to train their eyes to spot the right color harmony. The key is t o have HARMONY & BALANCE. The colors should enhance you instead of drowning you. You must wear the colors not let the colors wear you.
Look at the picture below and see if you can tell which is warm and which is cool.
If you are warm and you're wearing a cool scarf/hijab, the color will drown you, and your face will not stand out. For hijabis out there it is more important to identify the right colors because the scarf is so close to the face. The good news though, we can still wear the other group because we have a hijab on our head and the blouse or the top comes after the hijab so it's not directly affecting our personal color harmony. The hijab however, has to be in the right color.
So, there you have it, the 3 Cs to bring out the Diamond in you! CLARITY, CUT & COLOR. The next part, I will share with you what I covered in the hands-on workshop session where we had SILKYGIRL - Malaysia's NO.1 Cosmetic Brand as our make-up sponsor and SERIMEL MAX as our natural health & skincare product sponsor for the skincare and daily health regime, because beauty is about being healthy. So, till we meet again, stay true to the Muslim Style & Brand. YOU R YOUR CAPITAL!
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