Of all the aspects of applying storytelling to job search/career, the two that don’t quite gel for me are the elevator speech/story and the personal-branding story.

Last month, my friend Trey Pennington wrote an attention-getting blog post in which he cited the word of “father of personal branding” Tom Peters: “The brand is the story. … think story first, brand second.” Trey’s post was mostly about product/service branding, but applying this notion to personal branding might just address my qualms, as well as the kinds of complaints about personal branding I reported on here.

In my book, Tell Me About Yourself, I talk about developing a personal-branding statement and having a story to support the statement.

But Lana Kravtsova takes that idea a step further 30 Minutes To Craft a Remarkable Personal Brand Story, noting that a brand story should consist of 3 main elements:

1. Your values and beliefs. In other words your “whys”
2. Your experiences
3. Your personal unique characteristics

Starting with an example of an un-storied branding statement, Kravtsova takes readers through the process of developing a branding story. She gives an example of her own branding, but I have difficulty seeing a story in it.

In 10 Ways to Building Your Personal Brand Story, Kyle Lacy, who cleverly breaks his advice into “chapters,” suggests including as part of your personal-branding story the story of where you came from and where you’re going, examples of problem-solving, a story with which your audience can connect emotionally, and story elements that make you relatable to your audience. Unfortunately, he provides no example of a personal-brand story that meets all the requirements of Lacy’s 10 chapters.

If would-be personal branders want to take Peters’s advice to think story first, I believe they need to see more examples of the personal-branding story done well.