There are some clients you get to know over time.
I’ve worked with Jordan Smith on a few photography projects, and our sessions are always enjoyable. Jordan brings a lot of energy with her, and there is usually plenty of laughter mixed in with whatever we’re trying to accomplish that day.
This session felt a little different.
Jordan is at an interesting point in her career. She is a pharmacist, entrepreneur, nonprofit founder, leader, speaker, and advocate. She has spent years building a career in pharmacy, but today, one job title no longer explains everything she does.
Her personal brand needed to catch up with that growth.
And that was really the purpose behind this personal branding session.
Building a Business Around What You Believe
One of the things I appreciate about Jordan is that her different projects don’t feel disconnected from one another. There is a pretty clear reason behind what she is building.
She wants to help people.
Jordan founded Medicinlogic, a pharmacist-led healthcare and consulting business focused on helping people better understand their medications and healthcare options. The business provides personalized pharmacist consultations and services including medication education, pharmacogenomic testing and interpretation, health testing, remote patient monitoring, and other forms of pharmacist-led support.
The idea behind it is surprisingly straightforward: make medication make sense.
After spending so much of her career in community pharmacy, Jordan saw firsthand how difficult navigating medications and healthcare can be for patients. Medicinlogic gives her another way to address that problem and expand the kind of care a pharmacist can provide.
That same desire to serve people shows up elsewhere in her work. Jordan also founded the Jordan Smith Community Care Foundation, a nonprofit focused on improving health outcomes through pharmacist-led community care. She has taken leadership roles within the Kentucky Pharmacists Association and works as a pharmacy mentor.
When I look at all of those things together, I see someone finding different ways to put her experience to work.
That distinction mattered when we started thinking about her photographs.
What Should Personal Branding Photos Say When You Do More Than One Thing?
This is a challenge I see with professionals whose careers are evolving.
A traditional headshot can identify you. It gives LinkedIn, a company website, or a speaker bio a polished photograph to put beside your name, but Jordan needed more than that.
Her personal brand has become the thread connecting Medicinlogic, her nonprofit foundation, The Next Dose Summit, pharmacy leadership, speaking opportunities, and her professional career.
She didn’t want photographs that only represented what she was doing on the day we created them. She needed an image library flexible enough to move with her.
After sitting down for the consultation phase of our Personal Branding onboarding processs, we decided to approach the session with that, and other factors in mind.
We’re thinking about where the images will live, what different sides of the person need to come through, and how those photographs can remain useful as their business and career continue to develop.
Jordan plans to use hers across websites, social media, speaking engagements, media opportunities, publications, and marketing materials.
That requires variety, but it also requires consistency.
No matter where someone encounters one of these photographs, it should still feel like Jordan.
“Yep. That’s Me.”
There was one thing Jordan said after the session that probably explains the goal better than I can.
When she saw the finished photographs, her reaction was:
“Yep. That’s me.”
I love that.
Jordan wanted the images to feel professional and elevated, but she didn’t want to become a different version of herself for the camera.
She wanted people to see someone professional and approachable. Confident, but still very much herself.
That includes the accomplished pharmacist and entrepreneur. It also includes the person who laughs a lot, has plenty of energy, and, by her own admission, probably has too many ideas going at once.
Personal branding photography works especially well when we have room for both.
Credibility does not require someone to suddenly become overly serious in front of a camera. In fact, when someone is building a business around personal expertise, hiding their personality can work against them.
People eventually meet the person behind the photograph.
The two should match.
Creating Personal Branding Photos When You Don’t Love Being Photographed
Jordan and I already knew each other from previous projects, which helped.
She will also be the first to tell you that posing for photographs does not come naturally to her.
That’s normal.
My job during a personal branding session is to pay attention to the things my client shouldn’t have to think about. I’ll give direction, make adjustments, watch the details, and keep us moving. The client can concentrate on being present instead of wondering what to do with their hands or whether they’re standing correctly.
Jordan described our session as feeling more like we were hanging out and creating something together, and that’s exactly where I want us to be during the session!
When someone stops concentrating on the fact that they’re having their photograph taken, I have a much better opportunity to photograph the person other people actually know.
And because Jordan and I had talked about the larger purpose of the session, she could trust me to create with that purpose in mind.
A Personal Brand That Can Grow With You
One of the things Jordan said struck me: “I don’t think one title really captures what I’m building anymore.”
I think that gets to the heart of why this session mattered. We were creating a collection she could pull from as different opportunities come along, without having to start over every time something changes.
That was something I kept in mind throughout the session. We needed enough variety to give Jordan options, but the photographs still needed to feel connected. Whether someone sees her on a website, in a publication, on LinkedIn, or attached to a speaking opportunity, they should recognize the same person.
And for me, that’s where personal branding photography becomes really useful. You can’t always predict where your business or career is going to take you, especially when you’re someone like Jordan who always seems to have another idea in the works. But you can create a strong library of photographs that gives you the flexibility to show up when those opportunities happen.
Jordan has that now, and just as importantly, the photographs feel like her.
Personal Branding Photography in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky
If your business or career has grown to the point where your current headshot no longer tells enough of the story, a personal branding session can give you a more useful library of images for the places you’re showing up professionally.
I work with entrepreneurs, executives, business owners, and professionals throughout Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky to create images built around who they actually are and how they need to use their photography.
Learn more about our personal branding photography
If you’re entering a new stage in your business or career and need photographs that can grow with it, I’d love to talk about what we can create.
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