Chapter 1

Showing the World Who You Are

In This Chapter

Defining the personal branding process

Revealing your true self and your mission

Considering your target market and competition

Sharing your brand in every form of communication

Ensuring that your entire environment is on brand

It’s a new brand world. You’re branded, branded, branded. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called YOU.

—Tom Peters

The greatest success stories inevitably involve people who stand out from the crowd — people who may or may not have extraordinary talents but who most definitely know how to represent their capabilities in everything they do.

This chapter is your preview of how you can distinguish yourself by creating an image and reputation that set you apart, build trust among the people you want to serve, and represent the true, authentic you. This process — the process of creating your own personal brand — can serve you well whether you’re searching for a first job, exploring a change in career, looking to be more viable and successful in your current workplace, or hoping to serve your community as a volunteer or leader.

Crafting a personal brand can be exciting and a bit intimidating. To do it right, you have to spend time up front studying yourself and figuring out what really makes you tick. Only with a strong sense of yourself in mind can you undertake the steps that follow, which include identifying your target market, setting yourself apart from your competitors, communicating your brand to the people who need to know you, and aligning every visible aspect of your life with your brand. In this chapter, I outline the whole process so you know what to expect from the rest of the book. Your own success story is waiting to be written!

Discovering Personal Branding

Personal branding caught fire when Fast Company magazine ran a cover article called “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters in 1997. Soon, books like Daniel H. Pink’s Free Agent Nation (Business Plus) and William Bridges’s Creating You & Co.: Learn to Think Like the CEO of Your Own Career (Da Capo Press) joined in to support the idea that you direct your own career path. Being self-reliant means that you’re responsible for the direction of your career and the impression that people have of you. The time has come to take control of your personal brand.

So what exactly is personal branding? Your personal brand is your reputation, which is defined by your character. Your personal brand is also your legacy; it’s the way others remember you through your actions, your expertise, and the emotional connections that you make. Your personal brand shows your authenticity from the inside out.

You have a personal brand whether you know it or not:

• “She is so smart.”
• “He is such a slob.”
• “I can always count on him to finish what he starts.”

Personal branding is about expressing your authentic self by allowing you to be the person you’re meant to be. But it isn’t just some feel-good, self-help mumbo jumbo: It’s a strategic process that makes you an active partner in creating the direction of your life. Through personal branding, you find out how to bring more value to your work and to the target market that you serve. You discover how to identify and communicate your unique promise of value.

Your personal brand acts as a filter that helps you make decisions that are congruent with who you are and what you stand for. It identifies what makes you unique and clearly communicates your individuality to the people who need to know about you.

Having a personal brand sounds like a great idea, but how do you get one? If you’re serious about developing your personal brand, a very clear road map can get you there. This book guides you through every stop along that map. The following section, in brief, walks you through what you need to do.

Know your brand

Knowing your brand sounds easy enough, but how do you figure out what your brand is?

1. Define who you are.

   The beginning of any branding process is being able to clearly define that brand. In personal branding, the product is you! You must take time to get to know yourself and what is important to you. That’s what Chapter 4 is all about.

2. Spot your target audience.

   Are you interacting with and trying to promote yourself to the right people? In Chapter 5, I help you determine who needs to know about your personal brand.

3. Get to know your competitors.

   Whom are you competing with? To have a strong brand, you need to understand who your competitors are and which market niche works for you. Chapter 6 gives you the tools to accomplish this step.

4. Craft a personal brand profile.

   This all-important tool, which I discuss in detail in Chapter 7, gathers all the data that you collect about yourself, your target audience, and your competitors into one defining document. This profile helps you pinpoint your unique promise of value and write a statement that succinctly expresses your brand.

Communicate your brand

After you get to know your brand, your next challenge is to communicate it clearly, concisely, and consistently to the people who need to know about it. Here’s how:

1. Write your story.

   Chapter 8 is a lesson on how to make your story appealing to others. You need to be able to tell others about yourself and to develop a personal commercial (or an elevator pitch).

2. Brand your traditional communication tools.

   You want to express your personal brand in your letters, resume, professional biography, and presentations — and, if you have the opportunity, on television. Chapter 9 shows you how.

3. Communicate your brand online.

   Chapter 10 demonstrates how to merge the world of social media with your personal brand.

4. Create a communications plan.

   You need a communications plan so that you’re sharing your brand on your own terms — not leaving anything to chance. Chapter 11 gives you the inside scoop on how to craft a communications plan.

Control your brand ecosystem

The phrase brand ecosystem may sound intimidating, but it’s just shorthand for “every element of your life, from your clothes to your professional colleagues, that influences how your target audience perceives you and whether it wants to learn more about the product or service you’re offering.” Phew! You can see why I opted for the shorthand. Here are some of the elements of your ecosystem that you want to control:

• Your image: Whether you like it or not, what you look like on the outside does matter. Fashioning your image to match your personal brand helps you communicate something authentic about yourself at first glance, and Chapter 12 shows you how.
• The appearance of your branded materials: From business cards to your website, you want to create a consistent visual image for your brand that makes the right impression on your target audience. Chapter 13 explains how to select images, colors, and fonts that create the visual effect you want.
• Your unique career path: Your target audience — and the way you interact with it — is determined by where you are in your career. In Chapter 14, I discuss special considerations to keep in mind if you’re just out of college, if you’re midstream in your career and trying to switch jobs, if you’re an executive, if you’re an entrepreneur, and more.
• Your network: The people you associate with are very important; they factor into the impression you make on your target audience, as well as your ability to make connections with future employers. Chapter 15 is full of tips for finding people who can support your goals and connecting with them in meaningful ways.
• Your performance in your current workplace: Personal branding is not just for job seekers. If you’re already employed, Chapter 16 offers lots of ideas for developing your personal brand in the context of your current workplace.

Figuring Out Who You Really Are

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

—Dr. Seuss

In the previous section, I note that the first step in developing a personal brand is knowing yourself. You need to look at the expectations others have of you and how they influence how you want to be seen. In this process, you ask yourself questions to discover your authenticity and understand what you need in order to live your mission through your personal brand. Here, I help you start thinking about what that process involves.

Shedding others’ ideas and expectations

Becoming an authentic human being means that you accept yourself for who you are. Everyone has different approaches to life, likes and dislikes, and skills and talents.

Most likely, when you were in junior high, standing out was deadly. At that age, nothing is more important than fitting in. But...