By Steve Beseke, beseke1@earthlink.net
Over the next several weeks, I will be posting excerpts of my personal branding series that I am presenting to individuals, corporations and other organizations. Please let me know if my personal branding thoughts resonate with your life. Just remember to not try to create/reconfigure your personal brand all at once. I suggest you hink through it and take one step at a time.
Firstly, a little about my own personal branding journey…
When I assessed my career a couple years ago, I wanted to take a critical look at what I offered companies and, really, myself. At the time, I said to myself, “You are nearly 50 now and what is your career passion that will make you happy for the next 15 years.” It was not like I was struggling in life or anything.I’ve had a very successful career making money to buy a nice house, afford periodic vacations and live a quiet upper-middle-class life.
But I wanted more. I wanted to be reenergized again at work and actually feel more work passion than the everyday humdrum of job stress. I am sure many of you have gone/or going through the same reflection.
I asked myself, ” Does my career resiliency and legacy only depend on how much money I make?” I am a materialistic guy but after considerable thought I had to admit that it was not.
This started me on my journey to identify my personal brand and passion. The fascinating ride has taken me down some interesting turns and has led me to my resiliency business, motivational speaking and personal brand consulting. As I’ve become more mature as I hit 50 this year, I wanted to use my life experiences as a person with a disability (Cerebral Palsy), a local leader in internal/employee communications for companies and an average person like you to make a true difference.
Over the next decade, I want folks to remember me (a.k.a., my personal brand) as someone who is helping others find their resilient “sweet spot.” All of us have this spot and we deserve to find it for our health, happiness and resilient well being.
As we begin to discuss finding your personal brand, please think of yourself as a corporation selling a product. While you may not have millions of dollars to promote yourself like Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, you do have your wonderful skill set, personal experience and integrity to offer a company the “best deal in town” – yourself.
Let’s get started:
o Personal Branding is Your 21st Century Key to Standing Out From the Crowd
- Today, branding isn’t just for companies, Hollywood celebrities, or highly-paid athletes. People in all walks of life are starting to use personal or self branding to get ahead in the game of life.
- The single factor that often explains the difference between a professional who is competent and doing okay and one who earns a significant income and generates lots of business is having the confidence of self branding.
- Self branding defined: Self branding is a strong personal identity based on a clear perception about what you stand for, what sets you apart from others, and the added value you bring to a job or situation.
- Your self brand is the sum total of other people’s feelings about your attributes and capabilities, how you perform, even their perceptions about what you are worth.
- To brand or not to brand? Many people think that if they do a good job, their career will go fine. But no matter how secure your position seems to be, you are in competition with more people than you think. Even if you do a great job, you could still side-railed by circumstances out of control. I had this fantastic position that I was receiving fantastic accolades and wonderful salary. This country’s economic meltdown forced the company to lay off 1,000 employees including me
- To some people, branding may seem manipulative or phony. “I’d just rather be myself,” they say, “to with the flow and see where my career takes me.” Or, the familiar line, “I’m not good at marketing myself.”
- If you don’t brand yourself, others will. The fact of the matter is you’re giving the power to other people to brand you if you don’t do it yourself.
- Self brands are created not born. Branding is mainly a process of analyzing a product in relationship to a market and figuring out how to maximize the brand’s potential. Branding is creating an asset out of something. It is a matter of satisfying a market need in a different way. And figuring out a plan of action – the marketing plan – to build awareness and trial of the brand.
- Launching a person on a drive to become a successful personal brand is essentially the same process. It is a conscious strategic process, a branding process, a process that Hollywood celebrities and high profile athletes have been using for some time. As I mentioned earlier, I had to sometimes be brutally honest with myself in my branding process!
- The Self Brand mindset: Self branding means looking at yourself as a marketer would look at a product that he or she wants to make a winning brand. You don’t think of yourself as an employee even if you work for a boss. You think of yourself as working for yourself marketing the brand, You.
- The first thing a marketer does is analyze the market and the product to understand what the opportunities are, what the threats are. What are the current conditions? What are the assumptions about the future? What problems need to be solved? What needs aren’t being met?
- Act like the marketer of the product: You. In personal branding, after analyzing the market, you do a self audit. What are my strengths and weaknesses? How does my brand compare with the people I am competing with?
- You focus on key attributes and resources that differentiate you. Skills, abilities, even personality traits you have that are a solution to a market need. Then you adopt what Theodore Levitt called “the marketing imagination.” You build a personal brand identity that is different, relevant and adds value.
- Plan to dazzle: Write out a marketing plan. I often work with folks to develop a formal marketing plan that lays out a personal brand strategy and action plan. It is often in the writing that new creative options come to light.
- It is important to set personal brand goals with a specific timeframe and plan of action for achieving your goals. So just like a marketer would, write down your personal marketing activities to achieve your goals. And, of course, you then need to execute the marketing plan. You can’t get to where you want to go unless you plan it and then do it.
- The final step is measurement…assessing your effectiveness. How is my “portfolio” different now than it was last year? What new projects did I take on? How did I expand my network? What new learning did I acquire? If something isn’t working, you change trains. Branding is a dynamic process that offers the greatest rewards to the receptive individual.
- Thinking and acting like a brand can create and maintain demand for your most important product – you.
Coca-Cola or McDonald’s has nothing over you or me – except those millions of dollars. We need to “live” our brand and folks will see the true passion and commitment no matter what your profession.
Please begin to think about establishing or reassessing your personal brand. I will have the next installment in my personal brand series next week. If you want to see the complete series, please just e-mail me at beseke1@earthlink.net.
I look forward to helping make your personal brand experience a resilient and worthwhile adventure.
Until next week, thanks again for joining me. Thousands of others worldwide are also joining you each week to read my career and life resiliency advice and banter. I am very humbled to say the least.