The Brand Called You
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.
What makes You different?
Start right now: as of this moment you’re going to think of yourself differently!
Starting today you are a brand.
You’re every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or Lady GaGa
What is it that my product or service does that makes it different?
Give yourself the traditional 15-words-or-less contest challenge. Take the time to write down your answer. And then take the time to read it.
Several times.
If your answer wouldn’t light up the eyes of a prospective client or command a vote of confidence from a satisfied past client, or — worst of all — if it doesn’t grab you, then you’ve got a big problem.
It’s time to give some serious thought and even more serious effort to imagining and developing yourself as a brand.
Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors
What have you done lately — this week — to make yourself stand out? What would your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength?
Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?
How do the Big brands do it?
The standard model they use is
feature-benefit: every feature they offer in their product or service yields an identifiable and distinguishable benefit for their customer or client.
So what is the “feature-benefit model” that the brand called You offers?
Do you deliver your work on time, every time? Your internal or external customer gets dependable, reliable service that meets its strategic needs.
Do you anticipate and solve problems before they become crises? Your client saves money and headaches just by having you on the team. Do you always complete your projects within the allotted budget?
I can’t name a single client of a professional services firm who doesn’t go ballistic at cost overruns.
Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value?
Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of?
Ask yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about? If you’re going to be a brand, you’ve got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value, that you’re proud of, and most important, that you can shamelessly take credit for.
When you’ve done that, sit down and ask yourself one more question to define your brand:
What do I want to be famous for?
That’s right — famous for!
No matter how beefy your set of skills, no matter how tasty you’ve made that feature-benefit proposition, you still have to market the bejesus out of your brand — to customers, colleagues, and your virtual network of associates.
When you’re promoting brand You, everything you do — and everything you choose not to do — communicates the value and character of the brand.
Everything from the way you handle phone conversations to the email messages you send to the way you conduct business in a meeting is part of the larger message you’re sending about your brand.
Your brand You Logo/business card: Have you designed a cool-looking logo for your own card?
Are you demonstrating an appreciation for design that shows you understand that packaging counts — a lot — in a crowded world?
Most Importantly: The key to any personal branding campaign is “word-of-mouth marketing.”
Your network of friends, colleagues, clients, and customers is the most important marketing vehicle you’ve got; what they say about you and your contributions is what the market will ultimately gauge as the value of your brand. So the big trick to building your brand is to find ways to nurture your network of colleagues — consciously.
We now live in a project world. Almost all work today is organized into bite-sized packets called projects.
A project-based world is ideal for growing your brand: projects exist around deliverables, they create measurables, and they leave you with braggables. If you’re not spending at least 70% of your time working on projects, creating projects, or organizing your (apparently mundane) tasks into projects, you are sadly living in the past.
Today you have to think, breathe, act, and work in projects.
Project World makes it easier for you to assess — and advertise — the strength of brand You.
You’ve got a marketing brochure for brand You. Your marketing brochure brings to life the skills you’ve mastered, the projects you’ve delivered, the braggables you can take credit for.
And like any good marketing brochure, yours needs constant updating to reflect the growth — breadth and depth — of brand You.
A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It’s full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense.
(It often does.)
A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.
Start by writing your own mission statement, to guide you as CEO of Me Inc.
What turns you on? Learning something new? Gaining recognition for your skills as a technical wizard?
Shepherding new ideas from concept to market? What’s your personal definition of success? Money? Power? Fame?
Or doing what you love?
However you answer these questions, search relentlessly for job or project opportunities that fit your mission statement.
And review that mission statement every six months to make sure you still believe what you wrote.
No matter what you’re doing today, there are four things you’ve got to measure yourself against.
Start by writing your own mission statement, to guide you as CEO of Me Inc. What turns you on? Learning something new?
Gaining recognition for your skills as a technical wizard? Shepherding new ideas from concept to market?
What’s your personal definition of success? Money? Power? Fame?
Or doing what you love?
However you answer these questions, search relentlessly for job or project opportunities that fit your mission statement.
And review that mission statement every six months to make sure you still believe what you wrote.
No matter what you’re doing today, there are four things you’ve got to measure yourself against.
First, you’ve got to be a great teammate and a supportive colleague.
Second, you’ve got to be an exceptional expert at something that has real value.
Third, you’ve got to be a broad-gauged visionary — a leader, a teacher, a farsighted “imagineer.”
Fourth, you’ve got to be a businessperson — you’ve got to be obsessed with pragmatic outcomes.
It’s this simple: You are a brand.
You are in charge of your brand.
There is no single path to success.
And there is no one right way to create the brand called You.
Except this: Start today. Or else.