Building a New Brand YOU

The following is excerpted with permission from Managing Brand You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Most Successful Self by Jerry S. Wilson and Ira Blumenthal (AMACOM 2008). I've written that you need to market yourself when you're looking for a new job, but you also need to market yourself to grow your career. And step #1 in doing this is deciding what "brand" for want to become (what you want to be known for.) This excerpt is being posted to get us started on the "marketing yourself in your career" discussion.

Yes, you can create your future. It’s in your hands. If you commit to the Brand YOU process, you can and will succeed. It will take work. It will take focus. It will take time. And in the end, it will all be worth it. In the words of the poet Spirella, “There’s no thrill in easy sailing . . . but there is satisfaction that’s mighty sweet to take, when you reach a destination that you thought you’d never make.”

Why is personal branding so important to you? You may be someone who doesn’t believe in “tooting your own horn”—or drawing attention to the things you’ve done, or do, or plan on doing. You may also believe that if you just do the best you can, good things will automatically come to you. Well, this may be the case for a few lucky individuals, but the majority of people are confused about how they can, in fact, stand out in a crowd, how they can succeed, how they can clearly stand for something, and how they can gain the respect of others. After all, there are times in all of our lives when we’d like to be noticed, to be appreciated for our personal strengths, competencies, good nature, and insight. Everybody wants to be special and receive respect, acknowledgment, and even admiration from others. The reality is that each of us, regardless of our position in life, wants to be special, hopes to be noticed, craves attention from others, desires respect, and regularly wants to feel important. Who doesn’t want to feel (and be) important? And who doesn’t want to make a mark on the world we live in, to truly make a difference to the people around us? It’s human nature to want to make a difference, whether it’s to your family, your significant other, your children, your friends, your business, your community, your house of worship.

Who doesn’t want to feel (and be) important? And who doesn’t want to leave a mark on the world we live in and truly make a difference to those around us?

Personal branding is relevant to anyone who wants to unleash his or her inner passions and proactively build a fulfilling future, as well as grow in importance, relevance, and reputation. Too many people are just floating down the river of life, expecting that everything will work out in the long run. But why settle for the possibility of life’s taking care of itself when you can draw the roadmap that captures the kind of life you envision for yourself? Why not create your own future? It’s cute, it’s funny, and certainly it’s an example that reinforces what we’ve all known throughout our lives. Too many times in our lives we seem to be waiting for something to just pour into our mouths or fall into our hands—or for challenges to just work themselves out in the nick of time. But life isn’t like that. When changes and challenges confront us, doing nothing will result in—nothing. Business guru and author Price Pritchett wrote, “More of the same gives you one thing . . . more of the same!”

We have to become more proactive, more energetic, more spirited, and more focused on making positive changes in our lives. After all, there are only three things a person can do when confronted with change. Ignore it. React to it. Make other changes. Now, ignoring it will lead to disaster. Did you ever have a toothache? What happens if you ignore that biological change in your mouth? It doesn’t get better; it gets worse. The second strategy, reacting to change, will keep a person at status quo and he or she will survive. But is just surviving enough? Of course not. You want to thrive. You want to succeed, to achieve.

Then there’s the final strategy in dealing with change: making other changes. Yes, you want to be a catalyst for change—a change agent, as business consultant Peter Drucker has said—to create your future. One theme throughout this book is simply stated as “If it’s to be, it’s up to me!” Being proactive, being committed to building your personal brand, will allow you to:

• Identify your inner passions and core essence.
• Stand up for what is important to you and stand out in the crowd.
• Focus your energy on meeting your top priorities.
• Stop spending time doing things that do not excite you.
• Execute your own personal Brand YOU plan.
• Achieve fulfillment, personal success, and, ultimately, happiness.

There are only three things you can do when confronted with change. You can ignore it. You can react to it. You can make other changes.