Every Company Needs a Good Map

Why should you worry about how you are perceived? Why concern yourself with your personal brand?

1  You are a business - the business of you

2  Your competition is - or at least some are

3  It takes time - you cannot rush it

4  Not everyone is - and few are doing it right

5  You are doing it anyway - so why not do it right

Your business consists of everything that you are responsible for: the food on your table, the clothes on your back, and the shelter over your head. If you have a family, you may have partial or full responsibility to provide these same items for your family. This is not a simple job. Your life is a business that requires thought, planning, and determination. There are balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements. They may look different than the traditional forms but they are there. The entries are not all monetary either. There are accounts for emotions, time, favors, and trust.  

You can find more about this topic in books by Tom Peters - Brand You, Rajesh Setty - Beyond Code, and Stephen Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You can also find great blogs and websites like those of Krishna De, Om Malik, Robin Good, and Dan Schawbel.

You can also go to the next page...

A big part of your business is the personal brand that you build. You actually have several brands. Your professional brand is related to your work. Your private brand is how your family sees you. Your community brand is how friends and neighbors view you. These probably overlap significantly. There may be parts that are reserved for each but the key components are hard to separate.

Like it or not, what you do builds your brand, one or more of them at the same time. From how you react to trouble to how you greet people you meet. You are always building your brand in some fashion. You may be building a poor brand image but you are building one nonetheless. You can be in charge of the process or just let it happen to you. Chances are the latter strategy will not produce a desirable result. I think it was Dale Carnegie who said, "If you are not becoming the person you want to be. You are becoming the person you don't want to be." (See untended brand to the lower right)

If you want to do it right, you cannot rush brand building. It is more than polishing a resume. You need time to build some brand equity. You need to work at it. You need to cultivate your brand with intent and purpose. The best news is that few people are working at their personal brand. The bad news is that someone who wants the job or position you want, is or has, worked on theirs.

Bringing balance, fun, and education into your routine will help you to improve as a person, a leader, and as the manager of your own brand. Networking, socializing, and community service build your brand. If you have any doubts about the current state of your brand then you need to do some market research. Ask the target customers for your brand if you are perceived the way you want to be. If you have built up trust, then you will hear the truth. This is what good Modern Magellans do.

If you would like to share your thoughts on this, I am very interested to hear them.