Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

Today is a special event.  It is the first guest post ever on the Personal Branding Blog.  This guest post is written by Lief Larson, the founder and genius behind Lyro.com, a social network for exchanging business cards with your contacts. I’m proud to support Lief and be featured on the main page of Lyro.  Lief was also mentioned as one of America’s Top 10 Entrepreneur’s Under the Age of 30 by Entrepreneur Magazine.
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Tom Peters, in the August 1997 issue of Fast Company, said it best, “Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. 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.”

Here we are just beyond the Decennial of Peters cutting-edge article and yet many of us have not stepped up to the plate to take a swing at personal branding, yet alone hit one out of the park. If you feel guilty about building your personal brand, don’t. It’s what separates the ultra successful from the mediocre. In my childhood back in Wisconsin, my name was the butt of numerous jokes. No matter which way others approached the uncommon name of Lief, the few hurtful antagonists-at-heart always ended up producing variants such as “beef”, “grief” or the flatulent-sounding “queef”. Although it bothered me back then, peer maturity and wisdom have rewarded me handsomely with a name that immediately sets me apart from the crowd. I’ve come to embrace and appreciate my name and freely share it every chance I get. To me, my name has become the platform for launching my personal brand.

Whether your name is Tom, Mary, or John, you too can embrace your personal brand. Outside of our names, understanding our individual identity traits can cultivate our personal brand; it’s what makes you different! Often your identity is directly tied to what you’re good at. Maybe you are highly creative? Possibly you’re a people person? Or perhaps you have a natural talent for managing teams? Regardless of the capability that is unique to you, it is only worth something to others if you have found a means to express it through actions. In other words, have you fostered your distinctive abilities and have you leveraged them to a personal or commercial benefit?

Personally, I have come to realize that I have great vision and the drive to execute that vision. Unfortunately, because I failed to exploit this gift in the early years of my career, I needlessly held myself back. Once I got in touch with my natural sense of intuition, I excelled in the business world. This brought me to a new appreciation for the importance of taking the personal brand and turning it professional for new commercial opportunities.

You too have a skill that is unique to you. But what is it? To help you identify this unique attribute, I have a short exercise for you. Think back for a moment to those last ten (non-superficial) compliments other people have paid to you. Did somebody say that you’re very organized? Maybe they mentioned how poignant and well spoken you are? Or possibly they noted that you come across with great confidence and leadership? Whatever those people told you, they were subconsciously encouraging your unique trait (and likely one that they themselves do not possess). The social group, although somewhat mysteriously, has this omnipresent knack of discovering your role in society long before you have a clue. However, sometimes our antennas are just not fixed in the right direction to pick up on the signals. So now is the time to listen.

Somewhere between about age 18 and today you picked up several proficiencies. These are skills and traits that you have developed through education and practice. Maybe you know how assembly lines work and you’re skilled in the art of lean management. Perhaps your capable hands have performed surgery on a human heart, but you’re also incredible at making patients feel safe. Or possibly you are qualified at organizing and managing vast amounts of data, but you can leave the technical jargon behind when conveying yourself to operational and technical teams.

Your unique identity combined with your trade or skill set equal your distinction. [identity + skill = brand distinction] Take a moment to really focus in on how uncommon you are and how difficult it would be for just anybody to come in and do what you do every day. Modesty has no place in professional brand building.

O.k. Now back to reality. Unless you are the President, the Pope, or the Dalai Lama, chances are there are other people competing to do things similar to what you do or even for your very job. Let’s take comedians for example. There are thousands and thousands of people whose livelihood depends on making people laugh. Yet, a small roster of names like Seinfeld, Richard Pryor, and Rodney Dangerfield come to mind. Each has worked tirelessly to bring value to the marketplace and the reward has been competitive differentiation. What value do you bring?

Around my office I have a saying that I repeat at least once a week, ‘business is not about products and services, it’s about people.’ Without Edison there may have never been a phonograph. Without Bills Gates there may have never been a (albeit vulnerable) Windows® operating system. Without Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard none of us would know who moved our cheese, which leads me to my next point.

You are the Wizard of Oz – behind the curtain of some product or service – making the show go off without any hitches. You are pulling strings and dazzling the marketplace. But no one outside of your inner circle knows who you are. The ad budget for brand YOU is non-existent and your PR strategy doesn’t extend any further than leaving the office for an hour lunch break with colleagues. So what to do for brand YOU? Well, try discovering your inner star on the internet.

With the vast amounts of bits and bytes floating around in cyberspace, it’s easy to get lost. You can create a blog (which will only be one of more than 3 million blogs). You can create a website (which will only be one of 30 million). Or, you can leverage existing websites that already offer tools for helping you to create a digital identity. For example, check these sites out: www.myspace.com, www.facebook.com, www.lyro.com, www.orkut.com, www.linkedin.com, etc.

When you set out to tackle the mission of creating a brand YOU on the web, the first objective is to be searchable. Your own blog, if created through services such as Blogger or WordPress, will almost immediately be found in the major search engines. Your website, in most cases, will get lost in the mix unless you know how to market it. So how else you go about getting your name top ranking on search engines? The answer is that it’s a numbers game. In other words, you want to publish and control your identity on as many major sites as possible. The above-mentioned web communities are a start, but here are a couple of ideas most people don’t think of:

• Create an OpenID at www.ClaimID.com
• Create a Wikipedia entry at www.wikipedia.org
• Check your aggregated identity at www.spock.com

Now that you’ve put yourself out there, be careful to manage your expectations. Don’t anticipate that commercial opportunity will come knocking immediately. Increasing your exposure and reach takes time. However, with patience and thoughtful placement of your brand you will increase your visibility, which has greater potential than not.

Your professional brand is unique and there is no better time than now to take it online.