Leo Babauta Helps Us Achieve Personal Branding Zen

December 22, 2008 at 5:52 pm | In Book Reviews, Career Development, Interview, People, Personal Branding, social media | 3 Comments

Today, I spoke with Leo Babauta, who is one of the most well-known and respected bloggers in the world. He blogs at Zenhabits.net and has been writing for decades on work concentration and management. We talk about his success story, why it’s important to work smart (not just hard), how to stay afloat in the bad economy, what it takes to have a killer blog and the steps he’s taken to build his personal brand over time.

A few years ago you quit smoking, lost weight, tripled your income, started a successful eBook company, created an extremely successful blog called Zen Habits, and began to truly enjoy your life. How did you do it?

One thing at a time. :)

Seriously, as I talk about in The Power of Less, I’ve found myself to be much more effective at achieving goals and creating new habits if I focus on one goal or habit at a time, and concentrate the full power of my focus on it. I also used a number of effective habit-change principles that I learned through quitting smoking to create each new habit — to learn more about this, join The Power of Less New Year’s Challenge on thepowerofless.com.

So I focused first on quitting smoking, then on running, then on waking earlier so I could run, then on eating healthier, then on becoming more frugal and eliminating debt, and so on. One habit at a time, then focus on the next thing. Before I knew it, the list of accomplishments was incredibly long — more than I ever dreamed possible within a year or two.

It is possible to do more with less, even under intense corporate pressures and a poor economy?

It’s absolutely possible, as I’ve proven and as many others have shown as well. Not only is it possible, it’s even more imperative with intense corporate pressures and the tough economic times we’re facing.

“If you don’t do more with less, you’re liable to lose your job or go into bankruptcy.”

With intense corporate pressures, you have to learn to focus more, and become more effective with the time that you allocate to work. You can spend that time by being incredibly busy, doing a ton of tasks, but at the end of the day having little to show for all of your busy-ness … or you can spend it by focusing on just a few really important, high-impact tasks that will do a lot for your business in the long run. Which is a better use of your time — the high-volume, low-impact approach, or the low-volume, high-impact approach?

With the tough economy, you will also need to learn to cut back to the essentials, so you are not sacrificing quality of life as you become more frugal. It doesn’t cost much to be happy and live an incredible life if you have the things you really love and value in your life, and cut out the rest. I’ll soon be releasing an ebook companion to The Power of Less, called “Thriving on Less: Simplifying in a Tough Economy”, on my site thepowerofless.com.

How do we break our goals down into manageable tasks?

Start by focusing on one goal at a time. Pick the first goal on your list of goals — the one that will have the most impact, that you can accomplish in the next year — or even better, in the next 1-3 months.

Then, for that one goal, focus on just the next task you have to complete. If it’s a task that will take an entire day or several days, break that task into a smaller task that will only take an hour or less — 10-30 minutes might be even better, but no more than an hour.

Then focus just on that task, clearing away all distractions, until that task is done. Move on to the next task and finish that one, and so on. You can’t do more than one task at a time anyway, so it’s better to stop trying to switch between tasks and focus on one task at a time, and become more effective.

You have around 80,000 RSS subscribers to your blog. For any new blogger starting out, what would you recommend to them?

Start small. Don’t worry about getting thousands of subscribers – just worry about writing your next incredibly useful post. Creating great, useful, valuable content is the only way to get new readers — if your writing is great, you can attract visitors and keep them. Be genuine, write about what you know about, and be passionate in your writing.

Once you have a dozen or more really useful articles, do guest posts on other blogs, as often as possible. Again, write really useful guest posts and you’ll attract readers to your blog.

How have you built your personal brand over time? What do you think people know you the most for?

I started by thinking about my core message — what was I excited to write about, and what desires in my potential audience would that tap into? From these questions I created a message of simplicity, and I’ve tried to stay as consistent about that message in everything I do and create: from the title of the blog, to its design, content, headlines, to guest posts and comments and emails. If you’re not consistent, you will send a mixed message and your branding efforts will be diluted.

I also tried to find my target audience on other blogs and repeat my brand (Zen Habits) and message of simplicity to this target audience as often as possible. Read more about these topics on my blog for writers and bloggers, Write to Done, in an article called “Branding 101.”

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Leo Babauta, is the famous Zen Habits blogger, which is one of the top blogs in the world and author of The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life. He’s been writing for 23 years and served as a staff reporter, newspaper editor, and freelance journalist for 17 of them. He has done freelance for some of the most popular blogs, including Lifehack.org, Dumb Little Man, Web Worker Daily, FreelanceSwitch and others.

An Introduction into the World of Personal Branding

December 22, 2008 at 11:55 am | In Career Development, Personal Branding, Success Methodologies, eBrand, social media | 11 Comments

I’ve been asked by a lot of people for an article that introduces personal branding. I went searching through my archives and found that I really didn’t have an up-to-date article that goes over personal branding at a high level. More and more educators are interested in this space and most of my posts are for someone with basic knowledge and skills. Before we step into 2009, I’d like to go over the basics of what you need to know to get started on your brand for next year. “Building my personal brand” should be on all of your new years resolution lists.

The history of personal branding

Tom Peters crafted an article for the August 1st, 1997 issue of Fast Company Magazine, entitled “The Brand Called You,” which explored the evolution of career development, and exposed a new mindset for the new millennium. Basically, instead of relying on a company for career guidance, it’s up to you to take ownership of the brand called you. Personal branding called for everyone to become a “free agent,” which not everyone bought into back then. Now there are tools available for you to grasp your brand and shape it (social media).

Web 2.0’s impact on personal branding

Before web 2.0 changed our world, it was really hard to get enough press to really stand out. There weren’t blogs, so you’d have to get your local newspaper, or mainstream media to write about you. You could go to a networking event and meet five to ten people each time. You could sit in your college class and meet ten new people. Web 2.0 amplified how we network, first impressions and personal visibility and self-promotion forever.

Me 1.0 was hidden behind a corporate brand, without an outside voice and not being able to afford excessive promotion (PR & advertising). Me 2.0, as I call it, is when you get to stand in front of your company, at the cost of your time and with the ability to carry your voice across the world in a matter of seconds (think Twitter). I’ve captured this change in my new book, rightfully called, Me 2.0.

Why personal branding was inevitable

There are two main reasons why personal branding is becoming a core part of our culture. Sadly, it’s nothing revolutionary! First, we are all being judged all the time, even when we’re sleeping (our online profiles are still up!). Second, we have to constantly sell our ideas to teachers, managers, venture capitalists, our friends and family, to make things happen in our lives. We have to convince them to take action.

Personal branding defined

In 2007, I gathered a group of international brand and career experts to collaborate on a single definition for personal branding. After analyzing the definition and reciting it in a few presentations back then, I felt it was too long, thus no one could remember it. For 2008, I shortened it to “how we market ourselves to others.” Personal branding is a process.

Personal branding: how we market ourselves to others.

The personal branding process (DCCM)

1. Discover: The first thing you need to do is to figure out who you are, what you want to do in life, while focusing on your strengths, passions and goals. After that, you should create a development plan that aligns your short-term and long-term goals and, finally, a personal marketing plan.

2. Create: There are traditional and non-traditional ways to create your personal brand. The traditional ways include a business card, professional portfolio, resume, cover letter and references document. The non-traditional ways include, a video resume, LinkedIn profile, blog, Twitter and your existence on the various other social networks. While you create your brand, ensure that the content, including pictures and text, are concise, compelling and consistent with how you want to represent yourself.

3. Communicate: After you’ve created your brand, it is only natural (and human instinct) that you want people to see what you’ve done. Depending on your audience (hiring manager, teacher, clients), you may want to tweek your materials accordingly. To properly communicate your brand, through self-promotion, you need to have your story down pat and find the right sources that would be interested in what you have to say. I would recommend promoting others before you promote yourself as well. Communication consists of guest posting on blogs, writing articles for magazines, becoming your own personal PR person (pitch to the media), attending networking events and speaking.

4. Maintain: As you grow, the brand people see has to grow at the same time. For every new job, award, press article, and client victory (to name a few), everything you have created has to reflect that. The reason is simple:

You want to use what you did in the past to get what you want in the future.

Also, as you become more popular, your reputation will be knocked around and tossed throughout the web, from blog post, to tweet, to video, and more. You’ll want to keep a close eye on where your name is. To do this, I have created a post giving you free tools to do so.

Personal branding depends on your career status

High school student: If you’re in high school, personal branding still applies to you because getting into a top college is very competitive. Your goal is to position yourself as worth of a top school, so getting good grades, good SAT’s, interviewing at schools, networking with alumni who can endorse you, writing a compelling essay and all things social media, will help you.

College student: A college student is interested in either getting an internship, starting a business or getting a corporate job upon graduation. They have to compete on experience and network extremely hard in order to get a job. They need to position themselves as superior relative to their peers. This means, becoming a leader in college organizations, meeting as many people as you can, forming a personal branding toolkit and starting when you’re a freshman are critical to your success.

Corporate employee: If you work for a company, and enjoy doing so, then personal branding becomes the cornerstone for how you move up the hierarchy and become recognized as a leader.

Entrepreneur: An entrepreneur needs to think about branding his or her company, as well as him or herself in the process of establishing a business. The entrepreneurs brand must reflect the company, yet be set apart from it simultaneously. The entrepreneurs brand is VERY important in securing venture capital. For instance, if Jason Calanis wanted seed money, he has a better chance of getting it than someone without a track record of success (he sold Weblogs Inc for millions).

Consultant: These individuals are obviously all about personal branding because it’s all they got. Many consultants brand themselves as masters of a specific trade (at least the good ones). They are able to track value and attribute it to the work they provide for clients.

3 laws of personal branding

Authenticity: You need to be yourself because everyone else is taken and replicas don’t sell for as much. Furthermore, you need to define your brand before someone else does for you!

Transparency: It’s better to be straightforward and honest, then lie, and have your actions work against you.

Visibility: The notion that if you aren’t known, you don’t exist.

5 benefits of personal branding

Promotions: Anyone who is ambitious and works at a company will want to move up. By building your personal brand, you become the best choice for a promotion.

Happiness: By aligning who you are with what you do and appending goals to it, you can turn “work” into a “hobby.” You can position yourself on a topic you love, so you get paid to do what you would count as a hobby.

Compensation: Personal brands command premium prices. Just like Apple and Gillette can charge more for products you can get for less, you can do the same.

Business: People want to purchase from other people who they know, like, trust. When you make those people happy that they chose you, by giving them great results, they will refer you to even more people.

Perks: Strong brands get perks. For instance, I get free books from authors and other bloggers get free products, such as limited edition Pepsi cans. Celebrities, like Halley Berry, don’t have to pay for anything because of who they are.

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