Master the Brand Called YOU: The Proven Leadership Personal Branding System to Help You Earn More, Do More and Be More At Work. Brenda Bence
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more than half of our waking hours at work, yet 75% of us are unhappy while we’re there!
If you’re one of those people who aren’t as satisfied at work as you’d like to be, defining your own leadership brand can help you start to enjoy your job again. Once you define and clarify your role at work and what you want to accomplish—which is what leadership personal branding is all about—your work will have new meaning. Knowing who YOU™ are can help you eliminate that groan that escapes from your throat when the alarm goes off in the morning. Yes, you can be happy, fulfilled, and motivated on the job.
When you look at your work as an opportunity to build a brand for yourself, you start to make every minute of your career count. It brings new energy and purpose to your job. When people ask you what you do, you’ll be able to answer the question with enthusiasm.
Grab the Steering Wheel of Your Career
Author and motivational speaker Nido Qubein said, “Life doesn’t give you what you want; it gives you what you deserve.” What you focus on is what you get. So, if you want a better career and a more satisfying work life, it’s up to you. Your success at work is in your control, and a large part of the foundation of that control comes from learning how to master the brand called YOU™.
Defining your brand is only the first step in the process, though. It makes no sense to get clear on the brand you want and then leave it in a desk drawer. In order for your brand to serve you well, you need a roadmap to help you communicate to others what you want it to stand for. That’s how you achieve your goals. That’s how you change your work life for the better. That’s how you master self-leadership and become a leader of others, if that’s what you want in your career. And that’s how you grab the steering wheel of your career and drive it to where you want it to go.
Believe It or Not…You Already Have a Brand as a Leader
When I speak about leadership personal branding at conventions and corporate gatherings, often an audience member will say, “Sounds very interesting, Brenda, but no thanks. I’m actually not into self-promotion, and I’m not a leader. I don’t have—or even want—a leadership personal brand.”
It’s then that I break the news: You already have one.
It’s true. You don’t have to sit down and give your brand any thought to have one. Just by virtue of being you in the workplace, you are branded. And whether or not you lead others, you do lead yourself. The question is: Do you have the leadership personal brand you want?
If you don’t take control of your leadership personal brand and make a conscious decision about how you want to be known, you may be leaving an impression that actually works against your success. Are you living up to the potential that YOU™ could achieve if you took charge of your brand consciously rather than leaving it to chance?
Don’t Like the Brand You Have Now? Change It.
Many years ago, a famous man discovered the hard way that his leadership personal brand wasn’t what he wanted it to be. Alfred Nobel was a very successful and wealthy Swedish industrialist who lived in the 1800s. He was widely credited with two inventions—dynamite and the detonator (the apparatus that causes dynamite to ignite from a distance). He had made millions from these two inventions, and he was living a wonderful millionaire’s life.
Alfred’s brother, Ludwig Nobel, was an equally well-known and wealthy businessman who had developed successful inventions of his own. You might say that Alfred and Ludwig Nobel were the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of their day.
In April of 1888, Ludwig Nobel died. But the death notice that showed up the next day in the newspaper was switched, and it was Alfred’s obituary that appeared, not Ludwig’s. So, Alfred Nobel had the rare opportunity of opening up the morning paper and reading his own death notice. Can you imagine how powerful that would be?
But Alfred must have cringed when he read the headline of his obituary. It labeled him “The Merchant of Death” because of all of the work that he had done with dynamite and detonators. In that single moment, Alfred Nobel realized that everything he had done would forever associate his name with death—unless he took control and did something about it.
That was the day the seed was planted for the Nobel Prizes. Alfred didn’t want the name “Nobel” to stand for death and destruction, so he made a plan to develop a series of prizes for those who confer “the greatest benefit on mankind.” When he died, he left the bulk of his millions to the establishment of the awards that eventually included five categories: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, Literature, and Peace.
Look at what the name “Nobel” stands for today—the most prestigious prizes awarded for the highest achievements of humankind. While you’ve no doubt heard of the Nobel Prizes, you might not have known about the other work that Alfred Nobel did in his life. This is a true testament to the fact that he was successful in changing his brand so that his name could stand for what he wanted.
The same holds true for you. If you aren’t happy with the brand you have now, you can change it. As author Carl Bard said, “Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand-new ending.” This book can help you kick start that brand new beginning.
A “Systematic” Way to Master Your Brand
Now that you know you already have a brand, it’s time to take control of it by learning how to manage it. Since the advent of personal branding, several books have been written on the subject. What I have tried to do with Master the Brand Called YOU™ is to offer you a complete system that covers every possible aspect of building a leadership personal brand for yourself. This book goes beyond the theory of personal branding to bring you tangible applications for your brand within your day-to-day work life. It’s a do-it-yourself, no-nonsense guide to achieving greater success at work through branding yourself. It’s simple, easy to read, and has worked for thousands around the world.
Master the Brand Called YOU™ is designed to take the guesswork out of figuring out what your brand is and how to make it work for you. Through this proven step-by-step system, you will:
•Define your own brand using a Leadership Personal Brand Positioning Statement format, which is modeled off the six core positioning elements used by the most successful product brands in the world.
•Communicate your leadership personal brand through a Leadership Personal Brand Marketing Plan that will help you take charge of the five activities you do every day that most impact your brand.
•Avoid damaging your leadership personal brand by learning from the mistakes of others. This is one of the most unique and fun parts of the system—my Leadership Personal Brand Busters®. These will help you bypass the most common pitfalls to establishing your brand so that you’ll know what to watch out for before you even get there.
•Use the graphic labeled “The Proven Pathway to Branding YOU™” above like a map to understand each step of this leadership personal branding system. Don’t worry if it doesn’t all make sense to you right now. It will—I promise.
I will also give you tangible tools to help you check the development of your leadership personal brand three months from now, six months from now, and further down the road. You will discover ways to assess your progress so that your brand will stay on track and evolve as your career moves forward.
As you read these pages, I hope you will experience many “ah-ha!” moments that stem from the power of thinking of yourself as a unique and individual brand. I hope you’ll see how you can use leadership personal branding to make tangible changes in your career. Those changes can bring you the kind of success you have always wanted but weren’t sure how to achieve, resulting in increased income, greater job satisfaction, and faster career progress.
Input Equals Output
Master