Personal Branding: Developing Your Personal Brand Pt.1

How to Start
Developing Your Personal Brand

(adapted from
My Success Journal: For Young People)

“Hey! Why is my medicine so expensive this time? It’s usually a lot cheaper than this. What’s up with that?”

“Mr. Duncan, you normally get generics, but your doctor instructed us to give you the name brand medicine this time.”

“Does it do anything different? I mean, it costs twice as much. Is it twice as good?”

“Not really, it’s just the fact that it’s name brand. The brand is what you’re paying for.”

—A conversation between Al Duncan and the pharmacist

If I asked you to think of your favorite place to shop, different images and words would immediately begin popping into your head. I could also ask you to think about any company or successful person you know and once again images and words would immediately come to mind.

Those words and images aren’t popping into your head by accident. Successful people, companies, and organizations spend a great deal of time, energy, and resources (that includes money) to make sure that people are thinking certain things about them.

They want people to think these things so that they will associate or do business with them. This is known as branding. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product, service, or individual.

If you never thought about or worked on your personal brand, now is a good time to get started. It’s a crazy, competitive world, especially if you’re in the Millennial Generation.

Also known as Generation Y, the Millennial Generation is estimated to be--depending on whose data you use--between 85-95 million strong in the U.S. alone! That’s the largest generation in the history of the world. The Millennials have changed the game forever and if you want to excel at the game of success, you had better have a strong personal brand.

Your earning ability is largely determined by the perception people have about the quality and value of your service and your character. That means that your personal brand could be the difference between you getting the internship, scholarship, job, or promotion instead of someone else getting your internship, scholarship, job, or promotion.

Your personal brand will be the difference between a venture capitalist investing in your business or someone else’s. Your brand could even be the difference between you getting a date or not! (Who wants to go out with someone whose brand is: complete loser?)

The bottom line is:

Your personal brand has a huge impact on whether or not someone will associate or do business with you.

So, let’s work on your personal brand right now. It starts with Authenticity, the first step in my most requested college program called Get on the BRANDwagon™: Rising to the Top in a Crazy, Comepetitive World. Below you will find 9 questions. The answers will help you lay the foundation for your personal brand.

Understand that this is going to take a little time so, keep checking back because I’ll be writing a ton of articles on personal branding over the next few weeks. In fact, I'll walk you through all seven steps from my program on personal branding.

With your strong personal brand you'll be poised to Rise to the Top in a Crazy, Competetive World.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you are writing your answers:

It’s a personal choice. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions.

Keep it professional. Stick to answers that will help you achieve your goals. I know you want to be the coolest person ever, but trust me—I know from personal experience—being paid and successful is very cool.

It’s not permanent. Your brand doesn’t have to be written in stone. You may want to change things down the road and that’s okay. If there's a problem with your personal brand then work on it, but eventually you are going to have to settle on a core brand that you can build on. Consistency is one of the keys to a successful personal brand.

Keep it real. Seriously. Just be yourself. It’s okay to put down things you are striving for, but don’t be a faker. Authenticity is at the core of any successful personal brand.

Have fun. Relax. I know a lot is riding on your brand, but that doesn’t mean that this has to be a pain in the butt. Well…at least not all the time.


QUESTIONS FOR BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

1. What is one thing you are passionate about?
2. What is one thing you want to do in life or die trying? (Keep it legal!)
3. What special qualities do you look for in a friend?
4. What do you like most about yourself?
5. What is your greatest gift to the world?
6. If you could have any type of career you want, what would it be?
7. What is the one thing you would do if you were 100% guaranteed to succeed?
8. In terms of your career and being successful, what is your greatest fear?
9. In one positive, professional word, how would you describe be yourself?

Congratulations. Now that you have taken the time to answer these questions (you did answer them didn’t you? In writing?) you’re well on your way to crafting a powerful personal brand. You'll learn how to craft these answers into the foundation for a strong personal brand in the next several articles on Personal Branding.


Up next: Part II - A few more things about Authenticity.
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