Branding yourself

In a world where everything is branded, in order to succeed we need to learn how to brand ourselves. Tom Peters gives us an overview of where and how to start doing that.Tom Peters suggests following these steps:

1) What makes You different?
- Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors -- or your colleagues.
- What is the "feature-benefit model" that the brand called You offers?
- What do I want to be famous for?

2) How to market the brand You?
- Get involved in adjacent projects that help you gain visibility: teach in a local school, make some panel presentations, write in a local newspaper
- Being aware that everything You do matters and afects the You brand perception
- Drive word of mouth marketing - the key to any personal branding campaign

3) What's the real power of You?
- Learn to get and use power to grow the You brand
- As power is a matter of perception, act in a way so that you create a halo effect around your actions
- Organize your actions in terms of projects, which have the advantage of being: time limited, organized around deliverables, measurable, and leave you with braggables.
- Choose projects based on how you want to growth the brand You

4) How is brand You doing?
- Put together your own "users group" and ask them to provide you with feedback on your performance
- Know the value of the You brand on the market at every moment so that you know your bargaining power


Finally, I would like to share with you Tom Peters' quote, which I found extremely relevant and motivating to me:

"As you scope out the path your "career" will take, remember: the last thing you want to do is become a manager. Like "résumé," "manager" is an obsolete term. It's practically synonymous with "dead end job." What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more provocative projects. When you look at the progression of a career constructed out of projects, directionality is not only hard to track -- Which way is up? -- but it's also totally irrelevant."

His advice:

"Instead of making yourself a slave to the concept of a career ladder, reinvent yourself on a semiregular basis. Start by writing your own mission statement, to guide you as CEO of Me Inc. What turns you on? Learning something new? Gaining recognition for your skills as a technical wizard? Shepherding new ideas from concept to market? What's your personal definition of success? Money? Power? Fame? Or doing what you love? However you answer these questions, search relentlessly for job or project opportunities that fit your mission statement. And review that mission statement every six months to make sure you still believe what you wrote."

Good luck to all of you in this challenging endeavor!

Looking for a mentor...

Let's skip today's celebration of either "the working day" (in the more socialist market countries) or "dance into the May" (in the countries without a socialist history), and get down to business. Lately, I have been struggling with the idea of taking advantage of this crisis time when jobs are rather scarce and uninteresting, to consider building my own business.
There are four driving factors towards this entrepreneurial path:

1) Awareness that there are so many market opportunities in Romania and that I know where some of the opportunities lie

2) I know at least 4 other high potential people around me who are in the same situation: fresh graduates from leading European universities, with a lot of potential, who are in need for a navigation point.

3) The acknowledgment that the sooner you make a start-up business, the better because you don't have so much to lose and are rather used to the simple standard of living as a student.

4) I already have potential clients who are in need of my strategy & consulting skills and would trust to give me my first projects.

At the same time, however, I am aware of the risks and probability of failure that an entrepreneurial start-up encompasses. In line with this, for better or for worse, I have several potential alternative jobs, even in this crisis time. So, what I am missing now is a mentor with an entrepreneurial spirit. Until I find one, I am leveraging other people's mentors.
Check out the video below, which is the evidence that if you graduate from a world top university, it hardly ever means that you should pursue "standard" career paths.

Enjoy!




Some ideas from the presentation - on how to choose the focus area for the startup:
- Find what you are really passionate about
- Develop a product / service that solves one / some of people's problems/concerns
- Gather people around you who are at least as passionate about that thing as you are
- Keep your solution fast and simple
- Develop a corporate culture
- Know when to step down