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Professional Presence: Brand Me!

Professional Presence: Brand Me!

It has been over a decade ago when Tom Peters wrote his article “The Brand Called You” in the magazine Fast Company. The idea is to differentiate yourself and your services from others. Instead of such terms as employee or manager you must think of terms such as “CEO of Me, Inc”. Everyone brands you - politicians, marketers, your supervisor and coworkers. If you don’t take control of your brand, you could be stuck with how others judge you and not how you want to be judged. Once you have identified your brand, you must work on establishing your professional presence and letting people know about you. Bottom line: What do you want people to think when your name is mentioned? When you walk into a meeting how do you want to be perceived? Are you new? Improved? Fast-acting? What is your brand?

Branding is the first step in developing your professional presence (how you package yourself internally and externally). The main outcome of personal branding should be a clear, deep, and profound understanding of who you are, what you stand for, and what you want to be known for. It is not enough to be known for what you do — you must be known for what you do differently and effectively. You do not merely want to be known as another employee in a classification. You want to be known as the best (perhaps the only) solution to improve productivity and solve problems.

There are three areas you can focus on when developing your "Brand Me" strategy:
(1) Develop your brand. (2) Package your brand. (3) Communicate your brand. In developing your brand you need to ask yourself some basic questions. What are your values? What do you love? What do you hate? What are you insanely great at doing? What are you most proud of? What do you want to be? What is important and valuable to you? What do you want to be known for? What is your mission? The concept of branding yourself goes far beyond marketing yourself to others. Once you formulate your brand, it will serve as the basis for everything that connects people to you. Your brand is powerful.

How will you package your brand? Like it or not, people judge people based in part on appearances. First impressions are very important. Once you have established who you are, what you are about and how you want to be perceived, you must then begin to develop the professional presence that identifies your brand. Professional presence is comprised of all the resources you have to influence others. Your professional presence is the way you present yourself in the workplace: your appearance, your speaking style, and your way of interacting with others.

Next, people have got to know about you and your great work. They have to meet you and to see you. If you want people to talk about the wonderful things you do, then you must give them the opportunity to experience you. This means attending networking meetings (both social and professional) and getting involved in external organizations in your field. You may want to do volunteer work related to your field. When you share what you know, you will reap far more than you sow.

Personal branding may have been a unique idea in the '90s when Tom Peters first wrote
his article but in today’s world personal branding is vital. The market place is crowded
and the labor market is very competitive. To make your imprint and rise above the
masses, you need to have a clear idea what you're all about, what you have to offer and
to whom. What makes you different? What do you have that is unique, better,
richer? Dig deep inside yourself and find out. Once you have message down, create the
opportunities to tell others what you're all about and how you can help them. Make your
brand known!

Professional Presence Brand Me - To learn more about this author, visit Dia Sutton's Website.

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Kim Castle
With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website

David Barr
David Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website

Anne Barr
Anne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website

John Brennan
John Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website

Jay Kubassek
(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.

As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)

Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist.

Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website

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Dia Sutton

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(Visit Dia's Website) Go to www.suttonenterprises.org Dianne Floyd Sutton is President of Sutton Enterprises, author, trainer, educator, facilitator, expert witness, coach and actor. She has twenty-five years of combined experience in Human Resource Development (HRD) and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) training. And she has twenty years of business experience as Sutton Enterprises. She has the skills to create a safe learning environment where diverse participants are able to ask questions, experiment with new behaviors and make mistakes. She also has the ability to present models and techniques in a straight forward and clear manner so that they are easier to remember and utilize. Ms. Sutton She was a mathematics instructor in the St. Louis, Missouri Public School System while attending graduate school at Washington University. Before founding Sutton Enterprises in 1987, she held a variety of positions at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in training and employee development. Her most recent publication is Workplace Etiquette: A Guide to Thriving and Surviving in Today’s Workplace.