This document provides 10 easy steps for personal branding. It begins by explaining that personal branding is like branding a product - you construct an identity for yourself. The 10 steps include determining your unique strengths, showing rather than telling about your strengths, developing a branding strategy with purpose, point of view and principles, documenting your work, becoming an "embedded entrepreneur" who creates value for their employer but also themselves, taking ownership of tasks, understanding your own talents and strengths, measuring your traits long-term, and thinking from others' perspectives. The overall goal is to strategically portray an authentic identity that achieves your career objectives.

1. Branding: You
Ten Easy Steps

2. Branding 101
• THE PURPOSE OF BRANDING IS TO
PROMOTE THE VIRTUES OF A
COMPANY OR PRODUCT AND
DIFFERENTIATE THOSE VIRTUES
FROM ALL OTHER COMPANIES AND
PRODUCTS
• WHAT WORKS FOR PRODUCTS GOES
FOR PEOPLE TOO. JUST AS YOU CAN
CONSTRUCT A BRAND FOR A
PRODUCT OR SERVICE, YOU CAN
BUILD A STRONG BRAND IDENTITY
FOR YOURSELF.

3. Personal Branding in 10
Easy Steps
• personal brand is
• Authentic
• value to your boss
• aligned with your company's goals
• In fact, "Brand You" is a distillation of who you
genuinely are -- and how you must appear to your
current and potential employers and customers.
• Personal Brand is NOT
• elevator speech
• self-help jargon
• positive corporate buzzwords

4. Step 1 What makes you
unique?
• determine your unique value
based on your talents and
strengths.
• What makes you hard to beat
and hard to replicate?

5. Step 2 Be prepared to
show
• Branding is strategy, and just
like any other important
corporate strategy, companies
should show, not tell.
• You should show, not tell

6. Step 3 Three P’s
• You already are a brand, whether you know
it or not. Your bio, experience, skills,
behaviors, appearance, even your name --
they all express your brand.
• Develop your brand strategy -- just like
good corporations strive for -- to make sure
you are portraying yourself in a way that
achieves your objectives. Strategy drives
tactics
• Purpose
• Point of View
• Principles

7. Step 4 Do your best,
and Document it
• To do our best work, we need a
sense of control -- and more
importantly, a way to ensure
that our employers are seeing
the unique value of what we
bring to work.
• Document and stretch out

8. Step 5 Become an
Entrepreneur
• Your brand strategy should
have sustainable
differentiation
• Become an “EMBEDDED
ENTREPRENEUR“
• YOU WORK WITHIN A FIRM FOR
THE GOOD OF THAT FIRM, BUT
YOU'LL EQUALLY SEEK
PERSONAL BENEFIT NOW AND
INTO THE FUTURE.
• Make what you are doing work
for YOU

9. Step 6 Become Value
• EMBEDDED ENTREPRENEURS HAVE A
DIFFERENT MINDSET
• THEY COME UP WITH NEW SOLUTIONS TO
COMPANY PROBLEMS AND NEW IDEAS TO
FUEL FUTURE GROWTH
• FIND OUT WHAT MAKES THEM UNIQUE
AND USE IT TO NAVIGATE A PROFITABLE
AND FULFILLING TRAIL WITHIN THE
COMPANY (AND ACROSS COMPANIES
OVER THE COURSE OF THEIR CAREERS)
• You create value because you become
value

10. Step 7 Own the Task
• Change your mindset about
how you feel about work
and employment
• Take ownership of the task

11. Step 8 Know Thyself
• To create a SUSTAINABLE,
DIFFERENTIATED BRAND
you must understand your
talents and strengths
• Are your talent and
strengths relevent to the
culture where you serve?

12. Step 9 Stay the Course
• Measure your core traits for
the long-term

13. Step 10 Think
• Think like the other guy, gal,
customer, boss
• Get into their head, but don’t let
them get into yours