Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Personal Branding is NOT Image Management

Breaking some myth: 

Personal Branding is not a very talked about subject in India yet, though this is a huge thing in west. Unfortunately, the few so called Personal Branding “companies” in India are primarily into Image consulting while calling it personal branding. This is not only fueling the misconception around it, it primarily amounts to deceiving people with a very wrong notion.

Personal Branding is based on personal goals of individuals which are tuned based on individual strengths, experience, expertise and knowledge for a long term purpose, with a Roadmap and timeline as well as skill-set adjustments.

This also defines the potential  Customer Group the individual might be addressing (example a mid level executive’s CG can be the CEO of the organization; an artist’s CG can be the gallery owners, or a start-up entrepreneur’s CG could be investors or end users ) as well as the positioning that one should take given the above factors (GOTO person, best in the industry, great story writer, etc)

Imagine two beautifully wrapped boxes. One is covered in attractive wrapping paper, but contains only scraps, while the other has unique and excellent gifts inside it.

Image Management is like the first box that deals with your ‘image’ or appearance alone, whereas Personal Branding is essential life or career strategy to make you Unique and Influential in the area of your work or specialization.



Sunday, April 24, 2016

Tell The World Your Worth.


A lot of entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals struggle with self-promotion as well as personal brand building.
Most of them struggle because of 2 very costly limiting beliefs - not because they are humble or introvert.
The first is…
“I’m ‘just’ a small operation / one person. No one’s interested in what someone in my position is up to or has to say.”
The other is…
“I know I need to promote myself and build my own brand and influence, but I have no clue how to do it and it seems like a huge job that I’m not up to handling.”

Now think hard : The way things work in the “New Media Age”, you DO ABSOLUTELY have a voice, and people absolutely DO want to learn from your expertise.
And second: Yeah, it can be difficult if you’re trying to build influence from scratch without a solid step-by step plan.
But starting today, let's change that. 
Let's create that plan...