Your personal brand is the sum total of your reputation at work, at home, with your friends, with people who don’t know you well, and with people who do. This may sound a lot like a reputation however, a reputation seems like something that happens to you while brands are something to be developed and improved. The truth is your brand is your reputation and the good news is you are in control of both.
Ten Truths About your Personal Brand
- Your personal brand is what you are known for. It creates and perpetuates expectations about you. What do others expect of and from you?
- Your brand arrives before you do, and stays after you leave. What impression does your brand leave when you aren’t there?
- It takes a lot of work to build an exceptionally positive personal brand, and very little to break it down.
- Personal brands can be helped or hurt by association.
- Brands can be incredibly strong and surprisingly fragile.
- What you think of yourself has very little to do with your personal brand.
- There is no such thing as a neutral personal brand.
- Your personal brand begins to build immediately with a new person you meet. The interaction is figured into whatever preconceptions the person might have add to create the current, more accurate, brand.
- Your personal brand can be strongly influenced over time.
- You are in control of your personal brand, just as you are in control of your reputation.
These ten truths about personal brands make a great primer for understanding exactly what a personal brand is… and how important it will be over the course of your career. What choices are you making to create the personal brand you desire?
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