A Brand Called You
On a beautiful summer day way back in the early 1990s, I picked up a relatively new magazine Fast Company. The cover article, “The Brand Called You,” was written by recognized speaker/author Tom Peters, then most well known for his 1980s business tome In Search of Excellence.
Peters suggested that the old business model of entering the workplace and slowly but surely climbing the corporate ladder was dead, dead, dead. In its place, he wrote, workplaces were about to become far more flexible. Individual employees needed to begin to view themselves as “CEOs of their own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”
Given the state of our post-recession economy, it’s never been more critical for employees to brand and market themselves internally and externally. Every quarter, undertake a personal brand assessment, by completing the following statements:
1. I am known for . . . .
2. By this time next year, I plan to be known for . . . .
3. My current projects challenge me . . . .
4. New stuff I’ve learned in the past 90 days includes . . . .
5. New people I’ve met . . . .
As Peters wrote: “It's over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That's not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It's full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.”
When you're starting work, every intern, summer associate and new hire should consciously work to build their personal brand.
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