The preparation

The Ingredients

If Personal Branding was a magic potion, the ingredients to make it are experience, thought leadership and passion.

#1 Experience

Many people express their seniority by stating how many years of experience they have. However, it’s not the number of years of experience that counts.

What really matters is what you became through those years of experience. During our busy workdays, we typically forget to check whether we are leveraging all those years of experience into our present jobs and projects. So, when you design your personal brand, leverage your entire lifetime’s experiences.

Good experience comes from valuable accomplishments. Working for a number of years without valuable accomplishments won’t count as “experience”.

#2 Thought-Leadership

The next component in the personal-brand design process is to think about thought-leadership. What original ideas or knowledge that move the needle in a significant fashion do you bring to your job, your company, your clients, or your industry?

#3 Passion

Of course, we can’t ignore passion in this equation. You need to love what you are doing. When you build a personal brand, people will frequently call on you to perform your unique capabilities. Position yourself so that you can do things that you’re passionate about.

You should be able to create a compelling “who you are statement” around your experience, thought leadership, and passion. This statement should be unique to you. Once you ensure that your brand is relevant to the marketplace, you will attract substantially more attention than people in the commodity crowd.