When You Stand Out, You Are Personal Branding
When you are visible, things happen. People seek you out because they’ve heard about you and your capabilities. They invite you into business meetings and conversations when they don’t have to. Your name pops up when people talk and gets passed upward and outward. You are top of the mind and tip of the tongue. …
Open Door Policies Don’t Work
In interviewing a client at the end of our project I learned how ineffective “open door policies” are by organizational leaders.
My client said, “Before we started our work together I couldn’t understand why employees who knew I had an open door policy, didn’t come to me when they knew another employee was doing things …
Personal Branding Weekly – We Work Through People
A third party endorsement is gold to a personal and business brand. A recommendation or referral is the end result of someone lending their credibility and reputation to you.
While there are other activities we can do ourselves, a recommendation and referral must be done through someone. It’s their endorsement that’s the special sauce that …
Why Every Professional Should Have a Personal Marketing Plan
Successful business owners leverage marketing plans to gain clarity on market conditions, their brand positioning, and to create sound marketing strategy. The end results of a solid marketing plan are clear-cut goals with date-specific action items.
As we observe the shrinking U.S.workforce and greater job competition, savvy career professionals should invest time in creating personal …
Use the “F” Word to Boost Your Creativity
Could failure lead you to your next success?
“It is not the critic who counts. It is not the man who sits and points out how the doer of deeds could have done things better and how he falls and stumbles. The credit goes to the man in the arena whose face is marred with …
Ditch the Pitch: An Interview with Steve Yastrow
Recently, I had the privilege to connect with Steve Yastrow, a former marketing executive and the founder of Yastrow & Company, a consulting organization that helps businesses improve results through breakthrough marketing, customer relationship, and sales ideas. Steve’s new book, Ditch the Pitch: The Art of Improvised Persuasion, makes the case against a standard sales …
Seven Reasons Your Resumé Is Hurting Your Career
I have reviewed over 300 random resumés in the past two weeks and, based upon that sample and my past experience, I can tell you that it is highly likely yours is working against you. Why? Because it contains common errors that detract from your initial impression and your overall professional presentation.
There are two …
Why Hiring an Assistant Could Save Your Personal Brand
There’s a defining time in every well-maintained brand when it becomes so popular and respected that you have to ask yourself, ‘Can I continue doing this alone?’
If your answer to the above question is no, and you continue chugging along solo, you could reach a plateau in your personal brand that eventually leads to …
Introvert’s Dilemma: Charge or Recharge?
Some of my favorite people are introverts. Like me, introverts need a good bit of alone time, which my staff calls my “cone time.” About half the time my nature cries out what Greta Garbo famously drawled (if Germans can drawl), “I want to be alone.” I like cone time, but I can go a …
Improving Workplace Communication is Not What You Want
Upon finishing a recent client project we had a nice discussion to close out our work.
I used it as an opportunity to learn my client’s feelings regarding the results we achieved.
We discussed the problems he and his company were facing that motivated him to bring me in.
He said one word, “communication.”
Then, …