Today, I spoke to Penelope Trunk, who is the CEO of BrazenCareerist.com, the author of Brazen Careerist, the New Rules for Success, and a top career blogger. In this interview, Penelope tells us about how she started her new company, tips for people interested in building a personal brand, how she’s stood out amongst a lot of career experts out there and more. As a side note, I’m an evangelist of Brazen Careerist, but believe in their mission and site anyways.
Where did Brazen Careerist originally come from and how did it evolve over time (book/blog/company, etc)?
The company started as a way for me to share traffic with people who didn’t have a big a voice online. I realized that I could shift the traffic I had on my blog to people who did not have as much traffic. My first idea was that I could help people this way and the blog network was a way to do that. As Brazen Careerist evolved, we realized there were bigger ways we could help people.
What tips would you give to someone first starting out with personal branding?
“Focus more on trying to figure out what you love than trying to figure out how to brand yourself.”
A personal brand that stands for nothing is not very useful. The process of branding yourself is something that has to go hand in hand with the process of understanding what is unique about you.
You’ve managed to stand out in the career space, where there are thousands of people vying for attention? What is your secret to doing so?
I didn’t start out intending to be a writer about career stuff. I started writing about myself. My love life, my family, my episodes of self-doubt. It turned out, though, that I had to also support myself. So I started a career in software marketing, and what people were willing to pay me to write about was my career. I think what made me stand out as a career writer is that I didn’t want to write about work. I wanted to write about the stuff that’s brushing up along next to work.
What have been your experiences been like working with millennials at your company? Do you think it’s challenging to work with people who are much younger?
It’s challenging for me to work with anyone, to be honest. It’s about compromising and listening and having patience. I think that’s what all relationships are about. I am still learning what part of relationships I’m good at. I’m 
good at caring about other people. But I’m not sure I’m good at doing it in a conventional well. So all this stuff is challenging for me in the company, and I dont’ think it has anything to do with the age of my co-workers.
What do you have planned for the future? What will Brazen look like in 5 or 10 years?
I hope Brazen Careerist will look huge and it will be the first place everyone goes to launch a job search or to figure out where they should be going next, or who they should be helping next.
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Penelope Trunk is the CEO of BrazenCareerist.com, both the largest online community of Generation Y professionals and a consulting firm that helps companies reach young professionals. Her clients rely on her to help them understand Generation Y’s priorities and passions so they can better build and manage their young workforce. Penelope’s breadth of experience encompasses ten years as an executive in the software industry and three companies of her own, and she has navigated an IPO, a merger, and a bankruptcy. And before all that, she played professional beach volleyball. She is also the author of Brazen Careerist, the New Rules for Success, published by Warner Books in 2007. Time Inc., Au Bon Pain, UBS, Brinker International, CUNA Mutual, Public Relations Society of America,
