When Your Personal Brand Becomes a Commodity You LOSE

  • 1 min read

You can’t market your brand if it’s a commodity. Instead, people with empty pockets (a low hiring budget) might take pity on you and offer you something. A commodity has no differentiating traits or skills and cannot command a premium price (compensation). Also, when you are branded as a commodity, you have negative job security, which means that the probability that you get laid off is MUCH higher than that of people who are investing in their personal brand.

Tropicana example

Think about it this way, if you venture to your nearby Shaws Supermarket and are looking to purchase orange juice, you might see Tropicana and the store brand. Based on reputation and perceived taste and quality, Tropicana’s product will sell for $2 or so more. The power of brand is that you can command attention, get more money and have more respect.

Today, I’m going to share with you the worst job offer I’ve ever received. I can’t really hide that I don’t get offers regularly, but this is certainly one that stood out for me. I wanted to share it with you because it demonstrates why commodities lose. Please note that I don’t even think this company exists. Do not email that address, as it might be a virus.

We hire commodities!

Hello,

Our company would like to offer you the following position: Assistant Manager.

This is part-time home-based position. You’ll need no money and no special skills to start. This job requires only few hours during the week and is available on the whole territory of United States. You can easily combine it with your main employment.

If you are interested and would like to know more about our company and position offered, please drop me a line to: info@pix-trade.com

Sincerely,
General Manager
PIX Trade, Inc.

Final word

As you can see, there are jobs out there for people who have no specialty skills, money or time. You don’t need a strong personality or social skills to get jobs like this. What I’m trying to demonstrate with this example is that you “get what you pay for,” meaning that if you don’t invest in your personal brand, you will make far less money and have a far riskier position. To eliminate risk, become rich and have recruitment power, personal branding is required.

Picture of Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success (St. Martin’s Press) and the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future (Kaplan Publishing), which combined have been translated into 15 languages.

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