You Own a Personal Brand?!

[David Sandusky]

Notice the increased personal brand talk at the 10 year anniversary of Tom Peters Fast Company article "The Brand Called You". As many are writing and saying, the 10 year anniversary of personal branding. This is where my friends and colleagues with long time careers in executive search, politics, athletics, media, speakers and commodity self employed people are laughing about.

Fact is, you already have a brand and it is being defined by others. We as people have been working on our individual brand strategy for longer than 10 years as a people. Tom Peters just did a magnificent job with a relevant article. He did create an industry of personal branders, however. It is good, there are a lot of people creating their own personal brand campaigns and as a result thinking about value and hopefully customer service. Perhaps people are trusting gut and following passion. There are a lot of people evangelizing personal branding which is good for people like me who build career and personal strategy towards business, team, culture and community branding driven by the individual brand. But as Krishna De says,

"Building your reputation and your personal brand today is a life long journey. I do encourage you to dismiss anything you read about ‘creating your personal brand’ as that is not authentic and you already have a personal brand."

It is a journey, not a talking point. Being found by personal brand front door packaging is not a personal brand. It is a commercial.