The Brand You 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!
Michael Goldhaber, writing in Wired, said, “If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won’t get noticed and that increasingly means you won’t get paid much either. In times past you could be obscure yet secure — now that’s much harder.”
Again: the white collar job as now configured is doomed. Soon. (”Downsizing” in the nineties will look like small change.) So what’s the trick? There’s only one: distinction. Or as we call it, turning yourself into a brand…Brand You.
A brand is nothing more than a sign of distinction. Right? Nike. Starbucks. Martha Stewart. The point (again): that’s not the way we’ve thought about white collar workers–ourselves–over the past century. The “bureaucrat” on the finance staff is de facto faceless, plugging away, passing papers.
But now, in our view, she is born again, transformed from bureaucrat to the new star. She works in a professional service firm and works on projects that she’ll be able to brag about years from now.
I call her/him the New American Professional, CEO of Me Inc. (even if Me Inc. is currently on someone’s payroll) and, of course, of Brand You.
Step #1 in the model was the organization…a department turned into PSF 1.0. Step #2 is the individual…reborn as Brand You.
In 50 essential points, Tom Peters shows how to be committed to your craft, choose the right projects, how to improve networking, why you need to think fun is cool, and why it’s important to piss some people off. He will enable you to turn yourself into an important and distinctive commodity. In short, he will show you how to turn yourself into…Brand You.If Dilbert and Tom Peters ever attended the same party, they’d probably find themselves in opposite corners. The cynical cartoon character would have a hard time in Peters’s upbeat, high-energy world of “Cool-Beyond-Belief.” The Brand You50 is Peters’s manifesto for today’s knowledge workers. It joins his Reinventing Work series, which includes The Projects50 and The Professional Service Firm50.
In The Brand You50, Peters sees a new kind of corporate citizen who believes that surviving means not blending in but standing out. He believes that “90+ percent of White Collar Jobs will be totally reinvented/reconceived in the next decade” and that job security means developing marketable skills, making yourself distinct and memorable, and developing your network ability. His
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars A classic!
Have you worked for the same company and doing the same job for 10, 20, 30 years wondering what went wrong? If yes, Tom Peters’ books should be on your must-read list by now. It is a no-beating-around-the-bush-and-no-excuses wake-up call. If you are serious about your career, but feel like it isn’t going anywhere, read this book. Plus, Tom is highly entertaining. I started reading it at bed time and was not only not able to put it down, I never fell asleep that night. I was pumped and ready to follow Tom’s leadership. Hey, they don’t call him a guru for nothing…
5 Stars Brand yourself within your company
“i read this about 10 years ago, before I started my own firm. I loved its energy and disdain for thinking like an employee. Essentially Tom Peters argues that each of us - including employees - are brands with audiences we must sell to.”
1 Stars Strange Writing Style
Because the author has such an oddball writing style, I couldn’t get past the first three pages.
5 Stars A must read
A new way to reinvent myself. “Brand You 50″ is a powerful book. I like when Tom Peters said :” Experiences are as distinct from services, as services are distinct from products”. The book is an eye opener. Unique.
3 Stars Good, but a bit painful
The “The Brand You 50″ by Tom Peters was a quick read, but the overuse of exclamations!!!!!!, bold type, ALL CAPS, font changes, and h-y-p-h-e-n-s was tedious and kind of juvenile.
Once I got past that, it was a solid read that gave me a few new ideas. I recommend this book for the person that is just realizing that it’s not just what you know, but WHO you know and WHAT they know about you. I picked out the most relevant pieces by identifying what I wanted to remember (which I added to my learning journal), and what actions I wanted to take. Both are outlined below.
Why I selected this book:
For the life of me, I cannot figure out where I got the input to read this book, I think I read somewhere that this was a personal branding classic. I do remember I bought it used for .99 cents on Amazon.
Was the “The Brand You 50″ helpful?
Yes. It helped me to think about what was most important in the work and I do and try to cut out the non essential items. It also helped me to think about “who I am” and “what I want to be known for.” As this requires quite a bit of introspection, I do not have the results yet, but the mind is working that direction.
What will do as a result of reading “The Brand You 50″
Do a Personal brand equity evaluation:
Define: What 2 to 4 things am I known for?
Define: Next year, I will be known for these 2 to 4 additional things
Start building a personal brand equity statement (brand priorities)
* Start with skills, attitude, and character
* Develop a quarter page advertisement
* Synthesize down to an eight-word positioning statement
* Ensure the calendar reflects 1, 2, or 3 of these priorities each day
* Do an after-action-review (AAR) each night, was the day focused on one of the three brand priorities?
Look at the “to do” list, does it have a off brand topics on it? Can you 1. Kill it, 2. “Wow” it 3, postpone it
Ask, is not on-brand, stop it!
Focus on 100% on the on-brand work
Develop a contact list and manage the heck out of it!
Last contact, next contact, score each contact (in touch, neglect, etc)
Invite the project killer to lunch
Develop a visibility plan
Construct a formal word of mouth marketing campaign (see Read: Regis McKenna’s “Relationship Marketing”)
What did I add to my learning journal after reading “The Brand You 50″
Re read Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people”
Read: Brad Blanton’s “Radical Honesty”
Read: Regis McKenna’s “Relationship Marketing”
Try 1 thing really different each month
Go to the bookstore and skim through 20 magazines you typically do not read
Filed under: Personal Finance Book Reviews