Threshold Consulting: It's Your Life, Own It!

Substitute

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah

~ The Who

Back in the day, when I first became a certified Personal Branding Strategist, I learned that personal branding was about having permission to be yourself. And personal brand was synonymous with your reputation.

Actually, it still is.

To be even more specific, there are still many people who use the term personal brand to refer to an authentic expression of who you uniquely are in terms of the attributes, vision, purpose, values, and passions that you bring to what you do. It is the you-ness you add to your professional competencies that makes you more valuable to your clients, and your broader professional community.

In many ways, then, your personal brand, is the experience you provide while you are doing what people hire you to do. So, the skills that you bring to your work may be the same skills that others in your profession use, but your approach is unique to you. For example, I have a friend who injects her fun, vibrant personality into meetings where she is delivering accounting and tax advice. She brings who she is to what she does. She didn’t cultivate a personal brand. She is just being herself, and her clients love her!

Today, however, there seems to be a lot of personal branding advice that tends to overlook the you-ness element and treat “your personal brand” as a distinct entity that you have to care for and manage. Kind of like a bonsai tree. So, we get articles and blog posts that provide advice on building, revamping, or reinventing your personal brand!!

While much of the advice these authors provide is actually useful, it has little to do with you. It is much more focused on tactics for gaining visibility and attracting clients. Yet, to engage in any exercise that is construed as “working on your brand,” but leaves out your you-ness, is akin to caring for some abstract entity. It’s like creating a proxy. A substitute.

Too bad.

Seeing the notion of personal brand become more mainstream is a good thing. It signals the end of mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Even more it supports the growing recognition that we all have the capacity to serve specific tribes. It helps us see that our true value comes not merely from the commoditized functions our skills are based in, but from the very weirdness that makes us appeal to our niche.

Of course, personal brand has also become subject to criticism. And frankly, based on the approach of many "personal branders," it’s criticism that is well deserved. If you have any doubt about this, you should read Olivier Blanchard’s very well-argued critique of personal branding. Blanchard notes, “People are people. They aren’t brands.” And ironically, one of the tips he offers is, “Just be yourself.” I think this is great advice! It's a great post, actually; and if you haven't read it, you should! 

As you might surmise, I reject the idea of personal "reinvention." This does not mean, of course, that I believe who we are and the reputations we develop don’t evolve. They do. Yet, they change because we have gained new insights into who we are, what we want to do, who we want to serve, and the difference we want to make for others – and impact that has on how we do what we do. This is very different from throwing out a new value proposition to see if it sticks.

So, insofar as our “brand” is concerned, the real task is the application of introspective insights to our work. And often, it is a process that is best done with a well-qualified coach who can help identify the themes that matter to you and to your audiences. Investing this kind of effort fosters a personal clarity that can help align what we know about ourselves with a communications strategy that will bring meaningful visibility and credibility.

Frankly, as I see it, bringing anything less than who you are to what you do means you may as well have been born with a plastic spoon in your mouth.

Substitute

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah

~ The Who

Back in the day, when I first become a certified Personal Branding Strategist, I learned that personal branding was about having permission to be yourself. And personal brand was synonymous with your reputation.

Actually, it still is.

There still many people who use the term personal brand to refer to an authentic expression of who you uniquely are in terms of the attributes, vision, purpose, values, and passions that you bring to what you do. It is the you-ness you add to your professional competencies that makes you more valuable to your clients, and your broader professional community.

In many ways, then, your personal brand, is the experience you provide while you are doing what people hire you to do. So, the skills that you bring to your work may be the same skills that others in your profession use, but your approach is unique to you. For example, I have a friend who injects her fun, vibrant personality into meetings where she is delivering accounting and tax advice. She brings who she is to what she does. She didn’t cultivate a personal brand. She is just being herself, and her clients love her!

Today, however, there seems to be a lot of personal branding advice that tends to overlook the “you-ness” element and treat “your personal brand” as a distinct entity that you have to care for and manage. Kind of like a bonsai tree. So, we get articles and blog posts that provide advice on building, revamping, or reinventing your personal brand!!

While much of the advice these authors provide is actually useful, it has little to do with you. It is much more focused on tactics for gaining visibility and attracting clients. Yet, to engage in any exercise that is construed as “working on your brand,” but leaves out your you-ness, is akin to caring for some abstract entity. It’s like creating a proxy. A substitute.

Too bad.

Seeing the notion of personal brand become more mainstream is a good thing. It is signals the end of mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Even more it supports the growing recognition that we all have the capacity to serve specific tribes. It helps us see that our true value comes not merely from the commoditized functions our skills are based in, but from the very weirdness that makes us appeal to our niche.

Of course, personal brand has also become subject to criticism. And frankly it’s criticism that is well deserved. If you have any doubt about this, you should read Olivier Blanchard’s very well-argued critique of personal branding. Blanchard notes, “People are people. They aren’t brands.” And ironically, one of the tips he offers is, “Just be yourself.” I think this is great advice!

This does not mean, of course, that I believe who we are and the reputations we develop don’t evolve. They do. Yet, they change because we have gained new insights into who we are, what we want to do, who we want to serve, and the difference we want to make for others – and how all of that changes what we do. This is very different from throwing out a new value proposition to see if it sticks.

So, insofar as our “brand” is concerned, the real work is the application of introspective insights to our work. And often, it is a process that is best done with a well-qualified coach who can help identify the themes that matter to you and to your audiences. Yet, investing the effort fosters a personal clarity that can help align what we know about ourselves with a communications strategy that will bring both visibility and credibility.

Frankly, as I see it, bringing anything less that who you are to what you do means you may as well have been born with a plastic spoon in your mouth.

Connecting Your Dots

It’s no surprise that with the tragic passing of Steve Jobs, there have been so many tributes to his genius and contributions to the world. And while most have been great, perhaps one of the most touching is the impromptu talk by Guy Kawasaki during a Facebook Success Summit 2011 teleconference, just minutes after Apple’s announcement of Jobs’ death. If you haven’t heard or read it, I recommend you do.

Yet, for me, perhaps the most touching tributes have been publications of Steve Job’s own words. And while the advanced, game-changing, and exquisitely designed technology he brought into the world is central to his legacy, his philosophy frames his passion as well as the value he created. His view of life is firmly rooted in his personal stories; and to see their power, you need only look at the three stories he told during his commencement address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005, which you can watch or read. During that speech, he said:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. I have always wished that for myself. And now, I wish that for you."

While it was certainly not his intention to convey a “branding” message, those 83 words capture the essence of what personal brand is truly about – following your heart and intuition.

Unfortunately, too many people look at personal branding in strictly value terms. Yet, it is even more critical to determine the foundation for the value you bring. Getting locked into crafting a perfect value statement, without introspection, is to miss the point. In fact, it’s a big mistake. As I see it, putting who you are in service to others is the only way to ever provide the kind of value that matters to your community.

So, to truly follow your heart means taking a look at your life and figuring out how your values, passions, interests, activities, and even circumstances, contribute to the direction of your life – pointing you toward work you were meant to do. Indeed, in his commencement address, Steve Jobs makes a brilliant point about this when he references connecting the dots. He said:

“… you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

In a very real way, your personal brand is tied to your stories, and your stories encompass your “dots.” If you don’t know what they are, and more importantly, how they connect, then you have slim chance of standing out and making a difference. So, find your stories, see how they connect, and use them as a basis to move ahead. You may fail at times. In fact, expect it. Yet, realize that each of those failures is just another set of dots to connect as you move forward. 

Be Yourself, Only Better

Recently, I posted to Instagram a photo of myself at the gym. I was wearing a Mizuno T-shirt emblazoned with Japanese characters, and the phrase, “Be Yourself, Only Better." Later that day, a Japanese Instagram friend posted the simple comment, “Me too” – along with the same Japanese characters. Curious, I went to Google Translate and found that “limit challenge” is the literal translation. I was intrigued, and even more so, over subsequent days, as I got favorable reactions from other Japanese friends about the shirt – and the philosophy!

Of course, this prompted me to take a closer look. So, I went to Mizuno’s website and found a flash presentation that expresses how they see limit challenge. It said this:

“Every day
You make promises to yourself.
Be tough, only tougher.
Be strong, only stronger.
Be yourself. Only better.
And, above all, never waver.
Never quit.
Never settle.”

In digging deeper into their philosophy, I found a statement that really resonated for me: “Inside each of us is a better us trying to get out. Trying to make the most of what we've got. Trying to be more than we think we can be.” Not only does this reflect my philosophy of owning your life, but also captures the whole essence of living one’s brand. It’s about the daily promise to bring one’s authentic self to making the world better for others. And the better we do, the better we become.

Frankly, this stands in stark contrast to most of the “personal branding” advice out there, today. As the idea of personal brand has become more mainstream, there is no shortage of views on what you ought to do to have a strong brand. Unfortunately, too many career coaches, along with an array of other experts, point to the need to create a personal brand; and if you want to change jobs or careers you are advised to re-brand.

Sure, there may be a nod to authenticity, but it tends to get lost in the quest for the clever tag line or value statement. And what happens to any shred of authenticity you may have salvaged, if you think you need a new brand to move your career in another direction? If personal branding is truly about authenticity, then it seems to me, re-branding is an oxymoron.

So, what to do?

Part of the problem, I believe, rests in the artificial distinction between your career and your life. By maintaining this false dichotomy, it becomes nearly impossible to see that your ability to provide value for others has always been part of your “brand DNA.” To discover it, you need to unravel your life stories to find the themes that make you who you are – who you uniquely are.

Once you find yourself, and the unique value you bring to others, you’ll have a stronger, and truly differentiated brand. You’ll also, perhaps for the first time in your life, be in the best position to be yourself, only better.

Mid-Year Check Up: The Full 360

This month’s Career Collective topic is Mid-Year Job-Search Checkup. 

Okay, I can almost hear what you’re thinking: “Washington is making massive job-killing mistakes, employers are either getting by with less or unwilling to expand, and besides it’s summer. So, what can I possibly do to move my job search forward?”  Frankly, if you’ve honestly been taking reasonable steps in conducting your job search, and assuming you’re using every opportunity to show your value and build relationships, there probably isn’t much more you can do.

An honest assessment at your efforts in managing a job search is important. Yet, in my experience, too many people in job search become so focused on landing that new position that they lose sight of the bigger picture: their lives.  So, maybe your mid-year check up ought not to focus on how you’re doing in your job search, but on how you want your life to be.

Consider the parable of the MBA and the Mexican fisherman.

If you haven’t heard it, the gist is this: A tourist with a Harvard MBA meets a fisherman who is content to sleep late, fish a little as a livelihood, play with his children, take siesta with his wife, and stroll into the village each evening to sip wine and play guitar with his amigos.

The tourist takes it upon himself to describe how the fisherman can grow his business, issue an IPO, and make millions. On the question of “what then,” the tourist tells the fisherman: “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

Okay, you may wonder how this applies to you.

If you’re like a lot of other career-oriented people, you may think that the real rewards in life will come at the end of your career. So, you keep focused on finding that job…or perhaps on the frustration of not finding one. But you may not have thought about how you truly want your life to be. So, whether you are currently working or not, take some time to do a life check up and consider how you may want to rebalance. Look at the full 360! In other words, think of how you invest your energy in the various parts your life portfolio, and figure out the return in satisfaction. And while you’re at it, determine to lift your level of happiness. To help you, a good summer read would be Get A Life: You Don’t Need A Million to Retire Well, Ralph Warner.

Sure, I know that considering your retirement is counterintuitive. Yet, by shifting your focus, you may discover that in creating a satisfying life, you may find you can reinvent your career in ways you may not have considered during your relentless pursuit of a new position.  Who knows, maybe you’ll find a way to sell a few fish so you can enjoy your more time with your family and amigos.

Make Your Career More Social: Show Up and Engage

This month’s Career Collective topic is “social media - how to use it in a job search, how to get started, do's and don'ts”. This post, however, provides perspective on using social media for long-term career management.  For specific job search applications, you’ll want to check out posts by Career Collective colleagues. As well, use Google to find great content; for example here, here, and here. You can also join LinkedIn and choose relevant discussion groups, or use Facebook and it’s tools, including BranchOut. Finally, there are several great books such as this, this, and this.  So, now, let’s get on with the rest of your career.  

It often seems to me that many people in the career transition space continue to party like it’s 1999. That was the year when we were all concerned about defending life-as-we-knew-it from the looming Y2K Bug. Had disaster struck, it would have included a setback for job seekers who were just discovering the newly minted monster.com that promised to ease the process of applying for jobs. Fortunately, catastrophe was averted, and many people breathed a sigh of relief knowing that life could be the same as it ever was. Well, at least until 2003, when LinkedIn was launched, … and in its wake, the social media revolution that would change things forever.

By now, everyone realizes that social media has emerged as a force in career management! Yet, many tend to use it according to the old job search rules; that is, as a means to an end – like a resume, cover letters, career fairs, and networking events. One danger of this approach is that social media use can be put on the shelf with job search tools as soon as one lands what seems like a secure new position.

Yet, the new career management reality increasingly requires always-on engagement with trusted networks that form out of your broader brand community. We have entered a world where social media is fast becoming the ticket to opportunities that emerge in a relationship economy, or as Gary Vaynerchuck has recently dubbed it, The Thank You Economy.

So, what is this new economy? Here’s Vaynerchuck’s view:

[Business] … happens in the small, personal interactions that allow us to prove to each other who we are and what we believe in, honest moments that promote good feelings and build trust and loyalty.  Now imagine that you could take those interactions and scale them to hundreds, thousands, or millions of people …. Now, … it's necessary. In fact, those companies and brands that refuse to try could jeopardize the potential of their business, and in the long term, even their very existence.

Why?  Because when it comes down to it, the only thing that will never change is human nature.  When given the choice, people will always spend their time around people they like. When it's expedient and practical, they'd also rather do business and buy stuff from people they like. And now, they can. Social media has made it possible for consumers to interact with businesses in a way that is often similar to how they interact with friends and family.

A shorter way of saying this, and one familiar to many small business people, is: People do business with people they know, like, and trust.  And lest you think you’re not a small business person, consider that increasing numbers of workers continue to be hired on short-term, contract gigs, requiring an always-on pursuit of new opportunities. In fact, the new standard of “job security” is rooted in your ability to always find work. And this has implications for how you actually use social media. To mention a few, you need to:

Establish and Cultivate Professional Presence. If the “thank you” economy is all about doing business with people we know, like, and trust, then people need to know you. This means having an online presence that conveys who you are, the differentiated value you deliver, and what sets you apart from others. The trend is away from hiring the right skills and job titles and toward hiring the right people!

Convey an Authentic Story to Underscore Credibility. Today, people are especially astute in creating personal brand statements to convey value. Unfortunately, many of these are superficial. You now need to provide your backstory, showing you’re the best choice because your brand is truly rooted in relevant life and work experiences.

Identify and Connect with Your Brand Community. Contrary to what many social media advisors say, there’s little benefit in large numbers of friends, followers, and fans. The key standard is not the number but the relevance of your social media connections. So, you’ll benefit most from relationships with your people; that is, audiences who understand what you do, and who are most likely to look for you (or people like you) when they see an opportunity.

Use Platforms that Display Your Expertise. You probably understand the importance of having an online profile at sites like LinkedIn, but have you settled for providing just career history? If so, you risk being too easily ignored or forgotten. You can only stay relevant and current – and memorable – when people see your expertise expressed in fresh ideas and new accomplishments. There are many ways to do this, from participating in LinkedIn Groups to tweeting, blogging, and posting videos and slide shares – just to name a few!

Invest the Time to Engage Others. Social media has deep roots in the idea that markets are conversations. And with the powerful platforms available today, it’s possible to have conversations with people from anywhere in the world, and at any time of day, and over extended time periods. Short or long, regular online conversations go well beyond exchanged information to facilitating trusted relationships built over time.

Cultivate Good Karma. “What goes around comes around” applies to positive thoughts and deeds as well as to negative ones. On social media, pushing your own agenda, especially if you have not taken the time to help or acknowledge others, can be a negative. So, find ways to put others first. You generosity can take many forms; for example, extending simple congratulations, providing links to resources, answering questions, putting up how-to posts, promoting others or their causes, or even consulting with someone who could use your expertise.

Frankly, all this requires a commitment of time and energy.

Yet, regularly showing up and engaging your brand community in small daily doses has a cumulative effect, and will generate good will and word-of-mouth marketing as your reputation spreads. As more people know you, chances are better that they’ll consider you for that next gig because they’re already predisposed to do business with you. Make the investment. You’ll thank yourself!

When it’s Time to Recycle Your Career

This month’s Career Collective topic is Best Advice for Career Changers.

When I think about how people make career choices, I often recall the scene from the classic movie, The Graduate. In it, a well-meaning family friend, Mr. McGuire, corners young Benjamin resulting in the following exchange:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.

Among the movie’s other themes, one review makes a great point about the implications for how  “…aimless and unalive the disaffected young generation was…and would become as they approached middle-age and worked in sterile corporate settings.” It was, in fact, a chilling prospect; and in many cases, has become a daunting reality.

I’d love to say that we’re well beyond the time when people drift aimlessly into a career choice with the hope of a safe, secure, and financially rewarding future. Certainly, the world has become too uncertain to believe in such an outcome. Yet, I often see mid-career folks who want to make a career move into a field with more stability and more reward. And so they look externally to career forecasts. Frankly, it’s not the place to start.

As I see it, if you are at mid-career, the first place to look is to your career journey. For it’s in your personal career story where you’ll find the clues that will help you make a more informed evaluation of your best direction. So, doing some introspective work that uncovers the theme or themes that have directed your choices over time, you’ll be able to create a clearer statement of the differentiated value that is your brand, and you’ll know how your story validates it.

Once you have those insights, you can then fold them into a career vision. For that, I would strongly recommend the “I SEE Career Vision” exercise presented by Laurence Boldt, in his excellent, Zen and the Art of Making a Living. Basically, it’s this:

Integrity: What work will best fit with who I am?

Service: Whom do I want to serve?

Enjoyment: What will I most enjoy doing?

Excellence: To what will I devote myself?

There is in my advice, a bias that you ought to figure out what you were meant to do, and go do it! So, today, if there is one word for career choice, I’d say it’s “authentic.”

Are you listening? Think about it. Enough said.

Succeeding in a “Final Jeopardy!” World

This month’s Career Collective topic is re-tooling / re-focusing / organizing your job search...

Yes, I’ll admit it. Upon seeing this month’s topic, my first association was Jeopardy!  Perhaps it was the listing of categories in search of answers, but in a flash, I was thinking, “l’ll take re-tooling for 100, Alex.” And in my rapid free association, the answer “commodities” came to mind, quickly followed by, “What do you call transferable skills?”

As a career coach, I’ve long believed that one’s ability to identify transferable skills was the biggest part of the battle in conveying value to a potential new employer. And perhaps, at one time, it was. No more.

Today, any effort to re-tool, re-focus, or re-organize your job search and career management, means giving up past career models so you can re-align your efforts to meet today’s reality. And today’s reality calls for much more than a bullet list of transferrable skills put at the top of a resume and regurgitated in a cover letter. 

Even if they hope against hope that that the old approach will work just one last time, I think many people know this.

You need only look at career advice columns to see big themes like re-invent, re-focus, re-launch, and re-brand – often accompanied by a list of five to ten things you should do now. Sometimes, the advice is good. More often it’s shallow. For the new reality is that job search and career management has grown in complexity. It’s no longer your skills, your credentials, your track-record – or even your brand. Nor is it your ability to package all of that in a clever elevator pitch.

Today, we live in a relationship economy where our worth is validated within the context of a community whose members know what we do, why we do it, and how we make a difference for the people we serve.  And they know this not because they’ve all seen the transferrable skills listed on our resume, but because they know our story, and have experienced it coming to life as we’ve actively engaged them in conversations that matter and lead to meaningful relationships. As a consequence, they’re more predisposed to send opportunities our way because they know, like, and trust us.

Frankly, it seems like we’re now living in a “Final Jeopardy!” world. The answer is relationships. And the question is, “Today, what will drive your success?”

Brand Story in a Social Media World

At the invitation of Sarah Behunek, Director of Alumni Relations, I had the privilege of doing a video shoot, with Tonya Riggs Clement, for the  University of Colorado Leeds Business School.

In case you don't know who she is, Tonya is one of the Everest Peace Climbers. In fact, she’s the twentieth American woman to scale Everest, and the fifth of just nine American women to have reached the top via the treacherous North Ridge. She also heads sales for Stonewear Designs, a manufacturer of women’s rock climbing and yoga apparel; and she is co-founder of Beyond Everest where she creates and delivers multi-media presentations designed to encourage individuals and teams to reach peak performance.

Tonya became a client and a friend, after she attended Reclaim Your Career: Professional Presence in a Social Media World, which was sponsored by CU Leeds, and co-facilitated with my friend and colleague, Carol Ross. During our videotaping, Tonya told me that one of the main reasons she and Kitty Bradley, President of Stonewear Designs, had come to the workshop was to better understand social media and use it in their marketing efforts. And the workshop did lead to insights that helped the company better use social media marketing and business communications on Facebook, representing about 25% of their marketing effort, and allowing them to connect with young, hip buyers that would be hard to reach in other ways.

What Tonya had not expected was to start a journey that helped her discover her own brand story.

At the workshop, one of the ideas that “popped” for Tonya was the need to have a strong LinkedIn profile. She simply felt hers wasn’t adequate. Moreover, she felt that with differing areas of professional activity she really needed two profiles. As well, she had not mentioned her Everest ascent because she didn’t want to have people feel she was boasting.

In working with me on her profile, she set out on the path of discovery and ended
up finding that the central theme of her life, climbing and reaching higher, is reflected in what  she does now, and in what she’s always done. That theme is the core of her brand, and it  finds expression in all the events that are part of her brand story. In seeing her theme and how it shows up in her life and work, she and I were able to craft a LinikedIn Summary that tells her story in a differentiating and compelling way.

Since posting her LinkedIn profile, Tonya has attracted inquires from an array of people, including new people who want to learn more about her and her professional activities, as well as old business colleagues who became aware of her athletic accomplishments and motivational speaking. Today, she is a believer in the value of social media as well as the power of telling one’s brand story online. As well, she’s seen that her story has the power to touch and motivate others, without being “braggy” at all.

On some level, you might think that a person who’d reached the top of the world wouldn’t need to work on her brand story. But she did, and you should too. Everyone has a brand story waiting to be told. Tell yours and open the door to a new world of connections and opportunities.

Break the Rules or Change the Game?

This month’s Career Collective topic is Job-hunting “Rules” to Break/ Outdated Job-Search Beliefs.

When I saw this month’s topic, my first thought was, "Wow. Easy topic." There are lots of rules that I think people should break, and there are lots of outdated job search beliefs. Yet, there is a larger truth that we all need to face, and it’s this: Job search is as much art as it is science. For example, whether you should have a one-page resume or a two pager is going to depend on a myriad of circumstances that you’ll need to figure out. Sixty-second, thirty-second, … or no elevator pitch? Who knows? Only you can decide what’ll work best, based on your specific situation!

If you are facing the very real need to find new employment, then you need to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. And you need to find that out quickly. Yet, whether you’re in active job search or not, what you truly need to consider is stepping out of the traditional career management model and changing your game to a longer-term career management strategy that relies on:

Differentiated Value.

It’s really not enough to define yourself in terms of a job title. Doing so merely makes you a commodity. Frankly, an accountant is an accountant is an accountant. If that’s all you tell others, you only give them a reason to ignore you. On the other hand, if you say you offer tax and financial advice to women entrepreneurs who want to have fun while becoming successful, you’ve made yourself stand out.

Authentic Story.

Of course you know you should have a personal brand. Maybe you even have a branded resume, bio, or online profile that reflects a unique promise of value. But how will people be able to see that the value you deliver is truly differentiated and authentic?

One way, is to document it in a career story that shows how you came to be good at doing what you do, and at serving the audience you serve. For example, if you are a sales and marketing strategist who is skilled at turning outsiders into insiders, then that ability should be grounded in your career/life journey backstory. If it is, you’ll be much more credible, and differentiated with a story only you can own.

Brand Community.

We all need a network, right?  And if you’re in job search, you’re probably actively building one. But what happens when you land a job? Do you, like many people who are working, put focus on the work at hand, forgetting about the people who helped get where you are? If yes, you’re making a big mistake. In today’s world, where jobs are just another gig, and the next opportunity is likely to emerge from a trusted network, staying connected is a career lifeline.

Changing the game is not easy. But it’s increasingly necessary.

If you remain mired in the traditional job-search model to manage your career, you may find moving ahead increasingly difficult. Instead, you need to stop being a job seeker, and start generating opportunities by becoming a trust agent connected to a trusted network that will turn to you the next time someone wants to find a professional who can do what you do.