Your company, customers, co-workers, and anyone gravitating around your day-to-day job will benefit from it.
Ever hear the expression dumbed down? You may have seen this at school when the level to pass an exam was lowered so more students could pass their tests, a process called leveling.
Funnily enough, personal branding isn't just about you.
We don't live in a world where employers can only choose from a limited base of people.
You Are Not Indispensable
No matter if you're creating websites, mobile applications, or standalone software, whether you're an employee or a freelancer, use open-source or proprietary technology, code in JavaScript, Python, C#, CSS, Ruby, Java, Rust, HTML or C++—at the end of the day, branding your career will help you.
Even if you're already sold on the value of branding, I suggest you not skip this chapter.
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
It's not about being as intense as one of those big brands we all know, but it's still about marketing yourself: it's about being a linchpin—becoming that piece of the puzzle that you can't remove and being indispensable in your industry with your expertise.
So again, keep in mind that your personal brand is about you and every aspect of you that has forged who you are.
There are concepts that are so important that they are worth a couple more words in this book.
People who have a bread-and-butter job won't benefit from this book—you know, the job you do only to be able to pay your bills, have a roof over your head, and buy food.
Many think personal branding is like jumping into a ring and fighting every opponent.
Those examples were of international superstars in their domains, but personal branding is not just about superstardom.
Here's why: his brand is so strong with regard to standards that he's known as the godfather of web standards.
I bet you said Nike, because it's a company that makes sports gear, its swoosh logo is everywhere, and its mantra is "Just Do It." Nike's tagline pushes us to be more active and live a healthier life.
If you do this exercise with people in your personal network, you'll probably end up with mostly the same answers.
What words come to mind this time? Probably quality, expensive, biker, rebel, loud...
I'm not a motorcyclist, but I recognized it right away.
Maybe, maybe not, but even if you're not a biker, I'm pretty sure you recognize the logo.
Source: Unevolved Brand #89.
Can you recognize the brand shown in Figure 1-1, even though it’s been altered to be made up of just circles?
In this first chapter, I demystify personal branding. What is it exactly? I explain the general concept of branding and deconstruct some of the misconceptions that may crop up when you try to think about yourself as a brand.
Are you still at school? No problem—that might even be a better time to start your brand because you’re starting with a blank canvas, which makes some things less complicated.
You may think you need to be a seasoned old hand to think about your personal branding—that to reach the next level, you need to have many years of experience building software, creating wireframes, or designing websites.
The feedback from the audience was astonishing, and I was only scratching the surface.
I began sharing the idea of thinking about yourself as a brand by giving talks at conferences.
How come someone like me, an average developer, was able to get his dream job and be where he is today? Then it struck me: I know the secret sauce—it’s personal branding!
Extremely social, he spent years challenging the industry and showing the openness of companies you would not expect, like Microsoft.
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