Personal Branding1 Comment

Want To Know About Personal Branding? Step Right This Way…

ThisMuchWeKnow

I closed out 2013 with a series of posts on personal branding and the BrandBoard process we excel at here at TMWK. To welcome the new year, here is a quick review of the content. It’s Me > You Every Time It starts with you. How you define yourself is the most important thing – more important than how other people define you. You own your brand. More >> Do You Have A Head-Heart-Hand Brand? We cannot be all things to all people. Don’t try it. Focus on where you make the difference. We find that most people have a … Continue reading Want To Know About Personal Branding? Step Right This Way…

Story + Narrative, The Curious Will Inherit The World1 Comment

I am no longer sure of the question, but I am certain of the answer: YES!

ThisMuchWeKnow

Sometimes, it feels the world is moving in a particular direction. Ideas coalesce, people enter your life, opportunities occur, or mutate. Things happen, if you can be open (enough) to that change, those moments. Via Seth Godin: “I am no longer sure of the question, but I am certain of the answer: YES!” – Leonard Bernstein. Happy New Year everyone! ←This Much We Know.→ Continue reading I am no longer sure of the question, but I am certain of the answer: YES!

Story + Narrative, The Curious Will Inherit The World3 Comments

When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Flâneur

ThisMuchWeKnow

How could it be that this word, this idea, this approach to life has passed me by all these years?! Fuck fireman, astronaut or Prime Minister, a flâneur is who I want to be, it’s a flâneur’s life for me. Of course, wikipedia has all the details. It is long, sumptuous, beguiling: a literary type from 19th century France…[i]t carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. Susan Sontag describes the photographer / flâneur as an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers … Continue reading When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Flâneur

Personal Branding, Story + Narrative1 Comment

Dissecting Your Personal Brand: Synthesizing Your AwesomeSauce

ThisMuchWeKnow

This is where the hard work begins, and the pay-off too. You have a ton of data, and several interesting ideas to play with. Perhaps your brand has a theme to it. You have a beautiful BrandBoard to share! Now what? Well, now we synthesize. This means distilling down all the brand content into 2-3 core ideas around which you can build a story. Although you brand might skew in a particular direction – mine is a heavily head brand – it does not mean you have no skills in the other Head-Heart-Hand elements. When you meet people, generally you … Continue reading Dissecting Your Personal Brand: Synthesizing Your AwesomeSauce

Social Business, Story + Narrative, The Curious Will Inherit The World, The Future of WorkLeave a comment

Change Agents Of The World Unite

ThisMuchWeKnow

Let’s start at the end. Change Agents navigate the choppy waters and uneven terrain toward the future of work. They invite you along for the journey – as guides, as co-conspirators, and treasure seekers. They are in the vanguard. This puts them ahead of the pack. It means they are ready. It also makes them vulnerable. There are bruises, and battles, yet Change Agents still ask: How can I help? The currency of social business is a deep understanding of emergent themes and practices in culture, technology, organization design, and the impacts on, and motivations of, individuals. Change Agents are … Continue reading Change Agents Of The World Unite

Personal BrandingLeave a comment

Dissecting Your Personal Brand: 180 Degree Peer Review

ThisMuchWeKnow

I have received a 360 degree peer review – a very interesting process of understand the good, bad and ugly about myself. Illuminating. Personal branding is not 360 feedback. It is 180 degree feedback – it looks forward into the marketplace; it does not (generally) look behind the curtains at the malignancy and maleficence within us all. Save that for the psychologist’s couch, please. No, we want input from your cohort about how great you are, to drive your brand to new heights and to either agree or challenge your own thinking about how you show up. Seeing Eye To Eye. Generally, I … Continue reading Dissecting Your Personal Brand: 180 Degree Peer Review

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Dissecting Your Personal Brand: Personality Tests

ThisMuchWeKnow

At TMWK, we do not pretend to be psychologists. We are marketeers! We want to develop a brand with you in the most powerful and meaningful way. We do not want to tell you who you are – that’s your job. We provide some inputs, and the stimulation. So, if you have “personality tests” from other sources, we can add those in – we like data, the more the merrier, because in much data we see patterns, themes emerge, and from that – your brand essence. So, I have nothing particular to add about these tests other than – it’s … Continue reading Dissecting Your Personal Brand: Personality Tests

Personal Branding, Social BusinessLeave a comment

Dissecting Your Personal Brand: How Do You Show Up Online?

ThisMuchWeKnow

We have to think differently about our personal brand than we did 10-15 years ago. Then, in order to get ahead, to get promotion, to get on that juicy project you could scan your immediate work environment and determine who it was you had to impact to make a difference. Now, things have changed. Your network of influence might be social, virtual, global, segmented based on the communities in which you hang, participate, lead. When I am hiring, the first thing I do in a cursory scan of a resume is to look for online avenues of investigation – therein … Continue reading Dissecting Your Personal Brand: How Do You Show Up Online?

Personal Branding, The Curious Will Inherit The World2 Comments

Dissecting Your Personal Brand: How Does Your Brain Work?

ThisMuchWeKnow

The number one area of reading everyone should be doing to better understand the(ir) human condition is modern advances in neurology – we have come to understand more about the workings of brain in the last 20 years than in the previous 10000 years. I remember as a Economics undergrad participating in game theory studies with my professors as they pulled apart long standing arguments about rational decision-making. It is fascinating stuff. So, when we look at your personal brand, part of the process is to reflect on how we make decisions, because it definitely informs how we show up. … Continue reading Dissecting Your Personal Brand: How Does Your Brain Work?

Personal BrandingLeave a comment

How BrandBoards Help You Say: “This Is How I Make The Difference.”

ThisMuchWeKnow

We are always tinkering with the personal branding process at TMWK, trying to work out how to leverage cool inputs (“Snakes!”) and unexpected syntheses (“Heart brand!”) to drive epiphanies that make people more successful in their lives. My instinct is to limit the focus to our professional lives, but my experience is different. Talking with my wife about my BrandBoard was a most illuminating conversation about how she sees me; and uncovered things she didn’t know about me, given the work-home divide that occurs when you have two kids demanding your attention at the end of the day. The BrandBoard … Continue reading How BrandBoards Help You Say: “This Is How I Make The Difference.”