Developing, Defining and Projecting Your Personal Brand

The world is a stage, humans are all actors- Shakespeare

What is your personal brand? Why do you have to identify it?


Your brand positions you clearly in the minds of others and increase your perceived value. It distinguishes you from the herd.

Another important thing about your brand is that it extends to products/services/platforms that emanates from you. Your brand also enables you to make emotional connections and develop loyalty to people who have similar values to your brand or those who just admire it.

Your name, product or even your look could create a remembrance of your brand, but each in itself is not your brand. The purpose of branding yourself or identifying and nurturing your personal brand is to achieve preference or an edge amongst the roaring herd or looming crowd.

Your brand is your distinct identity in the mind of the people who know you or have heard of you. Branding yourself is thus the process of defining, enhancing and consistently expressing your entity identity to your audience.

We all have an audience: it could start from your spouse, family, colleagues, boss, customers or even the general populace. We are social creatures and we relate with other humans who watch us and who we watch too.

In defining your personal brand, its important you discover your 1. values: the ideals you hold clearly, that define your personality. 2. your mission in life: what you feel or know you have been called or assigned to do here on earth by mother nature. 3. Your vision; your ideal picture of the future you see.

After you must have identified the above, to consistently maintain and express this personal brand of yours in order to get any great currency or value thereof: you need to demonstrate:
i. Sincerity: an honest value in connecting with your identified personal brand. It has to be honest and wholesome. For example; if you have identified yourself as a technical solution expert then all tasks given to you related to such should be done perfectly or at least communicated to your customer clearly in an otherwise case.
ii. Sophistication: Why do you identify yourself as a brand? To stand out from the roaring crowd. So you dont want to be different from the crowd in a lesser way, that won't command a high value, you have got to have a brand that makes a connotation to some charm and upper class.
iii. Excitement: The world is tough and brutal enough; so no one needs more pain and sorrow. So when projecting your brand it must come with some daring, spirited, imaginative power.
iv. Competence: This looks more like the first point on honesty; but we need to emphasize that whatever field of endeavour or character you have chosen to be identified with, you have got to be competent in it.

Reliable, Intelligent and successful are the buzzwords here. Lets take an example in our world: when you hear Oprah Winfrey you think media, Michael Jackson: music, Steve Jobs: Technology, Business etc. This people have so identified and defiened their brand and gotten to the zenith of their field that the world can't forget them even long after they are gone.

An individual like Richard Branson who has an adventurous spirit, a risk taker and fun loving individual with a business mind has such projected his personality and brand and created a business empire that embodies his personal brand; from his music business to the Virgin airline and now trying to take humans to the galaxy. Richard has so defined his brand and projected it and made a commercial success of it.

Taking it further, your brand identity needs to have an output or what i call translations such as a name to call you, a logo to represent your product, service, platfrom or company. This brand identity have to be:i. simple to pronounce.ii. memorable.iii. give an hint of the benefit to be experienced.iv. create an expectation for the experience.v. create an emotional appeal for the brand. vi. extendable.

In the case of your product, service or organisation. Your logo is a visual representation of the organisation's DNA and aspiration. Visibility is more obvious than ability. Awareness is the first point of call in building brand equity.
Brand equity is the overall value both tangible and intangible of a brand. The stages of developing brand equity are: Awareness of the brand, Quality product/service/platform, Association and brand loyalty.


Studies have proven that at least 10,000 hours of study, learning, education and practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being world class in any field or career.

Getting the best when entering the marketplace.

You have spent years burning candles, sleepless nights reading, tedious lessons and assignments done. Project topics assigned and completed. Finally, you are about to hit the labour market.
However, cropping up within you is tension, questions such as; what is in the future for me? Will i get a good job? How long will i wait to get one? Would my employers be nice to me, etc?

Life is filled with different stages: conception, childhood, teenage, adults etc. A significant and most important entry to the adult stage especially for the educated is the passing out from the college/university into the working stage (the market place).

Every human being has talents, skills and potentials that are treated to acquire resources such as money etc. This resources comes in form of salaries, commissions, dividends, profits etc. Likewise the resources at one's disposal is equally used in procuring needed necessities of life such as shelter, transportation, feeding, entertainment and providing for our family, we in turn reward those involved in providing these needs.

It is thus normal for one setting out into the marketplace to be concerned for his lot. However, mere concern and worries do not bring food to the table nor lay the bed. As you lay your bed so you lie on it.

These steps below help in placing a person setting out into the marketplace to get the best out of it.

1. Identify your strengths: Yes you may have studied physiology in school but dont be fooled into thinking that is where your competitive advantage lies. Your true edge in the marketplace is your inner strenghts unique to you.

Are you an extrovert with great communication skills and a pleasant personality that attracts people to you: you do have a great skill for a communication role, sales role and the likes. If on the other hand, you are an introvert who likes to keep to himself, detail oriented and organized; you may be a great asset for a role that involves documenting, observation, accounting, auditing or organization.
The above examples are just a simplified example; however, the main point is that you identify your stregths and project such in the market place rather than relying solely on your paper qualifications.

2. Convert your strength to a product/service platform
As we have noted in the first point, after you have identified your stregth/passion unique to you. You need to covert it to a product/service platform.


Lets say for example you have a stregth/passion for cooking; could you convert that to a service such as producing food/snacks for people in your community and getting paid for it. Or maybe you could start by working for a restaurant to learn the processes of making money out of such passion/strength.

3. Market it
You have identified your strengths and then you have gone further to converting it to a product or a service platform or at least getting into a place where you learn to do that. The next thing is to make such product or service from your talent/skill known to the real market; those who need it and are willing and able to pay to get it.

This may include you sharing your service/product on the social media, talking about it to your peer group, social class, family alumni etc. The world must know what you offer. The value and reward earned from your strength, skills, product/service is equivalent to the numbers of people who patronise you and that is determined by those who are aware of it in the first place.


4. Learn to receive
It may seem an obvious fact that we should know how to receive for service/products offered but i can tell you from experience that this is where many are lacking. Despite prevailing misconception believe that there is abundance for you as much as you want and you will receive it. So learn to receive earnings, rewards for your efforts.

The process of receiving starts with:
i. Adequate pricing of your service; when in a learning atmosphere as an apprentice you might be modest in your pricing, but when you have finetuned your service, learn to price your product to ensure you are profitable and sustainable. If in an employee position, do not be afraid to ask a salary equivalent to the best offered in your industry.
ii. Open payment channels: As a graduate you should have a savings account where you save earnings and receive earnings of your service, and then a current account that allows payments such as cheques from corporate entities and even dividends to be able to be paid to your account.
Taking it further if as a business person; registering your business with the Corporate Affairs Commission and opening a corporate account is the ideal. This is the professional way that allows business dealings with reputable companies.

Diffusion: A catalyst for change

In chemistry, we learnt that diffusion is the movement of gases from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. What this means in simple terms is that gases move from a place where they are abundant to a place where they are few or non existent.

Another word to capture the essence of this article is a word in physics called resonance. Resonance is described as the lengthening effect of sound.
Bringing the above two definitions into a social context; materials, ideas, values, skills and resources that are predominant in an area need to move to other areas where they are not so abundant yet needed. This in economics is described as comparative advantage.This exodus helps to increase the appreciation and value of the relocated skills, resources, ideas etc.
The question then arises: as an individual, a corporate entity, a nation, How do i maximise my value in the general market. The following steps ensue.

1. Identify your uniqueness and those of others
What are your unique offering; talent, skill, resource that differentiates you from the other? Its called your selling point.
Every entity is unique, however, when there are abundant of an entity over the demand of such. It tends to lose some value. In economics price of a product falls when supply is higher than demand.
Tasks that can be done by a lot of people tend to get paid less than those which can be offered by a very minute few. A service such as cleaning a dirty house will be paid less because it can be done by a lot of people but a service such as an heart surgery will be rewarded astronomically higher because it requires a specialised skill and knowledge few people possess.
Its said that no man is an island and that two are better than one. Two becomes better than one when each party posesses a unique ability that is not so sufficient in the other party who also posesses another different ability which is also needed in the achievement of their set goal.
The world has 7 continents 197 countries having about 7 billion people. However, the pace of development and prosperity enjoyed by the different countries differ, this is as a result of the combination and organization of various resources to create wealth.
Imperialism is an action that involves a country extending its power by the acquisition of territories. Such a country as so identify and developed her uniqueness that it can influence and colonize others, so also it applies to a corporate entity developing her market share or an individual offering her skills to the marketplace.

2. Exploit the power of connectivity
In this age of globalization. Power of a country or corporate entity is measured by her degree of connectivity to the outside world. A country's prosperity is judged by her Gross Domestic product but recently added as a yardstick is megabits per capita.

The rate of information dissemination within population to and from decision makers is critical. Jobs, knowledge use and hence economic growth will gravitate to those societies that are the most connected, with the most networks and the broadest amount of bandwidth-because these countries will find it easiest to amass, deploy and share knowledge in order to design, invent, manufacture, sell, provide services, communicate, educate and entertain.
Bandwidth, railroads and seaports are the backbone of commerce in countries, continents and world entirely.
Klaus Schwab of the Davos World Economic Forum once observed. "We have moved from a world where the big eats the small to a world where the fast eats the slow. Fast in terms of transmission of ideas from laboratory or board room to factory and then to the consumers, fast in terms of communication of new insights, fast in replication of new ideas etc

3. Shed unnecessary weight
To move faster its expedient that excessive and unnecessary weight should be shed. Weight such as old beliefs and practices that have lost their relevance in this age, unnecessary and unneeded items that takes up space and resources.

4. Embrace change swiftly
Its said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing all the time and expecting different results. Solving new problems require exploring new knowledge.
To experience development its necessary to embrace change. Individuals who are open to new cultures, ideas etc rapidly feed their imagination hence produce quality thoughts and ideas that leads to innovative products, service delivery or new ways of life.

5. Be open
The more open you are, the more integrated you are into the world's network of ideas, markets, technologies and management innovations. This needed absorption of new ideas is facilitated by your ability to network habitually. You cant be successful in whatever you do unless you have lots of allies. You have got to be able to compete on a global basis.
Countries such as the United States who keep their economy open to either the best brains in the world or the best technologies in the world multiply their economic growth.
This needed absorption of new ideas is facilitated by your ability to network habitually. That job, customer, contract you are seeking is being sought by other individuals with deiffering strengths and experiences from yours. Except you have friends or allies who can share experiences learnt with you, you will be limited to your own knowledge and experience.
Your networth is a sum total of your network.

6. Develop your personal brand
To attract quality network it is essential that you develop a personal brand that is attractive and connnotes some form of success. People are attracted to people or companies who have something they admire.
It may be your unique way of providing services; a specific talent or skill that you have developed and refined, or just your pleasant and knowledgeable personality. Whatever it is; develop your brand; be known for something good and interesting and you will in turn attract pleasant networks.

7. Reach out
Reaching out entails moving outside of your closet. The value of your idea or services and rewards earned thereof increases as the number of people it reaches.
As common as social networks platform are; many still do not maximise their potentials. Incredible deals and relationships could be secured on this platforms but it takes a careful and pragmatic approach, you will need to be selective too.
Communicate your professionalism or services in a fun filled format. Another great way of reaching out is travelling. It helps in learning new things, meeting new people. Attending social meetings such as Alumni meetings etc also help in expanding your networks.
As you strive to expand, however; never try to manipulate people or present a different image of yourself, be real and confident with who you are, do not seek to be heard alone but listen to others too, remember to do unto others what you would like them do to you. So give what you want; be it contacts or resources.

Redirection of Labour: Key to our National Development

"seeth a man dilligent in his work he shall stand before kings and not ordinary men".
"The labour of the fools wearieth them for they know not how to get to the city".
"From he that hath not even that which he has will be taken and given to him that hath".

The three quotes above are taken from the Holy Bible. Human beings trade their talents, skills and expertise which are human resources to acquire material resources such as money, land etc

it is a supposedly obvious fact that if a man applies his energy to a productive task it will pave way for his prosperity. However, also obvious is that a large percentage of the human populace especially in developing countries such as Nigeria experiences abject poverty even as workers either as self employed (artisans, craftsmen, businesspersons, traders, clergy etc).

The question then arises why the reason for poverty if a human being works. In the second quote of this article it is said that 'the labour of the fool wearieth him for he knows not how to get to the city'. The quote acknowledges that the fool is labouring but describes the reason for his weariness; unproductivity, fruitlessness has being unable to go to the city. The city here refers to the civilized setting, the urbane marketplace where the end products of his work are highly priced.

So until the fool has devised a means to take his product/services well packaged for the use in the city, he will be at the mercy of trading his raw materials at low price to the one who has found a way to get his produces to the city. Let's highlight once again what the city is here: it refers to the marketplace that buys the final product. for example; lets say a labourer knows how to dig wells but knows not how to create a construction company that digs bore holes to the water packaging companies or a farmer who plants oranges in his farm in the village who then sells his oranges to a trader who transports the oranges to the city, say Lagos and sells it to a Orange juice processing company which then process and bottles the orange juice for the populace who buys them at shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels and bars where they are sold at high prices.

In the above story, the labourer who exhausts himself physically wears him self out unlike his wiser counterpart who has a large farm with a mechanized process; a processing plant where his farm produce are processed into finished product and equally has a marketing system to sell his finished product to the masses, and gets maximal value from her efforts.

The above story does not seek to look down on any form of labour but to encourage the populace to seek out maximal value for their efforts. It has also been said that to be wealthy, you need the efforts of other peoples, their time, their money/resources, that explains why an entrepreneur (the class to which most wealthy people belong) employs other people to use their time, efforts, skills and still uses their resources such as loans from the bank, communal land etc. for his productive ventures while he pays them stipends. This may be classified as unjust, but the truth is that he chose to carry the higher load of paying their bills while he knows how to get the collective efforts of all to the city: the market.

In the Nigerian setting, the Government is the largest employer of labour sadly and the largest contractor, because adequate systems to promote entrepreneurship and business growth has not been set up. Taking a look at the Nigerian street, you find a lot of idle people loitering the streets going nowhere actually, military and para military officials exploiting and harassing road users especially drivers who are seeking for a means to earn a living.

It therefore becomes imperative to call for a great redirection of labour; the masses have to be awakened to acquire a skill that has commercial value and learn to take it to the market. A look at the richest people and companies in the world shows the meaning of this call.

Apple company sells apple products (ipad, iphones etc) and takes it to the market where it is highly priced and bought. Facebook and Google sells advert spaces on their website which is exhaustively consumed by the marketplace. The Richest musicians etc Dr Dre, Jay Z, Beyonce etc brings their musical talent and packages it to a product: Compact Disc and then put it to the market such as iTunes where its sold. Nike sells fashion items and franchise to the market.
So you my reader! What are you bringing to the market?