THE AUTHORS
INTRODUCTION
Control Your Destiny!
KNOW. SHOW. GROW!
Your fast track to becoming an influential, indispensable, and incredibly happy executive starts here.
Why? Because 3D personal branding unlocks your full potential, freeing you to give your best and be your best. Your 3D personal brand is YOU—a clarified, confident, and compelling you—you with a unique promise of value. Your personal brand is your trusted reputation; it’s what people can expect from you, always. It’s at the intersection of what’s authentic to you, what differentiates you from your peers, and what influences those who are making decisions about you.
3D personal branding allows you to reap happiness, fulfillment, and success—to live in fabulous 3D—in your work, in your life, and in your world. And a workforce of authentically branded employees is good for your company, too—it helps your company grow stronger, more authentic, and more trusted. Building your brand can help you achieve all of that and more—if you have the courage to ditch, dare, and do!
3D personal branding is purposeful and magnetic. It’s never spin, but it is strategic. It helps the people who need you to find you. And in a world where decision-making is increasingly complex and swift, your personal brand is your career compass, guiding you to your true north, simplifying decision-making into one profound question: Is this on-brand for me?
Is 3D personal branding for you?
Do you want to be comfortably, confidently, and authentically YOU—always and everywhere?
Are you burning to do something different but don’t know what it is? Or do you just want more of the great work and life you already have? Has success at the top of the pyramid eluded you or come too slowly? Or are you there but finding that the top is not what you expected?
Do you want to make your teams great and your company greater? Are you famous within your organization but faceless outside of it? Are you a hero to your team but feel like you’re just not on the radar of the people who can help you attain your goals? Are you the iconic square peg in a round hole, but your boss doesn’t know it and keeps promoting you into wrong-fit positions?
Are you struggling with work-life balance? Are you a mom or dad trying to be the best you can be at work while doing the best you can at home? Or are you a stay-at-home parent or care-giver recalibrating your life while building your skills and visibility for re-entry?
Are you working around the clock, sacrificing precious personal or family time to protect your position in an uncertain economy, yet still feeling like you’re tottering on the edge of the precipice? Or are you unexpectedly unemployed or underemployed—unsure of your direction and far outside of your executive comfort zone?
Do you want to make a difference? Do you want to do something special in the world? Do you want to leave an enduring legacy? Do you want to do these things but can’t find the time or the vehicle? Or do you simply want to be fulfilled at work and happier in your life?
We find that most executives relate to one or more of these questions, and sometimes their challenges are even more daunting. No matter your situation, we can tell you from coaching and training thousands of personal branding executive clients (including many in the Fortune 100) that the personal branding strategies in Ditch. Dare. Do! work.
3D personal branding is the key—for you and your company!
Branding boldly and practically, 3D-style, gives you permission to be yourself—your best self—to know that YOU are like no other (and to have your company know that, too!).
In the words of Dr. Seuss, “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” You should trust that YOU are enough—that your particular combination of strengths, passions, and talents is exactly what is needed, and you build upon that—for yourself, your organization, and your teams. That’s why Ditch. Dare. Do! is subtitled 66 Ways to Become Influential, Indispensable, and Incredibly Happy at Work. Branded executives are fully and powerfully themselves, set firmly on a trajectory to ever more success and happiness at work (and in life and the world, too!).
Before, the company brand was everything. Remember the “company man” of the not-too-distant past? Today, the individuals working in the company are the authentic face of the brand, not the reverse. Employees’ brands and their company’s brand are inextricably linked. The workforce itself is a part of the company’s marketplace strategy.
The most successful companies recognize that employees are human brand assets. You need only view recent ad campaigns like GE’s “Pass the Wrench,” IBM’s “I’m an IBMer,” and Intel’s “Star” (featuring Ajay Bhatt) to see that these companies get it. All of these ads showcase employees as the brands’ greatest resources—the true value of the company.
These companies know that when employees understand and apply their individual brands to the corporate mission, they create differentiation in the marketplace, build their constituencies’ trust, impact the bottom line, and win the game.
In a white paper from the Economist Intelligence Unit and the IBM Institute for Business Value, Chris LeBlanc, corporate marketing manager at 3M Australia, asserts, “[We’ve entered] an era of collaboration and information-sharing and transparency, in which every employee has become a touch point. Everyone is responsible for communicating the company’s values, products and services. We are all messengers.”
Your personal brand is that important!
How to Use This Book
The Ditch. Dare. Do! Guide
We wrote Ditch. Dare. Do! with executives like you in mind.
You know you can never stand still; you know you need to know more and be more to achieve and surpass your goals. You know you need to manage your career inside your organization as well as in your world—to build an internal brand that positions you for best-fit upward momentum that serves you and your organization. You know you need to be branded (or at least you’ve heard you should be), but your overloaded schedule makes “busy” seem like a vacation! You’re too busy working in your career to work on your career or your brand.
We know your world—its triumphs and its troubles—because through the personal branding process, we’re granted entry into the worlds of our executive clients. We get to know them on a profound and trusted level—we know what they do, what they face, and what they want, and we’re privileged to witness how personal branding catalyzes their careers and their dreams.
You’ll meet a number of our personal branding stars throughout this book—some by real name, others by pseudonym—and we hope their experiences will help you see that you, too, can “be a brand!” And we’ll share some of our own experiences in using personal branding to stand out. You’ll see that we practice what we preach.
We purposely designed Ditch. Dare. Do! to be a bold and brief real-world instruction manual for continuously managing your career and achieving unstoppable momentum. Does it provide deeply specific, step-by-step instructions
