by Vince Rogers
William Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest arbiter of Western Literature to have ever lived. In his masterpiece of treachery and envy, Othello, he may have also delivered the most useful idiom to remember while continuously building your personal brand. In Act 3, Scene 3, of the play, the villainous Iago delivers a soliloquy that summarizes the essence of building your brand and managing your reputation:
"Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed."
Personally, I first learned these powerful words from my beloved grandmother many years ago. She tried to instill this valuable lesson in me time and time again. Grandma was a great proponent of Strategic Branding and Reputation Management long before these terms were in vogue. She just prescribed these maxims under the general heading of lessons you need to learn in order to be regarded as a good person.
Nowadays numerous books, seminars, dvds and cd programs are available to purchase on the topics of personal branding, brand management reputation management and various nuances and augmentations of these themes. Many of these products have information that is vital and if applied can make a great deal of impact in your life. As you continue to follow this column, I will share many such valuable tools and resources that I have developed or researched especially for you. However, I am convinced that many of the most essential, powerful and easily implementable keys to building your brand are the things you learned just as I did as a child.
I have identified Six Keys to Success that are essential to building a winning Success Plan. While these attributes are the key to implementing your overall Success Strategy, they are also integral to building your personal brand as well. These Six Keys to Success have been adapted to meet the complex demands of modern day enterprise building. However, you should realize very quickly that they are based on simple lessons that we've all learned over the years. Integrity in dealing with people, common sense in matters of good judgment and exercising good stewardship over the resources at your disposal are the essential requirements for successful personal branding.
1) Information: Become known as a trustworthy subject matter expert in your field.
2) Image: Go out into the world every day and look, sound and act the way you want to be treated.
3) Initiative: Always act on the basis of sound planning and good research, which leads to the pursuit of effective strategy.
4) Confidence: Through dedicating your self to winning small victories, you will be emboldened with the confidence that you've done your best; this will be the basis of the momentum that propels you to success.
5) Capital: The greatest source of future revenue and profits for your business will be determined by the purchasing and cost decisions you make today.
6) Contacts: You must assemble a winning team. You alone will never possess all of the skills and abilities required for perfection, nor will you ever be able to earn every certification or degree needed to answer every question.
In summary: You and you alone are responsible for controlling the quality of your brand. The image you present and the information you transfer to the public are signs of your dedication to quality and the soundness of your ideas. Many vital aspects contribute to successfully building a powerful personal brand. In most instances, if we would heed the vital life lessons we learned from our parents, grandparents and even the sage wisdom from the tales written by the Bard of Avon, we would be just fine. The answers we seek most often come when we remember to keep it simple, keep it honest and keep it consistent.
Vince Rogers is a highly skilled resource manager and communications consultant; trained in economics, marketing, project management and commercial real estate management. He possesses many years of successful experience in financial asset and real estate wealth building. He is the Principal Change Agent at Vince Rogers & Associates http://www.vincerogers.biz Contact us to help you to formulate a winning Success Plan for reaching your desired personal and professional destination. Please continue to visit this blog Disguised Limits @ http://disguisedlimits.blogspot.com to find more information you can use to Discover Life's Unlimited Opportunities!!!!
