Jack Canfield: The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
David Allen: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Daniel Pink: A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
Seth Godin: All Marketers Are Liars : The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
Keith Ferrazzi: Never Eat Alone : And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »
If you ever have to question or find a reason to follow your passions and follow your dreams watch this excerpt from the Oprah show - its an extremely humble, brave and fun man called Randy Pausch a university professor delivering his last lecture.
You Tube Video of Randy Pausch delivering his last lecture
If you delivered your last 'speech' what would you want to be saying?
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tom Peters’ thought provoking-article on Personal Branding published in Fast Company, leading Personal Branding Strategists—including many certified by Reach (a leading authority in Personal Branding worldwide) have planned the most exciting event ever on Personal Branding. Peters’ article launched “Brand You Thinking” as the new revolution in which professionals could manage their careers, and it has now become a mainstream concept ten years later.
The Global Telesummit will be held on November 8, 2007 in the form of a Teleconference (details of how to register to join the event are at www.personalbrandingsummit.com). The Personal Branding Summit is expected to draw more than 100,000 professionals from throughout the world.
There is no charge for this event which comprises of 24 separate seminars, and the value of the content and the expertise of the speakers rivals any world class professional development conference.
Participants are being invited to make a contribution to the events social cause partner Kiva. Kiva provide microfinance loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries with the goal of eliminating social poverty. As the event is free to attend, the event organizers are hoping to raise US$100,000 for Kiva through donations.
With bestselling authors and personal branding experts as speakers and panelists, this unprecedented event is important for people who want to increase their career and business success and companies who are interested in attracting and retaining top talent.
Confirmed presenters include Jason Alba, William Arruda, Dick Bolles, Anita Bruzzese, Silvia Cambié, Krishna De, Tim Demello, Kirsten Dixson, Stewart Emery, Phil Gerbyshak, T Scott Gross, Neville Hobson, Thebe Ikalafeng, John Jantsch, Catherine Kaputa, Guy Kawasaki, Andrea Kay, Liz Ryan, David Meerman Scott, Andy Sernovitz, Debbie Weil, Susan Whitcomb, Carol Wilson, and Martin Yate.
Globalization has changed the way we work, and this event is a testimony to the global, virtual project team. Chaired by Krishna De in Ireland, the planning team also has representatives from the United States, France, Italy, and Portugal. Personal brand strategists from all over the world are engaged in promoting the event in their local markets to increase the awareness of personal branding as the best strategy for accelerating success in business today.
Sponsors include Reach, Conference Calls Unlimited and Ziggs. Conference Calls Unlimited is also recording all the teleseminars that will be available free at www.personalbrandingsummit.com after the live event.
More information about the event and how to register can be found at www.personalbrandingsummit.com
September and October have been busy months for me in speaking about personal branding - there has been a surge of interest from both professionals and small business owners.
The number on question, perhaps not surprisingly, has been "How do I build my personal brand on line?" - or words to that effect. Everyone is hearing about Facebook, MySpace, getting 'Googled' and they want to know one of three things;
The answer could be YES to any one of these - it all depends on the individual.
What I decided to do about it was to create something that helped people cut through all the hype that is out there and decide for themselves based on their own brand if its for them and what they can do in easy to take, actionable steps to raise their on line brand.
Take a look for yourself here - as a blog reader you can even take advantage of the special e-newsletter subscriber price up until October 31st.
"Google ME! - how to build your online personal brand in 10 easy action steps"
According to a recent IBM human capital study there is a leadership vacuum developing in organizations because internal talent is not being recognised.
Actually in many cases it is being recognised, by current managers who are reluctant to let good perfromers move in to other departments - ultimately this is either going to lead to conflict or frustration - either way an unhappy employee and potentially soon to be ex-employee.
So what can companies do about this?
Personal branding is one option that is now being embraced by leading companies as part of leadership development programs. After all in many cases now its the employees responsibility to manage their own careers - the use of personal branding gives them some concrete steps and actions they can take to raise their profile and get noticed in the organization and also provide them with some key networking skills to start to 'get out there' and find where the opportunities lie in the company.
This is something that you might be hearing more of in the coming years if the results of a recent Ipsos Reid / BMO Financial survey are anything to go by.
Increasing numbers of baby boomers are not ready to pack it all in - 18% of men and 12% of women are expecting to be working in business until they die - and its not all about the money. Other reasons included dreams and nearly half said remaining occupied.
So as a boomer what are your thoughts?
There was an interesting article on the Electronic Recruitment Exchange this week by Kevin Wheeler - No Women at Apple's Top, about the fact that the technology industry in Silicon Valley has the lowest number of women in senior positions (just 9%!) and that Apple, one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies has none!
Many of the women that I work with do not expect (nor want) special or preferential treatment whens its comes to being considered for promotion. But they do expect an employer to be fair.
There are certainly still some inconsistencies when employing women versus men and companies need to continue to work at addressing this. What they seem to be missing in many cases though is the fact that in a wide range of industries women are responsible for a much higher percentage of buying decisions - that alone should be prompting companies to think about getting more women in to the senior roles.
Interested in understanding more about Marketing to Women? - check out these up coming workshops.
If you were passing out of Union Station in Toronto yesterday, like me, then you would think that Santa was at least a little more creative than you thought as a young child.
One thing you can be sure of in probably every major city is that there will be people begging on the streets.
You see all the people rushing to work, their eyes firmly fixed on the neck of the person in front of them, they have become immune to the call for 'spare me some change?' Once in a while you might see someone stop and drop some money in a cup - but for most what would make them stop - short of the person jumping up and stopping them?
Enter 'Santa' at Union Station yesterday.
This person had a real white beard and was dressed in a red elf hat, red top and pants with collection box and a sign.
"Sleigh Broken Down - Please Help!"
He had money almost pouring in to his box - not because he had a broken sleigh of course, but because he had taken the time to understand his target audience- what their pain was, what was the same about him and all the others calling for change and what he could do to stand out and be different.
Many commuters had to get up earlier than they wanted, sit on a crowded train and now go to the same desk in the same cubicle with the same people - they craved variety or just a little smile.
He brought that to them - it was worth it!
The workshop I delivered on Monday at the Oakville Chamber of Commerce for small business week, was to a room predominantly full of small business owners and solopreneurs. It was a mixture of products, retail and service businesses - but there was a common theme coming out when we talked about marketing, advertising and branding.
We are not Starbucks or Nike or Virgin - we do not have the resources or reputation - let alone the budget that these have.
Absolutely - but ;
- Nike stated as a one person company selling shoes out of the back of a van at track meets - it was another three years before they had their first retail store
- Starbucks was one coffee store in Seattle - and it was over 11 years later before Howard Schulz's concept was developed to sell such offerings as Latte's
- Virgin was a mail order record company started by a 20 year old that is now the most admired brand in the UK
What these and many other successful brands have in common is one or two personal brands that had a passion, believed in their vision and pursued it. I am sure none of them had big budgets or endless talent to start with - but they recognised what they were good at and were able to communicate that effectively to enough people that their businesses grew.
The parcipants in the workshop all have that too - that raw passion and belief in that what they are doing is going to be a success - the key in unearthing the power of their personal brand to be truly successful.
I was very fortunate to attend a breakfast keynote talk given at the Oakville Chamber of Commerce this week by Thomas Grifferty, the CEO of First Canadian Title. What was truly amazing about him was that it took him 5 years beofre his product/service was even recognised as being a viable proposition in Canada! This was a company that started in his daughters bedroom and now employs over 1,000 and hundreds of millions of $'s in sales.
In his speech his personal brand skills of humour, honesty and leadership were very evident in what he said and displayed - however the real underlying attribute was perseverance - and when you know that he did not come from an insurance background - but was an air traffic controller!
I was just doing a little 'fun' surfing - actually to see how many web pages came up for each of the 3 main party leaders in the recent Ontario provincial election in a personal brand search.
John Tory the Conservative leader was by far in the lead with over 400,000 pages where as Dalton McGuinty and Howard Hampton had less than 2,000 each. It was not a reflection of the results though - McGuinty won a majority and Tory lost his seat - so much for Google value!
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