Define, Promote & Live Your Powerful Personal Brand

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"You have the real potential for creating a powerful and exciting distinction that fascinates, inspires, rewards and engages others to become advocates of who you are and what you offer of value." Genece Hamby

What is Personal Branding?

Every day, everywhere you go and in everything you do, whether at work or at home, you are telling the world about yourself, your values, your goals and your skills. You are defining your personal brand. Your personal brand is composed of the expectations, perceptions and emotions that people associate with you. According to personal branding expert Nick Nichols, your personal brand is the firm impression or fixed image that comes to mind when people think of you. A personal brand is the mental picture that people conjure up when your name is mentioned.

Can you articulate, in 35 words or less, what unique value you deliver to your supervisor? If you answered ‘NO.”, you are among many professionals who aren’t leveraging the power of personal branding to enhance their career. If you can't authentically and clearly explain your value to your supervisor, how can you expect them to understand it and appreciate it?

My most requested keynote is entitled, “Building the Brand Called You: Creating an Indispensable Personal Brand!” Companies are realizing the benefits of helping their employees see themselves as an individual brand.

They are starting to acknowledge that self-realized employees work more efficiently and innovatively and are secure enough in their abilities to welcome teamwork. A personal brand communicates the value an individual brings to the table.

Each of us brings unique gifts and talents that can be used to make valuable contributions in our personal and professional lives. This is why the concept of personal branding works. Developing your own personal brand is not about winning a popularity contest. There's no cookie cutter solution or set of behaviors or theories you can just take over from other successful people. That would not be considered being authentic to your true self. It would be in a sense false advertising because you are pretending to be someone you're not. Being an original ‘You’ is far more valuable than being a first-rate imitation of someone else. Wouldn’t you agree that an original Picasso painting is far more precious than a brand new lithograph of the same painting? Your personal brand must be the product of authentic self-examination, or it simply won’t work.

If you know yourself inside out, your strengths and weaknesses, you can begin to value yourself. You will then be able to articulate your value and effectively demonstrate your skills, attitudes, beliefs, sense of worth, and the breadth of possibilities within you. When you know your strengths and the value of your contributions, you will be able to develop a personal brand that reflects the person you desire to share with the world. Whether it is inspiring others through your servant leadership skills (a leadership philosophy in which the leader serves the people he/she leads by encouraging collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment), using your communication skills to nail that sales presentation or listen to a troubled family member or friend, or simply demonstrating to colleagues, clients, and superiors just how much more you have to offer, you are building your brand, one action at a time.

Peter Montoya, author of The Brand Called You, describes your personal brand as “a personal identity that stimulates precise, meaningful perceptions in its audience about the values and qualities that person stands for.” I often use the phrase, “What you see is what you get!” when describing myself. As you consider your own personal brand, work hard to ensure that what people see is what you want them to get.

Success and wealth love action.

Begin the process for attracting phenomenal success and wealth into your life by implementing what you have just learned. Start with these easy three steps:

1) Imagine your business being better by implementing the strategies you just learned.

2) Decide which two or three things you will implement in your business as a result of the information you just read. Identify one thing you plan to do immediately.

3) Act on one strategy you learned within the next 24 hours. Ask someone to hold you accountable. Your success depends on it.

Lethia would love to partner with you on your success journey as you begin working through the steps above. She has prepared a special bundle of resources to help you build a powerful personal brand and attract all of the opportunities and resources you need to be both successful and wealthy. You can access your free gift valued at over $129 by visiting us online at the following web address - http://www.Facebook.com/PersonalBrandingStrategist

As a personal branding and social media strategist, Lethia Owens is passionate about teaching people how to think, work and live powerfully! Lethia is a professional speaker and consultant who enjoys working with enterprising speakers and business owners who want to build a million dollar brand using cutting edge social media marketing strategies. For more information on Lethia Owens International, Inc. please visit http://www.LethiaOwens.com

Diverse Business Online Radio with Mark Hackshaw

Hear Mark Hackshaw on the Diverse Business Online Radio by Diverse Business | Blog Talk Radio


A stylish auto hub
Ford, Chrysler created bustling, urban suburb -- and brought it down
Greg Tasker | The Detroit News

HIGHLAND PARK -- In this tiny community straddling Woodward Avenue, the managers and workers of the burgeoning auto industry found an urban oasis -- small neighborhoods of tidy bungalows and tree-shaded lanes. Even the street names -- California, Pasadena, Buena Vista -- seemed to reflect their dreams of upward mobility.

As the automotive hub of the globe in the early 20th century, cranking out millions of Model T's, Highland Park could afford to nurture those dreams.

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With its move up Woodward from Detroit, the Ford Motor Co. had transformed the sleepy, pastoral farm village into a bustling community. Ford opened its innovative manufacturing complex on Woodward and lured thousands a few years later with the promise of $5 a day in wages.

Bounded mostly by Detroit and a bit of Hamtramck, Highland Park also would become the seat of the Chrysler Corp.

But Highland Park was more than just a company town. It was a model American suburb, home of leafy streets with distinctive bungalows, thriving main streets and community-minded corporations.

The residential streets that fanned across Woodward and other main roads were never more than three blocks long. Never mind that the city was the home of Ford -- the company that put the world on wheels -- the city was designed as a streetcar community, with public transportation never being more than a block and a half away. Residents could hop on a streetcar to downtown and other parts of Detroit, but they could shop, work or play in their own community.

"Back then you had people living and working in Highland Park. You had people living above the main street businesses," said Harriet Saperstein, chairwoman of the Woodward Avenue Action Association and former president of HP Devco, a nonprofit economic development agency. "You talk about the new urbanism. Highland Park had it a long time ago. It truly was a city in itself, with a separate identity from Detroit."
Shops, residents pack Woodward

In its heyday, Highland Park boasted a population of more than 50,000, which swelled every day as thousands of autoworkers streamed to their jobs at the auto plants. Much of the construction -- commercial and residential -- occurred over an 11-year boom from 1914 to 1925.

This legacy includes the Albert Kahn-designed Ford factory and a significant collection of Dutch colonials, Tudor revivals and Arts and Crafts bungalows. Two neighborhoods, Medbury's-Grove Lawn and Highland Heights-Stevens -- with some 700 homes -- are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Woodward and the city's main streets were packed with mom-and-pop shops, banks, restaurants, hotels, theaters, churches and apartment buildings. Its schools boasted high academic standards and a wealth of extracurricular activities.

In 1938, Sears Roebuck and Co. opened in an expansive Art Moderne building on Woodward, across from the Ford plant, which, by then, no longer made cars. Ford continued to assemble tractors there.

"With the variety of stores in place, you didn't have to travel outside Highland Park to do any shopping," said Jerome Drain, who grew up in Highland Park and returned to live there in 1989. "You had Sears, you had major stores, you had restaurants, theaters -- anything you wanted was there. You had all the amenities of a thriving community."

For many, Sears was the Target of its day, a working man's alternative to the downtown J.L. Hudson flagship store. With its central location, Highland Park became the home base of other well-known companies, including Sanders and Highland Appliance.

"Lots of folks called Highland Park the hubcap of the wheel of Detroit," said Katherine Clarkson, a former Highland Park resident and former executive director of Preservation Wayne. "It was the shiny thing in the middle. The workers' wives would come to Sears and the Ford company stores to shop. It was really a busy, vibrant city. It was an affluent community, even though the individual folks were not."

Automotive executives, managers and workers moved into neighborhoods with street names that symbolized Highland Park's cosmopolitan sensibility: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pasadena, Rhode Island.
Automakers contributed to city's fall

The automakers put Highland Park on the map, but they also contributed to its decline.

The ever-growing Ford Motor Co. moved its car operations to its sprawling Rouge complex in Dearborn in the late 1920s. Decades later, Chrysler left.

In between, this once highly integrated community lost thousands of residents. Businesses left or relocated, further eroding its tax base. After more than a half century, Sears closed shop in 1992. The city gained a reputation for blight, crime and poverty.

The human and tax drain contributed to the city's well-publicized money woes, and the state took over its finances in 2002. The state still manages the city's fiscal affairs.Even so, many in this community of 16,000 are optimistic about Highland Park's future.

While vacant lots and abandoned buildings remain, new shopping centers have been built along Woodward. Coca-Cola Co. opened a distribution center in 2006, and Visteon Corp. recently announced plans to build a factory on the former Chrysler site. Efforts continue to preserve and redevelop the Ford plant, a National Historic Landmark, as well as the city's McGregor Library.

"I definitely see positive signs now," said Carl Pettway, who grew up in Highland Park but lives in Detroit. He opened a barber shop, Fade Away, on Woodward several years ago. "People my age who graduated in the 1980s still have relatives here. I hear a lot of people talking about moving back. I'm looking to see big things happen here in Highland Park."

Even an outsider like Mark Hackshaw sees potential.

Hackshaw, a real estate developer and entrepreneur, initially came to the Detroit area from the East Coast to run a car dealership. Instead, he bought the eight-story Medical Arts Building on Woodward and restored it.

"If you look back on the history of Highland Park, it's always had the ability to create things here," said Hackshaw.

"We can't look for someone else to come to Highland Park and save it. We need to do it, and I see it happening. Coca-Cola is here. Visteon Corp. is coming, and new stores are opening. It's going to happen."

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20070417/METRO/108010007/A-stylish-auto-hub#ixzz1JFyOlnSB