While the IPO market on Wall Street has cooled substantially, there is a new IPO looming on the horizon that has the potential to make you millions of dollars in the coming years. This is not hype. This is not a pipe dream. This is not a fantasy. It is a reality that is yours for the taking.
If your stockbroker told you about this, you'd do everything you could to get in on the deal. If a friend worked for this IPO-poised venture, you would try to get hired to get your options before the big day of "going public."
The good news is that you already have an inside track on the hottest IPO of the next decade.
It's you.
Twenty years ago, the acronym IPO meant little to people outside of Wall Street and the investment banking industries. In the late 1990s, IPOs came to center stage - turning young college students into multimillionaires in a matter of minutes. Fortunes were won or lost in the blink of an eye and everyone wanted to be in on the next big IPO. In the decade to come, people will begin to focus on their own IPOs - the initial public offering where they present themselves to industries, the marketplace, and even the world in an attempt to build long-lasting, personally gratifying careers. The first steps in developing your own personal brand and taking it public to the world are outlined below in an easy-to-accomplish, step-by-step format that promises to bring you a more fulfilling work experience in future years. Whether you work in-house for a large development company or spend your days freelancing - developing your personal brand will drastically help your career.
The Personal Brand
People are always talking about "brands." Soft drinks have brands, cars have brands, computers have brands, schools have brands, even countries have brands.
But do people have brands?
Absolutely.
Your personal brand is the image created in the minds of people when they connect with your name, your work product, or your service offering. It's your reputation. It's the experience people have when they interact with you. It's the expectation people have when they learn that you will be part of their team going forward.
Your personal life experience, personal point-of-view, and the way you are perceived by others, combine to make your personal brand.
Your personal brand is yours. It's unique to you. It's mobile - you take it with you no matter where you go. It's unique - your individual life experience made you who you are today. It's valuable - your earning power, your position in your industry, and your ability to find the next great project all hinge on your personal brand. Much has been written about the celebrity personal brand. Images of Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, David Beckham, Donald Trump, and LeBron James dominate any discussion of the value a strong personal brand can have on a career. Each of these individuals has spent countless hours developing personas and their respective career trajectories reflect this personal study and focused effort.
The Significance Of Your Personal Brand
According to the most recent findings by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average American will have 10 different jobs before reaching 40 years of age. In short, that means you will be working in a new position, for a new boss or company, on an average of once every two to three years. That's a lot of changes in a short amount of time!
Given the frequency of job changes, the maintenance and development of your personal brand is vital. Gone are the days of employers helping to groom your career over time by providing a long-term employment ladder that you climb to retirement. Now, constant changes have employees shifting from project-to-project, company-to-company, and even industry-to-industry in a chaotic career dance that is only controlled by the tempo the employee sets.
A well-developed and polished personal brand will help you navigate a variety of options while at the same time positioning you for new opportunities.
While your personal brand can be many things, it must be the following:
- Honest and authentic
- Promise value
- Build trust
- Offer differentiation
- Continually grow and develop
Investigate Your Brand
In the same way a company would decide to go public, for you to present your brand to the world you must first begin with what the experts refer to as "due diligence." This is nothing more than taking the time to thoroughly investigate your self. What types of projects have you worked on in the past? What endeavors would you like to focus on in the future? What are your best skills? What are you known for? How does your involvement with a company, project, or program make it better?
The answers to these questions help inform your personal brand offering - the attributes that are uniquely yours and for which people admire and seek you out. This searching process requires you to consider your past performance and highlight the key moments where you achieved stated goals, exceeded expectations, and contributed to the success of a project. By making a comprehensive list of these activities, you will identify your personal brand assets.
Express Your Accomplishments & Contributions
After identifying the traits and characteristics that comprise your personal brand offering, you must design a means for expressing these skills in the context of your accomplishments and contributions. In short, you must show people what you're good at doing.
The Personal Annual Report
You may have colleagues
who are great at answering the question, "What do you do?" You may
constantly read about a peer and their new book/award/speaking
engagement/etc. While there are many ways to package you achievements,
one format that is familiar in the business world and yet offers
tremendous opportunities for personal adaptation is the annual report.
Companies use annual reports to provide information on their past performance, strategic goals, marketing plans, operational objectives, and financial soundness. Annual reports are often signature pieces that allow an outside "investor" to quickly ascertain a company's value and review progress in the fixed space of a limited time - one year of activities.
Individuals can develop a personal annual report to help showcase their activities over the past year. A personal annual report provides details about your professional accomplishments, your strategic goals, your past performance, and your ongoing efforts at self promotion.
Many people will quickly note, "But Joey, I've worked on the same project for two years running and we're still in development. I don't have any accomplishments to highlight!"
Really?
Have you helped keep the project on schedule? Have you made suggestions to improve the finished deliverable? Have you managed the work of other people? Have you contributed to the efforts of the team? Have you pushed the project in new and exciting directions? Have you delivered what you promised you would?
If you can answer any of these questions with a "yes," you have something to highlight. Compiling these highlights in a personal annual report offers a much more interesting and dynamic presentation of your successes than the typical, boring, one-page resume with "Experience," "Education," and "Hobbies" serving as the main headlines. A personal annual report allows for compelling design, illustrative charts and figures, and even (gasp!) photos of you at work! To a prospective employer or team leader, this type of presentation will help you stand out among the masses while at the same time offering candid insight into the type of person you are and what it will be like to work with you.
Once you develop your annual report, you can send it to friends, colleagues, potential employers, and even your current boss. A personal annual report (see sidebar) is a great way to update people on your achievements and serves as a wonderful tool to introduce people to your personal brand.
The E-Presence
Given an audience of
ColdFusion programmers, a discussion of the importance of a strong
e-presence is probably like telling a jockey about the importance of a
good saddle. Nonetheless, it's significant to note that with each
passing year, an individual's online presence and digital identity
become more critical. With people "googling" each other before a date,
reading up on a seller's ratings before making a purchase, and
contributing user reviews to product sites for others' consideration, a
well-designed e-presence has never been more important.
My informal research of audiences around the country and the world shows that even in a room of technologically savvy professionals only about 45% have their own Web site. Approximately 25% have a blog - and about 10% of them update it regularly. And these are the statistics for those on the cutting edge of technology!
You might ask, "Since not many people seem to be focusing on their e-presence, why should I?"
There are two reasons. First, the lack of conscious focus by your peers and others means that you have a chance to make a big splash without a tremendous amount of work. Second, you're going to need to focus on your e-presence if you plan to earn a living in 2010. If you don't think you'll need to be interacting in society as a professional or an individual then, feel free to stop reading this article right now.
Given the increasing importance of an e-presence, you should ask yourself what your e-presence currently looks like. Does it represent who you truly are? Are you happy with the links that come up when you google yourself? If you tell me your name, can I find links to you in the first two pages of an online search? What are you doing to enhance you digital identity?
If you haven't considered these questions before, now is the time. Make a list of three things you can do in the next two weeks to improve your online positioning. They can be as simple as registering a personal Web site (less than $10 at GoDaddy.com), starting a blog (check out TypePad for ease of use), or just searching your name to find out what's already being said about you (you'll probably be surprised at just how much is already out there).
Evolve Your Offering
Once you've investigated your
personal brand, developed a personal annual report, and enhanced your
online presence, the work is done right?
Not even close.
A personal brand is constantly evolving. Consider yourself just five years ago - are you the same person? Do you have the same friends? Do you work in the same job? Do you live in the same place? Do you enjoy doing the same things? I'd be shocked to find you respond "yes" to even half those questions - and at the same time disappointed if you did.
Don't be afraid to let your personal brand grow as you grow. As you acquire new skills and develop new interests, your personal brand should meld and morph to include these new personal attributes and skill sets.
Consider the music superstar Madonna. Over the years, her personal brand has gone from "Like a Virgin," to a "Material Girl," to "Papa Don't Preach," to "Who's That Girl?" to "This Use To Be My Playground." Her career as an author has seen tiles ranging from the racy "Sex" to the children's book "The English Roses," and her movie roles have included films as diverse as "Truth or Dare," "A League of Their Own," "Die Another Day," and "Evita." Even her name has evolved from Madonna Louise Ciccone, to Madonna, to Esther, and back again to just Madonna.
While this kind of personal brand evolution is extreme, it shows that a personal brand can go through radical changes - yet continue to showcase the development of individual skills, interests, and attributes. While modeling a career on Madonna may not be the best choice for you, it's possible to find inspiration in her willingness to change directions and constantly reinvent herself.
The Time Is Now
The "IPO" of your personal brand
doesn't mean "immediate pay off." The time spent developing and honing
your feature will result in great dividends - both financial and
personal - but they will come over time as opposed to all in one day
like the IPOs of the 1990s tech boom.
The key to launching the IPO of your personal brand?
Getting started.
You have all the assets necessary to investigate your personal brand, express your accomplishments and contributions in a well-designed and thought-out package, and consistently evolve your brand to take you to new heights. Nothing is stopping you from riding your personal IPO to newfound success and accomplishment - and having a great adventure along the way.