If you’re fed up with the job you’re in, want an exciting new career, seek promotion, hope for a pay rise or to get noticed at work, then it’s time to reinvent your personal branding.

The concept of personal branding has been going down the wrong road, a superficial road, and needs to be reinvented. In fact, for many people, reinvention is precisely the thing that needs to happen. People get stuck in jobs they hate, in relationships that aren’t fulfilling and in virtually all areas of life, and often because people believe that they have made their bed and have to lie in it. We need to fulfill our potential and we do this by developing our unique, authentic, distinctive and compelling life-story: and living it!


What people actually need to do is to assess their personal brand strategy with the same thoroughness that successful companies like Apple, Virgin and others do for their brands. You need to look at what you want your purpose to be, whether as an employee, an entrepreneur, even as a life partner. From a solid purpose you can then build strategy and a powerful personal narrative – in short, the only way to build a powerful personal brand, one that will actually make any difference to your life, is to do it profoundly and deeply: to actually reinvent yourself – but authentically!

Here are the 10 tips:

1. Your personal brand isn’t about your qualifications or even how smart you are: it’s about making yourself of distinctive recognisable value, no matter how modest your role. Even if you have the lowliest job, if you do it with an absolute commitment to excellence then you will get noticed.

2. The greatest skill of all in a modern business or organisation is to be able to solve problems and to create more effective strategies. So instead of trying on the one hand just to ’fit in’ or on the other hand to be ’innovative’ for its own sake, strive instead actually to solve real problems. And remember that doesn’t mean having to be cleverer than others: sometimes it just means applying a little more attentiveness.

3. The second greatest skill is to be able to communicate your ideas with regard for others’ understanding and position. Nobody likes a show-off or stubbornness, least of all managers in organisations. So be clear and make your case with conviction, but never be arrogant or uncompromising.

4. In a small business, or in a team within a big organisation, your personal ’brand’ is best expressed through a compelling narrative about how and what you contribute. It’s no good claiming to be valuable. That’s like a comedian claiming to be funny. You have to ’be’ valuable.

5. Along the way, and especially when your contribution is being noticed, you will find others who try to stop you, trip you up, or trap you. Pay no heed to those, other than to be aware of them. Engaging in inter-staff warfare can only damage your personal brand and will never enhance your career.

6. Great brands are founded on authenticity, not on lies. Never, ever invent a better back story for yourself. You will, ultimately, be found out. Instead tell your real story: but tell it better by engaging emotions and imagination.

7. Don’t go for promotion just because you think you should. Don’t follow the career path as though it was pre-determined. It isn’t. Think about your career strategy. What do you really, truly want to be doing in two or five years’ time? If a promotion helps take you there that’s great. But if it doesn’t, consider other approaches. A different company? Working for yourself?

8. Learn to balance hope and fear. Anything worth doing (new job, big presentation etc) will induce fear and anxiety. But you need to step around that fear or your personal ’brand’ will never progress. But don’t fall into the X-Factor trap of assuming that you will succeed just because you want something badly enough. Never try to wing it! Prepare, prepare, prepare.

9. If you hate your job but there appears no prospect of changing it in the near future, don’t despair. Change your attitude to it instead: treat everything you do as ’training’ for what comes next.

10. If you’ve made an error of judgement, or any other kind of mistake, do not try to hide it. Own up to it and take the flak. Learn something from it, explain what you have learned, show why having been through the experience you are now more valuable than ever, and be the guy who made the famous recovery!