You Already Have a Personal Brand, Whether You Want One or Not

I don’t frequently tell people, and I almost never use the title Dr., but I have a PhD in Oceanography. While on active duty, I worked closely with scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, Naval Postgraduate School, and in civilian academia and research companies. I was one of the authors of the Navy’s strategy for returning to operations in the Arctic after several decades away from high latitude operations. I have also written several scholarly papers that have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

I also grew up in south Mississippi and have had a very thick southern accent for most of my life. The intensity of the accent has varied over time as my environment has changed. It has largely evaporated now except that, no matter how hard I try, “thing” seems to always come out “thang”. But for many years I have actually cultivated and enjoyed that distinctive accent. 

Once an admiral that I worked for talked to me about it. He told me that I am very intelligent and he reminded me of the academic work that I have done, the published papers, the work with some of the smartest scientists in the world, and the strategy development, but he also said that the way I talk does not convey any of that in a first impression. It didn’t help that I kept chickens and cows and enjoyed gardening. I was well known for those things. Any time I wasn’t at work or some official function, I was usually dressed in work boots, jeans, and an old t-shirt. I completely failed to understand how he was trying to help me, and I told him that I cultivated that image intentionally. 

I really enjoyed being underestimated. People frequently made assumptions about me and were later surprised when they got to know me better. I found this very entertaining at the time, but I had unintentionally created a personal brand that held me back like a parachute. In fact, now that I understand personal branding, I realize that it is probably the biggest factor that prevented me from being promoted to admiral.

Today, I do business with a fellow member of the local Rotary Club. One day I came to her office dressed in business casual. I was wearing slacks and a polo shirt, perfectly appropriate for most any business function on the Gulf Coast. She remarked to me that she had never seen me not wearing a sports coat before. This illustrates how my personal brand has changed!

What is a brand? What is personal branding?

Personal branding expert, author, and speaker Tim O’brien says that your personal brand is the word or phrase that comes to mind when people think of you. It really has nothing to do with what you do for a living. It is, instead, what they think about you personally, not necessarily what they think about you at your work. It also doesn’t really matter what you think, it is all about the image you invoke in the minds of other people, not what you think about yourself.

“It is a personal identity that stimulates a meaningful emotional response in your target audience about the values or qualities for which you stand.”

Tim O’brien  

More generally, a brand is what people say about you whether you want them to say that or not. O’brien further says that your brand may be positive, negative, or neutral, but you already have a brand (O’brien 9-39). You can work on changing the brand, but you can’t change the fact that you have a brand. 

“If you don’t build and manage your brand, the world around you will do it for you, and you will be putting your future in the hands of others.”

                                                                                               Cynthia Johnson

Personal branding is the actions you take to change the conversation into what you want them to say about you (Pudney and Perera).  Five years ago, my brand was probably something like “the guy who should have been a farmer but somehow got stuck being a Navy officer instead”. Today, I strive for it to be words like “professional speaker”, “expert leadership, personal growth, and military transition coach”, and “thought leader”.

I’m not running for office. Why does it matter?

During most of my Navy time, I enjoyed being underestimated on the first impression and then being able to surprise people later when they realize that I am much more than they had thought. What is wrong with that? 

As it turns out, there is a lot wrong with that line of reasoning. It is because I, like most people, was assuming that people actually are reasoning. We assume that humans are thinking, rational beings but, in reality, we are not. The first impression is absolutely vital because most of the time people don’t think to make a decision. Instead they make the decision very quickly, often based on that first impression, then they think to justify the decision that they have already made (Beckwith and Clifford, 37). 

In a job interview, the interviewer may well have already decided not to hire you before they even ask the first question. Frequently, they don’t admit to themselves that they have made that decision, yet it has been done. You’ve probably heard people say “perception is reality” – what someone believes is true is the reality for them, even if it is not really true. For our purposes here, it is probably more meaningful to say “expectations create reality”. 

Remember that people frequently make decisions very quickly based on how they feel about you during that first impression. If they like you and they believe that you are smart, they will validate that decision in their own mind (O’Brien). They believe that they have not made a snap decision and are weighing the facts to come to that decision, when in reality, they have already made the decision based more on emotion than fact and are now trying to justify that the decision they have already made is the right decision. This is where your personal branding can help them – you want them to choose you based on the first impression and then validate that decision because they think you are smart.

You have to be your brand all the time.

I recently became interested in networking groups after seeing a number of posts on LinkedIn about people attending such groups in multiple different cities around the country. I realized that it would be useful for me to bolster my local network just as I have been working to do with my wider ranging network on LinkedIn, so I started looking for a local networking group. 

I couldn’t find one within a reasonable distance, but a LinkedIn search showed 112,148 people in my area. I thought surely that is more than enough people to support a networking group so I decided to start one. I talked to a couple of people who also thought it was a great idea and vowed to bring along several friends. We chose a venue and a date. Then, the marketing started.

One day during the time I was reaching out to people and sending out invitations to attend our networking group, I decided that I wanted a smoothie. I headed over to the local Smoothie King store and placed my order. Since I love to talk and there were no other customers, I struck up a conversation with the young man who was making my smoothie. I quickly learned that he had been working at Smoothie King for two years and he enjoys his job, but he aspires to do something bigger. He was recently licensed and has been working at a second job as a real estate agent. Of course, real estate agents need a network of potential clients and the members of my upcoming networking group all live in houses of some sort so it sounds like a match made in Heaven! I pulled a business card out of my pocket, wrote the URL for the sign-up link on the back, and handed it to him as I gave him a quick overview and invited him to join us, which he did.

A part of my personal branding strategy is to always dress like a business person and not a bum every time I leave the house, even if I am just going to Smoothie King. I also make sure I carry business cards. One this particular day, I had no expectation that I would meet someone with whom I would discuss business and need to look the part and yet it happened. I could have extended the same invitation while dressed in overalls and work boots, but it just wouldn’t have been the same interaction and I doubt he would have accepted the invitation. 

Being dressed properly just lends credibility. It makes making the connection easier when they can see you as the person that you say you are. If I had not been paying attention to my personal brand that day, I very well may have missed adding that realtor to our networking group, adding his name to my email list, and adding value to him by connecting him with several people who may be his clients in the future. Being your brand all the time, no matter when it is or where you are, enables you to accomplish your objectives!

You are selling all the time!

Remember, that people buy from people they know, like, and trust, and we are all selling all the time. If you are in the job search, you are selling the most important product of all: yourself. If they don’t trust you, then they definitely will not offer you the job, no matter how much you dazzle them at the job interview.

Everyone needs a great personal brand. In his book, O’Brien tells the story of a lawyer who says that many professionals don’t think that they should be selling and, in fact, that selling is beneath them. Most of you probably remember the time when doctors never advertised, for example. But this lawyer said that 50 percent of his job is selling. When asked what is the other 50 percent, he enthusiastically called out, “ Selling!” (O’Brien 43-44).

You may say “Well, of course that’s true for a lawyer. They are either selling to potential clients to get hired or after they are hired they are selling to a jury. But I’m not a lawyer and this doesn’t apply to me.” Let me offer another example that perhaps more people can easily relate to.

As a supply chain manager operating a distribution center, I have several warehouse managers reporting to me and every one of those managers is engaged in sales all the time. Let just look at one of those managers. First, he had to sell himself through networking and the resume just to get a job interview. Then, in the interview, he had to sell himself as the solution to the problems the business faces in order to get hired. But it didn’t really start there because he had long been selling himself to previous bosses who are now references for this job application.

After being hired, now he wants to have the supervisors that he wants assigned to him instead of another manager so he has to sell his plan for that alignment. He has decided that he needs more people to get the job done so he has to sell his manpower requirements to get those people added. He has a plan for how much overtime support he needs when the shipping volume exceeds his team’s capability so he must sell both me and his peers to get that extra overtime allocated. Constantly, he must be selling the mission and why this job is important to his people to convince them to work at the highest productivity and avoid mistakes. All of these sales are made much easier and more effectively if he has established and maintained a great personal brand.

This is just one example from the workplace, but everyone is in sales all the time. If you try to convince your spouse to go to dinner at the restaurant you want instead of the one he or she wants, that is selling. Even as a child you were selling your parents on letting your have a new toy or go to the amusement park. You have been selling almost since the day you learned to talk. Even though most people don’t think of it this way, we are selling all the time (Beckwith and Clifford 3-4).

Choosing a branding statement.

When choosing your branding statement, remember that your personal brand must be who you really are. Yes, you should frame the story of who you are to your best advantage to cultivate the image of you that you want people to recognize in a first impression and to stick with them as they get to know you better. However, that brand must actually be you. It must be a brand that you can live with and exude all the time, no matter where you are and what you are doing. Above all, your brand must be authentic (Beckwith and Clifford 69-71).

You are still you on weekends and late at night. You are still you when you are shopping for groceries. If you try to create an image that is not who you really are, people will quickly figure it out. It is too much work to fake it all the time and the real you will shine through (Beckwith and Clifford, 35-36). When this happens, all your work is lost. Worse, they will see you as a fake, a charlatan, and you will lose all credibility.

When creating your brand, you need to focus on setting yourself up as the expert in something fairly narrow. If you keep it very broad, you are selling yourself as a dabbler in a lot of different things, which means that you are not really an expert in any of those things. Set yourself up as an expert in what it is that you do or want to do and then you can sell yourself as the specialist in that. Paint yourself too broad and people won’t even remember what it is that you do, much less see you as the expert and hire you (Beckwith and Clifford, 18-19)

Multiple approaches to choosing a brand.

There is no “one best way” to determine a brand you wish to develop. There are even differing opinions on what a branding statement should be. Some will recommend that you pick a word, or maybe three to five words to describe the brand. Others will say you need a coherent statement, or even a “catchy phrase”. I think that it really doesn’t matter that much. Either of these will work for you as long as you choose something that is authentic, that fits you, that resonates with your target audience, and is something that you can live with all the time.

Pudney and Perera “Four E” approach.

Use these four “E’s” as a guide to help figure out the personal brand that best fits you.

·        Expertise. What are your skills? Think about the things that you are good at. What are the things you could put to use to teach or help someone else?

·        Experience. Where have you worked? What kind of jobs have you had? Have you been in different industries? What kind of projects have you worked on?

·        Education. Formal qualifications – you would have more credibility if you have a master’s degree in that topic than if you learned it from watching a few Youtube videos. But education is not necessarily required to establish a brand. It could be experience or other training, certifications, etc.

·        Endorsements. What recommendations or testimonials do you have from people that other people trust? Telling people that you are good at something has limited value, but hearing someone else say you are good at it establishes much more credibility.

Create a list of all the words you can come up with which can describe you in each of these four areas. Then narrow down that list to the words you want to focus on in creating your brand (Pudney and Perera)

Chelsea Krost “Total You” approach.

Chelsea defines your personal brand as "the complete extension of who you are and what you stand for." Just as with definitions from other authors, this makes it obvious that you cannot fake a personal brand. It must be authentic and truly represent who you are. She suggests a series of questions to help develop a branding statement.

·        What are you passionate about? This should incorporate everything you are passionate about, both personal and professional. Think about all your experiences and what of those have really resonated with you.

·        What are you good at?  It is not enough to be passionate about something. You must also consider which of those things you are good at. Use your strengths to you advantage and build your brand upon those things rather than trying to build up your weak areas

·        What gives you credibility?  Do you have specialized training, credentials, certifications, awards, and/or professional accomplishments that make you a recognized authority?

·        What are your personal brand goals?  You need to consider your objective for developing a certain brand. Do you want to grow your network, find more opportunities, develop or grow your own business, or find a job?

O’Brien “5 Step” approach.

Tim O’Brien recommends a five-step approach to creating a personal branding statement. He suggests that we look very broadly at ourselves, our audience, and how we wish the impact them. Then after looking at the expanse of what the brand could be, narrowing it down to something simple and yet impactful.

1.      Identify your domain. Who is the audience you wish to influence? You need to decide to whom you are marketing yourself in order to figure out how you may best sell yourself as a benefit to them.

2.      Identify descriptive qualities about yourself. You have to look at yourself and figure out what it is about yourself that you will be marketing to your audience.

3.      What are the benefits? Now you need to examine your descriptive qualities and your domain together. How do those qualities provide benefit to the people you wish to serve? Show your audience what’s in it for them!

4.      Narrow it down to one. Of all the descriptive qualities that you identified and were able to quantify a benefit for your audience, you will now pick the one you really want to focus on.

5.      Create a catchy phrase (if appropriate). “The people I coach find jobs and grow as leaders.” (113-142)

These are three different, but quite complementary methods of creating a branding statement. Use one of these, or some other approach, to figure out what it is about yourself that you wish to be your brand. It doesn’t matter how you get there, but you have to know what it is that you wish to market in order to market it.

You must be self-aware.

It is not enough to know what you want people to think about you. Remember that you already have a brand now, but you very well may not know what it is. If you want to change that brand to the one which will have your desired effect, you also must know the starting point in order to get to the destination. You have to know what your brand is before you can change it. You must become self-aware.

Tim O’brien writes about two different studies that show how we tend to over-inflate our feelings about ourselves. The first was from Men’s Health magazine which concluded that 80% of men believe that they are “very good-looking”.  That one certainly surprised me a little and I’m sure it would surprise most of the ladies reading this as well. The second study was done by Time magazine and found that just 19.7% of people feel that they are overweight, when in fact, 33% of Americans are obese (30-31). 

Both of these studies just illustrate how poorly we know ourselves. We are equally bad at figuring out the brand we are projecting to those around us. If you don’t know what your brand is, how will you change it to what you want it to be? What is you think your brand is “nice guy” and it is really “arrogant jerk”?

Being self-aware is the foundation to developing and implementing a great brand. The starting point is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. Your brand must really be you or you will not be able to maintain that image. The real you will start to show through and if you are putting on a show people will brand you as a fake. So naturally you will want to pick one or more of your strengths to emphasize in creating your brand (Moore).

Remember that your brand is what other people think when you come to mind, not what you think about yourself. One exercise you can use to help figure out what your brand is now is to ask people. Email a number of people or private message them on a social media platform and ask them to write down the first word or phrase that comes to mind when they think of you and then send it back to you. You will have to ask them not to think about it, just write it down. You will also need to reassure them that you want a totally honest answer if you want to get any value from this. Finally, don’t only send it to your closest friends. Of course, they like you, they’re your closest friends. Instead, send it to a mix of close friends, looser acquaintances, and people you barely know. Just be prepared to accept the answers you get back with an open mind and without getting your feelings hurt! Honest answers will help you much more than those who just want to make you feel good.

How to create and maintain your brand.

In order to create and maintain the brand you desire, you will need to carefully look at your habits both online and in person. When job seeking, your online footprint is vitally important. Also remember that the internet is forever, so you need to always maintain the right image, not just try to dress it up when you need to find a job. Here are some concrete action steps you can take right now to start bolstering your personal brand online.

1.      Profile Picture. As the preeminent online professional meeting place, LinkedIn is the first place to start crafting your online personal brand. The place to start at LinkedIn is with your profile picture. Most people completely overlook the importance of this vital piece. Your picture needs to show you in your best light as the professional that you want them to see. 

If you are a manager, consultant, speaker, etc., you should be dressed in professional attire and men should wear a sports coat. You don’t need to wear a tie unless that would be expected for your profession and position. If you are a charter boat captain, I would expect you to dress in your best fishing attire – dress for the job you want, not the job your lawyer wants!  

Your picture should be a clear, high quality photo of you making good eye contact with your audience. You may find it helpful to use an online voting site to evaluate multiple pictures and use the best one. 

Madeline Mann, Self Made Millennial, in her LinkedIn classes recommends that you use the same picture for all online platforms to firmly establish a coherent brand. This is the picture you want people to see in their mind whenever they think of you. After hearing this, I realized that I had a professional looking (though not great) picture on LinkedIn, but on Facebook and Instagram, I had a picture of myself in a leather apron hammering hot steel on an anvil. Since I have a side business making custom knives, I had originally used that picture on my knife business Instagram page @tonymillerknives, where it is still appropriate. But if someone looked at the two pictures on my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, they would have been very confused!

2.      LinkedIn Headline. The headline on LinkedIn is the comment immediately under your name on your profile, which has a 120-character limit. Most people put their position title in this space, but there is no reason you have to do that. Frequently, active duty members who are looking for their first civilian job will use words like “Transitioning Military Leader” or just “Senior Leader” or maybe “Senior Military Executive”. I recommend against all of these. 

I would especially avoid “Retiring” anything. Remember that to most of the 99% who haven’t worn the uniform, retired means you spend winters golfing in Florida or maybe that you’re the guy going 52 miles per hour on your way to the coffee shop at 6 am blocking traffic while the rest of us are trying to get to work! This is certainly a personal brand, but believe me, it is not the one you want.

If you are looking for a job, the most effective use of this space is to put in the actual title of a job that you want. Include the industry you want to work in. When you think you have it, use the LinkedIn search for jobs and see if there are jobs with that title. If not, adjust it. You should also include the word “Veteran”. Many companies have veteran hiring initiatives and this helps brand you as someone they are looking for in that that program.

3.      LinkedIn About Section. This is a free-form 2000-character section where you can tell about yourself. Many people just copy and paste the top section of their resume into this block, but this is a mistake. Write this section in first person and tell a compelling story about yourself. Include some history, what you are passionate about, the problems you solve, and how you can fit into the job that you are looking for. Make sure the reader can see themselves in the story of you.

4.      LinkedIn Experience Section. The first key here is to enter the correct spelling and format for your branch of service in the Company Name block to activate the correct logo for your service. This is an important piece of branding. It alerts all other veterans, recruiters, military program directors, and many HR professionals and hiring managers of your veteran status at a glance. This is very important in a veteran friendly company. It will also alert some people that you are a veteran and cause them to pass you over, but do you really want to work at a company that would do that?

Here again, this is not your resume so you don’t have to try to keep it to two pages. For each job, you can elaborate on your accomplishments much more here than you can in the resume. 

5.      LinkedIn Endorsements. Write endorsements for other people in your network. This encourages them to do the same for you (Pudney and Perera). Be strategic about who you exchange endorsements with, though. You will want to pick people that you are pretty certain will write you a good endorsement. Also when you write an endorsement for someone, it stays visible on their profile. This means that anyone who visits their profile will see your name, so it is beneficial to write your endorsement for someone who has a large number of followers.

6.      LinkedIn Groups. Join LinkedIn groups that interest you (Pudney and Perera). Choose groups that are related to the career field you are interested in and participate! This is a good way to find other people who can help you learn more about this career field and eventually to find a job in that field. At this point, though, you are just branding yourself as one of them by interacting together in the same group with them.

7.      Other social media. Always make sure that every post and every picture you put up on social media is consistent with the brand you wish to portray (O’Brien). Think about what people will think when they see your pictures or posts. Will they see a drunken idiot college student? Or a creative, innovative, hard-working professional who cares about his family?

8.      Another thing to be careful about is political posts. It seems that our country is more polarized than ever before. Many people are very vocal with their opinions and seem to think that anyone on the other side is uncivilized and stupid. Regardless of whether you are right or wrong, if you are constantly telling your potential employer that what she believes is stupid and un-American, you probably won’t have to worry about any tense conversations in the office because she’ll hire someone else!

Consider your personal brand before making a comment on any social media platform, including LinkedIn. It is very easy to let someone get under your skin and say something that you shouldn’t. Don’t let this happen. The best course of action is to just ignore it and move on. If you do post something in the heat of the moment, come back and delete it as soon as possible.

9.      Online Reviews. Be very careful what you put in reviews (Johnson 44). Scathing reviews of other businesses can be viewed quite negatively by hiring managers.

10.  Email Signature. Add a personal branding tagline to your email signature (Pudney and Perera). If you have chosen a catchy phrase for your personal branding statement as Tim O’Brien recommends, you can just add that phrase to the bottom of your signature. Or even if you have just chosen a few words, add those words.

Pudney and Perera recommend several other very intentional online branding tactics which I feel are more important if you are running your own business, but could be useful in branding yourself for the job market as well. It is not necessary to take these steps, but they certainly help create your brand.

1.      Register a domain name of your name, i.e., www.tonymiller.com. Even if you don’t have any content for a site, you can just redirect that URL to your LinkedIn profile.

2.      Create a blog. You can use blogger.com or set up a Wordpress site. You will establish your expertise in a given area by writing about it. You can start by writing a small commentary on other people’s content, and then expanding to start creating your own content.

3.      Twitter. Send out short tweets with a link to your longer blog content.

4.      Youtube. Just like establishing your expertise by writing, you will instead produce videos on the given area to inform others and establish yourself as an expert in that area.

In addition to your online presence, you have to consider your presence when you are actually in the presence of other people. You are your brand all the time, no matter what time it is or where you are. You never consider when going to the grocery store that you might run into an important networking partner, but sometimes it happens. You must always be ready.

In the Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway movie The Intern, De Niro’s character Ben has become bored with retirement and takes an internship working for the young CEO and founder of an eCommerce business. In one scene, he is conversing with the other, more appropriately aged interns, who are incredulous that he shaves every day. Every day. Even on weekends. Even when you know you won’t see anyone you know. Ben also insists on wearing a suit to work every day, even after most everyone there has told him that he could dress more casually. Ben is a great example of personal branding. He is simply “impeccable professional”. And he is “impeccable professional” whether he is at work, grocery shopping, playing chess with his friends, or eating breakfast with a child.

Keeping your appearance professional is an important aspect of personal branding. You need to have a neat haircut, shave (or neatly groom your beard), be clean, and wear appropriately professional clothing every time you leave the house. You never know when or where you will meet someone who may be a valuable addition to your network and you must be credible when you meet them.

O’brien offers a number of small gestures that can impact people around you and therefore help bolster your personal brand. He says you should frequently write thank you notes, call people to let them know that they are important to you, make sure your shoes are shined, contribute to other peoples’ charities, say “I’m sorry”, say “Good morning” to everyone, thank your staff for their hard work every day, smile a lot, and have a firm handshake. He tells us to congratulate our adversaries on their big wins! (154).

 That one can be pretty hard to do, but think of the impression it leaves. Don’t just say congratulations, but show some enthusiasm and really wish them well, even if they just beat you at something. If you just go through the motions, it really doesn’t mean much and will be soon forgotten, but if your can really congratulate someone from the heart after they win something that you really wanted yourself, they will walk away thinking very highly of you and will probably tell just about everyone they know.

O’brien offers a much longer list then I have summarized here and tells us that we must do these small things consistently (155). You don’t have to do everything all at once and no single thing in personal branding is difficult. Simply keep doing those little things over and over until they become your way of life.

Other authors refer to this concept as The Law of Consistency (Maxwell, 69-83) and The Compound Effect (Hardy, 5-22) and it applies to every area of life, not just personal branding. Tim O’Brien, John Maxwell, Darren Hardy, and I all agree that doing small things over and over consistently over time will accomplish huge results!

Moore tips for getting started.

In her podcast, Pam Moore gives us several tips for getting started with personal branding. Trying to take all this in at once may seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Just get started moving in the right direction and build on your program as you go.

1.      Stop making excuses and get started. You don’t need to be a rockstar to build your brand. Focus on authenticity and figure out what is the right level of transparency. You don’t need to share details about your children and what you ate for dinner to be authentic. If someone is thinking of hiring you, they will Google you, look up your Facebook page, look you up on LinkedIn. They will discover your personal brand.

2.      Be self-aware. You must know your strengths and weaknesses and focus on your strengths. 

3.      Have goals for your personal brand strategy. Example: establish thought leadership, be the go-to person on a given topic. 

4.      Know who you are and know what you stand for. What value do you offer your audience? How do you differentiate yourself from others? Know the foundation you stand on and don’t be afraid of what will happen because you stand on it.

5.      Know your audience. Who are you talking to? what do they want from you? When will they engage with you? How can you help them? Where will they talk to you? Why should they care and invest in a relationship with you?

6.      You are your brand. What gives you meaning? People are drawn to people with the same beliefs. Email complaints and tweets are not your own. They are a reflection of your brand. Make sure your online digital persona is who you want to be. Your actions have consequences.

7.      Make sure you are focused on a meaningful journey. Don’t focus on menial metrics, instead work to create something of value (Moore).

Be Strategic!

Personal branding may sound painfully complex, and indeed, a number of complete books have been written on the topic. But it doesn’t have to be that difficult. After you know what it is that you want to do, you must choose a brand that shows you in the best light for that objective, but the brand must truly be you. You cannot fake it. You have to be your brand all the time, no matter where you go and what you do. 

Like the rest of your transition journey, you need a strategy. Creating a great brand is a just a series of simple steps, repeated consistently, all the time. After you determine you branding statement, decide which of these steps you will take, write them down, and do them over and over until they become a habit, until the new brand is your way of life.

Notes:

1.      O’Brien, Tim. “Personal Branding presentation to Business Honors Students at California State University, Northridge.” Youtube, November 21, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZqUSyso8hk&feature=youtu.be.

2.      O’Brien, Tim. The Power of Personal Branding,

3.      Johnson, Cynthia. Platform: The Art and Science of Personal Branding, Lorena Jones Books, 2019, pp. 4, 44.

4.      Pudney, Chris and Gihan Perera. “Personal Branding.” Audio blog post. Talent Everywhere, 24 January 2013. Web. 20 July 2019.

5.      Beckwith, Harry and Christine K. Clifford. You, Inc., Grand Central Publishing, 2011, pp. 35-36.

6.      Krost, Chelsea. “Learning Personal Branding”, www.dhirubhai.net/learning, 2019.

7.      Moore, Pam. “7 Personal Branding Fundamental Steps.” Audio blog post. Social Zoom Factor, 10 July 2015. Web. 20 July 2019.

8.      Maxwell, John. The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, Center Street, 2012, pp. 69-83.

9.      Hardy, Darren. The Compound Effect, Da Capo Press, 2010, pp. 5-22.