I am on a personal journey to crystallize my own brand. I’ve been stymied by not knowing what I want to be when I grow up (I’m 52:-). Ok, stymied is weak, I’ve agonized over it.

But I have been writing online since 1997 and I have followed a personal creed to not swear, value other’s opinions and never put someone down in public. Although it was not designed by any other intent than to practice my own values, I know that I do have a brand cause people have told me so.

It’ll all come together once I get a better since of direction. I have unshakable faith that it will.

Thank you for the opportunity to get this off my chest brother!

Good observation. I was thinking more in the context of a solopreneur or independent professional, who are in the business of “solving a problem” for their customers.

At the same time, it is also true that from the point of view of the customer, let’s say, a dentist’s patient, a root canal is not a business problem. To make the definition all-encompassing I have removed the word “business” from my definition.

Thank you for adding value to this post with that excellent reply.

I really like your definition. The only thing that I would potentially challenge is that a personal brand needs to be able to solve a business problem. I would argue that athletes, rockstars, and even regular everyday people can build their personal brands that do not necessarily facilitate the end-goal of solving a business problem.

There’s a homeless guy in Austin named Leslie who cross-dresses, wears thongs, rides his bike around the town and receives tons of write-in votes for Mayor every year. He has a very distinct personal brand, and while he does impact the community, I don’t know that he’s helping solve all that many business problems.

In any event, this was a solid post that demonstrated a great grasp of personal branding, and for the most part I really liked both definition itself and the breakdown.

Thanks for sharing!

@Martin – really bad decision to promote yourself in your comment without adding value to Mario’s blog post. It makes you look really bad!

Mario, personal branding is more of a process and the personal brand is the individual who has to constantly sell itself and be judged based on what is observable.

Great job,

Dan