When I was growing up in Peru back in the day, there was a very popular radio commercial that I would hear every day on my way to school. It was from an insurance company, and it went something like this: “It is better to have insurance and not need it, than to need insurance and not have it”. It must have really worked, because they aired it for years.
I can’t help to remember that commercial when I see how some people approach personal branding and networking. When they suddenly find themselves looking for a job, a project or a customer, they rush to update their résumé, put together a half-baked LinkedIn profile and call everybody they know, even if they haven’t kept in touch in years.
Photo Credits: MarkHillary
That’s not the way things work. Just like insurance, the best time to prepare for bad times is during good times (and times can go from good to bad very quickly). The Dow went from 13,000 to close to 8,000 in a matter of days and 240,000 people lost their jobs in October alone. Many of these were good, high paying jobs held by highly educated and well qualified individuals.
The right approach is to manage your personal brand as if you were an independent contractor. You work for a company called Me, Inc. independently of who pays your salary. If you’re still gainfully employed or still have work in the pipeline, by all means work hard and bring your “A” game to the office every day. Just don’t make the mistake of putting all your eggs in that basket.
Personal branding is like insurance. Don’t develop a pre-existing condition by neglecting your personal brand.
Here are a few links to get you started:
- A personal branding strategy to stand out from the crowd
- The new rules for finding a job (from WebInkNow)
- Building career security, not job security (from The Future Buzz)
- Stop searching for the perfect job and start finding your life’s work (from Escape from Cubicle Nation)
Mario, this is a fantastic analogy and great advice.
Mario,
This is not only sound advice but extremely practical as well!
The insurance analogy is perfect to illustrate the value and benefit of working on your personal brand.
You really owe it to yourself to invest some time actively building your personal brand – after all it is your name that’s getting out there so you should be actively working on how you want it to be received and viewed.
Being proactive not reactive is really the key here! Great post!
The sad thing is that we all give this same advice, but only a small fraction of our readers actually “start building their network before they need it.” The results are real and if people don’t take initiative it will certainly make job hunting 10x harder.
Mario,
Great advice.
I like to say whether you craft your personal brand, or let it be crafted for you, you do have a personal brand.
Leaving it to chance is a scary thing in todays Google Search world.
Craft Daily, Craft often or Google will do it for you.
Thanks,
Brian
Hey Mario, I saw that you’re from Peru and I knew I had to leave a comment. I’m half Peruvian and half Japanese. I’m going to Peru this Christmas to visit the fam. How long has it been since you’ve been back?
Love the blog. I am actually doing something that I feel you would be very interested in checking out. It’s called Future Delivery TV and we create episodes that teach people how to use social media to brand themselves.
Let me know what you think.
- Jun Loayza
@Jun Loayza:
Thanks for stopping by. You have some great social media related videos on that site… pretty cool. You’ll have fun in Peru. I just came back today and It’s changed a lot for the better. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that the Peruvian restaurant scene is probably the best in the world, and not expensive once you translate into US$.
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