The days when you could work as municipality administrator and worked there for the next forty years are gone. To make things even worse, even if you own a business, it’s simply not enough to make a sustainable future for yourself . Because if your company fails for some reason as the circumstances can change, you are again at the beginning. Above all of that, as the world will face a new economic crisis, soon there will not be even a country that will guarantee you stability.
So, what is left then?
You can rely only on yourself and your knowledge! The more you invest in yourself, the more stable your future will be. Or, let me put it this way: you must know how to create the American dream wherever you are, no matter what the situation is!
That’s the art of self-branding. You must be a business!
Welcome to the top secret tips that will help you to do self-branding as best as you can!
Choose your expertise
No matter what you choose to be and to do, there’s people that will want to know what you can offer for them. It is up to you to be the best in whatever you do.
What can you choose? There’s a lot of options, but you must be wise. You know how they say “Do what you like and success will fall from the sky”. Well, it turns out that’s one of the biggest lies! It’s good that you like what you do, but… and there’s a big BUT!
For example, if you want to open a food store market in your street where there are already four 4th markets, it makes no sense to be a 5th food store owner. Even if you are the best salesman and you love to sell food, the four markets in your street will decrease the amount of customers you will have per month, and results will be bad.
You must choose the industry that will bring you revenue! Then, you must become the best at it! If there’s not enough travel vlogs in your language about Asia’s countries but they are popular or blogs with medical advice, you can jump in! Now, when you decide to open a blog with medical advice, you must take care that you have the best possible blog on that subject.
In this way, even later on in the future your business faces failure, the audience that trusts you stays! You will maybe not write a medical blog, you will open your massage center. But people will come to you as they will always be interested in what you do and what you can offer for them.
Life-time learning
Never allow that your diploma, previous success or pride replace self-improvement and critical self-observation. The moment you fall into this trap, your professional and maybe even private life is gone! That’s why no matter how far you go, no matter how many things you achieve in life generally, you must stay on the ground and strive for skills and knowledge.
When you can, go to a seminar and do additional courses in the subject you do. In this way, you will always be up to date, have the latest industry knowledge and be one of the first people that will give new information to the clients. Clients will trust you more as they will see that you work on yourself, that you know what you do, so this will just elevate you in people’s eyes.
Create Connection
The connection is everything! Yes, you work for yourself but you will need help from other people. Two heads are always smarter than one. Be sure that you treat people nicely and give tribute to those who help you. Mention them in front of other business partners if you find that they can be of help to them. Vote for their skills on LinkedIn and mention them in your LinkedIn blogs. You don’t have LinkedIn? Open the account now!
Support others in their own dreams! Especially if that’s not against your interest and not in the same field of business as yours. At the end of the day we are all people who want to live better. Business matters but the good things we do for ourselves and other matters even more.
We are at economy war
However, we are in an economic war, and you must take care of yourself. Because even if there’s plenty of people that want to help (at least I want to believe it), we are on our own. Our life is just our life! Once, Napoleon Bonaparte said “If you want something to be good, do it by yourself”.
Four years ago when I was at a seminar about marketing strategy, our director said “We are in an economic war”. I was thinking back then: “Okay, there is competition, but war is maybe a strong word”. Now I realize he was absolutely right and accurate! We are in an economic war and if we want to win, we must make ourselves a product that will always bring food on the table and give us maximum security.
Situations can change, business can come and go, but if we have skills and reputation among the people, we will never be at the beginning again!