Introduction

Personal branding is something people talk about when they refer to curating a social media persona or stepping into a job search for the first time.

It’s a question a career counselor or even a friend might ask you. “What’s your brand?” It’s something we answer with just a few words: “poised and professional,” “smart and sassy,” “loud and proud,” “laid back,” “fashion forward.”

Most personal branding books will help you arrive at that sort of branding elevator pitch. That’s a useful exercise, for sure, but it’s just a tiny first step toward creating a brand that will help you sell yourself. This book, Sell Yourself, will take you the rest of the way.

The fact is that your personal brand isn’t a catchphrase. Say you come up with a personal brand you’re happy with, but all you know is how you would like others to describe you. Chances are pretty good, in that case, that you don’t really know what your personal brand is at all.

But everyone else does.

And if you have never felt the need to create a personal brand for yourself, you might believe that you don’t have a brand or that you don’t even need one. But here’s the problem with that.

You do have a personal brand, and everyone knows what it is—except for you.

Whether you have taken the time to plan a personal brand or not, you still make an impression on others. When you do, they form an opinion about you. In that moment, they determine for themselves what your personal brand is.

If you have a pithy one-liner that you use to describe your brand, but you don’t live up to it every single day, that’s not your brand.

The impression you make on others is your brand.

LESSON LEARNED

Let me share something I learned from personal experience as well as from working with thousands of people—both experienced and very young: A personal brand is as complicated and as multifaceted as you are.

It’s not something you just say; it’s who you are. Your personal brand is you. Or at least it’s who and what and how others think you are.

Your personal brand is how you behave, what you say, and how you treat others. It’s not only what you say about yourself; it’s what others think and say about you, based on how you behave and what you do.

So if your brand is “poised and professional,” but you show up at a morning Zoom meeting before you’ve had a chance to comb your hair or rub the sleep out of your eyes, the impression you make on the others in the meeting is not “poised and professional.”

It’s “unprepared” or “just woke up” or “Pajamas? Really?!”

That’s your personal brand.

That’s your personal brand because that’s what you sold yourself as when you turned on your camera. That’s your personal brand no matter how polished and professional you were yesterday.

What you sell today and every other day is your personal brand.

Sell Yourself will show you how to build the right brand. And it will teach you how to sell it.

I understood how important a personal brand was the minute I realized that if I didn’t plan one for myself, live it every day, and sell it to others, others would assign one to me anyway.

That is what they did. And I didn’t like the one they chose.

In fact, I learned a tough lesson about what can happen when you leave the work of creating your personal brand to chance.

I was just a few weeks away from graduating with a PhD in communications when a professor I respected and trusted pulled me aside and whispered, “Girls who look like you aren’t supposed to be smart.”

I was taken aback. Was he referring to my blonde hair? To my free spirit? To my side job as an aerobics instructor? To all of the above?

Yes.

He wasn’t trying to insult me. He was trying to show me that this might be a hurdle I would very likely encounter throughout my life. In fact, he was very kindly trying to give me a heads-up that I might need to oversell myself as a smart, capable, ethical researcher and student, starting when I defended my dissertation to the panel of brilliant academics who would decide, in a few weeks, whether I was ready to graduate.

Sure, I’d heard all the “dumb blonde” jokes ever since I was a towheaded kid. And I was well aware that women in general, regardless of hair color, can attract the “wrong” kind of attention—often unwanted. It had happened to me before, even though I tended to dress in buttoned-up, professional clothes.

Yes, I’m blonde. But I’m not dumb. Never have been. I’m curious and resourceful. I’ve studied my whole life. I learn new skills whenever I can. There’s a highly educated brain tucked under my long, blonde curls.

It’s like Dolly Parton sings in her famous song “Dumb Blonde”: “Just because I’m blonde. Don’t think I’m dumb. Cause this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.”

I know my professor was trying to help me understand an important life lesson: Other people sometimes see us differently from how we see ourselves.

Still, his remark stunned me. He was alerting me in a friendly way that my hard work as an undergraduate, a grad student, and now an accomplished researcher about to finish up a doctoral degree was competing with an age-old stereotype to define me. He was letting me know that others may be buying into those stereotypes linking blonde hair to stupidity. Or they might wonder if I got a step ahead because I used my femininity to convince others to help me or even do my work for me.

My kind professor was letting me know that some people believe “girls”/women like me do just that to succeed. It’s how we are sometimes branded. That others might not see beyond the stereotype and recognize my dedication, worthiness, and talents. He was trying to help me understand that despite all the classes I took, I still had one more lesson to learn. I had to do something to change people’s minds and destroy their assumptions. At that moment, I realized it was completely in my power to take control of how I’m perceived.

As much as his words shook me in the moment, they led me to an epiphany: I’m leaving the impression I make on others—to others.

It’s not anyone else’s job to decide for me—through misguided assumptions or otherwise—what I’m all about. It’s not anyone else’s place to pigeonhole me into a “brand” that I haven’t chosen or approved.

But because I had never given any thought to branding myself back then, others around me, including those perfectly nice, competent professors and colleagues, did it for me.

If they were basing their perception of me on the stereotypes my professor warned me about, they got it wrong. Dead wrong.

That could have hurt my reputation. It could have held me back from accomplishing my goal of earning a doctorate and becoming a college professor. It could have followed me for a lifetime.

I can’t stop people from buying into bogus stereotypes, but I can at least try to stop them from believing I am stereotypical. I realized in that dizzying moment that because I never gave any thought to how others might perceive me—right or wrong—I was leaving the choice up to them.

In short, I was “selling” them on believing whatever they wanted instead of selling them on what I wanted them to believe about me.

Sure, I was in a PhD program—a feat that doesn’t happen without a good measure of dedication and intellect. But it’s possible that if they bought into any part of that stereotype, that would be enough to make them question my abilities.

I needed a better brand. One that I created on purpose. One that I could use to sell people, including the professors in that room. I wanted them to believe that I was smart, honest, and hardworking enough to earn my own credentials—and to successfully use them throughout my life and career.

I needed a brand that people would buy into, despite the color of my hair. And I needed that brand right now. So I got to work on planning my personal brand.

And then I learned how to sell it.

CREATE. LIVE. SELL.

Sell Yourself will give you the skills you need to create a brand that you can sell—and then to live your brand and sell your brand every day.

Create. Live. Sell. That’s my mantra when it comes to personal branding.

My premise: A personal brand is useless unless you do three things:

1.   Devote time and thought to planning and creating a brand that you can live up to every day and that will be easy to sell because it’s authentically you.

2.   Live that brand every day. Everything you do and say leaves an impression on others.

3.   Sell your brand. Learn how to sell yourself at work, on job interviews, in your neighborhood, or on the phone with a stranger. Your personal brand is who you are. So it needs to be the sharpest tool in your toolbox when it comes time to sell you.

Create. Live. Sell.

The first step—create your brand—seems easier than it is, but because you are a complex, multifaceted person, your brand must also be complex and multifaceted.

The second step—live your brand—is one that many people assume comes automatically. It does not. It’s hard work to live up to your brand every time you interact with someone, post something on social media, or shoot off a quick text after having a couple of cocktails or getting some unfortunate news.

And the third step—sell your brand—is one that most people simply ignore, often because it never occurs to them that they need to sell their brand. They don’t realize that if they fail to proactively sell their brand, others might not “buy” it. And even worse, others might buy something about them that they never meant to sell at all.

Three steps: Create. Live. Sell.

Sell Yourself is the unique book that looks at personal branding through the lens of sales.

It’s shortsighted to create a brand—even a great one—if you’re not going to sell it. That would be like plunking down a year’s salary on your dream car, but never driving it. Sell Yourself is about how to sell your personal brand; that is, how to use your brand to help you succeed and get what you want at work and in life.

Everyone talks about how important it is to “sell yourself,” but too many overlook the truly important word in that cliché: “sell.”

Sell Yourself puts personal branding into the context of a sales tool. And then it teaches you how to sell.

HOW SELL YOURSELF CAN HELP YOU

In the chapters that follow, you will learn how to sell your brand, even if you’ve never sold anything else.

You will learn that if you don’t sell your brand, it will sell itself—and not necessarily in the way that you intend.

“Girls who look like you . . . aren’t supposed to be smart.”

Not at all what I intended.

By the time you finish reading Sell Yourself, you, too, will believe that knowing how to sell like a pro and being willing to sell like a pro are the keys to selling yourself. You will understand the value of selling the personal brand you have created for yourself.

Your personal brand is like a big billboard that advertises the absolute best version of yourself. It lets others know who you are, where you’re going, and what your superpowers are. As you sell yourself to bosses, interviewers, colleagues, new friends, life partners, or anyone else who is important to your success in life, your brand is the most important and influential tool in your sales kit.

And yes, selling yourself is a sales job. Literally, when you sell yourself, you make a sale.

Did you just say, “Ick?”

I know, I know. Sales, right? Cheesy. Pushy. Manipulative.

You’d rather do anything but sell, I know. If you wanted to sell, after all, you would look for a job as a sales rep for a big company and pocket those commissions, right? You don’t like selling. You don’t like being sold. You don’t want to have to sell anything, even yourself.

I hear you. That’s how I used to feel about sales, too. I don’t anymore because I have learned firsthand that sales can and should be a two-way street. A sale should benefit both the person who is selling and the person who might be buying. The sales process can and should be collaborative, honest, and helpful. It should result in a win-win.

That’s especially true when it comes to selling yourself by using your personal brand as a sales tool.

To help you sell effectively, I’ll share my five-step process for selling your personal brand. It begins with a great plan and finishes with an abundance of gratitude. It’s the same process that the most successful sales professionals use every day to sell products and services, and it expands on the sales advice from my Wall Street Journal bestselling first book, Every Job Is a Sales Job.

Those friendly five steps are:

1.   Plan. The more thought you put into your personal brand, the easier it will be to live it and sell it. In Sell Yourself, we’ll dive into two types of plans: one for creating the most authentic brand that will reap you the most success in life, and another for how to sell your brand. You’ll learn how to use your personal brand to sell yourself in all sorts of situations, from a job interview to a request for a promotion or raise, to a personal relationship.

2.   Look for opportunities. If you keep your personal brand top of mind, it eventually will feel natural to use it in any situation that involves an effort to get what you need or want. You can sell your personal brand whenever you see an opportunity that you want to go for. The keys to this step are to recognize those opportunities when they present themselves and to sell your personal brand every time.

3.   Establish trust. In this step, you listen and observe. Making a sale (even of yourself) is easy when what you’re selling will fill a need for the person you’re selling to. You can find out what your potential “buyers” need by listening to what they say and observing what they do. For example, if your personal brand is “someone who goes the extra mile” and you learn that your boss needs someone to pitch in on a project over the weekend, pitch in. When you do, you will sell your brand to the very person who will decide whether to choose you for the next promotion that opens up.

4.   Ask for what you want. This is the hardest step for most people. We’re reluctant to ask for a raise or a promotion because we feel our good work should speak for itself. Or we’re afraid if we ask, we’ll get fired instead of promoted. Neither of those assumptions is valid. A sale rarely happens unless the salesperson comes right out and asks for it. You deserve to have what you want, need, and deserve. It’s OK to give yourself permission to go after those things. So ask for them!

5.   Follow up with gratitude. Gratitude should be part of everyone’s personal brand. Selling a brand of gratitude leaves anyone who helped you or even considered helping you with the knowledge that you don’t take them, their time, and their effort for granted.

In short, Sell Yourself revolves around the three critical components of a successful personal brand:

1.   Create your personal brand. Everyone has a personal brand—even those who say they don’t. Those who have not deliberately crafted a personal brand are simply letting others assume what their brand is. Those assumptions are not always positive.

2.   Live your personal brand. The best way to sell yourself is to thoughtfully and deliberately live the brand you have created, day in and day out.

3.   Sell your personal brand. Sell Yourself will teach you how to sell your personal brand like a pro, using my five-step sales process. Whether you are a seasoned sales pro or someone who does not sell for a living (and doesn’t want to), you can and do sell every day, so you might as well do it the right way.

Sell Yourself will help you if:

•   You’re young and eager to begin creating and selling your personal brand.

•   You believed you already had adopted the perfect brand but have found it is not working for you—perhaps because you’re not selling it.

•   You’re stuck at work or in life, and you’re ready to move on, but your brand isn’t getting you anywhere.

•   You’re inadvertently selling the wrong thing.

Sell Yourself will prove equally valuable whether you are new to personal branding, you have experimented with personal branding, or you are at a juncture in life when your personal brand needs a serious makeover.

Professional salespeople know the key to successful selling lies in the way they present themselves to others—that is, in the way they brand themselves and sell their brands. That is also the key to getting what you want, need, and deserve.

I hope you will enjoy the stories I tell in Sell Yourself about my own journey with personal branding and the examples I have written about my clients and acquaintances who have let me help them create their personal brands.

I hope my book will help you embrace the need to sell your brand—to sell you—and the value of selling like a real pro. Mostly, though, I hope Sell Yourself will lead you to the success you want in your life—both at work and personally.