5 Features of Every Gold-Medal Personal Brand

by Ryan Rancatore • March 2, 2010 • View Comments

The 2010 Winter Olympics have concluded, and as usual, I was inspired by consistently amazing performances from the world’s best athletes. To win a gold medal is truly an incredible feat, given that an entire world of competition is fighting for that one single prize. While an actual gold medal may never be possible for most of us, here are 5 features of every gold-medal winner that we can all emulate and incorporate into our personal brands.

1. Passion

It is highly possible that we can all be good at an activity without feeling true passion for it. Maybe we can even be great at it. But to be the best? That requires an inner-passion that can’t be taught, learned, or faked. I’d bet good money that every gold medal winner has a passion burning within them that keeps them up at night.

What about you? I suspect you are building a brand around a certain niche or specialty. Do you truly feel an inner-passion for that niche that keeps you up at night? Without passion, you might still end up being pretty good – but to be the best, you simply can’t do without it.

2. A Mentor

Before Kim Yu-Na of South Korea skated the highest-scoring performance in women’s figure skating history, she received a few last words of wisdom from her coach. In fact, almost every athlete received coaching directly before and after their events.

Think about that for a minute – if world-class performers rely so heavily on the tutorship of others, shouldn’t you? In my opinion, mentorship can come from many angles. Maybe it is your boss, maybe it is a family member, maybe it is even an expert blogger in your field. Find someone smarter and more experienced than you, and learn everything you can from them.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice

For almost every gold-medal winner, the story reads the same way: Start at age 3, get up at 5 a.m. every morning, practice, go to class, practice some more, repeat. Even the youngest competitors have over a decade of practice under their belt, and thousands upon thousands of hours of refining their craft.

What about you? Are you expecting instant success without the hard work? Chris Brogan speaks of the fallacy of an “overnight success” in this video series.

4. Specialized Skill-Set

If you took the gold-medal winners in curling and ski-jump and forced them to swap sports, I can guarantee they would both be terrible at the opposite sport. Same goes for top personal brands. Try forcing Gary Vaynerchuk and Brian Clark to switch places for a day. You would get one awful wine video, and the worst copy-writing article you’ve ever read! Both are brilliant at what they do, but also understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

And you? Are you trying to be too many things at once? Drill down your niche as precisely as you can, and crush that one area better than anyone else.

5. Previous Failure

Whether public or private, I’m certain that every current champion has experienced previous failure. Take Apolo Ohno, for example. He almost quit speed skating for good after finishing dead last in a major race as a youth. For others, maybe it was a particular jump that was missed the first hundred times they tried it.

As Seth Godin points out brilliantly, “see failure as a learning event, not a destination, it makes you smarter, faster”. We all fail, and some of us do it quite often! It is how you rebound from failure that can turn you into a gold-medal winner.

These are just 5 of many features shared by Olympic champions. Can you think of any more?

Ryan Rancatore sometimes fails, and sometimes succeeds, at building a gold-medal blog at Personal Branding 101. Also connect with Ryan on Twitter at @RyanRancatore, or on Linkedin, Facebook, or Brazen Careerist.

Photo credit, adrian8_8

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5 Ways to Create Your Own Opportunities in 2010

by Ryan Rancatore • December 27, 2009 • View Comments

This is my first entry as a regular weekly columnist at Brand-Yourself.com. I am thankful for the opportunity to contribute to an already powerful site – and to connect with all of you in the process. For my first post, I want to explore how it is that career opportunities like contributing to established blogs present themselves.

In my experience, previous action creates future opportunity. Here are 5 ways you can take action to create your own opportunities in 2010.

1. Build Specialized Expertise

Experts are highly valued in today’s job market. Not “jacks of all trades” that can speak moderately well on a variety of subjects – but specialists that exhibit great authority on a given subject. Find a niche that you excel in, and that you are passionate about, and knock it out of the park.

How exactly do you go about this? By absorbing every drop of knowledge on your given subject. Set up Google Alerts for relevant keywords. Search Technorati for the best blogs on the subject. Create a Twitter “Saved Search” for the topic, and check the stream of tweets every day. Slowly, you will build knowledge on your subject that you can translate to “outward-facing” expertise, in the form of your own posts.

2. Express a Unique Opinion

On my own blog, I’ve written posts that contain useful information on relevant subjects – and nobody cared. Why? Everyone had read the same take a million times. But, when I posted my opinion that Twitter users should return follow all of their followers (as a result of Twitter Lists) – I suddenly received an influx of feedback. Admittedly, both positive feedback and negative. But from each camp, I formed lasting connections willing to engage in future discussion.

Keep in mind, opportunity does not appear magically – it comes from other people who think you are worth a shot. What better way to stand out to these decision makers than by expressing a position that is uniquely yours?

3. Form REAL Relationships

Engaging in social media represents a fantastic way to create opportunity, but not in the way you might expect. So you’ve got 10,000 Twitter followers. Great, right? Well… maybe. Definitely so, if you have 10,000 engaged followers who read your stuff and communicate with you regularly. Definitely not, if you are only connected to bots and spammers.

My advice: Cover up the portion of your screen that shows your Twitter follower count. Instead, focus on ReTweets and @Replies from those which you’ve TRULY connected with. If the results are less than expected, take action of your own. Reach out to Tweeters who you respect and admire. ReTweet their stuff and send an introductory @Reply of your own. Comment on their blogs. Email them directly. Whatever it takes.

Two great examples of widely followed Tweeters who manage to connect meaningfully with individuals are Chris Brogan and Gerald Weber.

4. Experiment With Tomorrow’s Tools

Opportunity, if it is headed your way, will arrive in the future. So why use the tools of yesterday to stir up that opportunity? Lifestreaming, location-based social networking, augmented reality… all are examples of technologies don’t make a hell of a lot of sense to the general public today. But if these tools (or others) make sense to you, there is opportunity.

Last year, while the economy melted like a stick of butter, a shrieking 15 year old from Nebraska made 6 figures with a flip cam and an internet connection. What will be the YouTube of 2010? I don’t know. But I do know this – someone will cash in huge because they experimented and got in on the ground floor. To stay on top of the latest tech and social media news, read Mashable and TechCrunch regularly.

5. Ask For Nothing (But Get it Anyway)

I am a huge believer in giving away as much “value” as you can, for free, for as long as you can tolerate. The seeds you plant today will eventually grow into something amazing – you just have to be patient.

My readers will know where I am headed with this… the example of Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary V. has built one of the strongest personal brands around by airing daily webisodes of Wine Library TV for the past several years – every one of them for free. He has grown his wine business into a multi-million dollar global empire.

How can you add value today, while asking for nothing in return? One great avenue is by responding to questions posted within Linkedin Answers. Here, you can help others and share your expertise with the community. Each answer is another seed you plant that just might bloom into something special down the road.

Taking action today to create future opportunity can sometimes be a frustrating task. But rest assured, taking steps to build a strong personal brand now will pay huge dividends in the long run.

What do you think? Have I forgotten any key steps certain to light the spark for future opportunity? Let me know in the comments section, and please, say hello on Twitter if we haven’t already met.

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14 Places to Build Your Brand (in the Field of Advertising)

by Pete Kistler • September 26, 2008 • View Comments

To build a brand worthy of remark in advertising, you should be actively participating in your niche online. One of the easiest and best ways to start is by posting comments on blogs and forums relevant to your area of expertise, and share original, on-brand media you’ve created wherever members of your niche hang out. You will soon find people thinking of you as a passionate and valued member of the community.

The following ten blogs are excellent resources to post comments on and interact with on a regular basis:

Remember to always include the following brand-builders whenever you post on a blog or forum:

1. The full name you want people to find you with in search engines. If your name is John Doe, it will be nearly impossible to make it to the first page of Google results for “John Doe.” So make sure you figure out the exact term you want to be found under when people search for you online. (Read our post, 5 Tips to Rank Highly on Google and Increase Your Visibility Online, to learn how to most effectively choose the term you brand yourself with online).

2. A link to your personal website or blog. Google counts a link from one site to another as a “vote” for that site. Sites with the most votes end up highest in search results. So, the more sites that link to the places you exist online, the higher your name will show up in results when someone Googles your name. Every time you post on a blog or forum, you should be leaving a link back to your “home base” site (which ideally contains your full portfolio) to boost its rank in Google results.

3. An eight-words-or-less description of your brand. Who are you, what do you do best and for what audience? Consistently leaving this short description with every comment builds brand awareness and associates you with your unique promise of value.

4. Optional: Your email address. If someone wants to get in touch with you, make it easy for them. Include your email address when you post comments to keep yourself open to as many opportunities as possible.

Know of any sites we missed? Submit a comment below if you know of any other advertising blogs, forums or resources we missed. There’s no way we could include them all, so join the discussion and tell us about your favorite advertising sites!