| Hello and welcome to this latest edition of The Personal Brandwagon. Isn't it lovely to see the days growing longer? Before long we will be seeing the clocks going forward and the summer sunshine here at last. Hopefully I won't have to wait so long for the sunshine as I have been invited to Bahrain to visit businesses there, and will also be travelling to China, also on business, before the end of 2008 so that is VERY exciting! I hope you enjoy my monthly mutterings and the contributions from other writers here, and if you think it is good please forward it to your colleagues, they will be pleased that you did and I will be delighted! | | 
May I introduce you to the lovely Dexter Moscow? Dexter has been a friend for a couple of years now and I thought that you should be introduced to him, as he has immense talent in his field of 'selling' yourself and making a great impression. If you are looking for someone to help you produce a great presentation to camera, Dexter's your man. For the last 12 years, Dexter has been a leading guest presenter on QVC, The Television Shopping Channel, structuring and developing 'selling' presentations that engage and motivate viewers to pick up the phone and order millions of £'s worth of product. As QVC's leading guest trainer he coaches other guest presenters to do the same. Informed by this experience Dexter has identified 7 key elements essential in creating an instant impression and 'selling' ourselves, products or services in today's business arena. I put the following questions to Dexter: 1. When did you start your business? 2,000 2. What made you decide to go it alone? Freedom to make my own destiny rather be part of someone else's vision. 3. What was your goal/vision at that time? To enable individuals to be influential and more effective in their communication with others. 4. How has your own Personal Brand helped you to develop your biz? Authenticity is at the core of my personal brand. Who I am at the front of the room or in front of a camera is exactly the same person I am in social situations. Congruency in what I say, do and believe is not my brand it is what informs my life. 5. What is your proudest achievement in business so far? Receiving feedback from the department heads of Marks and Spencer following a recent workshop, where they wrote "The best session I have ever attended! Great style and content to get message across. Entertaining and engaging but really well linked to the business context" 6. How do you measure your own success? When the people I work with report the success that they have had using the P.E.R.F.E.C.T. framework. When I come off air at QVC and see the level of sales of the product I have been talking about 7. How would you describe your professional outlook? I am dedicated to continual self improvement and coach others to achieve the same 8. If you could give 3 major tips to someone starting out in business what would they be? Truly understand what you are offering, ensure the market has a need for it and focus on how to get the message out to the market place. 9. What do you like most about your work? Seeing the light of understanding dawning on the faces of the people I work with. 10. What do you like least about your work?! People who know it all and are close minded. I have a phrase: - The mind is like a parachute - it only works if it is open. 11. Would you ever consider going back to regular 'employment'? Only for a fixed amount of time span and only if I feel I can make a real difference. 12. Which, if any, of your goals have you achieved at this date? Developing a workshop that is unique, that has a strong immediately usable business tool and that is memorable and immensely enjoyable. 13. Where do you expect to be in 5 years' time? Working with teams of dedicated individuals who are offering a range of workshops based on the model of excellence I have developed with The 7 Magic keys. Thank you Dexter. If you want to know more you can find Dexter and his website here ______________________________________________ | | You'll enjoy this one:
THE TIMES - Letter of the Year:
A Senior Moment - I hope I can have one like this when the time comes ! An elderly lady actually wrote this letter to her bank. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in The Times. You may have seen it before, if so I apologise but I bet you'll still enjoy reading it again. Dear Sir, I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nano-seconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.
My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.
I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, re-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.
From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.
Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.
Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.
In due course, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows:
1. To make an appointment to see me.
2. To query a missing payment.
3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
7. To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer is required. A password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorized Contact.)
8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 8
9. To make a general complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.
While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.
Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.
May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.
Your Humble Client
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I had the great pleasure recently of listening to and then meeting James Caan, he of Dragons Den fame, multi-millionaire and serial entrepreneur. He was addressing a packed theatre full of Surrey based businesses and his subject was 'Observe the masses and do the opposite' and his message rang all of my bells loudly and succinctly. The main theme to his talk was based on the fact that people make success and if you want to achieve greatness in your business you have to attract people in the first instance, develop them once they join you, train them and motivate them - this he has done many times over from his starting point in what he called a 'broom cupboard' in Pall Mall (where the door hit his desk), hired for £100 a week purely for the address. His next point was that you should share your success with your people! He motivates through sharing his equity with his directors, and has set up many businesses purely through believing that the directors he is investing in know more about their speciality and have expertise in something he knows nothing about. He trusts them and leaves them to get on with it after he has regenerated the energy in the business. He believes in combining entrepreneurship with intrapreneurship - allowing people to take responsibility for their ideas and not to be just cogs in the corporate wheel. Through doing this he enabled a young female member of staff who had only been with him for 6 months in his recruitment business and had not made a single sale, to discuss with him a whole new way of doing business, and despite frowns of disapproval from the board, he gave her an office and time to develop her idea, and she turned her idea into a £360 million pound business, was bought out and retired! He values his people. He helps people realise that they are always valued and listened to, that they enjoy working in their environment; he adds fun team events, and keeps a barometer of his teams' performance and 'happiness quota' and gives away unique and valuable incentives to keep them focused. Last year, as he was driving in to work he heard on LBC that Barts Hospital was threatened with closure because of a lack of £75,000 in their funding. He arrived at work, and said "I've got some good news and some interesting news. The good news is that we are not working today, the office is closed, but the interesting news is that we are going to raise £75,000 for Barts". They started by compiling lists of all their clients and emailed them to join the 'Raise £75,000 in a day' campaign, and then one of the team rang LBC to tell them what they were doing. By the end of the day, they had LBC and Capital Radio in the office, ITV lunchtime news, BBC evening news both did huge stories on the company's efforts and they reached their target, albeit with a top up in the end directly out of James' pocket. They probably did more for their PR and marketing campaign in that one day than they did all year. Being seen to take on philanthropic and supportive roles in the community with real generosity when no-one else was caring was hugely important to the public face of James' business and helped underline its reputation as a caring and public spirited member of the business community. His suggestions for making a business work really well were: - Make sure the managers create a sense of belonging.
- Do the managers contribute to the climate of well-being in the office?
- Make the customer experience better through commissioning well-conceived training and customer-centric thought processes - do what the customer wants, not what you think he wants.
- Ask your teams to be entrepreneurial, innovative and creative and keep underlining that thought.
- Embrace change
- Lead from the front
- Engage with people
- Don't give instructions, give goals.
- Allow creativity
- Involve people
- Play fair
- Think big!
James Caan finished with two lovely quotes "It's not your attitude, but your aptitude that will determine your altitude" and "The definition of insanity is to do more of the same and get a different result" As a personal 'brand' James Caan really does 'what it says on the tin', is empathetic, sympathetic, engenders trust and is overflowing with integrity. |
| | SPECIAL OFFER | | Congratulations for reading down this far! And to reward you for that I have a very special offer. If you send me an email and give me the names of three other individuals who you think might like a copy of my newsletter, I will send you completely free of charge a copy of one of my 4 ebooks which you can find here. They are normally sold at over £17 each so I hope you will spoil yourself and take this opportunity. Sincerely, Tessa Hood
Changing Gear Ltd | | Changing Gear is the leading company in personal brand and reputation management in the UK. If you would like to improve your perception in the marketplace and that of your people, build your reputation and influence the influencers, take a moment to speak to us about what we can offer. We run ongoing workshops in personal brand and reputation management for both separate groups of men and women and mixed groups too. We also offer personal 1:1 coaching, open forums and professional speaking at exhibitions and seminars. Please do contact Tessa on 01932 868 868 or on her email to find out what we can do for you and for your company. We are proud to be associated with clients such as HSBC, The Clydesdale Bank, BUPA, British Airways, Eversheds, Direct Wine, amongst many other professional City companies and 5 international Business Schools on their MBA courses. Better people make better companies!
Tessa Hood
Changing Gear Ltd
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| | ____________________ Starbucks, Tesco and Marks and Spencer are well-known, powerful brands, but what makes them great? Excuse me for a moment if I jump on my soapbox and cry "The idea that your brand is your logo, your tagline or any other aesthetic packaging of your business is absolutely false!" I'm sorry, but if you believe that the brilliant logo your expensive designer came up with, or the nifty tagline you brainstormed over for hours is your brand - I'm here to tell you otherwise. Here's the way you should look at it. You know, when you are stylishly dressed up, you are more than just an individual in a great designer outfit, your brand is more than the exterior casing of your business. Logos and taglines? That's just the packaging, the essence of every great brand lives inside the packaging. If you think that Starbucks', Tesco's and Marks and Spencer's success is based on their logos, think again, your business is a three-dimensional organism that needs an independent individual to flourish. Without knowing where your business comes from, what it stands for and what it hopes to develop into, it can't evolve from crawling (start up), to walking (momentum) and then running (growth+ stage). I am often asked "Shouldn't I build up my business first, and then my brand?". Goodness no, absolutely not! What makes the people in your marketplace raise their hands in hope of doing business with you is the spirit of your brand, not just its packaging. For the internet business owner in particular, the brand that wins over your market is your personal brand, and if you think that having a personal brand is an excuse for small business to stay small, think again. Some of the world's most beloved and well-recognised brands are personal brands. And it's their personal brand that fuelled the growth of their empire. Why do you think millions of women (and men) absolutely love Oprah, why does Martha Stewart, after serving time, still command a loyal following, and why is Jennifer Lopez regarded as a Hollywood darling? Because they were willing to let their hair down, reveal their blemishes and hold their head high in the face of adversity. They shared their passion, their fear and their dreams with their fans. They stood naked (partially and fully at times!) before their audience and let them see the real women behind the glitz and glam. They were willing to let their fans in by getting personal. So how personal is your brand? Take a moment today to conduct a quick brand review. Read through your marketing material and ask yourself "What makes my brand remarkable?" In other words what is the real strength of your brand? | | How to sell Brand Obama. And then there were three: McCain, Hillary, and Barack. While John McCain has safely locked up the Republican Party's presidential candidate nomination, the Democrats are still involved in a battle between two tenacious hopefuls who refuse to back down: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The brand that Obama's camp is trying to sell isn't difficult to nail down: He's a Washington interloper with fresh ideas (a trait that has become his liability as well as his main selling point). He's user-friendly and approachable-the type of guy you could discuss critical issues with at a black-tie gala one evening, and mix a guacamole dip with at a Super Bowl bash the next. Obama also personifies the cutting-edge and tech-savvy candidate, with a deep understanding of how to maximize today's multimedia to communicate with his core demographic. Here is where the Barack Obama website comes into play, extending his brand to countless Internet political junkies who can surf to their hearts' content about where he actually stands on the issues. The site's welcome mat features Barack, his wife, and two children, sitting arm-in-arm under a slogan that reads "Change We Can Believe In." The real branding and reaching out begins on the home page, which offers a countdown to the campaign's goal of "One Million People Who Own This Campaign," a "State of the Race" map, "Make a Difference" and "Next Up" sections, and six drop-down menus: Learn, Issues, Media, Action, People, and States. There is even a BarackTV section that features video clips from his speeches. Otherwise, the home page is dedicated to breaking news, speaking engagements, and a detailed map of the US, broken down state-by-state, encouraging visitors to click on "Where do you live" so they can become more involved in local, grassroots politiking for Obama. The Get Involved area highlights a place to donate, volunteer, and register to vote. You can even sign up for "Camp Obama," a two-day training session that will indoctrinate you into the Obama family and help you organize your own community to support Barack. I even received my very own dinner invitation from the unseen Obama. Of course, Obama's biggest challenge (besides his junior-politician status) has been trying to convince the American populace that he isn't all sparkle and no substance. Are political candidates knowingly and proactively setting forth to build their brand? And are the public's perceptions of candidates in sync with the attributes candidates are espousing in their advertising, press releases, and appearances? | | 
I want you to tell you about an extraordinary book that I read at just a couple of sittings recently. It truly is the most tender, sad and inciteful story of a sister's love for her brother. Below there is more detail and if you want to buy a copy (or two) you can order one directly from www.coppicepublishing.com. Below is a press release about it. Sister double-act achieve highest debut launch sales 16th November 2007
A writing and publishing sister double-act has achieved exceptional success with its first book, despite not having a UK distributor yet. After only six months, a second print run has been scheduled.
Tricia Walker initially launched Benedict's Brother as a blog on the Internet in August last year and, following demand from readers, asked her sister Sarah Smelik to publish it in book format. Neither had any previous experience of publishing. Despite this, the sisters achieved widespread media interest and coverage and a £5,000 grant from the Arts Council.
The sisters organised a launch event at Borders Bookstore in York in May this year. It was a resounding success, selling 200 books in two hours, leading Borders to say: "It was our best-selling debut launch of an unknown author this year."
"I'm delighted and thrilled at the unexpected success of Benedict's Brother," says publisher, Sarah Smelik. "It's a moving book, well-written and with wide appeal. Once the reader connects with it, and with Tricia, they simply come back for more. Word is clearly spreading because orders are coming in from all over the country."
Six months after launch, the book easily outsold works by famous names such as Sarah Waters and Val McDermid at a recent literary festival attended by the author. It's now being considered by three major publishers and interest is being shown by foreign publishers following the Frankfurt Book Fair.
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