You Are The Brand

An inspiring and practical guide to help corporate professionals start, run, and grow a side-hustle into a full-time personal brand business as a coach, consultant, or creator.

An authentic brand community is more than just people buying your product or working alongside one another. This book articulates the critical roles of mutual concern, common values, and shared experiences in creating fiercely loyal customer and collaborator relationships. Smart organizations know that creating communities is the key to unlocking unprecedented outcomes. But too many mistakenly rely on superficial transactional relationships as a foundation for community, when really people want something deeper. Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl argue that in an authentic and enriching community, members have mutual concern for one another, share personal values, and join together in meaningful shared experiences, whether online or off. On the deepest level, brands must help members grow into who they want to be. Jones and Vogl present practices used by global brands like Yelp, Etsy, Twitch, Harley Davidson, Salesforce, Airbnb, Sephora, and others to connect in a meaningful way with the people critical for their success. They articulate how authentic communities can serve organizational goals in seven different areas: innovation, talent recruitment, customer retention, marketing, customer service, building transformational movements, and creating community forums. They also reveal principles to grow a new brand community to critical mass. This is the first comprehensive guide to a crucial differentiator that gives organizations access to untapped enthusiasm and engagement.

Steve Adubato's entire professional life has been about branding--learning it, living it, making mistakes at it, teaching it at several universities, while discovering how to find the fine line between shameless self-promotion and smart, strategic branding--first for himself, then for others, and now for readers interested in an honest analysis of the good and bad in practiced branding. In You Are the Brand Adubato profiles the brands of more than thirty people and companies and skillfully analyzes and dissects their strategies.

Best-selling brand expert Marty Neumeier shows you how to make the leap from a company-driven past to the consumer-driven future. You’ll learn how to flip your brand from offering products to offering meaning, from value protection to value creation, from cost-based pricing to relationship pricing, from market segments to brand tribes, and from customer satisfaction to customer empowerment. In the 13 years since Neumeier wrote The Brand Gap, the influence of social media has proven his core theory: “A brand isn’t what you say it is – it’s what they say it is.” People are no longer consumers or market segments or tiny blips in big data. They don’t buy brands. They join brands. They want a vote in what gets produced and how it gets delivered. They’re willing to roll up their sleeves and help out – not only by promoting the brand to their friends, but by contributing content, volunteering ideas, and even selling products or services. At the center of the book is the Brand Commitment Matrix, a simple tool for organizing the six primary components of a brand. Your brand community is your tribe. How will you lead it?

In the modern workplace, clearly defined hierarchies are on the wane, few of us have 'jobs for life' and many of us have portfolio careers or are self-employed. In these self-reliant times, it's essential to be remembered for the right reasons. Brand You helps you develop a powerful personal brand, both on- and offline, and shows you how to: Discover your talents, values and purpose Become more visible in your market Make the most of your networks Build your brand online using blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Attract people who want what you do in the way that you do it This new, extended edition is the definitive guide to personal branding and is packed with new material on social media, charisma and discovering your mission, as well as new exercises and examples. It is supported by valuable extra tools. To succeed in today's fast-paced environment, you have to know yourself and be able to communicate your brand to the outside world. This book will show you how. Highly recommended.- Gemma Greaves, Marketing Director, The Marketing Society. A must-read for everyone, from trainees to board members.- Sanjay Shah, Chief Financial Officer, The London Clinic.

Unleash the power of your culture. Propel your brand forward. Too many executive leaders settle for inadequate employee performance, mediocre outcomes, and unremarkable earnings. But this doesn't have to be your organization's reality. There is a way to break through the inertia to engage your team, drive better results, and attract a tribe of loyal customers--by tapping into the greatest driver of brand success: your internal company culture. Mark Miller and Ted Vaughn have rebranded more than one hundred purpose driven organizations with their team at Historic Agency. Their decades of experience and research have culminated in Culture Built My Brand, your roadmap to winning more customers and turning them into raving fans. With practical steps and customizable tools, this easy-to-follow guide gives you the know-how you need to tap into your company culture to create an authentic brand that stands out from the competition.

The international bestseller-now updated for an even bigger, brand-savvy market Self-published in 2005, this step-by-step guide for professionals looking to develop a strong company brand has become an international sensation, selling more than 65,000 copies worldwide and hitting #3 on Japan's business bestseller list. This invaluable guide teaches you the vital principles and skills of personal branding, including how to craft an emotionally resonant branding message, create top-quality branding tools, and attract a constant flow of business. “Montoya's Personal Branding ideas are going to change how business owners and professionals promote themselves.”-Robert G. Allen and Mark Victor Hansen, coauthors, The One-Minute Millionaire

You Are Your Brand is a self-help book written for people from all walks of life: the entrepreneur, the person seeking their first job, the seasoned veteran, the college student and anyone wanting to grow a powerful, personal brand.