How to Build a Great Personal Brand

By Laura Garnett

Today, having a “personal brand” is virtually analogous to having resume--it’s essential, particularly for entrepreneurs. You have to not only be able to write about your experience but you need to be able to sell and market yourself. The definition of a brand is an experience, identity, or feeling. Figuring out your personal brand can be tricky, because it requires an ability to look at yourself and your skills objectively. Here are some tips to guide you through the process:

Be yourself

Your personal brand is just that--you. If you try to manufacture something that's not genuine, it will be obvious to others and immediately make you less compelling. Instead, focus on your unique talent or passion. Use what I call your “Zone of Genius” as a navigation system. Your Zone of Genius is a unique combination of your innate talent (in other words, your approach to work) and your greatest passion (your purpose or mission).

Virgin founder Richard Branson is a great example of this. He has said that his brand revolved around “finding new ways to help people have a good time.” I can’t be certain about this, but I am willing to bet that finding ways to help people have fun is Branson's innate talent. He is gifted at putting a fun spin on an ordinary experience, like flying on a plane. His greatest passion seems to be doing things his own way. Branson didn’t go to college, his ideas are unconventional, and his business goals are over the top. He has consistently stayed true to his brand, ideas, personality, and unique genius. His focus on keeping his business brand aligned with his personal brand has helped him become a huge success.

Know your “why”

Why are you doing what you do? What is your purpose and mission? The answers to these questions should be central to your work. 

Case in point: Apple. The company's “why” is about creating user-friendly, cutting-edge technology products that can improve everyday life. Once again, the business brand seems well aligned with the personal brand of its founder, Steve Jobs. Your "why" needs to be seamlessly incorporated into your story, your marketing, and your product. One way Apple has done so is through its approach to customer support. The Genius Bar is filled with “geniuses” to help you with your products. They are over-the-top helpful, usually free, and fun. This speaks the company’s why: They are there to help improve your life.

Know your ideal client

You will not appeal to every client or customer. There is a particular kind of person or audience that is going to respond to what you bring to the table. You need to figure out what kind of client will respond to you so you can hone your message accordingly. Knowing who you are marketing to is essential in order to connect authentically with them. (If you have already pinpointed your innate talent, you greatest passion, and your "why," then figuring out your ideal client should be easy.) JetBlue is a great example. The airline serves Dunkin’ Donuts coffee on its flights. This was a strategic choice for them. There are a number of different brands of coffee they could have partnered with. They chose Dunkin’ Donuts because of the similarity in the brands and similar target market. They want to make their customer feel more at home on their flights and that they are the right airline for them. Don’t get caught up in the trap of wanting to be everything to everyone -- or you will end up being nothing to nobody.

Get support, not advice

This last tip is one of the most important. When it comes to figuring out what your personal brand is and how to market it, getting support is key. The challenge is knowing the difference between advice and support. Most of us ask for advice. Advice comes from someone else’s worldview and is filtered through their psychology--it’s what they would do if they were in your situation. The problem with this is that they are not you. Support, on the other hand, is different. Support is when someone helps you understand what is right for you and helps you make decisions that are in line with your strengths, goals, and talents.

When I was in the beginning stages of building my own business, my brother encouraged me to get an MBA. I didn’t want to get an MBA, it didn’t feel like the right step for me. However, in the early stages of building a business, I was nervous and insecure. What if he was right? What if the only path to success was getting an MBA first? In this state of uncertainty, advice can seem like an answer. I followed my gut feeling that it was not the right path for me. Years later, I know that not following his advice was the best thing for me. I am thankful I had the confidence to listen to my gut and not do what would have been the right decision for him, not me. At the same time, I started co-working with two women who were also building their own business from scratch. They were able to give me the support that I needed to keep going. They were able to see that creating my own path to success was right for me and gave me daily encouragement to believe in myself. That support made a huge difference in my ability to build a business that was right for me--and with it, my own personal brand.

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What's the Best Way for Small Business to Grow?

By Jayne O'Donnell


Digital technology, websites and social media now are key tools for growing small businesses and competing with larger ones."Even if you're making coffee or ice pops or lobster rolls, you can also expand your business using technology," says Small Business Administration chief Karen Mills. "It levels the playing field."

Examples:

• Swing's Coffees, near the White House, has customers tweeting about its lattes and employees tweeting at strategic times of the day about specials. Meanwhile, its baristas at one location place orders on iPads that let customers pay by swiping their credit cards. And those with the Square Wallet app can pay with their phones.

• After doing brisk business at seven farmers markets and with a food truck using mobile devices, the owner of the Washington, D.C., frozen fruit pops company Pleasant Pops turned to Kickstarter.com — a site that lets people post projects and solicit investment — to raise money to open a store. Brian Sykora raised $13,000 in his first day and has attracted 400 supporters.

• Marilyn Caskey, owner of the San Antonio designer consignment store The Garment Exchange, used to spend much of her day answering the phone just to tell people her hours and location. After she spent an afternoon setting up a website with that information, her phone largely stopped ringing — and revenue increased 250% in the week after the site went up.

Despite such examples, however, nearly 60% of small businesses still are what Google calls invisible — operating without a website. Many of the rest are what Scott Levitan, Google's director of small business engagement, calls "completely invisible," meaning there's no original information from the company anywhere online.

That makes no sense, says Levitan, when Google data show small businesses with websites grow 40% faster than those without and when almost anyone — especially with free help offered by Google and others — can set up a site in hours.

"There's a perception out there that getting online is hard, that it's expensive and time consuming," says Levitan. "With modern Web tools that are relatively easy to use, it can take about an hour to set up if you're prepared."

So, is the phone book dead?

"I'm not saying they shouldn't be somewhere else," Levitan says of small businesses. "But they should definitely be on the Web."

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of social-media giant Twitter and founder of payment system Square, says his mantra in business is to make and keep things simple. That led him to create Square, a system that lets even the smallest of businesses accept credit or debit cards with a reader that can be used with smartphones or tablets.

"Somewhere along the line commerce became more abstract," Dorsey says. "We asked a very simple question: Why can't commerce be as free and easy as communication?"

By answering that, Dorsey gave Sykora a way to handle transactions for his frozen pops at farmers markets using mobile devices. "Where are you going to plug in at a farmers market?" asks Sykora. "I've seen everyone adopt Square at farmers markets."

Food trucks are an example Mills cites of how "small businesses are able to use technology in ways that couldn't be imagined before."

But even brick and mortar stores can benefit. Swing's owner Mark Warmuth saved up to $10,000 on traditional cash registers by using Square at his Alexandria, Va., coffee bar. That way, employees don't handle customer credit cards. Customer response to Square and the iPad system has been "overwhelmingly positive," Warmuth says.

It's also helped turn the 100-year-old shop he bought in 2006 into a trendy, high-tech competitor to Starbucks.

Doug Povich, owner of the Red Hook lobster roll trucks in Washington, D.C., also uses Square, but doesn't stop there. Povich says he has "only seconds to make an impression" with his business. So, along with lobster rolls that keep customers coming back, he uses Twitter and Facebook as his "main vehicles for engaging customers."

Red Hook has successfully employed a version of what Povich calls the "ice cream truck rule": tweet where you'll be when.

Over the two years since Caskey started her website, sales are up 40%, Google says. That has let her to hire another employee and spend more time on marketing, rather than answering the phone.

Sykora says technology, including the payment system and tweets that helped people find his truck's location, "allowed us to start small as a mobile business and scale up to brick and mortar."

"It was all about building a community of followers who knew what we were doing," he says. "Then, we were able to reach out to them to help us get to next level on Kickstarter."

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Lessons From Successful Entrepreneurs on How to Beat the Competition

By Christopher Hann

Cliff Shaw had already founded and sold three companies in the genealogy space, all of which had to cope with the supersize competitor he confronted once again when he started Mocavo in 2011. Based in Boulder, Colo., his latest venture bills itself as "the world's largest genealogy search engine." But to get there, Shaw had to devise a business model and pricing scheme that would compete with Ancestry.com, whose 2 million subscribers and 11 billion historical records made it the reigning behemoth in the field.

What's a startup to do? To distinguish his company from Ancestry's subscription payment model and content supply, Shaw decided Mocavo would offer a basic service free of charge, with customers providing content. "We originally started as Google for genealogy," Shaw says. "We've now evolved into a giant community of users who want to contribute content online for free."

Mocavo customers have published newspaper articles, old wills, marriage certificates, even family bibles. Last December the company introduced a subscription service, Mocavo Plus, an enhanced version of its search engine. To solidify Mocavo's share of the genealogy market, Shaw designed a business that doesn't compete directly with Ancestry.com but provides complementary services. "To be honest, we don't think about them very often," he says, "because we're pursuing an entirely different model."

Of course, there's no single formula for coping with competition. Some startups partner with direct competitors, such as the vineyards from California to New Jersey that have organized cooperative wine trails. Others choose to go toe-to-toe. Some all but ignore their competitors, and some get a leg up by collaborating with an established, noncompeting company. Here are five strategies you can employ to take on your rivals and carve out your niche in the competitive landscape.

Play Nice

In wine country, it's common for vintners to compare botanical notes on pruning methods or canopy management in their mutual quest to grow a better grape.

"I think the wine industry is a really unique industry in that the more wineries that are in the area, the better," says New Jersey winemaker Michael Beneduce Jr., who started Beneduce Vineyards five years ago. "It's essential to be able to collaborate with each other, because that really elevates the quality of the whole region."

Beneduce recently returned from a two-week trip to visit wineries in Austria, where the climate and soil are comparable to those of northwest New Jersey. Everywhere he went, Austrian winemakers were eager to show off their vineyards and answer his questions. "We don't see our competitors as competitors," Beneduce says. "We see them as collaborators."

Be Bold

Zach Schau knew the bicycle marketplace was jampacked, dominated by global brands such as Trek, Bianchi and Fuji. No matter: In 2010 Schau, his younger brother Jordan and two friends founded Los Angeles-based Pure Fix Cycles, a colorful brand of fixed-gear bikes.

At first Schau figured Pure Fix would be an e-commerce company. But soon he set his sights on Sport Chalet, a 54-year-old sporting-goods chain with more than 50 stores from Utah to California.

How does a startup compete for floor space in a regional retail giant? With a lot of hustle, some bodacious innovating and, yes, a little luck. Such as the time Schau chatted with a Sport Chalet buyer at a Las Vegas trade show. The buyer introduced Schau to a "colleague" who had taken a liking to the Pure Fix bikes on display. That colleague turned out to be CEO Craig Levra; before long Sport Chalet was stocking Pure Fix bikes.

But Schau didn't stop there. Pure Fix continued to rotate the palette of its bikes, which now come in more than 15 color combinations. The company produced a glow-in-the-dark bike and a smaller model for younger riders. And it priced its bikes to sell, ranging from $325 to $399.

Read more: HERE

Make a Mediocre Experience Awesome: 3 Steps

By Kevin Daum

Thanks to Kanye West, the word awesome has been overused of late. Some even claim awesome fatigue. Why do things have to be awesome? Isn't good good enough? What about great--isn't that good enough? Not in today's business environment. With all the noise and distraction even great can fall short. It's not that people and companies intentionally force mediocrity our way. In fact, it's their lack of intention that usually results in mediocrity. But given a choice, I strongly believe most people would choose awesome.

Three key characteristics define an awesome experience:

It Must Be Positive

Awesome experiences are always positive. Awesome by definition means inspired by that which is grand or sublime. Creating a positive experience will assure that your audience consistently wishes to relive it.

It Must Be Meaningful

What is the point of doing something if nobody cares? Meaning comes from context and impact, and lends itself to sharing and discussion. If no one is talking about it, it wasn't awesome.

It Must Be Memorable

Reflect on the business or life experiences you remember. They likely resulted in a surprising epiphany you couldn't wait to share. You must find a way to connect with a compelling message that sticks in the brain.

Awesome experiences can be created anytime, anyplace, so why isn't the world overflowing with them? Primarily because creating them requires forethought, creativity, planning and execution. It takes time, skill and an understanding of how to turn a mediocre or "just OK" experience into one that is meaningful and memorable for everyone. Whether you are trying to step up your marketing, make an impression on someone or just create an awesome experience for yourself, this formula will help make it happen.

1. Fulfill The NeedAt the very least, a good experience requires you to be a trusted provider and resolve whatever need is at hand. Anything less is simply a bad experience. A customer wants to reliably get what they expect. People crave dependability. Without basic needs being met, people are anxious, concerned and closed. Of course if all you do is provide basic needs, you'll be commoditized, and rarely considered if better choices are available.
2. Provide EntertainmentYou can go from good to great by making the experience fun. Engage the participants so they enjoy the activity. Often in sales, building relationships does this. It's more fun doing the most mundane of transactions when you like the people with whom you are working. Customer retention is often dependent on this element.
3. Create the UnexpectedThis is certainly the hardest of the three components to achieve, but by far the most critical. Today people are bombarded with so much information and it's rare that they are surprised. Find a way to wake people up in a way that is relevant to the experience you want them to remember. It could be with humor or great beauty, but consider where their thoughts are likely to go and take them a different and wonderful direction. This way they have a huge Aha!moment that makes them remember the experience for a long time to come.

Only providing two out of three of these components will come up short. The awesome experience requires the complete convergence of need, entertainment, and the unexpected, nothing less. Pursuing the awesome experience doesn't require lots of money, props or even other people. It mainly requires a decision on your part to make it happen and then a commitment to execute. Of course pursuing the awesome experience doesn't assure it will occur, but if you never attempt, you and those around you are sure to be forever suffering mediocrity.

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All Great Entrepreneurs Have This

By Geoffrey James

What makes an entrepreneur successful?

Some people believe it's the ability to innovate. However, many startups are refinements of existing business models or improvements on how everyday products and services are delivered.  Being innovative helps, but it's not the deciding factor.

How about access to capital? It's admittedly difficult to start a business if you don't have the money to get it started.  Even so, there are plenty of successful startups that survived on the thinnest of shoestrings for their first few years.

Management skill? Give me a break. Entrepreneurs are famously short-tempered and few have the patience to coach employees.  If they wanted to play politics, after all, they would be working in a big company, not starting something new.

There is one thing and one thing alone that every great entrepreneur absolutely must possess: courage.

And courage is very rare in our world.  Numerous surveys of the population at large have shown that, above everything else, most people value security.

Most people will tolerate just about anything--a bad marriage, an intrusive government, a horrible boss, a job that they hate--if only that thing can make them feel more secure.

It's sad, really.

But entrepreneurs aren't like that.

It takes courage to fore go the predictability of a corporate job.

It takes courage to sacrifice your nest egg to your startup.

It takes courage to take the risk of failure.

It takes courage to make your dreams into reality.

And it takes courage--lots of it--to hand over the reins when your startup grows beyond your ability to manage it.

That's why entrepreneurs are--rightly--the true heroes of our modern world.

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Why Should You Incorporate With Inc4Free?

Inc4Free is a one-stop, full service corporate formation specialist. We have formed more than 60,000 Corporations and LLCs in the United States and have been helping entrepreneurs around the country since 1989. Unlike other resident agent companies, we offer the most comprehensive range of services under one roof. We care about your business and your future.

Our support staff is dedicated to providing you with the resources you need to run your business and give you the confidence you need to succeed. You can count on Inc4Free to help you grow your business and protect your family's future.

We offer a variety of services to help you succeed:

• 50 U.S. State Incorporation Service with expedited filing available
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• Exceptional customer service from our dedicated team of business coaches