Customer Reviews

Managing Brand You: 7 Steps to Creating Your Most Successful Self

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had rather high hopes when I picked up this book. After reading that I needed to "Brand" myself in several books, I thought this book would be perfect for managing the NEW Brand ME. So I picked it up and started to do my usual reading and quickly found that this book is more about product brands then people. But youwould expect that right. After all, this IS a book on branding as it refers to people. But why does it have to be as boring as most of those "corporate speak" books? And this book wasn't that much help in focusing on me.

But there was one good aspect of the book. The quotes at the beginning of the chapters were deeper and more relavant then the chapters. I wrote down some of then as they teach the points clearer then the prose written by the authors.

I want to strongly recommend this book, especially to those in these tough times who are in transition and are looking for their next great opportunity. Taking the disciplined approach recommended by Ira and Jerry, thinking about yourself as your "most valuable brand", and looking for ways to differentiate that brand in a challenging marketplace are vitally important ideas. I encourage you to buy this book, dive deep into the seven steps (keep a close eye on the step where they talk about creating a "Unique Identity") and make your brand as successful in the marketplace as possible!

Good book for creating your personal brand. Very well planned and deep reaching. Thorough without being overly lengthy.

Managing Brand you is a monument of development discipline designed to encourage anyone who is willing to ignite their talents of higher learning and prosperous living. It is a unique read displayed for the entry level individual as well as the corporate mega leader. Not only is it a great tool for the workplace, but an ultimate guide for one who wants to grow and enjoy life to the full. It invites you to revisit you and see what changes you can make in your own life, your career, and the things around you to experience a life of change. Being the best advocate of your own development is the strength found in reading Jerry Wilson's "Managing Brand You." I encourage you to get a copy for yourself, your children, and your closest friend. Spread the wisdom and knowledge of a successful leader into the life of someone very special to you. That's the difference you can make in someone's life today. I am inspired and you will be too.

Dorothy Hart-Manuel

Managing Brand You is an intriguing concept of thinking of one's self as a brand. I found the chapter on the brand audit to be especially insightful when I thought about some of my experiences from the five stages in life, from childhood on into adulthood, and how those experiences helped create the person I had become. This helped me to understand how I needed to position myself, set goals for myself, and then implement those plans. I know now that personal branding is a critical element for me personally and professionally - how I see myself and how others see me. After reading the book and following through on the exercises, I found myself energized and refocused on myself and my goals. There is a great deal of substance in this book and it would be very helpful to all who read it.

An inspirational read; easy to get through with great examples.
A great personal AND professional guide from someone that has been there and lived it.
Highly recommended---5 stars.
Tom MinnerA Sense of Urgency

Personal branding is becoming one of the hottest topics for authors and consultants as more and more people wake up to the fact that managing one's personal brand is critical to vocational success. Co-authors Jerry Wilson and Ira Blumenthal have written an important addition to the best of the books on personal branding.

The strength of this book is the very disciplined approach to branding that the authors advocate. This is not a book long on info on building a personal web site, or getting to the top of Google listings, or the myriad of details that go into building a strong personal brand. Instead, the authors use their experience in corporate branding to support their concept of how a great personal brand is built.

Individuals who have been working on personal brand building will find this a wonderful resource for stepping back and rigorously considering the totality of one's branding efforts. Newcomers to the world of personal branding might be better off starting with the reigning champion (in my opinion), Peter Montoya's classic "The Brand Called You."

As personal branding has become more topical since Tom Peter's popularized the notion more than a decade ago, there has been a growing need for a disciplined approach to the process of building a great brand. Taking best practices from the corporate world, as the co-authors have, seems to make sense.

I only wish this book had actual mini-case studies of how great personal brands are being built, in a varity of fields. The authors primarily use examples from corporate branding to illustrate their points; examples from personal branding would put an exclamation point on each of their teaching points. "Lessons in Managing Brand You" would make for a great sequel to the co-authors' first book.

Managing Brand You really provides one a different perspective about oneself that I had not thought of previously. It is an easy and very productive read that I would recommend to everyone.It really does help one to analyze oneself, how other's view you to then potentially re-position yourself if you so desire.

Love the concept and these fellows really deliver on the description and the ideas around the theme of developing your brand. We all have been doing this, but here is an organized way to think of ourselves as brands to represent to colleagues, customers and in general our outside world.
Terrific read, entertaining examples and would recommend this book to anyone, but especially business people thinking through how to manage their careers and customers.

"Managing Brand YOU" is a wonderful resource for anyone who has had the urge to know better about their own goals, capabilities and aspirations, not only in professional but also in personal life. I truly believe that this book can be an impactful, self defining read, which encourages you to evaluate your life in a very positive and meaningful way. Written by two very successful professionals, Jerry S. Wilson and Ira Blumenthal, this book is rich with real life examples of people and companies that have been able to successfully position themselves as a `Brand' at no matter what age or time. Viewing ourselves as a Brand can be a very innovative phenomenon and in my viewpoint, this book encourages for an insightful introspection about your goals and offers tools to achieve them. Whether you are a professional or stay at home, have aggressive aspirations or just seek true satisfaction, or if you are going through transition in your personal or professional life- voluntary or in voluntary, this book can be quantitatively beneficial. This to me is like a workbook which makes you self assess your past experiences and present situations and define a suitable future path.

I appreciate the fact that it tends to lay out worksheets at various steps, that makes the 7-Step process of "Managing Brand YOU" very easy to understand and analyze. As a marketing professional, I had always thought of the word `Brand' from a corporate or product perspective. But, as it states in one of the chapters about `theory of Parallels', I have come to believe that I AM a Brand that has unconsciously been positioned all along in the different stages of my life but can NOW be consciously positioned to successfully achieve my goals moving forward. The fundamental values that the authors compel the readers to observe are, being truthful, analytical, and consistent and committed. This book has encouraged me to do a more meaningful self analysis, understanding my strengths, weaknesses, my true passions and helping me define well- constructed life goals.

I have to confess that this book is not simply a light passing read, but for real benefit it should be read with patience working through the 7-Step process. It is surely a worthwhile exercise. And as it states in the book that `your new Brand YOU is a work in progress' I agree that this exercise would automatically direct you to think and reevaluate your Brand YOU at various stages of both personal and professional life. It is a dynamic process which is self correcting as we move ahead to position ourselves as a Brand in all spheres of life. I would highly recommend this book to all those individuals who seek to become more successful people personally and professionally. I have found "Managing Brand YOU" to be an intellectually meaningful and insightful read.