Personal brand and value: from the home where both live better, by @Prof_EstradaMSC

Today begins a group of collaborations of guest bloggers, and I do it in a big way, starting with Doctor and Professor Vladimir Estrada, Cuban Havana, troubadour, excellent professional and great friend. Vladimir is today and here an inseparable binomial: Personal Brand and Value.

If you're short on time, I'll summarize it in this video:

By way of introduction 

Reader friend:

I 'm Vladimir Estrada, Professor, researcher and consultant on personal branding and various other topics to which she crosses. And here you have me once again, greeting you with all appreciation and thanking God for the opportunity that my dear friend and excellent colleague gives me today, Master Guillem Recolons, to venture as a guest blogger in his prestigious digital home; this time at a complicated juncture for him in terms of health, but not (We) will stop in the effort to continue contributing. This collaboration that begins today and I am honored to begin, which will include a group of excellent colleagues and friends (#Collaborating WithGuillem), it's part of it.

And as always I try to do it, but especially considering the intellectual height, professional prestige, the human quality and the powerful mark that is and leaves my host today (who also, has been and is since we met a special and very distinguished friend for this server), I will do everything possible to contribute in this delivery all the value I can; especially, entering for the first time as an author to a space that I follow so much, Value, I admire and respect (and in which I always learn!), for the enormous quality of the varied contents that are systematically proposed to us in it. A quality conceived and expressed in the form of Value immediately applicable to our personal branding processes, and also to several others, as you have surely been able to verify if you are a regular reader of this blog. And if you're not (sin capital!), for I invite you, almost I commend you to be from today: ¡you will thank me!  

As usual from 2020, my proposal today begins with a message of solidarity with those who have suffered in any way the effects of the terrible pandemic that has hit us all in the world.; Especially, with those people who have lost a loved one. Like every day since this started, And now In Quality of the survivor, I raise a prayer for them, because they can recover and move on.

That said from the soul, let's get into the topic of this work.

Guillem is, by far, the expert I admire most in the subject of which I write to you today (the connection between personal brand and value), and in several others; if you want to expand on this, I invite you to read later the transoceanic two-way interview that we both shared in December of the year 2018, Also my recent post/birthday gift for him, as well as your personal balance of your own 2018, and those corresponding to 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 And 2021. I have quoted it with great reiteration, and I have learned a lot from all their thematic proposals; Including, those relating to the subject of contribution of value as a key requirement for the positive positioning of a personal brand, and about the value proposition in particular, As the model for conception, design and offer to the environment the promise of value contribution. I focus only on these two, because I will talk about them at other times in this article.

I warmly welcome you to my first foray as a guest blogger in the blogging grounds of my dear friend Guillem Recolons. Thank you for being, for being, and for joining me here, today as always.

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Personal branding on Wikipedia

I start this section with a joke explicit and in very bad taste -I confess- for my host today, consisting of the quotation of the concept personal brand that until August of the year 2018 was published in Wikipedia: “The personal brand, In English personal branding, is a concept of personal development of considering certain people as a brand, that like trademarks, should be elaborated, transmitted and protected, with the aim of differentiating and achieving greater success in social and professional relationships. Emerged as a technique for job search.”. Ask him how he likes this!!

Too bad, I know. Like anyone who works this concept with a minimum of seriousness (the latter does not apply to Guillem: yours is maximum), for the very deep and manifest weakness of the linked formulation, which is already out of circulation thanks to Guillem himself, who was in charge of reformulating it and putting it in true value. If you click on the link above, you will find the new and very well worked version of this definition (and still pending new developments, as the author himself told me personally three years ago, and I'm sure he's getting ready to make them.). But I have brought it to the arena in its previous form and at this time., for three very specific reasons: 

1. It is an excellent starting point to define and analyze by contrast the personal brand, starting from what she does IT'S NOT, and focusing on working on the concept, considering the subject of this post,  In and from a value perspective. 
2. It is necessary continue to contribute and contribute to the conceptual clarification of the topic, since there were many people who for several years were guided by what was raised in the already deceased “definition”, and incorporated it into academic documents that -inclusive- constituted evaluative outputs to undergraduate and even postgraduate degrees, in various geographical areas and university institutions of a certain prestige. I affirm this to highlight the importance of STUDY and RESEARCH in this field, as much or more than in any other. And for the record: Me I Consists absolutely what What Here I 'm Posing, and indeed, keeps happening, Well many of the inquiries and appointments made before the change have not been updated.
3. And of course, to put in fair value The Relevant contribution What We has fact To All Guillem, To edit And To give true Value To The definition of the Brand Personal In A middle so important, Used And Not bad Positioned As Wikipedia; valuation and weighting as far as I know, we have only publicly carried out so far the Master Andrés Pérez Ortega (I remember a comment of his about it) and this server. If anyone else has done it, I ignore it: I express my most heartfelt apologies and invite you to clarify this.

A few years ago (2016), I posted on Soymimarca A Work where Emphasize In The Importance of the The concepts As base For all practice; And I've come back again and again about it.. A topic such as personal brand management, in full cognitive expansion, acceptance and implementation, and that still faces certain resistances, requires a clear conceptual foundation, Precise, well-supported, technically correct and unquestionable, as well as accessible and understandable to the public, both initiated and uninitiated. That everyone can know in a real and very clear way “what is this about?”, to say it to the Spanish. That's why, among other reasons, it is so important what the Master whose digital home I visit today did on Wikipedia, and also for that reason, I will try to make as clear as I can as much as I can specify and clarify at the conceptual level, in the remainder of this article.

Considering my topic today, in this area of the text I must propose you, as a result of my work related to it, an initial definition of value that is relevant to it in the field of personal branding, as a starting frame for the brief analysis that I propose.

For this purpose, and in this context, we will understand the Value As

“the contributory dimension it configures, describes and defines a personal brand favorably, that is, the set of contributions and / or solutions that arise in -Or Derived of the- she: models of action, referential image, Contacts, Influences, Relations, goods, Services, Ideas, Content, Feelings, Emotions, Learning, Challenges, Opportunities, Collaborations, miscellaneous developments, and/or any combination of two or more of these or other elements, which make it Valuable for those who receive and value their impact, from the ways and magnitudes in which such contributions and solutions contribute to improving their lives. These beneficiaries position positively in their minds that personal brand based on the value that it brings them and that constitutes, for them, the existential meaning and very essence of the mark in question; the resource or mechanism that makes it memorable for its audiences from the benefit received. If what happens is the non-contribution (Absence) of the required and potentially expected value of it, all of the above works and impacts in a negative and obviously unfavorable sense for the personal brand of reference.

That is: in a more synthetic and direct way, there is value in everything we bring to our audiences from who we are, we do and achieve, that constitutes or represents for them an opportunity to improve some aspect of their lives, or a resource of any kind with which to do so, or both at the same time. And this manifests itself in the negative, when we stop making such contributions” (Road, 2019).

With this framework (which I hope is clear), and by way of examples, we can analyze briefly, from the perspective of value contribution, the first three “Areas” of the erroneous concept previously present in Wikipedia. The three points I will address here –it would be very long and it would not make much sense to do so on the entire already deleted definition-, will be approached from as clarifying and didactic a perspective as possible; and among other things, I aspire to you to understand that we should never take something for granted, and assume it as correct, just because it appears in a certain space on the network, by more prestigious, consulted and even referenced that this is. Let's see them together, reader friend.

Point Nro. 1:

“Consider” as a brand. 

Do we only score if another “Considered” that we do? That is, that all definitions would be about the concept Brand or related to it are wrong, starting with the way the term “mark” is defined in the Dictionary of the RAE (Acting on someone or something by imposing character on them or leaving a moral mark on them), because in the end, we will only leave some mark on whoever wants and “Consider” it is pertinent that we leave it.

I mean: let's go through life by going through, for we only matter and will matter according to the free will of those around us, and if they decide, we will be ghosts. Let's do nothing to mark positively, let's not work to add value, do not prepare ourselves professionally to achieve performance of excellence and favorable results for society and for us, nor do we strive to have genuine personal behaviors, Ethical, Decent, Clean, Solidarity, Altruistic, well-intentioned and flattering of the people around us; and above all, let us forget Guillem when he wisely tells us that “if you don't contribute, you don't matter“, and also that “if you don't care what others think or say about you, you don't care about your reputation either“, and also that “we, humans are not important, the important thing is what we can do for other humans“, and of course, also to that great professional and even better person who is Ylse Roa, when he proposes that “with who we are, Do, and according to our actions, we manage to impact other human beings“…because in the end, we depend on the other WISH OR NOT Be marked by our being, our actions and our quality of achievement. But for God's sake!! And in what head did this fit?? 

Point Nro. 2:

“Certain people”. 

That is, Is the concept exclusive?? What would the great say? Tom Peters, creator of the concept personal brand as we know it today (Repeat: creator of the concept, NO of personal branding, that has always existed), who in the first work published in the world on the subject, states that “the good news – and it's very much good news- is that everyone has the opportunity to stand out. Everyone has the opportunity to learn, improve and develop its possibilities. Everyone has the opportunity to be a brand worth being highlighted”? Or what would you say?, For example, the Master Andrés Pérez Ortega, who has proposed to us that “…it is usually spoken of Personal Brand when a famous person arises, celebrity or a "celebrity" and that can make us think that it is necessary to have a lot of means or money. But that's not the case.. Fortunately, Personal Branding is available to the vast majority of people.“? Or the Master? Paul Mico Adam, who has stated that he knows anonymous personal brands: “…people with poor visibility, or desire to have it, but with strong impact in small environments. Your group of friends, your family, your co-workers, the people of his small town. You know them too. They are anonymous personal brands, relatively anonymous. But personal bests without a doubt”? Or will it be?, as a certain widely spread myth says – and already quite clarified, apparently-, What “personal brand is only for celebrities“? 

I propose and slightly expand a little of my thinking on the subject, developed in the article of 2017 linked at the end of the previous question: 

“When we interact in any way with other human beings, we act on them by imposing character on them or leaving a moral mark on them. (fifth meaning of the concept mark according to the DRAE, among several others that work for the theme) and from it, we are and we leave a mark; that is, we are known, Analyzed, valued and recognized in one way or another –and then remembered, eventually elected, and often recommended– from our characteristics, actions and results of any kind. All of which constitutes the essence of the concept., of its value and practical usefulness; I like it very much agree on it with Master Jordi Collell. And that can apply. (and applies) For anyone who interacts with other people; I mean, For All human beings, not only for those with high public visibility.”. Do we agree??

In the text itself I support this position much more broadly.; Especially (and in line with my article today), from a value-sharing perspective. For example:

“What are you looking for in the Famous? Among many other things, I think the following:

• The reasons that have made them such.
• The symbols that bear and/or represent their fame.
• The ways and paths necessary to be/do/achieve the same thing they are/do/achieve to be famous.
• The tangible and visible materialization of a level “aspirational” (term not yet accepted , but widely used And What se goes Imposing By The use) that many of us have -desires, Longings, Dreams, Ambitions, Illusions, hopes-, So what works as proof that reaching it is possible, since someone has already achieved it.

In short, your personal brands. And the impact of them. And the example or model that are/mean in one way or another, or in several. And how it might be possible be/do/achieve/impact/transcend like them.

   And what are you looking for in the No Famous? For example:

• The ability they can have to understand us, Well they are like us.
• The experiential and emotional closeness they bring us.
• The support that can effectively give us (from a close affectivity and/or a relevant and compatible experience) in the face of the multiple junctures and situations of life.
• The example we can follow from someone who looks like us and has effectively solved a problem like ours (or more than one).

ⅠGualmente, as you can see, your personal brands. And the impact of them. And the model they are/mean in one way or another, or in several. And how it might be possible be/do/achieve/impact/transcend like them” (end of quote).

All of this, by chance, doesn't sound like VALUE? Contributed in multiple and different ways, so much for Famous as by non-famous? Let's continue analyzing the joke in bad taste: just one more aspect.

Point Nro. 3:

“Emerged as a technique for job search”. 

This is the lid of the bottle; who wrote this I hadn't even read Tom Peters on the subject.. Jesus! 

But let's focus on the point: Is it personal branding? a technique? Or is it rather a social consequence of the way we have done things, and/or a footprint derived from the results we have achieved, and/or an intentional result obtained thanks to - among other things- to the conscious use of different techniques? Let's go back to the Dictionary of the RAE (as we saw before, mark means “act on someone or something by imposing character on them or leaving a moral mark“), so as not to go now to the specialized definitions that so many authors have proposed. Later you will see links to many of them.

And at this moment the category around which this work revolves returns to the arena: the value. How and based on what is generated in those around us that footprint that makes us stay in their minds in one way or another?? 

Well, in one of these two ways: adding value, or by ceasing to contribute what we were supposed to have contributed. No more, no less.

Moreover, for quite some time now, the vast majority of serious authors on this subject have agreed on an elementary and basic fact., that I want to reiterate to you: personal branding is a concept, that as such arose in 1997, but it reflects a reality that has always existed. I have a few brief details about it, based on three “simple and little known” Examples, and a question about them:

• What comes to your mind when you read or hear the names of Jesus Christ?, Gandhi and Einstein? 
• Which one “Employment” Sought Jesus Christ? And Gandhi? And Einstein? 
• ¿And maybe anyone doubts (or you may hesitate) of the power, the impact and significance of these personal brands? 

Then, it is clear that this goes far beyond the work context and the job search: there are many areas in which the contribution of value of a personal brand can be manifested. And so are the motives and paths through which she can transcend.; I suggest you in this regard review my work The transcendence of the personal brand, posted on LinkedIn.

Enough, Truth? Is it clear to you how great and necessary Guillem's contribution is?, by reworking the definition of personal branding on Wikipedia? 

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Summarizing the analysis 

So far, reader friend, my analytical and critical look at some parts of a misconception about personal branding, that luckily (thanks to Guillem) you will no longer be able to view online. And the final idea that I propose after this analysis is the following: Never, Never, NEVER subscribe to a single definition of anything. Because no one, nobody, no one has the absolute truth on any subject! 

And in case you are or aspire to be a trainer, considering the informative and referential nature of the space where she appeared, and where today appears another very pertinent and well focused that surely is already and will continue to be consulted by many people, I leave you the link to a work in which you can Learn To use Wikipedia For Purposes teachers; because Wikipedia is an extremely powerful source that we must know how to use, an excellent informative and bibliographic resource to which the prestigious professor and expert Dr. Enrique Dans rightly qualifies as “the largest and best encyclopedia created by man based on collective editing in an open environment“. I hope you find it useful!!

Having seen these elements, and so that you can contrast the above with a series of solid approaches, different and diverse on the same topic, I propose that you make an approach to the excellent post in which our great Eva offers us about thirty definitions of the concept of personal brand, and another work a little more recent, continuation of the previous one, where he collects another forty; each of the 70 each of the, with whose study you can greatly expand and deepen your management of it, whether or not you match the form or content of one or the other proposal. And of course, I propose below my own look at it, explicitly incorporating a value perspective:

“The personal brand is the footprint that remains in the human and social environment of a person, from the value she brings to him (or his absence; let us remember that personal branding is not always or necessarily positive) integrating what is, what he does and what he achieves, generating with all this a certain impact on those beings that surround him and interact with him in multiple ways in his various spheres of life; and eventually, managing to transcend their time and space thanks to all this, becoming this brand a legacy based on its contributions of value to those who have surrounded it during its life, or at different stages and times of it.”. 

Does it work for you?? Why yes, or why not? Let's discuss this!, to grow together!

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By way of conclusion

Reader friend:

For me it has been a divine opportunity and an incomparable honor to be able to propose my ideas to you today from the prestigious digital home of my dear friend and exemplary colleague., Master Guillem Recolons. Hopefully you will decide to talk with me and with him about the topics and concepts that I have addressed here, and to share the article on your networks if you think it may be valuable to someone else.

I announce that this project #ColaborandoConGuillem continues its march week after week, until necessary. Please spread this hashtag, and I invite you to look forward to next Sunday the next contribution to it, also from Latin American lands: an environment where Guillem has sown a lot and where he will always reap a lot.

Receive as always the warmest and most cordial brand/hug, from my Caribbean that I love.

Always your friend,

Vladimir

Here's a condensed version on the All Leaves a Mark podcast, episode 66, this time voiced by Helena Casas and again with the edition of Celestino Martínez. Thank you for your contribution Vladimir, Helena and Celestine. Listen to it on iVoox, Apple Podcast Or Spotify.

Stock Photos from jackbolla / Shutterstock (Sea of Cuba)