Work Comes First, Personal Brand Comes Second - HBR's Daily Idea

July 04, 2013 There's a lot of talk these days about "personal brands" and "personal reinvention."Do you know your story? How are you managing it? What's your competitive advantage? Et cetera. Et cetera. The problem with this type of talk is that it often places the cart ahead of the horse. Your personal brand will mean nothing if you don't know what you really care about, and the only way to find that out is to put in the work; in other words, you can employ all sorts of brand strategies, but if you don't know the skills that set you apart from everyone else, your efforts will be useless. Brand comes from the work itself. Not vice versa. SOURCE: Your Brand Is the Exhaust Fume of the Engine of Your Life by Nilofer Merchant