HOW TO GET PAID

So you --- like everybody else, think you are not getting paid enough. You put in the hours. You get the job done. You are top of your field. But still the money is not flowing like you had expected. In fact lesser knowledgable, lesser talented, lesser competent contemporaries are doing much better than you in terms of getting paid.

You need to fix this.

Below are three simple tips to set you on your way

1.       What is your value

If you are an employee ask yourself how do you make money for your company, boss, whatever? If you are a sales person that’s easy to point out, but what if you are a front desk officer?

Everybody employed in a company is there to help the company make money. So take a long hard look at what you do, not your job title, but what you do to help the company make money.

The aforementioned front desk officer value to the company would be in making sure that as the first line of interaction with the company’s walk in clients they have a nice, hopefully memorable experience that keep them coming back and cracking open their wallets to buy.

Her value comes from how she helps the company’s objectives.

2.       Who knows your value

Your value is not what you think it is but what the market is willing to pay for it. Be clear about this.

If you know your value you need to bring to the attention of people who recognize, will pay for that value. It does not help if you are the hottest financial analyst or litigator or bridge contractor if the people to recognize that value have no clue about your special skills.

The difference between those who get their full value and those who don’t, is communication. To get your value recognized you need to communicate it.

In this world of social media it is much easier to create awareness about your value than ever before. You can start a blog or vlog or podcast and drive traffic to it through social media instead of clapping back people and generally making a nuisance of yourself.

In a increasingly competitive world employers are on the lookout for that person who will give them the edge – serious employers at least and searching online is a good way to cut recruitment costs.

3.       Everything is negotiable

    

      A negotiation goes one way or another based on three parameters – knowledge, power and time. With a better understanding of how you can be of value to your prospective employer, knowledge you can see how to maneuver around power and time.

      Because they are the employer does not necessarily mean they have the power. You can shift the balance by being very clear about y our qualities and experience and what value you will be bringing to the table. It helps if your particular skills are widely in demand as well.   

      To be out of time could weaken your negotiating position, so the trick is not to be desperate for a quick resolution of the negotiation. Easier said than done.

      One last thing value is not static, it shifts and changes according to circumstance. You could represent value today and not tomorrow. The t rick is to keep increasing your value by keeping an eye on industry trends why continuously learning and growing your experience.

     It can be a whole thesis on how to get better paid but keep these three pointers in mind in trying to get paid.

REPUTATIONAL CAPITAL

In an earlier blog "The magic key, your personal brand" we made the point that the difference in earning power of individuals, companies and even countries depends on how they communicate what value they posses.

So you earn more than the next guy because you have built up value through years of study and experience and you have built a reputation that communicates this value to prospective employers or clients.

But there are those just as competent as yourself or even less so earning more money than you. When you drill down to why this is so you will invariably find they have been better able to communicate their value to their employers. This can be through better negotiation, building an industry wide reputation that is valued by the competition and all this above performing assigned tasks.

This is increasingly going to be the case in much more connected world.

The Ted Talk video of author Rachel Botsman illustrates/explains  the point perfectly and gives us a peek of what is coming.

Note however that she did this talk in 2012.

COMMUNICATE LIKE RICH DAD

The challenge of unlocking the  full value in ourselves, in our businesses, in our relationships,  in our assets is down to communication, or the lack of or the inadequacy of it.

In an earlier blog we made the connection that for highly competent individuals to increase the demand for their expertise or services they have to be more proficient in communication.

Look around yourself, the people who earn the top paychecks, companies that pull in the most revenues, charities that raise the most money are the ones who are the better communicators.

Unfortunately people, companies, relatives take communication for granted but don't recognize it. They blame their failures in their careers, in the markets and in their relationships to everything else but communications.

So I was glad to discover -- rediscover really, that Robert Kiyosaki, author of the wildly successful Rich Dad series put a high premium on communication.

He talks about communications although the series and it's importance in business but nowhere more emphatically than in "Rich Dad's Guide to Investing"

In the book Kiyosaki introduces the B-I Triangle in which he in a diagram shows the key elements needed for a business to succeed.

Our natural instinct is to believe that the product or service makes the business but Kiyosaki shows that the base of the business is formed on it's sense of mission, followed by cash flows and just above it is communication.

For more details on the B-I Triangle I advise you get yourself a copy of the book. I intend to stick to only the communication part of the book.

"The better at communicating you are, and the more people you communicate to, the better your cashflow will be ... The money goes to the best communicators," Kiyosaki counsels.

He says while most of struggle with sales an even greater majority struggle with marketing. He makes the distinction between the two by saying sales is what you do in person and marketing is what you do through a system.

The better your marketing system the more you sell, if you are struggling with sales look to your marketing process, which is after all about communications.

To build  brands, personal or corporate, we have to invest more in communications. Brands don't just happen. They are built and propped up by communication that is deliberate, systematic and consistent.

HOW TO MANAGE A CRISIS.... YOU DON'T!

It always makes me laugh.

This or that company has got bad press. Suddenly the phone is ringing off the hook, "What do we do?","How do we make this go away?" "Who can we talk to?"

I can imagine too, that more often than not, when tempers are still hot an official from the company has called the media house and given them a tongue-lashing, including threatening to take them to court, hang their mothers from the rafters and everything in between.

The above questions often come after things have cooled down a bit and the company is wondering what to do ... they are now in crisis management mode. By this time of course, the horse has truly bolted from the barn.

Here below are my fast and ready rules for managing a PR crisis

1. Calm down

Often times, because we are so engrossed in our own little bubble we think that the sky is going to fall around our ears. In the greater scheme of things many times, it is not as bad as it looks because one, the news is not as widespread as you think and two, if you have done your home work the people you care about you will see through the lies or brush them off as an isolated incident or never get to know about it anyway.

Take a moment. Breath. Clear your mind. Get a grip.

And most importantly don't rush into any action that may make things worse or antagonise potential allies who would help diffuse the mess.

Sadly spokesmen do the complete opposite, lash out at the media, make unnecessary calls to unrelated parties and generally make a mess of a not-so-bad situation.

      2. Who do you know?

Hopefully you have calmed down and the next thing is to make an inventory of your resources.  What is your side of the story? What are the channels you want/can use to get your story out? Who do you know in the media?

This where the rubber hits the road. If as a PR manager you have not been cultivating and nurturing your contacts in the media, chances are it will be an uphill struggle to get your side of the story out. Also because you have not been in touch you don't know how the media work and therefore how to effectively get your message out.

      3.Counter, deflect or bury your head in the sand

Believe it or not being defensive is not the only solution.

Sometimes the media has got it wrong and a robust response may be the key to shutting the whole mess down. But what happens if they have it right? Going after them hammer and tongs, hoping to intimidate them into silence or retracting their story, may backfire on you spectacularly and may very well make things worse. The smart thing would be to admit the error of your ways without admitting the error of your ways. This is often characterised by the response "We are not aware of this but we shall investigate the matter and if found to be true ...blah, blah"

And sometime silence is the best answer. With this you may judge by responding you will only raise the issues profile or that if you keep silent it may just blow over with little to no damage to the organisation.

This is the default position of many organisations but there is a real danger in this strategy. One, is that the consensus is that silence signals acceptance or guilt and secondly, nature abhors a vacuum and in this it will be filled and often than not to your detriment.

Crisis will come. That's a mathematical certainty. How you handle it will depend on how the PR department has been building the brand, maintaining relations with the media and within your company.

The truth though is that if your PR has not been deliberate,systematic and consistent up to that point the crisis may very well bury you. Good luck.

I AM THE PRO.... NOW WHAT?

So my friend was recently appointed the public relations manager of company X, lets call it Jack, Jilll & sons Ltd when it hit him that he didn't really know what he was going to do.

Which seemed strange since he had aced their interview, in an extensive and highly competitive process.

We sat down with my hyperventilating friend to chart a plan of attack for his new job and it looked something like this.

1. What's the company strategy?

The company he is set to work for has a set of strategic objectives my friend, called him Jalango, needs to acquaint himself with and commit to help achieve through his office as the brand custodian of the company.

The PR/Communications department is where the soul of the company's brand is nurtured and built before it is sent off to the marketing department to spruce up and defend with advertising.

Once he knows the strategic objectives of the company he would then be able to draw up his own communications strategy in which he would prescribe actions to achieve the the aforementioned strategies.

     2. Know your people

He was going in to head a team of three with the option to hire another person within his first year. He needed to get the measure of his people very quickly and decide how they fit in his strategy and what gap the new person would be coming in to fill.

We worked out that he needed at least one person to understand his strategy and even help in its development and if the other two were good implementors he would be off to the races. He also needed someone who would help him liaise with the media, hopefully a former media person, he was already respected in the media. It would be an added bonus if he had someone "who knows guys, who know guys" to get quickly around the organisation and the media.

    3. Touch base with your allies, enemies and everything in between

They had a PR agency under contract. He would have o go in there, share his  strategy and have a clear demarcation of responsibility. It was his responsibility to make sure they got value for money from the agency.

And then he would have to do a round of the media houses and understand house understand their workings, what they would require from him, what was feasible to expect from them and who will be his go to people -- find out their birthdays, their favourite restaurants, beers and if they were an Avenger who would they be --- that last one more important than you can imagine.

The media can make you or break the best PR man. If you think they are your enemies you would best be advised to keep them closer than your friends.

    4. Quickly who has the power?

Once we have the above sorted we would need to cover his back. Look within the company. Find out the power dynamics -- who has the power? who may have the power? who may not have the power but think they have the power? who may have the power but don't know they have the power? etc etc

This important because many companies think that the communication function is the dumping ground of those who have failed elsewhere, those who cant be sacked but have to be put somewhere eg the chairman's son or those who are in purgatory. 

Companies don't take communications seriously. It doesn't show until they are in a crisis and they have no clue how to get their message out.

To get anything done the PR man has to know the levers of power and how to work them, because communication is to important to be left to chance.

Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; 

it is your life’s artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.

----Robert Greene

BOOK REVIEW: THE NEW INFLUENCERS

With the waning influence of traditional media, social media is stepping up to take it's place. Traditional media has stopped trying to beat off the barbarians at the gate and joined in the fun, albeit halfheartedly.

What social media has done is taken the power away from the editors and producers to determine what is and what is not news, effectively democratising news gathering, production and distribution. In effect everyone can build their own media platforms.

Enter the influencers, those powerful nodes at the intersection of social media networks who appeal more deeply and intimately to niches that the mass media only gave a passing interest to.

This book was published in 2009 and tried to capture a trend at the time that was riding on the growing influence of social media in Western countries.

It describes how companies and personalities were joining the blogosphere to control their own narratives and launch what was known as conversational marketing. The books observations, prescriptions and predictions remian relevant today.

The realisation was crystallising then, that there was an information overload and the only way to break through the noise was to be a content provider who finds the audience where it is, with content that they want.

Gillin could have been writing about where we are today a decade later.

It explores topics like the changing face of PR, how social media has made small beautiful again and unlocks the puzzle of how to send your message viral.

It is an absolute must read for anyone in the communications business trying to make sense of the rapid changes in the sector.

HAPPY LABOUR DAY

GOOGLE YOURSELF

Do just that.

What do you see?

Googling yourself will help determine how visible you are -- you can have no brand if no one knows about it, and if at all, what the world knows you for.

It can go one of three ways.

One, that Google doesn't know you. You have no online presence. You have no email address, no Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram account. How can that be? Maybe you are retired and in the village -- you retired in the 1990s.

Two, you have an online presence alright but its not really in your control. Its often other people writing about you, the press? Which is rarely good. You know what they say "Nothing makes for good news like bad news" If someone is writing your story, filling your online vacuum it is rarely good or accurate.

And finally you not only have an online  presence but its you dictating the narrative generally. That's where we should all aim to be.

This is important for several reasons but not least of all that the first impressions of you online are created by yourself, everything else can only be built off your own narrative of yourself.

That is one of the reasons famous people publish memoirs. Everybody is free to write about them but they will have to start with your story.

Maybe legacy is less of a concern for you right now. 

Think of your online presence as enabling tool for recruiters looking for prospective employees or businesses looking for consultants or to pattern with someone. Think of it as making their work easier, and who doesn't want to do less work?

Today anyone who is anyone goes on line to get a sense of people they meet, people they may want to work with  or people they want to work for.

Personal branding can not be left to chance. Your online profile has to be a case of putting your best foot forward.

Seeing as most of us are not of interest to the mass media we advise clients to get blogs. Facebook doesn't quite work. 

In a blog you can have articles, audio or video of yourself speaking on the subject of your expertise and totally under your control without going through the filter of the newsroom.

And once you have you bog, essentially the raw material, you need to drive traffic towards it and push its ranking up your google page, where every one will see it first time.

A story for another day.

CELEBS ENDORSING MY PRODUCT? WHY NOT?

When golfer Tiger Woods sunk his last putt to win The Masters at the Augusta National Golf Club earlier this month it was his first major in a decade.

A series of unfortunate events -- numerous back surgeries and the spectacular collapse of his marriage, threw his game off and it was feared he would not live up to his potential of overhauling legend Jack Nickalus' record 18 major tournament victories. The Masters win brought Woods' tally to 15.

While the golfing world sighed with relief -- Woods is a joy to watch and brings a certain electricity to the events he participates in, an underlying subplot was playing out, about how sports equipment company Nike stayed with Woods on their roster product endorsements when most of his major sponsors  took the hills when he was in trouble.

Experts were unanimous that Nike, which has a reputation for signing on racy characters didn't suffer too much for being associated with Woods' travails but more clean cut brands like you would find in the financial or children's sectors may have suffered if they stayed with the star.

Celebrity endorsements of products are intended to gain the product greater awareness and serve as positive association for what brand the celebrity endorses. If the brands vision and values are aligned to that those of the star it can work to the mutual benefit of both parties --- helping the brand to sell more and making the endorser fabulously rich.

In Uganda this has not caught on much. Probably a function of marketing departments being a bit green about milking the potential benefits of such tool in their marketing strategy toolbox.

Endorsements contracts if crafted well benefit from the fact that people enjoy stories about other people, because it allows them to relate or even aspire to their heroes. This emotional connection can ensure untold mileage for the product owner, give them much more bang for their buck.

BOOK REVIEW: THE ANATOMY OF BUZZ: CREATING WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING

So what communication goes viral and what doesn't?

 "The anatomy of buzz" by Emanuel Rosen was first published in 2000 long before social media, it was a book ahead of it's time and clearly for this time.

Word of mouth marketing which has been recognised as a powerful marketing tool, has really come into it's own with social media.

Where individuals have becoming influencers, lugging around huge followings and hawking these to the highest bidder.

In this context the book assumes added relevance as Rosen describes how powerful networks can be built, maintained and leveraged to shift goods and services.

Overlaying his startegies on to social media can turn a so-so marketer into a Titan --- not overnight, but with diligence and persistence, soon enough.

SOME CHOICE QUOTES

"The idea that a critical part of marketing is word of mouth and validation from important personal relationships is absolutely key, and most marketers ignore it."

"Being a network hub is not

 about having lots of friends. 

It's also about who 

these friends

 have been

 connected to."

"Buzz travels most smoothly through the networks

 built on trust."

"To create buzz about a product you 

need to reach people where

they hang out."

"For buzz to succeed, you need two things: a contagious product -- 
one that has some inherent value that makes people talk -- 
and someone
 behind the scenes 
who accelerates 
natural contagion."

"There is a misconception that

 if a dealership gives good service it will automatically get good word of mouth. 

What we have found is that the dealerships that make a conscious effort to promote word of mouth

 are the ones that are most successful in getting word of mouth."

COMMUNICATING THE CRANE WILL BE KEY

Uganda Airlines first two planes landed at Entebbe Airport on Tuesday to much pomp and ceremony.

The resumption of activity after an 18 year hiatus has come amidst much criticism. Detractors believe the huge outlay needed to get the airline to commercial viability is money that wold be better spent revamping our social services, building our road network or beefing up security. Especially since, they argue, we do not lack for airlines flying into and out of Uganda -- 19 at last count.

The promoters did not exactly cover themselves in glory, failing spectacularly to counter their detractors, only managing that an airline is as tragic piece of infrastructure.

And that is going to be Uganda Airlines' main challenge going forward, the development  and execution of a robust communication strategy. Hiding their head in the sand is no longer an option.

A communication  strategy that help build the brand, carrying the momentum from all the good will witnessed when the Bombadier CRJ 900 jets touched down well into the future, past the hard years ahead. They need to do more with cultivating the media.

As pointed out in an earlier blog a branding strategy begins with creating awareness, which should not be a problem for the new Uganda Airlines, whose beginning have bee covered in controversy and culminated in a champagne popping receiving of the planes at Entebbe Airport.

They will need to work on building favourable associations around the plane. In the aviation industry reliability, convenience and safety are key.

Related to the above they have to work their socks of to give the clients a better than good experience, because clients who will be flying them know what good service is and will give them little benefit of doubt on this score.

And if they can ace all these loyalty, and hence long term viability, will be a given .

This communication strategy should anchor an equally formidable marketing strategy to help sell the tickets that will keep those birds aflight.

Like in any brand building exercise this branding strategy will have to be deliberate, systematic and consistent.

IS THE MEDIA YOUR ENEMY? THEN YOU NEED TO KEEP IT CLOSE

I roll my eyes every time someone says he or his company avoids the media.

In their mind the media is good for nothing except misrepresenting, misquoting and generally making a bad situation worse. Their response to this reality --- their reality, is to avoid the media like the plague.

They have worked themselves up to perceive the media as their enemy. If that is true -- to them, then wouldn't it be wiser to follow the old say that counsels, "Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer"?

The best way to overcome fear of anything is to gain more knowledge about it. Where there is ignorance there is fear. If you think about if you know something intimately you cant fear it. You may not like it but you wouldn't fear it.

What baffles people about the media is that they don't understand what makes them tick. If they knew that, their perception of the media would change immeasurably.

So here goes.

The media is driven by two things ---deadlines and the news worthiness of a subject or event. That is simplifying it to its barest essentials.



THE DEADLINE


Every media house has a deadline. there are series of deadlines through the news cycle -- assigning deadlines, editing deadlines, printing deadlines. All these build up to the final deadline which is in the case of the print media, when the publication hits the street; in the case of broadcast media when the news item goes on air and in more recently in the digital media when it is put out on the internet.

In a media house or operation worth its salt this final deadline is what rules their lives. in the print media getting to market after the competition can cost thousands of copies in lost sales. In the broadcast media gaining a reputation as the one with the news everyone wants to hear at the top of the hour will mean the difference between listeners turning the dial to your station or in the case of TV reaching for the remote to switch to your channel.

Media make their money by being able to attract audiences. no audiences no money and vice versa.

So if one wants to leverage the media to deliver their message they need to pay attention to deadlines, which are as diverse as the media you are dealing with.

If you are dealing with the daily papers who have to be around the country by the crack of dawn the next day, it does not help you to have a news event after 3 pm if you want the news to run he next day.

The kind of events that take place in the late afternoon and make the papers the next day are often earth shattering or even better will add extra copies to sales.



NEWS WORTHINESS


In journalism school they tell you that newsworthiness of an event will depend on several things including impact, relevance, proximity, prominence, conflict, timeliness to which you can also add drama and the unusual.

But before the media house reaches for those lofty heights, what determines what is news or not depends on three fundamentals;

1.  The media house's ownership

In the old days rich men owned newspapers as a tool of influence, to promote their own agendas, newspapers would often taken on their owner's character and mirror his biases. So in western economies you will find papers that support the monied classes or labour. Little has changed today.

So it makes little sense to have a news event or item you need pushed that is contrary to owners' world view. If for instance you have a capitalist news event it would be a waste of your time trying to pitch to the labour-leaning press and vice versa.

2.  The target market

The media are a business and as such have identified a target market to which they will target their news.

So if you are launching a sugar loaded soft drink it would be shooting yourself in the foot trying to slide it into a pro-health publication or media house. Or if you are launching a meat product trying to get it into a vegetarian biased publication.


3.  The editorial tradition.

Often unwritten rules but such things as endevouring to be as accurate as person, to give people the right of reply, to desist or insist on the sensational angle.

In inviting the sensational press for your press conference on company results, you should not be surprised if they make a mountain over a mole hill just to maintain their sensational reputation.

The point is the media is not as opaque as many people think, even communication officers who should know better.

If you understand your intended media target's deadline priorities and how it determines what is news it will make if so much easier to leverage the media for your needs , rather than fill you with pissing-in-your-pants dread.

THE POWER AT THE INTERSECTION

Many years ago I visited the spokesperson of top financial institution in The City. This man, let's call him John, was very clear about the target market and the best media to get to them.

He said if he had a piece of information to put out he would bend over backwards to ensure the wire services -- Reuters, Dow Jones, Bloomberg and with the m the Financial Times understand his message and get it absolutely right. If he achieved that then for all practical purposes his work was done.

As bonus he would put out his message to the quality broadsheets, but wouldn't feel too bad if they misplaced a comma or question mark.

As for the tabloids, if they never heard about it he would not lose sleep and if they got it wrong anyway, it would be okay because his target market did not go to them for financial news.

You may wish that you could reach all your target market, but that is practically impossible.  

The next best hing is to find those people/institutions in your target market who act as the disseminators of information. They are normally located at the intersection or center of many in your  market, are credible, believed by your target market.

In an earlier blog about Jesus as a master communicator we alluded to this in his choice of disciples. The potency of his message is indisputable but his effectiveness in getting the message out, is still felt 2000 years down the road.

And that is why the media is powerful medium for sending out messages. The media by design is a powerful node in a country or community's communication network. It can be leveraged to get your message out to your preferred audience.

Employing it will take an understanding of how it works and who its target audience is.

You can try banging on every one of the doors of your target market, to get your message across, but it is much more efficient to find those nodes of influence, develop relationships and that you work with with to reach the larger group.

THE MESSAGE OF EASTER... SORT OF?

On Easter Sunday Jesus rose from the dead, launching a religion, Christianity, that spread his message of love to the four corners of the earth and changed the world forever.

It is doubtful that two thousand odd years later we would still celebrate Jesus' life and ressurection had he not been centered in his role as the son of God, grounded in his faith and to round it off a master communicator.

For argument's sake in our brand personality matrix Jesus is firmly in the top right hand quadrant, the thought leader.

Beyond his Christian message we would do well to learn from his methods as a communicator to aid our own causes.

1. He knew his subject

Jesus knowledge of the scripture was evident at an early age. As precocious boy he was once feared lost but found engaged in deep conversation with the Jewish leaders in the temple in Jerusalem.

As a young adult he went away into the desert to deepen his faith before emerging 40 days later to announce his mission.

Even for the son of God it took time to prepare for his mission. There are no shortcuts. To ascend to thought leadership you need an education and experience all of which take time.

2. He tapped into powerful networks

Since Judaism the established religion became quickly hostile to him and his message, Jesus set up on tapping into other powerful networks.

He recruited among the fishing -- seven of his disciples were fishermen, trading and even tax collecting communities. These were all men respected in their respective fields who could be used to relay the message.

From this core he recruited others who he sent out into the world to preach the message.

Jesus was an outstanding character in his own right drawing huge crowds wherever he went but he knew that for his message to gain traction he needed others to help him spread the word.

One of the most pwoerful communication tools is word of mouth, especially from some who you respect.

In the modern world this would mean tapping into established media to build your personal brand.

3. He employed third party endorsements

After performing miracles he often told the healed to go out and tell what God had done for them.

The power of third party endorsements can not be understated. Your brand will get much more traction from others talking well of you and your work than going out and blowing your own trumpet.

We can mine Jesus' story for many more communication lessons but these three can serve as the bedrock of spreading your own message, hopefully to the four corners of the earth --- and why not?

PR BUILDS BRANDS, ADVERTISING DEFENDS THEM

My friend who wants to launch a new product is asking about advertising costs, which is what many of us do, but is it correct or even effective?

In their seminal book "The fall of advertising and the rise of PR" the authors are emphatic that PR (communications) build brands through use of media and third party endorsements.

The book published almost 20 years ago also speaks of the rise of personal branding, "If you want to get ahead in the corporation today, you need to be personally visible. How are you going to do that? By launching and advertising program? Obviously not."

In an earlier Blog this point was made using the personal branding matrix and what components of a brand are.

An investment in communicating your value is what will make you more visibile, build your brand.

WHAT'S ALL THIS BRANDING BUSINESS?

That was the irritated question of one of  our potential clients.

In his mind he was doing just fine in his chosen line of work and also he was brought up to believe that we will be known by our works, no need to brag about it.

By the way his brand, by accident, is very strong; he is well known for what he does, his intelligence is unquestionable and the quality of his work is impeccable. By doing good work consistently, he has benefited from word of mouth referrals so yes, why did he have to invest more in his brand.

Brand is just a fancy name for reputation, personal branding is ensuring that your reputation (hopefully a good one) precedes you.

To build as a starting point building a brand needs an understanding of its component parts.

Awareness, you can't have a brand if no one knows about it. As a starting point in building a brand you have to get the news out there.

Secondly you want to build favourable associations around your brand. My man up there is known for quality work, his brand stands for quality. The brand is then enhanced by the experience people have with it, needless to say you want this to be positive. And assuming you have the last three pinned down you can expect greater loyalty to your brand -- until you take your eyes off the ball.


That is the danger of a brand built by accident. When something bad happens you will not know what to do when you poke your head under the hood to fix the problem.

THE MAGIC KEY .... YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

My friend, lets call him John, has had a long and illustrious career.

He went to some of the best schools in our town and at university studied business administration. He did his time at the till at a big bank, put his career on hold to get a masters in corporate finance.

John returned to Uganda. Thankfully his old employer had a place for him and he has been with him ever since. He is respected in his industry he is fast approaching retirement. 

John has been prudent with his money. With what he has stoked away in shares, government paper his provident fund and his savings with NSSF, it is not likely that he will retreat to a life of destitution.

His worry is that he will have time weighing heavily on his hands, with nothing to do. The thought has crossed his mind of setting up a consultancy, but the rough and tumble of setting up a new business does not appeal to him.

He knows he has what it takes. On free evenings he has helped friends and relatives set up their own businesses, acquaintances restructure their businesses and even advised on "mergers and acquisitions" of the odd SME here and there. For most of the work he allowed his "Clients" to pay him whats fair with several assignments being done pro bono so he had no doubt in his mind about the value he could still provide.

The challenge is not that he is not competent, that he does not have value to offer as a consultant or there is no market for his services once he has left the bank.

John's dilemma is a common one.

The personal brand matrix above locates all of us in one of those four quadrants which differentiates us by a combination of the level of our competence and our visibility as competent or not in the field of our choosing.

In the lower right hand quadrant are the fakes, those with high visibility but low competence. They walk among us and are the reason the saying "Empty tins make most noise" was created.

In the lower left hand corner are those who have low visibility and low competence. Not  bad place to be. These are often young, starting out in their career with no experience and some education. Untested and unbattered by life's ups and downs.

We call them raw material, they can be molded into very useful members of our society. This they will do by putting in the time to educate themselves, gain experience and be in a state of continuous learning about themselves and their environment in order to become experts.

Experts abound. Anyone coming to the close of their careers -- like John, who has been consistent and dedicated in his chosen field of work qualifies as an expert. By the close of one's career ideally one should be at the highest point on the competence scale.

The fourth and final quadrant are the Thought leaders. These are the ones who are not only competent but by design or accident, their value is recognised within their own industry and beyond.

These are those among us who make the most money -- they do not seat interviews, they are head hunted; their skills as consultants are in demand; they work with whom they want, where they want and when they want.

That's where we should all aspire to be, whether we are in corporate Uganda or not.

"To make the transition from the Expert to the Thought leader quadrant is dependent on what communications you put out or go about you. We can consciously manage this if we are systematic, deliberate and consistent in employing the media -- traditional and new....