You can get yourself out of this crisis by re-branding and managing yourself effectively and by building, implementing and cultivating your authentic personal brand according to this model. If you are well branded according to this approach, you will master the financial crisis successfully, smartly save costs, generate new revenues, find it easier to convince others and attract the people and opportunities that are a perfect fit for you.

This new system will help you to actively grow and distinguish yourself as an exceptional professional. Remember what Albert Einstein said: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”. Now is the best time to engage in a meaningful dialogue with yourself and build your personal brand in order to better master the financial crisis with your unique value proposition. This innovative personal branding approach will provide you a roadmap to translate your genius, dreams and aspirations into manageable improvement actions and will help you adjust your market offerings to the different crisis needs of various customer segments. Now during the crisis it is a great time to reposition yourself strongly in relation to your competitors, built a strong reputation, develop an effective image of yourself that you want to project in everything you do, and become more creative and innovative. While some individuals fight for survival, this financial crisis is an excellent opportunity for visionary people who like to differentiate themselves, set them apart from others and create an identity around themselves. This makes it easier for others to remember who they are, become known as a thriving and distinguished professional and improve themselves continuously. They develop their own creative responses to this financial crisis instead of following the standard responses of individuals during a recession. They master the personal financial crisis because they have identified and leveraged their authentic dream, respond to it with passion, know what make them unique, special, different and outstanding, identified their genius, expand their limits based on this, and have faith in themselves and the courage to pursue their dream and personal brand.

Four Points to Master a Personal Financial Crisis

Building an authentic Personal Brand to response to the financial crisis is an evolutionary and organic process. This process consists of the following four phases, which are the building blocks of a strong authentic Personal Brand (see figure 1):

1) Define and formulate your Authentic Personal Ambition; This phase involves defining and formulating your Personal Ambition in an exciting and persuasive manner and making it visible. Your Personal Ambition is the soul, starting point, core intention and the guiding principles of your Personal Brand. It’s the fuel for your brand and encompasses your personal vision, mission, and key roles.

2) Define and formulate your Authentic Personal Brand; This phase involves defining and formulating an authentic, distinctive, relevant, concise, meaningful, compelling, enduring, and crystal clear Personal Brand promise, and use it as the focal point of your behavior and actions. First of all, perform a personal SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and evaluate yourself after using the breathing and silence exercise. This will also make you aware of the signs of the financial crisis in your internal and external environment. The result of SWOT analysis is the definition of your personal life style. …

3) Formulate your Personal Balanced Scorecard (PBSC); Personal Ambition and Personal Brand have no value unless you take action to make them a reality. Therefore the emphasis in this stage is developing an integrated and well balanced action plan based on your Personal Ambition and Personal Brand to reach your life and brand objectives and to eliminate any negative elements. It’s about translating your Personal Ambition and Personal Brand into your PBSC (action). Your PBSC entails your personal critical success factors that are related to your Personal Ambition and Brand and the corresponding objectives, performance measures, targets and prioritized improvement actions to master the crisis and to manage yourself effectively.

4) Implement and cultivate your Personal Ambition, Personal Brand and Personal Balanced Scorecard; Personal Ambition, Personal Brand, and the PBSC have no value unless you implement them to make it a reality. Therefore the next step is to implement, maintain, and cultivate your ambition, brand and PBSC effectively. You have to articulate your Personal Brand with love and passion, be committed to change, and improve your perceived value in the marketplace and yourself continuously. In addition, try to build credibility and become an expert in your field. Get the word out through a variety of media channels, do work you love which is consistent with your Personal Brand and values, gain experience in areas of your brand in which you are weak, promote yourself, market your brand frequently and consistently, make conscious choices about the people you associate with, build a strong network, deliver on your brand promise, and in short live according to your brand promise. To guide you in this process a unique learning cycle called the Plan-Deploy-Act-Challenge cycle (PDAC cycle) have been introduced, which should be followed continuously. …read further at http://tinyurl.com/cb9r8b

This article is based on Dr. Hubert Rampersad’s new book “Authentic Personal Branding:  A new blueprint for building and aligning a powerful leadership brand’ (Information Age Publishing Inc, 2009). You may email him at h.rampersad@tps-international.com.

Hubert K. Rampersad, B.S., M.Sc., Ph.D. is a Leading Expert on Personal Branding, Bestselling Author, and Keynote Speaker. He is president at TPS International Inc. and Personal Branding University in the US and author of the bestselling books “Total Performance Scorecard” , “Personal Balanced Scorecard”, “TPS-Lean Six Sigma”, and “Authentic Personal Branding: A new blueprint for building and aligning a powerful leadership brand’ (http://www.infoagepub.com/index.php?id=9&p=p49bebb1cdd589), which have been published in many languages. Dr. Rampersad is member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Training and Management Development Methods (UK), journal Measuring Business Excellence (UK), TQM Magazine (UK), and Singapore Management Review. He is also a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s prestigious Thought Leader Advisory Board (San Diego), and selected by The Marshall Goldsmith School of Management as one of the 35 distinguished thought leaders in the US in the field of leadership development. His views on happiness in life and work were published in BusinessWeek. Hubert Rampersad President, TPS International Inc. & Personal Branding University P.O. Box 601564 North Miami Beach Florida 33160, USA Phone: +1-786-537-7580 Fax: +1-714-464-4498 h.rampersad@tps-international.com www.personalbranding-university.com www.Total-Performance-Scorecard.com www.linkedin.com/in/hubertrampersad Twitter: http://twitter.com/PBUniversity Skype: h.rampersad