Personal branding is often misconceived as a modern trend exclusive to CEOs and celebrities, but it actually dates back to 1997 and is relevant for everyone, including young professionals. The misconception exists that personal branding happens automatically or equates to bragging. However, it requires intentional effort, strategic expression, and competence to project an authentic personal image effectively.

The speaker dispels the notion that personal branding is solely linked to social media. Instead, it is an intentional, strategic practice that extends beyond online platforms. A well-established network plays a crucial role in personal branding, as exemplified by the success story of Bill Gates and Microsoft. A diverse and deep network contributes to building a strong personal brand.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. demystify [diːˈmɪstɪˌfaɪ] - (verb) - To clarify or make something clear and easy to understand. - Synonyms: (clarify, explain, illuminate)

In this little talk, I'm going to look at seven myths of personal branding and I'm going to kind of demystify these seven myth by presenting the facts.

2. deluge [ˈdeljuːdʒ] - (noun) - A severe flood or an overwhelming influx of something. - Synonyms: (flood, barrage, avalanche)

The first myth is that this personal branding is something new, you know, which has come up during this whole social media deluge.

3. competent [ˈkɒmpɪtənt] - (adjective) - Having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to perform a specific task effectively. - Synonyms: (capable, proficient, skilled)

If you're good, you're competent. But you also able to project a strong personal brand.

4. articulate [ɑːˈtɪkjʊlɪt] - (adjective) - Having the ability to express ideas clearly and effectively in speech or writing. - Synonyms: (eloquent, fluent, expressive)

articulate, competent, analytical, quantitatively oriented.

5. deterministic [dɪˌtɜːrmɪˈnɪstɪk] - (adjective) - Believing that events, including human actions, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. - Synonyms: (predetermined, inevitable, preordained)

Sporty, committed, deterministic, persuasive.

6. quirkiness [ˈkwɜːrkɪnəs] - (noun) - The quality of being unusual in an interesting or amusing way. - Synonyms: (eccentricity, peculiarity, idiosyncrasy)

That's a quirkiness which is developed.

7. diverse [daɪˈvɜːs] - (adjective) - Showing a great deal of variety; very different. - Synonyms: (varied, assorted, heterogeneous)

Your network has to be diverse.

8. amplify [ˈæmplɪfaɪ] - (verb) - To increase the volume or make something stronger and more noticeable. - Synonyms: (boost, enlarge, expand)

And then how are you then going to amplify it?

9. strategic [strəˈtiːdʒɪk] - (adjective) - Relating to the identification of long-term aims and interests and the means of achieving them. - Synonyms: (planned, calculated, purposeful)

You got to be loud, but you got to be strategic.

10. validate [ˈvælɪdeɪt] - (verb) - To confirm or corroborate something as being accurate or true. - Synonyms: (confirm, verify, corroborate)

Then talk to someone who's your advisor, who's your mentor, and validate this.

Personal Branding - Myths & Reality - Ambi Parameswaran - TEDxJBIMS

So I'm going to talk about personal branding. Myth and reality. Many of you here may be under the impression that, you know, this personal branding is a fad, is some new kind of a fad. Why should it matter to me? I am a young executive or going to be a young executive. It's meant for CEO's, you know, it's too complicated and you know, isn't it just bragging? So hopefully at the end of this 20 minutes talk you'll get some clarity on what personal branding is and how it matters for all of us. The fact is that in the Harvard Business Review, June 2023, the COVID story was on personal branding. And in the article they made this kind of a complex definition of personal branding is an intentional strategic practice in which you define and express your own value. This is what HBR is saying it. But I like this thing which Jeff Bezos said a lot better, which is your personal brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. That in a sense is your personal brand.

So in this little talk, I'm going to look at seven myths of personal branding and I'm going to kind of demystify these seven myth by presenting the facts. And it's up to you to decide whether you still believe in the myth or now that you're clear, you don't believe in the myth and you believe in the reality. So let's start with the first myth. The first myth is that this personal branding is something new, you know, which has come up during this whole social media deluge. Everyone wants to post every day on Instagram and LinkedIn and all that. This is all, this is social. This is personal branding. But the reality is personal branding. The first article to appear on personal branding was written in the year 1997. It came as a cover story in a magazine called Fast Company August September issue. It was written by a management guru by the name Tom Peters. He said, you are a brand. It's up to you to decide what you want to be passionate as. So if you search for articles on personal branding, chances are this will be the first article Google will throw up. Chat, JPT may throw up something more, but Google will definitely throw this one up. So it's not new. Personal branding is almost 30 years old. So it has got nothing to do with the rise of social media. It's been there before. It's 30 years old. So it's not a new fad.

Okay, that's first myth. We are debunking that next. A lot of you here may think personal branding is meant for CEO's, it's meant for celebrities. I'm told we have a celebrity coming in soon. It's meant for them. What does it matter to me? I am a young executive. I am an account manager, I am a finance manager. Why should I be worried about personal branding? The truth is that you, irrespective of the level in the company, you have an image, you have a voice, you have a mission and therefore you are a brand. It is up to you to realize that or you are losing an opportunity. So first myth, personal branding is not something new. Been there 25 years. Second myth, personal branding is not only for superstars and celebrities and nowadays cricketers, right? Personal branding is for every one of us here.

Let's go to the third dimension. Personal branding happens on its own. And this is a myth I come across whenever I sit and work with coaches. I'm an executive coach. I work with coaches and they say, you know, I do my job, I'm working hard, I'm delivering my numbers. Why should I do all this personal branding? You know, if I do my job, if I work hard, I will get the recognition. Why should I do anything more? The truth is that just doing your job is not enough. So there is this interesting grid which, which I created with my colleague at SBMR, Professor Janikram Murthy said that look, you can be very competent. You can be not so competent. You can be very good at building a personal brand. You can be not so good at building a personal brand. So let's look at the bottom part, which is people who are not competent. If you're not competent and if you're not very good at personal branding, you will be a survivor. You will be hiding behind some bench, some stone. You will not get discovered. You will continue in your job. You will not get sacked till you get discovered. But chances are you won't get discovered. Other side is someone who is not very competent but who's always talking about himself. I am great. I am great. I am great. What happens to that person, that guy or girl that you get discovered and you either get reassigned to some other job or you get sacked. So let's go to the top of this grid. You're good. You're very good in your job. You deliver the numbers. You're hardworking and you're very competent. But you don't have any personal branding skills. What happens to you? You get branded as a workhorse, which means you get promoted at the usual time, once every three, four years. You get the normal kind of postings and your career chugs along the other side. If you're good, you're competent. But you also able to project a strong personal brand. You get seen as a star.

When you get seen as a star, you get promoted probably a little earlier. You probably get the more challenging, more interesting assignments and your career takes off. So all of you here have to remember this, that personal branding and competence have to go hand in hand. And my personal bias, competence is more important than personal branding. You got to be competent. Then you start worrying about your personal brand. So we looked at myth number one, which is new personal branding in on you. Myth number two, which is personal branding only for CEO's, which is also not true. Myth number three, personal branding will happen on its own. That's also not true.

Now we come to a more interesting side of personal branding. Which is personal branding is all about bragging, right? Personal branding is saying, you know, I'm a great guy. I've written so many books, I have delivered so many TEDx talks, I have so many people following me. That is bragging, right? And you can brag if you are Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali said it's not bragging if you can back it up and he could back it up. We can't back it up, therefore we can't brag. But therefore what? How do we then tell people about our successes? So what you need to do is you got to be proud of your successes. You got to be loud, but you got to be strategic. If you're sitting and negotiating to sign up a team or get a sponsorship of a cricket team, there's no point telling the captain of Mumbai Indians or whichever cricket team you're negotiating with that you scored a century in your cricket match in your school. Doesn't matter. So you gotta be loud, you gotta be proud and you gotta be strategic for when you talk about your achievements.

The other second trick, I'm told, and it works very well, is never talk about your achievements. Talk about your team's achievement. Never say, I did this project on time. But say that, sir, I worked with so and so and both of us completed this project ahead of time. We were given ten days. We've done it in four days. Right? By sharing this, you therefore get to be seen as a team player. At the same time, you are loud, proud and strategic. Third, if you go up the hierarchy, it's always good if you're a senior person to be a little self deprecated, a little bit humorous about how you talk about your achievements. That, again, reduces the kind of a nasty thing of a braggart.

So personal branding is not you. Personal branding is for everyone. Personal branding doesn't happen on its own. You have to work hard. Personal branding and personal branding now you saw is not bragging. Let's go to a more interesting area, which is what I call networking. When I talk about networking again to some of my coaches, they say, no, no, my network is very good. I know a lot of people in the company. I know 25 people. That's my network. But the point is that is not your only network. Your network has to be wide, has to be deep, and that's how you become a strong personal brand.

So let's go back to the origin story of a company called Microsoft. All of you know of this company, very very successful company. Who is the founder of this company? Bill Gates. What was the first contract Bill Gates got for Microsoft was to develop the disk operating system for a computer called the IBM PC. The year was 19 80 81. How did Bill Gates, who was a Harvard dropout, get to know IBM was developing a PC and got the contract for doing the software for IBM PC? The story has it that Bill Gates mother Mary Gates was a banker like my previous speaker Manil, a very successful banker. And she was also very actively involved in NGO's. And one of the NGO's she was very actively involved is a NGO called United way. And she was one of the board members of United Way and she used to attend the meeting very regularly, participate very strongly and she got to befriend a whole set of new people in the United Way board and one of them was a gentleman by the name John Ackers. So in one of the meetings, John Ackers asks Mary, Mary, your son must be in college, right? So what is Bill doing now? He is in college, right? So Mary says, look, you know John, he was in college but he has dropped out. Oh, dropped out? What is he doing? Well he is sitting in our garage and he is working with some computers and he says he is writing software. So John, that was interesting. You know what? Ask him to come over to New York. I want him to meet my team who is working on our new computer, a small computer called IBM PC. So Bill goes to IBM, gets to meet the IBM PC team and he writes the software for the first IBM PC. And that's where the journey started today, Microsoft. I checked this morning. Microsoft's market capitalization is $3.1 trillion, which is roughly ten times that of IBM. It all started getting a contract. How did they get the contract? How did he get the introduction? Because his mother had a great network.

So all of us here have to understand, what is our network? So how. What is the structure of our network? How deep is our network? How wide is our network? If you say. If I ask you to name 20 people who are part of your network, and you name 19 people who are in your batch of students and one outside who's probably a school friend of yours, I'm sorry, that's not a great network. Your network has to be diverse. It may have. May include someone who you go for a run with in the morning. It may include someone who's part of your book club. It may involve someone whose house you go to to do yoga. Right. It has to be diverse. Network has to be diverse. And the relationship has to be deep. John Ackers knew about Mary Gates and her son, which means they had sat and discussed all this. I have a son who is studying blah, blah, blah. Your network has to be wide. Your network has to be deep. And every one of us, it's up to us to build our network to be wide and deep.

So that was our myth number five. Now let's go to myth number six, which I, again, hear very common. Right. Personal branding is too complex. I can't spend time doing this. It's just too complex. The fact is, first of all, life, everything is complex, in a sense, coming and standing up, giving this talk is complex. Everything is complex. So nothing can be easy. But at the same time, it is not as complex as it's made out to be. It starts, really with what Sid Gordon said. Start defining yourself in four words. What are the four words you'll define yourself? articulate, competent, analytical, quantitatively oriented. Humorous or serious? Right. Sporty, committed, deterministic, persuasive. Right. How do you define. And there are clear five steps. The first step, define your brand in four words. Maybe three words. Maybe four words. Define it yourself for yourself.

But this is your view. The world may not see you that way. I may think I'm a very, very humorous speaker, but none of you may think I'm humorous. It's not working. So after you put down your four or five words, then talk to someone who's your advisor, who's your mentor, and validate this. Are these four words right for me, or am I talking to the top of my head? After you finalized your four words, then you start working on building your brand. Express yourself. You want to be seen. You're seen as a somewhat funny guy, right? Little humorous guy. Maybe you should start wearing orange trousers. So you do something different to bring out your personality. I know a friend of mine who's a CEO of a media company. His quirkiness was socks. He has a collection of multicolored socks. He only wears those multicolored socks. That's a quirkiness which is developed.

So how are you going to bring out your personal brand? And then how are you then going to amplify it? Maybe through social media, maybe through other means coming and giving talks like this, amplify your brand and finally monitor how your brand is doing. You may have to make changes after two years. You may say, no, this is not working. I am seen this way. I need to make this change. So make the change.

So this is myth number eight. So we started with personal branding is not new. Personal branding is something is meant for every one of us. Personal branding doesn't happen automatically. Personal branding is not just bragging. Personal branding and networking are important. And personal branding is not all that complex as we think it is. And now we come to something which a lot of young people mistake as equal to personal branding, which is social media. People think social media is equal to personal branding, which is incorrect. You have to define your personal brand and social media comes on top. Social media is nothing but the icing on the cake. It is not the cake. If it is a cake, everyone will become a champion. So it's not, it's just the topping of the cake.

So be aware of that. So be aware that your personal branding is not equal to social media. Personal branding gets topped up by social media. So with this, we have all the myths out there. It is not a fad. It doesn't happen only for CEO's. It doesn't happen on its own. It is not bragging. Networking is not a waste of time. You can probably end up building a $3.1 trillion company if you have or your mom has a good. Networking is not too complex. Don't worry, there are nothing, you know, huge grids and complicated flowcharts. It is pretty simple. And networking is not just social media. It's a lot more than social media.

And to just to bring it alive. I think Seth Gordon says it very nicely that many of us taught do your best and let the world judge us. But it is better to do your best and decide how you want to be judged by the world, right? So this little talk is pulled out of my book, all the words of stage which I call a personal branding story.

Personal Branding, Leadership, Education, Inspiration, Entrepreneurship, Motivation, Tedx Talks