I agree that personal branding is important. It provides people with, effectively, what your mission statement about yourself is. for thenewgreen it's "think Clausnitzer." and (it appears) being an ideas guy. As for myself, people seem to associate me with reliability and determination to get the job done. In my other organization, and other similar organizations at my college, I've often been referred to as "the right hand of <radio station here>" both by the rest of our upper management but also by the upper management of other organizations. That's always good to hear, and a bit of an ego boost. My brand is reliability.
My brand is reliability.
-That's an awesome thing to be associated with. It's amazing and sad how many people are not. But then my grandfather always says, "thank heavens for shitty competition." Reliability goes a long ways.
I'm glad you think so! There's an entire group of people that my roommates and I are friends with that we refer to as the "flake crew". This is because they are completely unreliable and constantly ducking out on responsibilities or even on hanging out with people because they decided they wanted to do something else. It's only completely annoying to deal with. I like that saying by your grandfather, I might have to use it from time to time.
I've always been keenly aware that as an individual within a large organization I had to develop and nurture my own personal brand. When leaving a meeting with senior management in which I made a positive impact, I would always say, "think Clausnitzer." -Cheesy as hell, I know it.. but when it came time to give out new territory or even excess bonus money, they thought Clausnitzer and it equated to more $ in my pocket. I was recently at a training seminar and one of the SVP's of our company was there. He took me aside and said, "you're an ideas guy, what do you think of...." -It made my day. My personal brand had made an impact on him despite me never having worked directly with him. I think that we can too often assume that "brand" means "logo" or even your formal business. Brand can mean "you" too. By the way, the idea I pitched him on is called "Archives". :)