Are You A Purple Cow? Personal Branding Helps You Stand Out!

The concepts that Seth Godindescribes in his book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable can be applied to individuals as well as more formal businesses. In fact, the very concept of personal branding is the "purple cow".

What is a purple cow? As Mr.Godin describes, imagine yourself driving through farm country seeing brown cow after brown cow. Pretty soon you no longer even notice that there are any cows around. They all blend into the background. Imagine that as you're driving there's one purple cow. Your eyes will notice it and grab your attention. Even if you drive past, you may do a double take and go back to see it.

Imagine now a world of resumes, proposals, people vying for jobs or contracts. How many of them pretty much look the same? Virtually all of them. It's safe to follow the standard format, have the same background and experience. It takes hard work and risk taking to stand out. Who do you think employers are looking for more, someone to blend in or someone to be outstanding? What kind of job to you want, one where you blend in or one where you shine?

In this day and age having an college or advanced degree, while necessary is no longer a outstanding, while 20 years or more ago it was. Technical knowledge, such as computer programming or statistics is also necessary, but not so special. If you go online and look at resumes you'll see that most of them look pretty much the same. Sure people's specifics might be different - different companies they worked for, different specific projects and different schools but fundamentally they are communicating essentially the same information, making it difficult for a hiring manager to decide which one is more worthy to bring in for an interview.

In order to stand out, conveying the same basic qualifications as everyone else is insufficient; you have to communicate your unique value added. You must be remarkable!

You need to understand what makes you special and how to communicate it in a way that will resonate with the right audience, not just any audience. Personal branding helps you do exactly that. Uncover your unique qualities and learn how to communicate them to the right people, whether you are looking for another job, a promotion or your next big contract win.

Do you want to be a brown cow or a purple cow? If you want to be purple it's time for some personal branding!