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Building Your Brand in 5 Easy Ways

Mention the word 'branding' and most people will only think of international brands like Facebook, Google and Apple. In reality, we are each a brand, as a brand simply means what you stand for.

Today we may be a not-famous brand, but tomorrow we could be reaching out to people we never thought of before, as long as we build our brand in 5 easy ways:

  1. Know What We Stand For.  Yes, what we stand for are usually our deepest passion and innate desire to help others.  Like me AndyTheCoach, people know that I stand for coaching and teaching, for I gave up a high-figure Director post in a Japanese MNC 13.5 years ago to go into full-time coaching and training.  
  2. Do That Few People Do.  It doesn't need to be something big, all you need is that you don't do what others do and you dare to do what others don't do.  Like Steve Jobs in 1997, when he took over the interim CEO position in Apple Inc, he took just a $1 salary but asked for huge amounts of stock options that were worthless at that time as people don't think Apple will ever make it.  Steve Jobs did not do what most CEOs do: ask for big salary. 
  3. Persist in Whatever You're Doing.  This sounds obvious, as people will only take you seriously if you can persist in doing when others have given up.  Like Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, he persisted in keeping Facebook advertisement-free until 2009 (6 years after Facebook gone overseas).   Today, Facebook's profits are in billions while other earlier social media sites like Friendster are now small shadows of Facebook's reach.
  4. Develop a Flagship Project that makes people take notice of you.  Like our "How to Be a Better Manager" 4-module course, since 2006, we have ran 62 batches in 5 countries including Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. 
  5. Focus on Quality Throughout.  Do not take short cuts and cut short on delivery, as this is the first sign of business decay.
By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer at Asia Trainers, whose courses on Sales and Management have now reached over 13 countries including Japan, Thailand, Maldives, Brunei, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Sri Lanka. Details are found here

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