The Brand You 50 : Or : Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an 'Employee' into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!

Michael Goldhaber, writing in Wired, said, "If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won't get noticed and that increasingly means you won't get paid much either. In times past you could be obscure yet secure -- now that's much harder."

Again: the white collar job as now configured is doomed. Soon. ("Downsizing" in the nineties will look like small change.) So what's the trick? There's only one: distinction. Or as we call it, turning yourself into a brand . . . Brand You.

A brand is nothing more than a sign of distinction. Right? Nike. Starbucks. Martha Stewart. The point (again): that's not the way we've thought about white collar workers--ourselves--over the past century. The "bureaucrat" on the finance staff is de facto faceless, plugging away, passing papers.

But now, in our view, she is born again, transformed from bureaucrat to the new star. She works in a professional service firm and works on projects that she'll be able to brag about years from now.

I call her/him the New American Professional, CEO of Me Inc. (even if Me Inc. is currently on someone's payroll) and, of course, of Brand You.

Step #1 in the model was the organization . . .a department turned into PSF 1.0.??Step #2 is the individual . . .reborn as Brand You.

In 50 essential points, Tom Peters shows how to be committed to your craft, choose the right projects, how to improve networking, why you need to think fun is cool, and why it's important to piss some people off. He will enable you to turn yourself into an important and distinctive commodity. In short, he will show you how to turn yourself into . . . Brand You.


See also the other 50List titles in the Reinventing Work series by Tom Peters -- The Project50 and The Professional Service Firm50 -- for additional information on how to make an impact in the professional world.

If Dilbert and Tom Peters ever attended the same party, they'd probably find themselves in opposite corners. The cynical cartoon character would have a hard time in Peters's upbeat, high-energy world of "Cool-Beyond-Belief." The Brand You50 is Peters's manifesto for today's knowledge workers. It joins his Reinventing Work series, which includes The Projects50 and The Professional Service Firm50.

In The Brand You50, Peters sees a new kind of corporate citizen who believes that surviving means not blending in but standing out. He believes that "90+ percent of White Collar Jobs will be totally reinvented/reconceived in the next decade" and that job security means developing marketable skills, making yourself distinct and memorable, and developing your network ability. His list-filled prescriptions cover everything; for example, "You are Your Rolodex I: BRAND YOU IS A TEAM" (no.?22), "Consider your 'product line'" (no.?25), "Work on your Optimism" (no.?35), "Sell. SELL. SELL!!!" (no.?47). While the book is overwhelming at times--its hyperactive typography pretty much shouts at you--any baby boomer thinking about his or her career will find much to consider. --Harry C. Edwards