The Standard

Matt Wilson’s and Jared OToole’s  Online magazine and Blog: Under30CEO

Personal friends and fellow entrepreneurs, Jared and Matt are two of today’s rising entrepreneurs. If you havent heard of them yet you soon will, because these go getter minded individuals dont ever sit still.

Gary Vaynerchuk

If you havent heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, GET WITH IT!  Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine.

Bradley Will

Bradley Will, also a connection of mine, is the founder of Social Media Altitude and a self-proclaimed “gnarly entrepreneur”.  Finding himself sick of the traditional “interruption” marketing approach to business, he was drawn to social media, visualizing the potential to create and engage communities. 

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y. He is the bestselling author of Me 2.0, as well as the publisher of both the award winning Personal Branding Blog and Personal Branding Magazine.

Greg Rollett’s Rockstar Lifestyle Design

A personal connection,  Greg is a new media marketer and lifestyle design consultant from Orlando, FL. I have worked with world renowned companies like Coca-Cola, Miller Lite, Disney, the Employment Guide and Warner Bros as well as helping countless individuals, bands, small businesses and nonprofits leverage online tools to help achieve the life and business that they want.

3 Other Useful Ones

Work Happy

Who is he?

Carson McComas is an internet marketing consultant, an entrepreneur, a search engine marketer, a web developer, a change agent, a twitterer, and a wannabe photographer.

What is it?

A blog of killer resources for young entrepreneurs. Definitely Check it out!

Go Big Blog

Who is he?

Wil Schroter is a serial entrepreneur who  has created 9 companies with his most recent being GO big. He is also an author and a nationally syndicated columnist on starting companies.

What is it?

The founders blog for the world’s largest community of startup companies.  An entrepreneur that joins Go BIG can now have access to tens of thousands of investors, advisors and services to help grow quickly.

 The Rise to the Top Underground Blog

Who is he?

Following the successful creation of four businesses, Garland started The Rise To The Top (TRTTT). This fresh mix of television, interactive online content and educational publications helps inspire and engage rising and aspiring entrepreneurs.

What is it?

Taking what he has learned from his own successes and failures in business, along with what he has picked up from the experts he has interviewed, Garland actively demystifies the business world for viewers and website viewers.  In addition, his award winning entrepreneurial blog has garnered attention around the country.

Creating a Website

 As a young entrepreneur E-commerce is a great and cheap way to start a business, and even if your not purely online at some point you will have a website. Before you start that website, there are a few things you should think about.

1. What is your goal for your business? Is the website going to help you achieve it?

You have a direction or goal that you want your business to go towards, but you gotta make sure your website is helping you achieve it.  If your website isnt saying the same thing or getting the same result then your moving into directions and your sure to get nowhere. So make sure you understand how your website fits into the bigger picture.

2. How is your business unique from your competition?

Your going to have to decide how you want that difference to be represented in your website. There are probably at least a few other companies out there doing what your doing and if there aren’t there will be soon. You want your website to emphasize your competitive edge , so think about how you can go about doing that.

3. When people visit your website, what do you want them to feel?

Emotion is one of the most powerful decision makers in a sale especially when you may not make direct contact with them if your making your sale through the internet. So when your customers get to your website, what emotion or feeling are you trying to get them to experience?  This can make or break your company if its not aligned with what you have in mind.

Have you ever wondered what you represent? What your image says about you? Well self branding is an important step in controlling how others view you.  Your brand can take a while to be fully established and needs constant work but if you do it right it can set you apart from the rest and be one of your most powerful tools in life and open a lot of doors for you.

Here Are 3 Ways to start branding yourself:

Create A Name For Yourself

One of the first things you want to do is figure out what image you want to give off and represent to others.  A way to help get your thoughts organized on this is to write down some qualities and ideas on a sheet of paper. Once you do this and focus your brand, create a name for yourself which exemplifies  those qualities.

For example, When I figured out my brand I decided I wanted to  play on my entrepreneurial strengths and really give off that theme while showing professionalism. So I chose the name “A World Class Executive” which is the title of this blog as you know. It is the name that best represents my brand that I want to give off.

Create a Blog and Website

 The next thing you want to do after you created your image is to create a blog that helps you get your brand out.  There are many sites to choose from  like wordpress.com or blogger.com and their free to use.  The blog doesn’t have to be directly named  after your brand or deal with your brand but you’ll want to incorporate it in there some place so that people begin to associate you with that brand.  Make sure that whatever your writing in your blog is what  you want people to view you  as because if you write unprofessionally they’ll associate you with that image instead of the brand your trying to give off. It has to be constant across all platforms for the brand to really stick so make sure to keep that in mind.

Matt Wilson from Under 30 CEO said that If possible you’ll also want to secure your name domain. www.yourname.com Set it up and put a landing page on there.  I believe this is a great idea and  if you want you can develop it and link your blog through there or have your  personal bio on it and contact information.  You will however also want to incorporate your brand into it in some way.  for an example of what I mean, check out RichieFrost.com which is my website so you can see what Ive done with it. If you dont want to pay money to build the website there are a lot of free website builders such as weebly.com in which you can also get your own domain name.

Spread Your Brand

The Final of the three things you should do to get your brand going is to spread it  and share it in any way possible. Ive already mentioned the website and blog, but there are numerous other ways in which to share it.  For example social media platforms such as myspace, facebook, twitter, or linked in. All  should have your brand somewhere in there. Also, when dealing with those platforms again be aware that people associate you with ANYTHING you write in there so make sure its giving the image off that you want.

When sending emails, when you sign your name at the bottom include your brand so that the person your emailing also sees it. The idea is to get it out as much as possible to as many people so that slowly but surely people will start to know you as that brand.  If you can do this you will be able to do alot more things in the business world, it will unlock a lot of doors for you so make sure you stick with it.

Tell me what you think about all of this? Questions, comments?  What does your brand say about you?