Take 1: Discovery

@jaylopez http://www.sxc.hu/photo/975857

As I continue my journey to find a niche for building value for myself and others in the next phase of my career, the development of a personal brand was an interesting part of the process. I was a bit overwhelmed at first with this notion of branding myself. In addition to searching the internet and reading many articles about personal branding and the elements involved, I was able to draw connections between personal branding and mission statements for companies. The hard part was asking others about my personal qualities. I must say I have great friends and coworkers who were objective in their comments and I thank them for stepping up to give me those adjectives to help me describe my personal qualities as others see them. I am also thankful my three sisters remained silent on the topic! My Mom, however, was not. I think some of my friends had a chuckle when they read her comments about my “being good at soliloquys” LOL! My husband chose to focus on my skills and background and steered clear of the request to describe my “personal qualities”… smart man!

Armed with the first and second versions of my personal branding statement, I am “off” to check in with my coach today.  Onto next steps…

What’s in a Name?

Source: http://morethanbranding.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/k0pv0.jpg

I began doing some research about building my personal brand. The first few articles spoke highly of the need to own your name/brand on the internet, so I purchased several domains that I might use in my new direction. As I continued with domain searches and reviewed my cart at the end of the process, I decided that I did not want to invest $1000 right now in making all these investments, so I scaled back the requests to a “good enough” list…for about $250.00.

I was still able to buy my name as well as several potential business names. I even bought all my kids names… easy enough to put the list and info in their birthday cards! Their domains represent about 1/2 of my purchase.

How much is enough? Godaddy.com has figured out how to “supersize” your order quite nicely. They have packaged less popular domain extensions (.org, .net, .info) with the more popular (.com, .ca, etc). Of course, with a 60% discount from the regular price. I don’t think I need all of them, do you? The standard 5 year registration is enticing… I’m pretty sure all 13 domains I registered today will need to be registered annually for awhile…. I’ll pay later and make decisions later.

I’m not yet ready to set up websites and all the other details, but at least I’ve got my name! Never would have dreamed I should be buying my name a few year ago. Have you purchased your name? Any advice?