Tyra Banks is a Personal Branding BEAST. I can’t think of anybody better to be named as a Professor to help teach MBA students the importance of creating a powerful personal brand.
Read about this breaking story in Fortune Magazine
I heard this news last week, and it made me giddy. Academia is finally pivoting. The old way of teaching from books, and grading by tests, and passing/failing students by percentages and grading curves is no longer relevant. (Not sure that it ever was.) Stanford’s Business School is stepping up and teaching a course on personal branding; and if they grade their students the right way to actually measure success, it will all be about the students translating the curriculum to real life metrics versus grading by written aptitude scores.
How important is personal branding? How many times have you said (or heard) the word “Fierce” and thought “Tyra Banks?” She is a phenomenon. Not her business, or her TV show, HER…and everything she touches. That’s personal branding. Who are the “Fiercest” Personal Branding Beasts? Oprah. Branson. Musk. Tyra. Heffner. Those who can be known by one name…who sport perceived halos or visible colored auras behind the words when you picture their names in your head (is that just me?) These are the masters of personal branding. Study them, and apply their sense of intentional fearlessness to your business. You can be a beast for your company and your brands, too. It’s just a quick mind shift. People don’t want to do business with pretty logos or buy things because of industry-dictated features and benefits at the lowest prices. They no longer need to do business with the store down the street. Your prospects have global reach to any product or service now, thanks to the internet. And people want to do business with people who they are attracted to. (And I don’t mean the ones they find sexy, in the traditional way. Necessarily.)
Industry icons and renowned thought leaders like Tyra and Elon don’t have to pick up the phone and make outbound calls to garner business. Psssht, please. They have people who vet the overflow of inbound calls begging for partnerships, and they get to pick the A+ opportunities. And they’ve earned that right. Have you?
Until you have, it’s your full-time job to become a recognized thought leader in your industry. This is how you earn the A-list clients and get invited to the best parties. This is how you build a unicorn and have that life that every entrepreneur wants and knows that they have within them. Build your personal brand and attract the opportunities instead of chasing them. Doesn’t that sound like more fun?
