In the new world of work, your reputation is the only accepted currency. Whether you are looking to move up the corporate ladder in your current organization, find a position at another company, make a major career change, or start your own enterprise, you will no longer be hunting for your next role. Instead, opportunities will come to you. Colleagues, hiring managers, clients, and recruiters will use search engines like Google as well as social and professional networks to find out about you and reach you. To thrive in this new environment, you must identify your personal assets and clearly communicate your unique promise of value. Your credibility and visibility will drive demand for your services. You must use who you are to affect how you earn. That’s where Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand comes in.

This definitive step-by-step guide enables you to determine how others perceive you, reshape those perceptions to achieve your goals, and communicate your message about your personal brand clearly and consistently. In this book, you learn how to become the “must-have” professional—by being yourself. We demonstrate the power that comes with being yourself by providing examples of people (some names have been changed for privacy) just like you who have achieved professional success and fulfillment by living their personal brands. But before we introduce you to these fascinating people, let us introduce ourselves.

Who are we, and why did we join forces to write this book? William is the perfect example of someone who initially had no career strategy whatsoever. When he was deciding on a major in college, he chose to go into engineering. He selected this discipline because he knew he would find it difficult, and he thought university had to be hard. And it was. He was thankful for the electives and humanities courses that kept his grade point average in an acceptable range. William had no awareness of his own passions or motivations—yet they were clear to those around him. For example, he had a deep interest in advertising from a young age. Over the years, he built up a large collection of TV advertisements on VHS and watched television more for the commercials than for the programs. In his words:

After graduating from school, I took on many marketing tasks while a consultant at KMPG and then officially moved into marketing in the information technology sector. I felt at ease there—motivated, energized. But it wasn’t until I had the incredible opportunity to manage the rebranding effort for Primark—a financial services company—that I realized my passion for branding. I had always been an ambassador of my favorite brands—Apple, Starbucks, W Hotels, Moulton Brown. With this project, I was able to learn about and apply the principles of branding for myself.

As I progressed in my career, I started to manage more and more people and discovered my other passion—empowering and mentoring others. I saw the power of helping people discover their talents, advance their careers, and reach their potential.

Then, something amazing happened. It was July 1997. I was working for Lotus in Cambridge, MA (the best company I ever worked for), and was busily writing a report. I needed a break, so I went out to my assistant’s desk and saw the new issue of Fast Company. I took the magazine outside, sat on a bench near the Charles River, and read the cover story, “The Brand Called You,” by Tom Peters. It was like all the planets aligned for me. That article cemented the connection between my two great passions: branding and people. In reading that article, I took my initial step toward launching the first global personal branding company.

With a vision of entrepreneurship shining in my mind, I moved to London and then to Paris to manage the Lotus brand in Europe. Finally, in 2001, while in my office at La Defense in Paris, I decided it was time to launch Reach. The rest is history.

Of course, 2001 wasn’t the best year to start a company, so it was a rocky start. And back then, no one had heard of personal branding—let alone wanted to spend any money on it. But, six years later, my only regret is that I didn’t launch the business sooner.

My career now focuses exclusively on the human side of branding. I work with professionals and entrepreneurs to help them use their personal brands to stand out and expand their success. I assist senior leaders in building their executive brands so they can make indelible marks on their organizations. And I deliver keynotes and workshops for forward-thinking organizations that want to get the best from their talent by helping employees unearth and leverage their unique value.

So I have found my niche and have increased my professional fulfillment. I live my personal brand every day. It is now my mission to help others to do the same.

Now we introduce you to Kirsten. William met Kirsten when she joined the initial session of the Reach Personal Branding Certification program. In fact, she was the first person to register. He knew instantly that she was an innovator. She absorbed the Reach personal branding methodology as if it were in her DNA. There were times during the program when William thought Kirsten was more excited about the material than even he was. As Kirsten relates it:

Like William, I had no real plan for my career. I wasn’t sure how to turn my disparate interests in theatre, international travel, foreign languages, and writing into a career that would satisfy my creative and entrepreneurial spirit. I transferred to Vassar College in my sophomore year and immediately had to choose a major in a new school. Because I had enjoyed acting, I thought “why not be a drama major?” Somehow, it made sense at the time, even though I knew that I would never be a professional actor. In the summer between my junior and senior years, I taught English in Thailand through AFS. I came back wishing that I had been an international studies major, but it was too late to switch and still graduate on the four-year plan.

As I entered the real world and had to search for my first nonsummer job, I was filled with unrealistic expectations about how I’d begin my career and took the first offer I got. Out of character, I worked in sales management support for a retail computer chain where I was fortunate to gain a lot of my early technology knowledge. After a shocking layoff, I found my way to the more tumultuous world of advertising.

I was working on the Peugeot Motors of America account when Peugeot decided not to sell cars in the United States. Then I worked on a new business pitch for Mazda: The agency I worked for won the account, and then the car was not introduced. I was laid off again. This time, I was sent to outplacement where I discovered that there was an entire industry devoted to helping me with my career. I then moved to Los Angeles (for love) and switched to the seemingly more stable “client side” of marketing. Among other things, I facilitated the international brand licensing program for Kahlúa. (I should also mention that amid these transitions, I held some long-term freelance assignments that gave me an insider’s view of companies in a variety of industries.) When the parent company reorganized, I opted for a package and moved back to New York. Before I left, I went to outplacement again.

I took part in a group seminar led by a particularly effective trainer who was talking about the concept of Me Inc.—long before it was mainstream. Right then and there, I decided that I wanted her job. In that moment, I realized that I could finally be in control of my own destiny and use my strengths and experience to help others do the same. I enrolled in NYU’s Adult Career Planning and Development program, and I was on my way to discovering my true calling. After my first daughter was born, I resigned from my position at a human resources consulting firm and launched a career marketing service that I sold a few years ago. Although I mostly specialized in working with career changers, I helped hundreds of professionals at all levels in a wide variety of industries, and I really didn’t yet have a personal brand.

Now, back to William to explain how we began our collaboration:

One day, Kirsten sent me an e-mail asking if we could meet in person. (The certification program was delivered through teleseminars.) We met face-to-face for the first time in Boston before she was scheduled to review resumes at a Women for Hire expo. Kirsten told me about her plans to launch Brandego® (pronounced brand-eh-go)—a consultancy for executives and solopreneurs to build their brands online—and asked me to be involved. This was the perfect business for Kirsten. She is future focused and anticipated the need for people to manage their online identities before the term ego-surfing even existed.

At the same time, I was looking to launch an e-learning product, the Reach Branding Club, that would give professionals everything they need to brand themselves at their own pace and for an affordable fee. Many people had come to me looking for brand coaching but weren’t able to or didn’t want to pay my hourly fees. I had the intellectual property—the content and methodology—and I needed to partner with someone who could find the most innovative and interesting, yet simple, way of delivering the material. There was only one person I could think of.

Kirsten is perhaps the biggest believer in the Reach methodology (okay, maybe the second). She uses it with every one of her clients. It’s integrated into her offerings at Brandego, and she talks about it with everyone she meets. Combine this with her passion for leveraging the Internet for career success, and you have the perfect coauthor for this book.

William started writing this book in 2001 with his then coauthor, Andrea O’Neill (a bright, accomplished branding and marketing expert). At the time, the book was titled Bulletproof Your Career—which reflected the post-Internet bubble economy where layoffs were the norm and job security was a pipe dream. When Andrea decided the book did not fit into her future plans, William left the files on the Reach server until he saw many books being published about personal branding—and noticed that none of them dealt with the future of work. Not a single author of these books described the shift in mindset necessary to succeed in the changing economy. He felt inspired to begin writing again. Having seen the value of working with a coauthor, he asked Kirsten to join him. And you’re holding the result in your hands. Writing this book has been nothing short of life changing for us. We hope you take away from it a little of the inspiration we have felt in writing it.

In this book, we share with you the forward-thinking methods for standing out from your competitors and peers that we have helped our clients to adopt. With the companion Career Distinction Workbook and access to the 360°Reach personal brand assessment (both available at www.careerdistinction.com/workbook), you have all the tools you need to transform your approach to career management for an enduring and rewarding career.