It still amazes me how bad individuals are at promoting themselves, the fact is everything you do shapes your personal brand. The benefits of personal branding are numerous, the only way to beat the competition is to actively market yourself. In a nutshell, personal branding is defining who you are, then actively communicating that through a multitude of channels.

Below is one of the many definitions of personal branding:

Thanks Tom Peters for identifying the importance of personal branding.

The process by which individuals differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leverage it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal.

Fast Company’s, Tom Peters was the first to define or recognize personal branding back in 1997. Read about it here.

So…how do you go about defining your brand?

1. Discover. This is the stage where you determine what your brand is. What makes you different? What makes you valuable? What is your value proposition? What have you done lately to stand out?
2. Create. In 15 words or less develop your brand statement. Be creative. Write it down, read it multiple times and then test it out. If it doesn’t grab a person’s attention, then start again. If you are still struggling, analyze a person you want your brand to emulate. Is it Beyonce? Steve Jobs? Tom Peters gives this advice: “What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the standard rungs of progression you’ve climbed in your career up to now. Burn that damnable “ladder” and ask yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about?”
3. Communicate. Now that you have defined your value proposition and have blown people away by your creativity…then you need to communicate it. What tools will you use? Let me give you a hint, you are reading one now (a blog…come on that was easy). Will you use social media, blogging, submit guest articles to publications, networking, speaking engagements? The floor is yours, so get busy.
4. Maintain. Seems easy, but the fact is everything you do is being judged all the time. Your online profiles are up 24/7, doesn’t matter if you are sleeping. If you created a brand that is not genuine or transparent then someone will create a more accurate brand…and it probably won’t be very complimentary.

Personal branding is not rocket science. Your brand is you – your beliefs, goals and personality. Defining simply helps focus your efforts. The best piece of advice I can pass along to you is to always be authentic, visible and transparent.

Now get out there and market yourself…and don’t forget to stand out.

You often hear how hard the startup stage is for a new business but not a lot of people address the headaches of growth.

Personally, I think the growth stage is harder than the startup stage…it seems damn near impossible at times. At the startup stage you are focused on obtaining customers and delivering the service or product you are contracted for. Your concerns are money and production.

When you reach the growth stage, you have the customers, money and have tackled a lot of hurdles to even get to the point where you can consider growing.

Harvard Business Review says this of growth: Among the important tasks are to make sure the basic business stays profitable so that it will not outrun its source of cash and to develop managers to meet the needs of the growing business.

The key problems you face are growing rapidly and financing the growth.

Some of the shitty stuff you are up against:

• Delegation. What comes first? The customer? The employee to manage that customer? Where does the salary come from? How do you anticipate growth? How the hell do you manage all of your employees? First step is relinquishing some control, empowering employees and taming your Type A tendencies. Good luck.
• Money. You start growing and bam! you are hit with a larger tax bill, salaries of the new employees you had to hire, expanded office space, equipment costs, benefits and more. Doesn’t the government know that growth costs a shitload of money?
• Resources. How the fuck do you do it all? In the startup stage you are the one managing payroll, tax filing, invoicing and more. When you start growing you often have to outsource these tasks. It becomes necessary to hire a human resource company, payroll company, bookkeeper, accountant or custodial service. Your best bet is to find someone who has been through it and learn from them.

When starting out it was just you and maybe 2 or 3 additional employees, now you have a team of 10, 15, 30 or more. How do you manage it all?

There are days, hell weeks…that I am just physically and mentally done, I contemplate selling or scaling back so it is just me and an employee or two…or I buy an island and sit in the sun drinking tequila. Who am I kidding, I can’t afford an island and every day sitting on the beach staring at the ocean…well that’s just boring.

You know, as well as I do, that we wouldn’t be satisfied doing anything else. So, in the words of my friend Sue…

Shake it off Bode, you’re being a pussy.

In the last week, our country has experienced a lot of tragedy. From the mass shooting in Orlando to the 2 year old being attacked by an alligator to who knows what else. In all of this social media often becomes the tool/platform/stage for humans to express their feelings whether filled with love or spewing hate.

That is the problem with social media. Just this morning I had a text conversation with my sister-in-law about the poor family at Disney World that watched their son be dragged away. What used to be conversations we had around our kitchen table or with a circle of friends is now amplified through social media. People take to Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more to place blame, give advice or call for action. I think my sister-in-laws text to me, says it best.

“Social media is out-of-control. Why does everyone feel the need to hate so much and be so naive to the fact that things like this could happen to anyone.”

It could happen to anyone. Anyone.

I don’t have a solution, or advice to give but I do hope that all of us will take pause and ask ourselves “What if it happened to me?”

Let’s do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

I love reading. It is my favorite thing to do, besides work. I love delving into historical nonfiction by authors such as Stephen Ambrose, Erik Larson and Nathaniel Philbrick. Reading books on WWI, WWII, Vietnam, The Cold War, etc. have given me a true appreciation on how far our country has come and the sacrifices made before my time. There is just something about holding a book, the smell of the pages and the satisfaction you get with each page turned. Yeah, I realize I am a dork but at least I am a well-read one.

This blog isn’t specific to PR, Marketing or Small Business but it is focused on education as it relates to history. It was really hard to narrow down my picks, but here are my top 5 in the historical nonfiction category (don’t worry historical fiction is next week). Pick up one of these books before a vacation and learn something while relaxing. It is the only way I don’t feel guilty for not working.

1. 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi: This is not a political book, although it will make you mad. It is the story told from the eyes of those one the ground defending Americans that weren’t supposed to be there. Told by the 6 men who protected the Americans with devastating consequences. 13 HOURS presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel the attackers and protect the Americans stationed there. Those men went beyond the call of duty, performing extraordinary acts of courage and heroism, to avert tragedy on a much larger scale. This is their personal account, never before told, of what happened during the thirteen hours of that now-infamous attack.
2. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania : Pretty much any book by Erik Larson is phenomenal. What I love about his books is the way he weaves a story together, by researching, connecting all the dots and finding little known details to share with readers. On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic.Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.
3. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex: Most everyone recognizes this story because of Chris Hemsworth. Yep, the book got made into a movie and cast a super hot guy to play the main character. This book by Nathaniel Philbrick gives readers a glimpse into life on Nantucket where whale hunting was the norm and sailors would be gone for years in pursuit of blubber. In the Heart of the Sea tells perhaps the greatest sea story ever. Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship’s cabin boy. At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man’s relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.
4. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest:  The 101st were the special forces of their time, they took the hard assignments and they made a lot of sacrifices along the way. The true account from the men still living will hit you hard. As good a rifle company as any, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, US Army, kept getting tough assignments–responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden. In “Band of Brothers,” Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze & died, a company that took 150% casualties & considered the Purple Heart a badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers’ journals & letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the stories, often in the men’s own words, of these American heroes.
5.  See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism: The book, written by Robert Baer, a former CIA operative, gives readers a glimpse into intelligence gathering and the infuriating politics behind it.  A veteran case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations in the Middle East, Baer witnessed the rise of terrorism first hand and the CIA’s inadequate response to it, leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001. This riveting book is both an indictment of an agency that lost its way and an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism, and includes a new afterword in which Baer speaks out about the American war on terrorism and its profound implications throughout the Middle East.

Let me know what you think of my picks. Is there a book that should be added to the list? Drop it in the comments below.

When you are managing over 30 clients, overseeing 20+ social channels and communicating with 100 or more media outlets on a monthly basis…you need to have your organizational shit down.

From 834 to you, here are our top time management tips, served with a side of sarcasm and swear words.

1. Never procrastinate. Do it NOW! Do the shittiest task on your list first. Once you get that off your plate, everything else is a cake walk.
2. Use tools: There are a ton of free tools that will do work and remember things for you. Use them! Google Calendar, iCalendar, Apple Reminders, Boomerang, Basecamp. The list goes on.
3. Prioritize. What needs to be done first? Map out your to-do list with the most important tasks being first.
4. Eliminate distractions. If you have a deadline you are working under and have to take shit home with you, don’t work in the same room as your significant other. They don’t care that you have things to do and WILL NOT STOP TALKING.
5. Find your power jams, turn them on and tune it all out. Might we suggest, Work Bitch by Britney Spears.

Have some great tips we should add to the list? Drop them in the comments and we’ll update the blog.

One of the biggest issues I have struggled with as 834 continues to grow is culture. How do we maintain our existing culture when adding new employees into the mix? Have we really defined culture? I mean, in my head it is perfectly clear…but isn’t that something every business owner struggles with? Are you actually communicating the shit that is swirling around in your head in a concise and clear manner?

Culture originates from the founder, entrepreneur or business owner…that means you demonstrate what the culture is every single day.

Here is 834’s core values that feed our culture:

Be Nice.

• In the way you communicate with one another, with a superior and with a client.
• No gossiping. We take care of each other and approach issues head on.

Don’t be a jerk.

• Negativity can infest the culture of a company, by choosing to be positive, you set the foundation for success.

Get shit done.

• If a client, employee, team or the firm has an issue – how can we solve it? Not sure how? Pull another employee in and brainstorm together.
• If there is an issue, develop a solution. Complaining to complain will not be tolerated.

I thought all of this was a given, was clear to all employees…but had I every really said it? Put that shit in writing, discuss it as a team and make sure everyone has a clear understanding of what will and won’t be tolerated…oh and communicate. As a leader you need to take full responsibility for your shortcomings. If your employees are confused, you only have yourself to blame.

Craving more words of wisdom? Check out this article from Entrepreneur.com.

Heading back to work after a long holiday weekend is tough, especially if you can’t truly unplug from your job. Part of agency life, is understanding that the work we do isn’t just reserved to the 9 to 5 timeframe. We have to be monitoring our client’s social media accounts 24/7 as well as keeping an eye out for any media opportunities. Obviously this makes vacationing tough. So whether you are a business owner or have multiple customers/clients that you need to stay in touch with, vacationing can be difficult.

Here are my tips to all small business owners and communication specialists on keeping a client happy while sipping rum on a beach somewhere.

1. Communicate far in advance. If you have a vacation coming up, be sure to notify your clients so they aren’t taken by surprise when they receive an out-of-office email. Let them know that you are going on vacation, who their back-up contact will be and that you will be checking email periodically in case of any immediate needs.
2. Update them prior to leaving. The week before you jet out of the country or go to the woods camping, send them an update on all current activities. This lets them see what is in process and that nothing will be missed. It also gives them confidence that you have things handled.
3. Email them once. This is something I do while on vacation and it sets myself and my clients at ease. I shoot them an email halfway through the vacation and ask them if there is anything that needs to be taken care of immediately or before your return to the office. This is great client relations, because it shows your clients that you prioritize them even when out-of-the-office.
4. Prep your back-up. If you have another staff member that will be handling things in your absence, not all of us are so lucky, then be sure to schedule a quick 30 minute conversation with them to debrief on your clients. I would be sure to include them in communication to the client a few weeks prior to your vacation. The client will get used to seeing their name and will also have their contact info handy.
5. Relax, damnit! You are of no use to your clients or employees if you don’t take time to decompress. Try to not think about work and read a book, do some adult coloring or just take a nap.

As small business owners we live and breath our company, and that is needed for success. However, we also need the luxury to be off the grid for a few days. With enough prep before leaving for vacation, you ensure that nothing will slip through the cracks while you are gone. Just remember – communicate, update and hand-off.

I have been waiting for 10 YEARS for an article that accurately depicts integrated communications (thank Brian) and why it is the ONLY way agencies should function.

This past week, I read this article on PR Daily that addressed integrated communications and categorized agencies in 3 categories: Traditional, Integrated and Lipstick.

The below diagram from the PR Daily article outlines what those terms mean.

Photo credit: Brian Hart, PR Daily

More and more, agencies are promoting the fact that they can provide the full range of services that companies are looking for, but it isn’t just the services it is the strategy and measurement behind them.

I started 834, almost 10 years ago because I couldn’t hire an agency that could provide the wide range of services, strategy and measurement that my organization needed. When all else fails, do it yourself.

An integrated communications approach takes all disciplines – creative, digital, public relations, advertising, marketing and meshes them all together to deliver your desired results. Everything works together to form a cohesive strategy that outlines goals, measurement and ultimate results for you, the business owner.

Still struggling to understand? I stole the below info from a blog I wrote back in January 2015.

All disciplines support each other. For example, you launch a recruitment campaign:

1. Design/Creative: Develop collateral for social, website, print and advertising. Coordinate efforts with all disciplines
2. Advertising: Review audiences, determine media buys – segmented by target audiences.
3. Marketing: Outline strategy to get the message out, plan special events throughout target area, work with creative and PR to outline messaging.
4. Public relations: Develop a press release on campaign, recruiting events, company growth. Plan out storylines throughout the length of the campaign.
5. Social: Work with PR to outline messaging for all networks, work with creative to develop images and infographics to be shared.
6. Digital: Set up online ads, create a landing page specific to recruitment that all advertising and campaign efforts will direct to.
7. Implement and measure

Drop the old-timer, put down the lipstick and hire an agency, demand an agency, that will provide the strategy and implementation that you need. Also, shit takes time, so don’t expect magic in 3 months.

This past week I moved an entire house, 4 dogs and a husband.

I came to several realizations while packing, unpacking and drinking multiple bottles of wine.

1. Life is short. Like everything else in my life, I set completely unrealistic expectations and then drive myself and everyone else around me crazy trying to meet them. We bought the house on March 11th, we gutted it, demoed and renovated it from top to bottom in 2 months and 6 days. Why? Because I am impatient and want everything yesterday. Life is too damn short to be so singularly focused on one thing that you can’t see past yourself and how everything else is being impacted. My advice? Step back, take a deep breath, drink some wine and call a trusted confidant that will tell you what a moron you are. Everything we do has a ripple effect and being too shortsighted to see the bigger impact of what you are doing will eventually come back and bite you in the ass. On the bright side, I have become much handier and am contemplating a second business laying flooring.
2. Why do we have so much shit? Does anyone really need 4 crockpots, 4 vacuums and 4 dogs (kidding on the last one). It amazes me the amount of crap people (me) accumulate throughout life. To be clear, I am not just talking physical but emotional shit. I filled box after box after box of stuff that hadn’t been touched in years and it felt good to give it away. Seriously, let it go (Frozen is in your head now isn’t it?) – just dump it. It is not doing anyone any good.
3. Take a deep breath. Do you think anyone cares if you renovate a house in 2 months or complete your entire to-do list in a day? We get so focused on one thing and accomplishing that one thing that we completely paralyze ourselves in all other aspects of life. It will sometimes take me all day to make my stupid to-do list because once I write it down, I must do it right away!  Just chill…step away from whatever you are doing and refocus.

Isn’t it funny how something as mundane as moving can provide such insight into other aspects of your life? Does anyone need a crockpot?

Most of us crave leadership, we want to be looked upon as an expert and someone that others look up to. But what does it take? You don’t wake up one morning and say “I am going to lead today!” Honestly, it really isn’t your decision at all, regardless of your job title. A leader is chosen, by peers, colleagues and those that report to her/him. I was listening to the podcast Entre Leadership last week and Dave Ramsey made a great point about leaders (if you could get past all of his yelling). He said “someone is always watching.”  A bit creepy, yes, but the fact is that it isn’t just what you do when people are watching, it is also what we do when no one is looking that defines you as a leader. And lets be clear, someone is always watching. We live in the technology age, someone is always there to capture a screw-up or misstep especially if you are in a leadership position and you can’t compartmentalize leadership.

You don’t get to choose when you want to lead. There are days I wake up and I just don’t want to adult but the best leaders lead by example and that means you show staff what you expect from them by your actions. I don’t believe there are any set characteristics that make up a great leader, not one person is the same. I do believe that you aren’t afraid to learn from those you hire, acknowledge failure and get out of the way of those you lead.

What does being a leader mean to you?