Jump-start Your Personal Brand Today!

[Kaira Sturdivant Rouda]

Whether you like gardening, ballroom dancing, pushing the envelope or flying under the radar, your innermost traits should be exhibited in your own personal brand. This being said, I challenge those of you who haven’t used a glue stick in awhile to create a brand board that displays your personality and passions.

What’s a brand board? It’s a poster board that you transform into a montage of pictures and images that accurately represent your personality. Are you calm and green; fresh and blue; or vibrant and red? My board is predominantly red and full of things that make me happy, like daisies (hence the cover of my book). I also took parts of my personal brand to my business brand. At Real Living, we’re red, round and real. You can read more about that on page 84 of Real You Incorporated.

Grab some magazines and start clipping images that exemplify your personal brand. Put it on paper and display it for the world to see. At my company, we make an effort to post our brand boards in our workspaces.

So put your apprehensions aside and give yourself permission to enjoy some arts and crafts. You may be surprised what you discover about yourself.

Need an example? Visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/25342810@N08/ for brand boards that some of our readers have sent in.

If you’ve completed your brand board, share it with others! Send a picture of your board to [e-mail], and we’ll post it on the RYI flickr page.