“In the new world of work, cultivating your individual brand, your “saleable distinction,” is not optional.”
–Tom Peters
The first step is to analyze and inventory your career assets. In the first part of this process, the career assets you want to focus on are your skills and knowledge, as well as your natural talents.
Determining your skills and knowledge might be the easiest place to start. Skills are the things you’ve learned or were trained to do… whether someone else taught you, or you taught yourself. Learning to read, learning to type, learning to use a software program on a computer… these are all learned, applied skills and knowledge.
Natural talents are just what they sound like… they come to you naturally, innately. Your natural talents were always there, even when you’re were a child, and you probably take them for granted since they are such a part of you. Think about the things which come very easily to you. You might even have trouble understanding why something that seems so easy to you is hard for someone else.
To demonstrate the difference between skill and talent, yet show how they are so intrinsic to each other, let’s look at a musical example. Jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis, seems to have had natural talent for music, and, indeed, his album, Kind of Blue, became one of the top selling jazz records of all time. You have to have talent to achieve such a feat. However, he didn’t just come out of the womb knowing how to play jazz music on a trumpet. He started taking lessons and acquiring music skills at 13 years old.
By the way, Miles Davis’ individual brand can be summed up in one word… “cool.” Now that’s what I call a brand!
Next up, in Part II of this “Cultivating Your Individual Brand” series, we’ll look at traits as part of your career assets.