Читать книгу Professional Practice for Interior Designers - Christine M. Piotrowski - Страница 106

Who are you? How do you want potential employers and clients to perceive you?

Personal branding is the image you create of yourself. In a sense, your brand helps tell others what you can offer to them. Knowledge, efficiency, loyalty, responsibility, enthusiasm, and being a good communicator are only a very few of the attributes that can make up a personal brand. And incidentally they are the kinds of characteristics that a business is looking for in an employee and clients are looking for in the service providers that hire.

You will see in Chapter 24 the importance of branding for a business. This brief section talks about your personal brand; how you wish to be perceived as well as how others perceive you.

Defining who you are and who you want to be lays the groundwork for developing your personal brand. Ongoing performance clarifies that brand to others. When you meet your obligations to clients and your employer—such as always meeting deadlines—this action reinforces your brand. Always being late with projects, missing classes, and finding excuses for the lack of performance tarnishes your brand. Soon others will not know if you can be trusted to do the work required by the deadlines that exist.

You no doubt wonder why the same designers win awards year after year or consistently obtain the great jobs. It is not magic. It is because they have established a brand and the performance characteristics that clients can depend upon. The client then has no qualms in hiring that designer again and in recommending that designer to others.

There are numerous ways to develop and establish your personal brand. A few have already been mentioned. Here are several more:

 Clearly understand who you are professionally and what you stand for.

 Don't promise what you cannot deliver.

 If you make a mistake, correct it quickly and work hard to not make that same mistake again.

 Reevaluate your goals (and brand image) annually to be sure that what you thought you want is still what you want.

 If you don't think your design philosophy meshes with a client's demands, then don't take the job.

There are numerous books available about personal branding. A few are mentioned in the General References at the end of this book. Many others will be found on the Internet.