Express Yourself

There's a reason Madonna is the top-selling female recording artist of all time--she’s a master of reinvention. Adaptation, personal reinvention, and image management are the keys to success in times of economic uncertainty and rapid change.  Alexandra Levit, in an article in The Wall Street Journal, notes, “It used to be enough to walk into a job search with an impressive résumé. If you were really enterprising, maybe you'd have a portfolio to showcase your best work. Now, though, people want a better way to stand out, and that has resulted in the very 21st-century concept of personal branding.”

Get Schooled

Ryan Matzner, Chief Marketing Officer and Lead Strategist here at Fueled, will be sharing his personal branding insights this Tuesday, July 19th at 8pm at General Assembly, one of New York City’s top resources for entrepreneurs seeking to transform industry and culture through technology and design.  If you’d like to learn how to harness the tools and techniques that work well commercially and leverage them to position yourself as a specialist within your industry, this class will serve as an invaluable introduction.  With a background in online marketing and strategy, and articles featured on Mashable and TechCrunch, Ryan will discuss how to manage your online reputation by maintaining an influential presence across social media sites and controlling what comes up when someone types your name into Google.  Whether you’re a filmmaker, musician, developer, designer, programmer, or writer, the ability to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses is a crucial aspect of defining your target audience and subsequently tailoring your services for that market.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.-- Epictetus

The best sales people know the products they sell painstakingly well.  Similarly, the more mindful you are about your skills and objectives, the better equipped you will be to define and communicate what qualities you would like to be known for.  When you craft an image that displays your expertise and experience advantageously, you will attract like-minded clients.

Know Thyself

In order to reinvent yourself, you need to know who you are in the first place.  While fluctuations in the job market are temporary, some truths are eternal.  And as the structure of the economy shifts, it appears that Socrates’ famed maxim may be more pertinent now than ever before.