Design, Photography and Entrepreneur Motivation Collection: www.KapreeZ.com

A brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company and how it relates to key constituencies. Some people distinguish the psychological aspect, brand associations like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on that become linked to the brand. A brand evokes passion, perseverance, power and the desire to succeed.

Take a moment and ask yourself this question “Why does my competitor’s business get more attention than mine?” The answer just may have to do with the elements that go into how memorable the business is, and this is where Branding comes into picture.

But exactly what is a brand, anyway?

Continue reading…

“Mark my words, if you want to stay competitive in the coming years – I don’t care if you’re in sales, tech, finance, publishing, journalism, event planning, business development, retail, real estate, you name it – you will still need to develop and grow your personal brand . Everyone-EVERYONE-needs to start thinking of themselves as a brand. It is no longer an option; it is a necessity. “   Gary Vaynerchuk, Crush It

Lana Kravsova, Daring Clarity

If Facebook was a country it would be the 4th largest country in the world. Youtube is the second largest search engine after Google. Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, Flickr… What are those social networks all about?

Personal brands.

We live in the era of personal brands.

Your personal brand is what sells your services, gets you hired, helps you develop relationships. Your personal brand is what makes your business recognizable and sets it apart from others.

Here is where a lot of people get stuck. Everyone tells you that you have to create a unique and compelling brand. And you probably have been thinking long and hard what your brand is all about and how you can make it unique and different.

Let me tell you the truth that you already know.

Continue reading…

The last ten percent is the signal we look for, the way we communicate care and expertise and professionalism. If all you’re doing is the standard amount, all you’re going to get is the standard compensation. The hard part is the last ten percent, sure, or even the last one percent, but it’s the hard part because everyone is busy doing the easy part already.

The secret is to seek out the work that most people believe isn’t worth the effort. That’s what you get paid for.

Read entire article…

“Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.” – Seth Godin

There’s a hidden message in this post – it’s your free prize inside.  Whether you find the free prize or not, this post will make you think.  About your life.  About work.  About just about everything.  Why?  Because it’s a distillation of lessons from a man named Seth.  Seth Godin is an author, an agent of change, a meaning maker, and an Idea Merchant.

Top 10 Seth Godin Quotes:

• “Expectations are the engines of our perceptions.”
• “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.”
• “Go ahead, do something impossible. “
• “You can’t shrink your way to greatness! “
• “I don’t know what the key to success is, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.”
• “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
• “Why waste a sentence saying nothing? “
• “If you could do tomorrow over again, would you?”
• “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.”
• “Are you a serial idea-starting person? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.”

Continue reading…

By: Dan Schawbel

Glen Allsopp built his first website at the age of 15 and be 16, one of his websites was featured in a book called “Dj’ing for Dummies.” At 17, he was making thousands of dollars per month offering internet marketing services and by 18, he became a Social Media Manager for brands such as Nissan, Land Rover and Hewlett Packard. At age 19, he quit his jbo to work on his own websites and projects, and at 20 he sold the 10th biggest personal development blog in the world for a mid-five-figure fee. Right now he’s traveling the globe making a five-figure monthly income from his affiliate websites. Glen blogs at ViperChill.com.

“As a side-note to the parents reading this: if your child (or young adult son) is really passionate about something and wants to go for it, please give them all of the support you can. Even if they make mistakes, they’ll learn so much along the way.“

Continue reading Interview with Glen Allsopp

As a business owner, sales person, or marketer, you should always be trying to find ways to drum up more business – especially with the current economic climate.

Luckily for marketers and business owners, there are several ways you can very affordably advertise your services and products online (many of which are free). Let’s go through a handful of them:

• Twitter, Facebook & Social Sites
• Video
• Blogs & Forums
• Press Releases
• Local Resource Sites & Classifieds
• Email Newsletters
• Contests & Giveaways

Continue reading…

Great emotional speech by Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk delivered this passionate and powerful speech at FOWA London 09 and it rocked the house. If you need a bit of inspiration (and a slight kick in the ass) don’t miss this one.

Warning: Strong language.
Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world.

Continue listening….

By Michael McDerment

When you start a company, eventually you are going to have to choose a company name. You may not take the decision that seriously – but trust me, a great name can make all the difference.

In the following article I will describe a process you can use to discover and select a good name for your company; this process can be applied to product and service names as well. Okay, let’s get going!

The Critical Steps to Generating A Good Company Name:

Continue reading:

Written by Steve Blank.

If you are an entrepreneur, stop what you’re doing and click through to a blog post called “No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers—Business Plans versus Business Models” by Steve Blank.

At the end of the article, you will find five lessons:

• A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
• There are no facts inside your building, so get outside and get some.
• Draw and test the Business Model first, the Business Plan then follows.
• Few if any investors read your business plan to see if they’re interested in your business
• They’re a lot more interested in what you learned

Continue reading…

Written by Lana Kravtsova from daringclarity.com for The Entrepreneur School

If Facebook was a country it would be the 4th largest country in the world. Youtube is the second largest search engine after Google. Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, Flickr… What are those social networks all about?

Personal brands.

We live in the era of personal brands.

Your personal brand is what sells your services, gets you hired, helps you develop relationships. Your personal brand is what makes your business recognizable and sets it apart from others.

Here is where a lot of people get stuck. Everyone tells you that you have to create a brand. And you probably have been thinking long and hard what your brand is all about and how you can make it unique and different.

Let me shine the light on this mystery for you.

You don’t need to create a brand. You don’t need to come up with anything unique and different.

Know why?

Because you ARE a brand already.

And this brand of YOU is as unique as it can get. You can try long and hard but you won’t find anything more unique than YOU. You are one of a kind. Don’t look any further.

All you really need to do is embrace your DNA, get clear on your core message and learn to clearly communicate that message to the world.

That’s what authentic branding is all about. And authentic brands are the ones that crush it.

So here are the steps you should follow:

Continue reading…