Creating or growing your retirement income- change your thinking
If you have worked as an employee for twenty years or more, you probably are very good at being an employee. You worked within the rules and expectations of your employer. You had limited responsibility. Maybe you complained about the constraints and expectations of your role but at the end of the day you could go home without worrying about keeping the business running or making payroll. When you develop a retirement income with your own business, you need a whole new way of thinking about business, income and yourself. You need to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and more than that a personal brand.
The foundation for your secure retirement – your personal brand.
Personal Branding is a requirement for business in the 21st century. It doesn’t matter whether you plan a career in business or as an entrepreneur. Author Dan Schawbel writes to young people, advising them about their careers in business today. In Me 2.0 he tells them that career success today depends on building a powerful personal brand, even when you are working as an employee because businesses today are not looking for employees so much as partners. He advocates building a personal brand using social media. Dan may be speaking to Gen Y and talking about new ways to achieve career success as an employee but his lessons are valuable for anyone of any age who is looking to reinvent themselves. Repositioning yourself as an entrepreneur? Establish a presence and identity on the web. Define who you are – or who you want to be.
Develop your entrepreneurial spirit – Me Inc!
These days everybody needs to think of themselves as a business and a business identity is a product of developing a personal brand. What do you stand for? You may no longer want to work for someone but business success from developing your own business is built on the personal brand that you establish. Who are you? What do you stand for? What services or products do you provide? Why should people choose to do business with you? All this is determined from how you define yourself. Dan Schawbel is a great resource for this effort and he provides an example of how, especially today, the old can learn from the young. There are great examples of entrepreneurial spirit on the web, many of them young people who decided never to be employees. Old dogs can learn new tricks but they have to be willing to watch the young pups and follow new ideas. One of the best ways to grow an entrepreneurial spirit is to build a personal brand. Start thinking about your personal brand and read Dan’s books or follow his blog to learn how.
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Thank you for the mention.
My pleasure. Thanks for writing your book. Just remember that your audience is more than Gen Y.