Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future

"Reinventing You" is a step-by-step guide to creating an individual brand that projects the best of you to the world and helps you achieve your goals. It's a roadmap for living strategically and getting what you want out of life.

So who's this book for? Well, we think it has a very broad reach. Whether you're aiming for a big promotion, wanting to move companies, expanding an existing business, launching a start-up, or trying to get noticed in your field, "Reinventing You" is a great resource that'll help you showcase your best qualities and move your career to a new level.

It's packed with really useful tips ranging from how to get work experience in a new profession to how to manage your online profile. And it answers the questions anyone who's trying to reinvent themselves might want to ask: do I need to go back to school or do I have the qualifications I need? How do I find a mentor in a new field? How can I get myself noticed when I'm starting out? And do I really have to blog and tweet?

To address these issues, the author draws on her experience working as a marketing strategy consultant, adding in interviews with experts, real-life case studies, and examples from the lives of well-known figures like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and politician and campaigner Al Gore.

Dorie Clark's marketing tips have helped clients like Google, the Ford Foundation, Yale University, and Mount Sinai Medical Center sharpen their images. She also worked as a presidential campaign spokeswoman for Vermont Governor Howard Dean, and has taught at some of America's leading universities. She's a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes, and is often quoted in the media.

So keep listening to hear how to assess your personal brand while throwing a house party, how old skills can work in a new field, and how to use social media to build your profile.

The great thing about "Reinventing You" is it really makes you think – right from the outset. After reading a handful of pages, you'll find yourself taking stock of your personal brand – even if you didn't think you had one, before you started the book.

Is the way I dress in line with the image I want to project? Do my emails reflect the person I aspire to be? Entrepreneurs and self-employed people might wonder: is my website suitably professional? Is my social media presence helping my profile or hindering it? And what would I find if I googled myself?

But the author doesn't just get her readers to think. She also motivates them to act, giving them the tools they'll need to start changing their image or improving their brand. We really liked this practical side of the book, and it's matched by the author's style and tone, which is straightforward and to the point.

So let's take a look at one of the author's first tips, which is about assessing the state of your brand today.

You may think you already know what your colleagues and friends think about you, but you may be surprised. So to get an accurate picture, you need to gather as much information as you can.

The first step is to carry out what the author calls a ‘360 interview' – 360 meaning in all directions. This involves gathering feedback on your strengths and weaknesses from as many sources as possible.

Start by writing down questions you'd like to ask others that'll give you valuable information about yourself. For instance, you might want to know what three words they'd use to describe you or what job they'd guess you did if they didn't know. Or you might ask about your blind spots.

Next, you'll need to identify some people you want to approach and decide how to do this, face-to-face or electronically.

Of course, offering friends or colleagues feedback they might not want to hear doesn't come easy to all of us, so you may have to help people out with some leads. You could tell them you've been told in the past you've got a blind spot in a particular area – perhaps you're not strategic enough, you're disorganized, or you lack confidence. It's likely you have a hunch about your weaknesses as well as your strengths, so it's good to get them out there.

We think one-on-one feedback like this would be really beneficial no matter what your future career plans are, but we particularly liked the author's suggestion of arranging a focus group in your own home – with the focus being you. She suggests inviting a group of colleagues and friends into your living room. Create a comfortable environment, and offer up plenty of high-quality snacks or even a meal. You may even want to think about giving people a token of your appreciation, such as a gift card or bookstore voucher, the author says.

Once everyone is assembled, fed, and watered, give the group an hour to answer the questions that are most important to you, perhaps about your strengths and weaknesses, or the kind of profession they see you in. You'll need a moderator to keep things moving along efficiently, and a good scribe who's happy to write everything down.

OK, so you might be thinking this all sounds a bit daunting, or perhaps impossible to pull off. But don't worry – the author offers great tips on how to get a focus group off the ground, and how to keep things running smoothly. And if creating a new life for yourself is important to you, and you have friends and co-workers you can trust, we think it's definitely worth getting over your reservations and throwing a reinvention party.

Once you've got a good idea of where you're heading, you'll want to try things out for size. You may want to find an apprenticeship in a new industry, shadow someone who's doing your dream job, or volunteer, to get a foot in the door. The author has some useful advice on how to identify the right people to approach and how to make sure they get back to you.

But be warned – if you're moving into a new field, you might have to start on the bottom rung of the ladder so it's best not to be too proud. You've also got to be prepared to work hard: after all, you may be exploring a new career while still doing your current job.

We also liked the author's tips on thinking carefully before going back to school. It's easy to think you're lacking in qualifications but you might discover that further training would be a waste of time and money.

Before deciding to study some more, it's a good idea to see what skills you have that are easily transferable to your new career. And even if you do need to sit some exams, it's likely you can leverage some or all of what you learned in previous jobs as you move on.

The author gives an example of this in one of her case studies. Lisa Granik trained to be a law professor and got a doctorate from Yale Law School, among other qualifications. But as she got closer to her goal and realized several legal academics she knew weren't happy, she thought again.

She began exploring an amateur interest of hers – wine – and soon realized that her legal training and prior experience stood her in good stead for a career in the wine industry. She had language training in her legal career, and was fluent in Russian, Spanish, and French, as well as speaking a little Italian, so she was well placed to communicate with winegrowers in other countries in their own language.

She also found the skills of deductive reasoning she'd developed in her legal training helped her assess the taste of wine. And her expertise at arguing a case meant she had an edge over competitors when it came to communicating information about wine to a non-expert audience.

In Granik's case, she did have to do a good deal of formal training, take tests, and even write a dissertation about wine – but her academic background and her experience writing a previous dissertation made it a lot easier. Granik is now a North American dissertation coordinator for the Institute of Masters of Wine.

Moving from the law to the wine business may not be an obvious transition, but the author uses this case study to help readers understand that their skills might be transferable. In a similar vein, she tells the story of a hairdresser who leveraged her communication skills – all those hours spent chatting to customers – to launch a public speaking career.

Let's now look at what the author has to say about taking your brand online and the social media world. If you've already got a blog and a Twitter handle, you'll find some great tips on how to make the most of these tools. And if you're just starting out, this section is a must read.

The Internet and social media are incredibly powerful – they can make or break a company or an individual in a matter of seconds – so it's a good idea to know what works and what doesn't when you venture online. But it's also important to embrace these new tools, because they can promote your brand to a huge audience at a very small cost.

Blogging is a great way to broaden your client base and build your brand. Many bloggers have found themselves with a publishing deal, invitations to speak at events, or increased product sales just from sharing their thoughts on the Internet.

To start building your blog into a shop window for your products or services, the author suggests creating a list of potential blog topics, and keeping it updated as new ideas come to you. This will give you a constant supply of ideas for posts.

When planning content for your blog, think about the questions people ask you about your line of work, the things they get wrong about your field, new directions or technology, or the secrets of success that have worked for you and others.

Once you've got a good number of blog posts on your own site, think about guest blogging elsewhere. This can lead to getting more readers, improving your brand recognition, and even increasing your sales. When approaching other bloggers, send a bullet-pointed list of topics you'd like to write about and include links to your best posts.

Once you've secured the guest spot, take extra care with your post. Back up the statements in your blog with good statistics, examples, and research. And make sure your guest post doesn't require any additional editing or formatting before it goes live.

Of course, not everyone likes to write – or is good at it – and there's nothing wrong with embracing your limitations and playing to your strengths. The author includes case studies of people who chose to video blog or create audio podcasts instead of writing. Find the right medium for you, or mix a few together.

And if you're worried social media will take over your life, the author has some suggestions for keeping the time you spend online to manageable levels.

As you'll have gathered, we found little to criticize in this book. We think the author's style is perfectly suited to its content, and the chapters are short and neatly structured. Especially useful is the detailed questionnaire the author includes, to help you assess your personal brand.

We did feel a little overwhelmed with the sheer number of case studies, and think the author could have cut a few out, but other readers may feel differently, particularly if a case study relates directly to their experience or the professional leap they're trying to make.

Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it speaks directly to its reader in a way that's difficult to ignore – it makes you want to take charge of your personal brand and to think more strategically about your life.

"Reinventing You" by Dorie Clark is published by Harvard Business Review Press.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.