Mike Abasov

In 2010, there is absolutely no excuse not to have cool personal brand identity. There is no excuse to have a boring black and white resume typed in Times New Roman. There is no excuse to not have business cards.

This post will put an end to bad design in your life, even if your are terrible at it (like I am). So if you are still planning on making excuses, you better stop reading now.

Design this, design that!

So, you don’t have a business card? You want one, but you don’t have the skills to design it and those templates at the office supply retail store don’t look sexy at all? There is a simple solution.

Or you want a good high-quality resume that will speak for itself, but MS Word doesn’t make life any easier? There is a simple solution to that too.

Welcome to GraphicRiver!

This very cool website is an open market where designers can sell their work for a good price, and consumers can choose one of the hundreds of great templates.

Surf the site and find the design that suits you. $5 for a business card or resume? It’s like buying a latte at Starbucks, but you will be able to drink it for many years to come!

There is nothing bad about getting a template, if you’re not a designer. Believe me, you will be ahead of the majority of your classmates and even professionals!

Every time I give my business card to someone, I see an amazed face. People don’t expect you to have a well-designed card, or any card at all for that matter.

Prove them wrong!

Printing

For your resumes, go to any printing store and just print them on high-quality paper. Please, don’t use your home printer, unless it’s some high-end piece of machinery :-).

For you business cards, check out Moo.com or some other service like that. You will get your cards delivered to your door fast and in cool packaging. No extra effort required, and at 35 cents per card, there is no reason not to buy.

Expense or Investment?

Well-designed resume and business cards can help you score a better job. They also help you stand out from the crowd and brand yourself. People will think so much more of you, if you don’t mumble, “Hm… uh… I don’t have a card, sorry…”

Spending money on identity design is an investment, not an expense. And it will have a great return, if you use it right (I’ll tell you how later).  

Let’s do the math:

1. Business cards cost $144 ($4 + $140) for the first 400. 
2. Even if you get a job that pays $10/hour, it will take you less than 2 days to get your money back. 
3. You will get over 600% return in a month!

Does it make any sense not to invest in your identity design, especially with all the awesome tools available?

No excuses

You heard me, there are no excuses anymore! 

If you don’t go and get yourself a bunch of cool cards and resumes, there is nothing I can do to help you. If you don’t do it, you might as well just stop reading this blog at all and stop dreaming about becoming successful too.

If you need advice, ask me. If you don’t care enough to make this change in your life, you can give up right now. I hope we understood each other ;-).

“Trust Agents” is a bestselling book written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith about social media, networking, and… well, building trust for success.

The book explains how the rules of branding has changed not only in terms of HOW you should brand, but also WHY. 

It mixes theory and interesting stories, and showcases with direct practical action plans that will get you on top of the new trends in personal and corporate marketing.

My favorite point in the book is about changing your perception of life and viewing it as a game. To some extent, this point is described by me in one of my latest posts. 

The authors also talk about building your network and leveraging your connections in a good, trustworthy way.

In my opinion, it is a great book for students, because it shows a lot of great timeless tools you didn’t know about before. It also makes you rethink you current activities and start planning your future career with better understanding of the cultural shifts that are happening right now.

So here we are. You already know that, in order to become really successful, you need to step up your game, which we will, from now on, call personal branding.

Sure, personal branding is not yet a must for becoming successful but only in cases where success is directly related to your achievements.

If being successful means to you being the best at doing what you love, then dive into the activities described below and start building your brand now!

Warning

I should warn you that taking these steps will make you forget 2 words from your vocabulary: boredom and free time.

Boredom. You will never be bored, if you are actively working on achieving success by doing something you like. You will be excited, full of passion, tired but fulfilled. Bored — never. 

Free time. You won’t have any free time, because you won’t need it. Don’t worry, you will still party and have fun, and date. But those days when you didn’t know how to entertain yourself are forever over. You can now find entertainment in work, and this is your first step to happiness.

Action Plan

Here are 5 simple activities that will help you start branding yourself.

1. Join student clubs.
Check out any student clubs you find interesting and get into a few! You’re not making any commitments, so don’t worry about joining too many — you can drop them along the way.

For every club you’ve joined, participate in their events. Try them out!

You will meet new people, and people = opportunities. Every job I had, I had got because of the people I knew. Networking is extremely important.

You will also figure out what you like, develop your palette of interests.

2. Become active online.
Yes, it’s time you get on Twitter. Start tweeting about the stuff you like, the books you read, the things you do to become successful. Tweet about this article, after all!

Putting yourself out there will help you show everyone who you are and what you do, leading to conclusions about why you are better than your competition, why you should be hired.

I don’t advise you get into blogging right away, but if you feel like it, go ahead!

3. Learn. More.
Curriculum is good. Extra-curriculum is extra-good. Start reading blogs and books about your profession, watching documentaries and going to conferences. Absorb avery bit of information and be hungry for more.

Then share your knowledge with your new friends from student clubs and followers on Twitter.

4. Increase productivity.
You might not feel this pain yet, but as you become more and more active with your life, you’ll understand how scarce the time is as a resource. So start early! Here’s a list to consider: speed reading, time management, life-hacking, utilizing commute time.

The more efficiently you can use time, the more you will be able to achieve before graduation.

5. Read this blog.
And subscribe to the “Awesome Sunday” newsletter, for god’s sake! :)

Summing up

Every point mentioned here, I will be discussing on the pages of this blog in detail. There is a lot more to learn about personal branding and other aspects of improving your college life. But these few tips will get you started.

Are you doing any of these already? What exactly? How is it working out for you?

You go to school. You study. You nurture your marks and learn what you can, trying to have fun along the way.

If we look at it from a different perspective, your time in school is like an old arcade game. You make different moves, and you collect points as you play. These points are essential to your final score. 

To get more points, you can use some secret pathway like in Super Mario Bros. Or collect bananas instead of cherries like in Ms. Pacman. In the real life, you aslo can do much more than just study.

You can work part-time, and not at a coffee shop but at some small position in the industry. You can go to conferences, network, read books and blogs, make time to be in student clubs, and much much more.

You can start building your own brand.

By the time you graduate, you might grow your resume substantially. All your successes and failures add up and make a huge difference in what you become and how high you get.

It’s just like in Pacman, when you were asked to enter your 3-letter initials, and the game would place you somewhere in the Top 10. Or not place you anywhere at all.

You should look at your time in college as a game — a game you can win by simply playing it better. Moreover, you can look in the same way on your whole life, as described by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith in “Trust Agents.”

You are the only person who decides how successful you will become. I challenge you to play this game.

Will you?

Always have an opinion. Ask yourself what your gut feeling is saying, what you think about this and that, if it is good or bad. Then analyze. Then answer.

Don’t brag about your decision just yet, because you might be wrong, and you don’t want to show that to everyone. But reevaluate and review your opinion later, when more information becomes available.

Some times, you will be completely wrong. Some times, you will be right. But what is more important is that through this process you will train yourself, learn and improve your cognitive skills, as well as intuition.

Later, when you get experience, more knowledge, and access to inside information, your judgements will improve dramatically. And this is crucial for any of your decisions.

So is Blackberry Playbook going to kill Apple iPad? What do you think?

Doctor is a protected term; psychiatrist is a protected term; lawyer is a protected term. You fake it—you go to jail.

But marketing specialist, social media consultant or, for crying out loud, SEO expert are not protected. That’s why there are so many of them, and the majority doesn’t have enough education or experience to the do job right. So businesses don’t trust anyone; they are suspicious.

This is why you need to be the best you can to compete and actually show that you are different from all those liars. This is why personal branding is so important while simply doing your job is not enough.