I’m so excited to share that The New Brand You was a winner and a finalist in the November 2016 International Beverly Hills Book Awards contest!
The International Beverly Hills Book Awards contest recognizes the best in fiction and non-fiction books across various genres, with a focus on print books. In addition to the quality of writing and content, each judge in the awards considers cover and interior design, promotional text, aesthetic components and other factors that demonstrate outstanding presentation which all comprise a great book.
The NewBrand You took home an award for best Non-Fiction Sales book and was a finalist (aka runner up) for the prize for the best Non-Fiction Business book. For a complete list of winners – you can visit the Beverly Hills Book Awards Website.
The New Brand You is available in book stores online everywhere, including Barnes & Noble, Indigo Chapters, and, of course, Amazon.
Are you curious about The New Brand You? Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction of the book.
Introduction
Standing in front of a whiteboard in a small, brightly lit meeting room, 12 people faced me, waiting. Tears filled my eyes. My hands were sweaty and shaking.
I was trying to think of something to draw. The only rule was that it couldn’t be anything related to real estate.
I had an MBA in real estate and finance. I’d been investing for ten years, and teaching people how to invest for three years. My husband was my business partner. Everything in my life – including a great number of my friends – was real estate related.
I couldn’t think of a single thing I would do if it wasn’t real estate related.
A door was opening in front of my mind, but it was pitch black inside that room.
I was terrified to go inside; any number of scary things could be waiting for me.
Yet I still felt a magnetic pull to that room.
What if it wasn’t bad at all? I was almost as curious as I was afraid. But I was too fearful to take that step.
Would you step into the pitch black room?
The people in the room were watching, supporting me to enter that room, but I was defiant.
I declared that I was already doing exactly what I wanted to do – writing and teaching.
When I left that day, I went back to doing what I knew, but that door didn’t close.
When I wasn’t busy working on our real estate deals, or teaching people how to invest in their own real estate deals, that dark room haunted me. The open door called to me.
The fears and possibilities chased me like ghosts. I’d worked hard to create the life I was living, and it was pretty darn good. I dreaded the effort that it might take to start something new. And I worried that it wouldn’t be as fun, or that I wouldn’t be good enough or strong enough to do whatever it was that I wanted to do next. But the feeling that so much more was possible would not go away.
The question ‘Was it possible there was life after real estate?’ was changing to ‘What will my life beyond real estate be?’
But, before I get into that, let’s talk about you.
What Do You Really Want To Do?
The question is not: “What can you make money doing?”
The question is: “What do you really want to do?”
Not what you think is possible, but what you want to do.
As I started searching for what else I wanted to do, I wasn’t the only one in our house thinking about what else was possible besides real estate. My husband (and business partner for more than a decade) Dave was exploring acting, and he had become quite serious about making a career of it.
As he found himself trying to manage our existing portfolio, speaking with our coaching clients, and building an acting career, he realized something had to go. He was being pulled in too many different directions to do a good job of anything.
It was time for change. Gulp….
There’s a reason we fear change. It’s hard. It’s emotional. It’s uncomfortable.
The worst part can be figuring out the first step. And then the next step.
If you’re about to venture into something new, you already know this. You have a level of comfort in what you do today. You may not enjoy it, or want to do it forever, but there’s comfort because you know what to expect.
But change can also be exhilarating and full of possibility.
Whether you’re changing careers, or going from student to employee, employee to entrepreneur, or entrepreneur in one type of business to entrepreneur in another, you have to reinvent yourself.
You have to showcase expertise you haven’t emphasized before, because you have been doing something different.
How do you influence others to see you in the way you want them to see you? How do you positively impact those around you? And how do you make an income doing it?
By creating your personal brand.
Creating a great brand – one that reflects clearly who you are and what you do – makes everything easier. And the stronger your brand, the more money you will be paid.
You have a brand already.
We all have a brand, but few of us have taken time to cultivate it and become comfortable with selling ourselves within that brand. We let things happen to us instead of getting in the driver’s seat and making things happen.
You can let people come up with their own idea of who you are and what value you bring to the world, and then hope they see you the way you’d like to be seen. Or, you can consciously create and shape your brand and communicate it to others.
You don’t need to reach millions of people to have a powerful impact and earn a great living. But you do need to know how to communicate and present who you are and what you do. You do need a personal brand that connects with the right people.
That is what this book is going to help you with.
It will provide you with a solid foundation to help you become known as an expert or an authority in your industry, and you will feel more comfortable selling yourself in that role. You may even be making more money doing what you do before you’re finished reading this book.
