Sports have a way of unifying, challenging, stretching, and pushing us to achieve the impossible.  As people it is human nature to take the path of least resistance.  I truly believe people won’t change until their challenged, I hope April story challenges you the way it challenged me.

There are times in life when someone or something inspires you to greatness, in this case it is April Holmes Paralympics Gold Medalist.  I found April when I was doing a search for Dwyane Wade and his new footwear deal with Brand Jordan.

Note: This is a great brand story.  April is the first woman of Brand Jordan and a great personal branding story who is truly living her passion and a purpose driven life. For more incite to her story check out her Brand Jordan video and follow her on Twitter (@AprilHolmes).

Michael Jackson, originally uploaded by houlouis.

The King of Pop. Thriller. The White glove. The Leather jacket. The moonwalk. Michael Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers and most influential artist to ever live. As I learned of his DEATH I began to think about the imprint that his LIFE made on so many people.

As a personal brand strategist I think in terms of legacy and human currency versus just dollars. There was a point in time where I thought it was more important to sell a million books then it hit me that it was more important to change a million lives, thus my mission changed to, ‘To inspire a million people to live a life of significance.

Let Michael Jackson life as an entertainer challenge you to think about the imprint that your life will leave. My question to you is what is your legacy? Your answer will be determined by what history says about the quality of life you lived.

Remember your life will be defined by the Dash ( -).

Mind Share- by Hajj E. Flemings, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

Market share versus mind share is a question for the ages. Is market share for personal brands important? Can personal brands grow market share? How do you determine if your personal brand is stronger than someone elses? For most people it would be hard to calculate market share and would be meaningless if identified?

Market Share

Market share is the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company or by a brand.

o Coke has 43.1% of $65.9 billion soft drink beverage industry.

This makes it very easy to define how much of the soft drink beverage industry that Coke-Cola owns.

Mind Share

Mind Share is owning a slice of mental real estate in the mind of your customers or potential customers. Personal branding has a lot to do with creating a top of the mind experience and making your name synonymous with the industry or space that you want to occupy.

For Example
o Tiger Woods = Golf
o Seth Godin = Marketing
o Anderson Cooper = News

Capturing Mind Share

How does a personal brand capture mind share? That is a great question and I am glad that you asked. Mind share is captured through conversational capital. There are many touch points of a brand that create brand impressions that simulates awareness.

Brand Impressions

o Social Network (SN) Connections: Adding Friends, Connections,
Contacts.
o Twitter Conversation: Humanize your brand and connect.
o Post Video Content
o RSS Subscription
o Email Distribution
o Blogs: Blogging, commenting on others blogs, number site of visits
o Sales: Products/services that connect people to your thoughts.
o Downloads/Views: Podcast (Video/Audio) and video content
o Face-to-Face Interaction: Speaking engagements, networking events, meetings, and presentations.
o Write a book: Traditional book, eBook, and/or audio book
o Web 2.0 Cards: Social media cards by www.BrandCardz.com, my personal favorite.

Results of Capturing Mind Share

Mind share is not about numbers, one can easily artificially inflate the number of social network connections, downloads, or view.

o Fame
o Notoriety
o Trust/Creditability
o Brand Awareness
o Inflated Ego
o Opportunity
o Influence
o Followers
o Stalkers

Converting Mind Share into Personal Brand Value

One of the challenges of personal branding is to convert mind share into value or basically creating a business model to monetize your new found brand awareness. Let me know your thoughts on you how you convert your personal brand into value!!!!

Passion, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

How do you help people become something that you can’t teach? My personal opinion is that passion cannot be taught, but I believe that every personal is passionate about something so it becomes very important to identify your purpose to live your passion.

Today’s post is on Passion one of the guiding principles of my book ‘The Brand YU Life’.  The Brand YU Life is divided into seven section defined as degrees. I chose degrees instead of rules or principles because of the significance of a degree. A degree is a small unit or interval of change. Small adjustments in your thinking can produce dramatic results in your life, it is typically the small that creates the big.

Your future, your greatness, and your personal satisfaction is tied to your personal passion. It is hard-wired into your DNA and is coded on the inside of you. It is the fire that burns deep within. Most of us ignore the drive and focus instead on what other people have told us we ought to be, or on what we see others do. Living a life of significance is fueled by passion, which is the reason passionless people exist and passionate people create the future. However, it is difficult to be great at something that you were never created to do.

“ Life’s too short to hate what you do all day.
Life’s way to short to make mediocre stuff.”
- Seth Godin, Tribes

Quite being average and be you. Now I leave you with this question, Who are you becoming?

I was on my laptop at Caribou Coffee in Royal Oak and I saw a friend
Eddie Lee (Detroit Young Professionals) and we talked for a minute and he mentioned the phase, ‘Thought Leader’ and this blog post was born. Thanks Eddie!

Are you a thought leader? We all have the potential to be one.

Thought leader is defined in Wikipedia as a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights (thinklets).

The term was first coined in 1994, by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the magazine, Strategy & Business.

But now I ask you a question, what things matter to you? Does anybody care about your thoughts? What is important in your life? What are your interest and what do you truly care about? It is time to wrap your thoughts around something that matters and leverage the power of the new media, blogging, social networks, and microblogging- twitter to name a few. The voice of user-generated content is increasing and becoming more relevant. For me it is simple, my thoughts are wrapped around branding. Branding is an inexhaustible subject so there is never a shortage of content or things to talk about.

I believe a lot people focus on things they think other people want to hear versus creating relevant content that matters. Being a thought leader is not a title that you can anoint yourself with, so please don’t try.

What I believe thought leaders have!
o Vision. They see what others don’t see (and before others see it.)
o Innovate. They think outside the box.
o Focus. The concentrate on something that matters.
o Make the complex simple. Anybody can add steps to a process, can you remove steps and make the process better.
o Swagger. They have that something that draws you to them and makes you want to consume their thoughts and their content.

Thought leaders communicate passion when sharing their ideas. As a personal brand strategist I fight the ills of the branding world and unoriginally with my Apple laptop (I would say pen, but that is so 20th century) my blog, and my book. I am the world’s next superhero, just call me ‘Brand Man’. LOL

Are you a thought leader? Let me know your thoughts.

Two of the though leaders (social media/marketing) I follow in twitter:

@chrisbrogan
@SethGodin

Two of my personal favorites:
Kevin Carroll- www.kevincarrollkatalyst.com

TED(Technology, Entertainment, Design)- www.TED.com (Inspired talks by the worlds greatest thinkers and doers)

thoughtleader_tagcloud, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

‘My Brand Story’ is a new series that I will blog about telling inspiring stories of some of the world’s greatest brands. Of course my story is first.

What is a brand story? It is who you are packaged in an organic and authentic way that allows people to connect with the real you. Now, what you all have been waiting for my brand story . . . Relax, get a cup of Starbucks (White Chocolate Mocha of course) or Voss bottled water as I take you through the Genesis of the Hajj E. Flemings brand story. I grew up in a small town Roseville, Michigan with big dreams of being a gym shoe designer. When I was in high school, I had a passion for sketching sneakers. I started writing Nike during my senior year of high school and continued through my junior year of college without a positive response (I also wrote every footwear company in United States and was rejected by them all). The rejection letters I received from Nike serve as an inspiration and reminder that motivates me to this day. I found that wrapped inside of every ‘no’ was my ‘yes’. In 1992, I began working for Mavade Footwear, a growing sneaker company, in Wixom, Michigan where I designed the Equator, a cross trainer shoe. My book, ‘The Brand YU Life: Re-Thinking who you are through personal brand management’ was birthed out of my necessity to identify my purpose and live my dreams.

The Purpose of a Brand Story:
o Definition- It provides meaning, perspective, and focus to your life.

o Connection- People are emotionally connected to their favorite brands which is most effectively communicated through a story. As a mental realtor it is your job to own a slice of mental real estate in the mind of your customer.

o Value- Your story has the potential to increase your value and can effectively position your personal brand.

In conclusion, my brand story is about inspiring people to live a life of significances. I love assisting people and businesses in finding innovative solutions for common problems. I believe you will be defined in life by the size of the problem that you solve and addressing the issue of significances is a hugh undertaking with tremendous return. What is your brand story?

My Brand Story: Hajj E. Flemings, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

After 5 Detroit one of the hottest online websites about Detroit and events around the region recently did a write up about me in their, ‘We Chose Detroit’ section. The write-up focuses on me as a local brand strategist who has chosen the city of Detroit. I am committed to assisting in the branding of individuals and the city of Detroit. Check out the article it is a great piece (hit the link below).  For the latest happenings in the ‘D’ check out their website as well.

http://after5detroit.com/a5/features/we-chose-detroit-local-speaker-brands-the-best.html

Did ‘The Brand YU Life’ book cover inspire the new NBA commercial (‘There Can Only Be One’) or the new Time magazine cover design with Hillary and Barack. Who knows? Nevertheless, all three are great designs.

After researching the design direction of the commercial I found the following statement from the NBA:
“There Can Only Be One” is designed to bring to life the dedication, desire, and sacrifice that create the intense emotions and drama of one of sport’s premier postseason events: the NBA Playoffs & The Finals.

When I saw the ads the first thing I thought about was the dedication, desire, and sacrifice required to operate in your purpose as a personal brand. The split faces represented to me the split personalities that most people have: one of a person trying to get a particular job and not being fulfilled and the other operating in their purpose and loving what they do.

My reason for being a personal brand strategist is that I was tired of just working a job and wanted to live my passion and operate in my purpose. Operating in your purpose is the highest calling of personal branding opposed to just getting a job. Positions can be filled, people can be replaced, but ‘There is only one’ who can fill your purpose.

There Can Only Be One, originally uploaded by Hajj Flemings.

I recently watched a commercial entitled ‘When You Let Everyone Play…Nobody Wins’ by ‘The Ladders’ which is an online job search provider for $100K+ jobs. The commercial embodied a topic that I planned to write on for a while that I term, ‘Maximum Capacity’. The video is a scene of a tennis match that is soon flooded with amateurs/people so that no one stands out. Have you ever felt in life and at work that it is impossible to stand out it the crowd? This video is funny but it is very real and very true. With the changing job market, downsizing, and outsourcing we all at times feel like we are stuck. There are more than 6.5 billion people on the planet and you are a mouse click away from your farthest competitor, so how do you stand out?

Personal branding is the new human capital, I will be developing a series of blog post on this topic covering the following content:

o Human Connections (Relationships)
o What’s my Human Capital?
o Your brand story

I will talk about how to develop your personal brand to increase your new human capital.
Are you ready to stand out?

Hello and I would like to welcome you to the 2008 Personal Branding Election. My name is Hajj Flemings and I am campaigning to be your personal brand strategist in 2008. Part of my charge is to help the American people to become more globally competitive. I believe that this is a season of change. I believe that common, average, everyday, working class people such as you and me can get uncommon results in their life.
My Platform
1. My platform is one of anti-abortion. I am tired of people aborting the vision and destiny for their life.
2. The price of Oil is increasing at an alarming rate. I am running into people everyday whose dreams have simply run out of gas, who don’t have the fuel to finish the race. I am here to restore hope, passion, purpose, and mission to all people of all races, all creeds, and nationalities.
3. War is Heavy on the hearts of many American- Many of you are @ war with the real you. Fighting who you were created to be.
4. Health Care is a major issue my personal branding plan is to restore the health of your personal brand.I have developed a 7-point Brand Plan:
1. Identify your Passion
2. Define your Mission
3. Count the Cost
4. Create your Voice

Let’s pause for a moment. Hilary was recently quoted on the cover of Newsweek, saying that ‘She has found her voice’. America Hilary is 60-years old, please don’t wait until you are 60 to find your voice. Had she just read my book. ‘The Brand YU Life’ she would have found her voice a long time ago.

5. Develop your Core
6. Be Authentic
7. Shift to Now

Go to my website and purchase my book, ‘The brand YU Life’ which outlines my plan to develop your personal brand. Vote for me as your personal brand strategist. My name is Hajj E. Flemings, your personal brand strategist and I approve this message.