Be Your Own Brand—A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd

Making It Personal

Together, your combination of roles, standards, and style builds a distinctive, relevant, and consistent brand image in someone else's mind. From that brand image, people know what to expect from you and can make informed decisions about the role they want you to play in their lives.

It's important—and, we hope, somewhat comforting—to understand that to be a strong brand doesn't mean you have to appeal to everyone. Just as businesses do, you can target your brand to specific relationships.

The typical McDonald's is built for scale—a large service counter and volume-oriented systems. It sells many times more items than Wendy's does. But because Wendy's builds on its burger competencies with different standards and style, its ...