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To my amazing daughter, Imani, who teaches me the importance of the creative mind, laughter, and unconditional love, every day. You are going to impact the world in a positive way and your mother and I will stop at nothing to give you all the tools to accomplish it.

To my Godchildren, Remi and Ezra, I hope you see all the possibilities that life has to offer. I pray that you strive to attain all your goals and dreams. May you have the success that you want throughout your lives and give thanks at every opportunity.

Where branding has been the focus of companies for decades, Duane Browne takes branding to the individual level in The Brand Avatar: Unlock Your Professional Potential & Dramatically Increase Your Income. This guide gives young professionals the skills and wisdom to take their careers to the next level.

Right from the start, Duane helps you to focus on your goals, allowing you to create a plan for where you want to go and how to get there. He guides you through the process of creating your own brand avatar, including stories and examples that effectively illustrate the points.

Throughout The Brand Avatar, Duane gives you tips on when to stand out and when to step back. His experience shines through in his tools for addressing how you are perceived by those you work with and those who can provide opportunities for you to advance your career. If you are looking for the ultimate guide to stand out and dramatically increase your income while advancing your career, then The Brand Avatar is the book for you!

Standing out in a professional setting is key to helping people remember who you are, and to increasing your level of influence. In the professional realm of your office, there are multiple settings where you have the opportunity to make a mark. The question is, what kind of mark are you leaving? Are you that individual everyone wants on their team because of the qualities and skills that you bring, or are you the one that everyone hopes is assigned somewhere else?

Just a heads up, if you don’t know anyone who everyone tends to avoid working with, you are probably that person. It is possible to change that, but like anything else, it is going to involve making an effort to change your presentation, and thereby alter the perception that people have of you.

Think about your favorite online game or social media site. In those virtual worlds, where you can decide who you are, what you look like, and how you want to present yourself, your avatar becomes an extension of who you are and what you want to achieve. Now I want you to apply those same principles to your career. Building a brand avatar is about making conscious choices regarding how you want to present yourself, and the perception that you want to create. Online, you might be able to fake it, but in real life, you can’t fake it. Building a brand avatar is about being what they want online and offline, even if your true offline self does not exactly align with what they want.

When it comes to your career and professional advancement, you cannot ignore how they impact each other. Simply put, there is no divide between the aspects of your personal and professional lives. One will always reflect on the other. With that in mind, it is important to address who you are online and offline, and brand yourself, not only as you want to be perceived, but also based on what you want to achieve.

Whether you know it or not, everything is branding. From the clothes you wear, how you react to situations, and even what you eat, everything is a statement about your brand. In other books, I have said the same thing about marketing, but after working in marketing and branding for over 15 years in numerous industries, I can say the statement is correct for marketing and branding alike.

Marketing is to branding what an artist is to art. Marketing is all the combined efforts to solidify, maintain, or enhance your brand. Branding is the by-product of all those efforts. Many people think branding is limited to products or services, but remember, everything is branding. If everything is branding, then the way you market yourself for success is no exception. The way prospects, colleagues, clients, and competitors perceive you is a direct function of branding.

Misty was talented, and she had plenty of good ideas that would have created many opportunities for her company to expand their business. But Misty was also not a talker. In fact, most people thought she was standoffish, and so she wasn’t making the connections that she needed to advance in the company. Her company was full of loud and direct individuals who shared their ideas, and meetings included multiple points of view before decisions were made. Except one voice was rarely heard. You guessed it: Misty’s!

Now, do you think that her career was heading up like she planned? No, it wasn’t, simply because she was falling below the radar. Her company’s culture didn’t match up to parts of her personality and, instead of adapting, Misty was falling behind, and not feeling empowered to take the reins in her career.

Then Misty decided to make some changes. She was ready to take her career to a new place, but she realized that if she didn’t start sharing her ideas, that was never going to happen. It meant a change in mindset for Misty. Creating her brand avatar was about changing the perception that she didn’t have ideas, by being more vocal during meetings. She took the time to share and, once she did, her ideas started to get acknowledged. Her voice grew in the company, and it translated into a promotion. It wasn’t that Misty gained new skills or suddenly got better at her job. She just met the company culture where it was, and the result was that she contributed to her own success.

The problem with many people who fall short of their professional or personal goals is they overlook how others perceive them. Sometimes people view themselves in a light that the world does not see. Right or wrong, positive or negative, perception is reality; and how the outside world views you is your brand to them. Even as I entered the marketing industry, I at times also missed the importance and power of personal branding.

When I was in university, I had a chip on my shoulder, being one of the only people of color in the class. I would not network much with others, and usually stayed by myself and studied alone. For me, I thought everyone felt I was not worthy to be there. The reality was my personal brand was perceived as closed off, unfriendly, and a loner. It wasn’t until I had to work in groups that other students saw the real me. I was someone who enjoyed taking a lead in presentations, and I loved the marketing process.

During my career, I have missed out on countless opportunities because I had either discounted, dismissed, or plum forgot that 100% of my conduct, couture, and concepts should be branded consciously. I can remember when I was a marketing manager for a multimillion-dollar company that did not have a dress code. I loved it because I could come to work in jeans, and the company was focused on my output and not so much on my appearance. The mistake in that thinking was illustrated by the fact that even though the VP allowed for casual dress code, he wore suits every day. When he walked in the room, people noticed he was present, because he stood out. He dressed for success (and was a success), so the question was, what was I dressing for?

Truth be told, when I am home alone, there is nothing more comfortable than wearing a pair of jogging pants and a V-neck shirt. Now, I do own suits, but my comfort clothing is sports gear. On top of that, I love my hip-hop music. When I am driving home from almost any place in my car, you better believe I have old school hip hop playing (semi-loud I may add), with me nodding my head to the tunes coming out of the stereo. At the time, I worked at one of Canada’s top telecommunication companies, and if they had known the full extent of the true me, I am pretty sure they would not have hired me. To some degree, I was already a brand avatar.

For some, the idea of re-inventing themselves, or not being faithful to their true selves, seems almost impossible given their life’s reality. Well, the great news I bring to you today is this book should help provide you with the guidance and resources to become successful in any industry and, at the same time, allow you to be true to yourself. This is possible through the concept of creating your own avatar to be the vessel to your personal branding requirements. This book is for anyone who is looking for a change in the way they view themselves, or the way people view them.

Lastly, you may be that person who has no interest in “selling out”, or not being yourself in the world. I find many individuals I have coached usually fall into one of those categories. Then there is another segment of people I coach, who have always played by the rules, who get promotions but look to supercharge their career and stand out within their respective industry. Whichever segment you best identify with, the ability to craft that perfect perception to display to the world will be your greatest asset in your quest for success in everything you do. Owning your brand avatar will accomplish just that for anyone willing to follow the instructions embedded on these pages.

What is an avatar? More importantly, what is a brand avatar? If you have not had the chance to watch the blockbuster movie, Avatar, by James Cameron, I urge you to do so to gain some more context on the topic of an Avatar. The premise of the movie was the ability of a soldier to transport his mind into the body of a genetically engineered host body, in order to blend in and interact with the natives of a foreign land.

A more detailed version is a soldier who lost the ability of his legs, but he used his ability to think and act like the enemy, as the main weapon to defeat the natives of a foreign land. This was accomplished by transporting the mind of the soldier into a body the army created to resemble the natives. Once his mind was in this vessel, he was able to walk, talk, look, and act like the natives, which allowed the army to gain intelligence on what would be required to defeat them and claim their land. By no means am I suggesting an avatar with negative connotations. Instead, I was highlighting that the ability to utilize an avatar is how someone was able to transform their reality and become a new person—one who matches the perception of what success looks like.

No matter if it is your professional or personal goals and desires, creating a brand avatar gives you the flexibility to turn on and off the perception you want the world to have of you. The ability to do this in an increasingly judgemental and competitive world is an amazing weapon you can have at your disposal. I am going to share a personal truth to help drive home this fact. Some of you have heard me present on stage, and some of you have read about some of my business ventures. Well, all those activities required me to put on my power suit, shine up my wing toe shoes, and eliminate all facial hair. I do this to personify what success may look like. Now, my personal view is that success comes from work, not presentation, but since everyone is judged in the first 10–15 seconds, I have to look like a success. If you are one of my friends (which I hope anyone reading these pages will seek to stay in touch), you already know that shaving and wearing dress clothes are things I fight with on a daily basis. I prefer to wear shorts and T-shirts, but there is a time and place for everything.

Taking things an important step further, you want your overall persona to exceed that of whatever the status quo is. If you are wearing a suit at an event, it does nothing for you if your suit is too baggy, or if you are not aware of dinner party etiquette. When creating your brand avatar, make a game out of it, and have fun with your avatar. All successful actors study their role and get into character to deliver an amazing performance. That is the same way you need to view your brand avatar. It is a role you are playing where you need to act the part. The great thing about becoming your brand avatar is that it is up to you how long you stay in character. This process will allow you to facilitate the desired brand perception in your industry and, at the same time, allow you to step outside that reality if you so wish, to just be yourself.

No matter where you work, your company is conscious about its brand personality, which includes what people are saying about the company and its brands. If you translate that to your brand, then it is clear you need to be aware of what is being said about you online, but also about what connections you are making and what impact your brand presence is having.

Think about that idea of an avatar. You want it to reflect who you are, your values, beliefs, and purpose. Throughout this book, I want you to focus on what you are putting out there that is impacting your brand. Are you crafting the right message for the goals you want to achieve, or is the message falling flat and missing your audience altogether?

As a professional looking to grow in your career and make significant strides, you need to be focused on not only what you are communicating but how you are communicating it. Too often, it is a case of focusing in on a few details but missing the bigger picture of how all those aspects impact your brand. There is an often-toted expression that you cannot see the forest for the trees. I want you to get into the mindset of seeing the forest, not just a few individual trees. Recognize that you cannot have a silo mentality to branding.

I want you to learn from successful companies, see what they do right and what they do wrong, and then use it as a guide. This book is focused on distilling those examples, giving you the knowledge to build a brand for yourself that gives you the platform to achieve your goals. So, what makes a brand successful? There are a few key aspects that you need to consider.

Note how each of these aspects can apply to your personal brand. We will be talking about them all in the context of your personal and professional brand, but before we can talk about how to apply these things, you need to know what your brand is. I want you to be able to take these tools and use them to reach the next level in your career and your life!

It is an exciting time to be a professional, as there are multiple avenues available for you to grow your brand, and to grow personally and professionally. I am excited to take this journey with you, so let’s get started!

Before I can even begin to help you brand yourself in a way that will rocket you upward in your career, you need to determine who you are and what you want your brand to be. It is so easy to go through life following a path defined by others, never exploring who you are or where you want to go. The media, social, and cultural expectations can steer you on a course that takes you on a journey that leaves you feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

It is so easy to follow a path defined by others. After all, the path of least resistance can provide a pleasant journey, but it lacks the excitement which comes from achieving a goal based on your hard work, or the joy that results from overcoming a hurdle or challenge.

Many of you learned to ride a bike when you were younger. It was difficult at first, learning how to balance the bike to keep yourself moving forward perfectly. Success was not immediate. I am sure that you fell several times and might even have felt like giving up. Still, your parents were there to encourage you, guide you, and even run beside you, holding that seat. Eventually, they let go, and you had that moment of pure joy when you realized that you were riding your bike! Of course, learning to stop was something else.

I want you to feel that joy in your professional life, but the only way to do so is to define who you are, what you are capable of, and the direction that you want to go. It might mean stretching yourself mentally and physically, but the results can be amazing.

Think of yourself as a ship. The best captains know their ships inside and out. They know what their ship is capable of and how to get the best out of it in any situation and in any weather condition. Then there are the captains that let their ship be cared for by others. They don’t know the ins and outs of their ship, leaving them blind to its abilities when difficult conditions arise. What type of captain are you in your professional life?

When you start to think about and focus on these aspects of who you are, then you also start to identify the influences that play a part in creating and defining your beliefs and how you operate in the world, as well as what values shape your priorities, including what you focus your energy on. If you find joy in a specific task or experience, then you are going to create the circumstances that allow you to enjoy that experience time and time again.

At the same time, without a clear picture of who you are, it can be easy for external influences to come into play. I have seen individuals steered on a course that ends up leaving them feeling frustrated and unhappy in their professional lives, simply because they did not know what they wanted, and they did not clearly define their goals.

You need to step in and define yourself before others do it for you. Once you know who you are, then you can begin to shape how people perceive you, which is going to become the essence of your brand. Remember, the avatar spent time learning about the people and culture that he was infiltrating. Still, it was his mind, his thoughts, and his values that played a part in the decisions he made. Although he presented himself in a certain way, in the end, he behaved consistently true to who he was.

These questions are meant to help you truly understand why you made your choice. Too often, you can decide for a superficial reason, and then find that you hate your job. To be real, you hate your job because you know it is not where you are supposed to be. The question is, why did you do that? Finding the answer gives you the ability to start making real changes.

You may have personal limitations, ones that you may feel are stopping you from moving forward. An avatar mentality allows you to play to your strengths and take on qualities that magnify your abilities. Remember the shy individual who stands up and speaks in front of a large crowd?

I do not want you to automatically assume that if you are not as skilled in one area or another, that it limits your ability to reach your goals or achieve your dreams. It is your moment to accept the challenge and allow yourself to grow, just like you did on that bike so many years ago.

Recognizing both your strengths and weaknesses can help you as you begin the process of branding yourself. If you don’t understand who you are, it is impossible to craft a brand. The best brands have a clear definition and message, one that is not confused by the various elements presented. Let’s focus on defining branding, and how it can impact you!