I haven’t met a single business person recently who isn’t looking to define how they stand out from the crowd. Today’s buzzword is personal branding. Whether you’re competing for a job, protecting your business from getting hit in these challenging economic times, or trying to get your arms around the right next career path, standing apart first requires that you define your professional assets.

What are professional assets?

Think of your professional assets as all the skills and experiences you’ve gained along the way. Your training, skills and experiences are the pieces of thread that have weaved the tapestry you have become.

How do you define your assets?

1. Make a list of your major areas of study, job skills and experiences. Don’t discount anything, even if you don’t think it applies right now. It is a part of your tapestry and it may carry more value than you realize. You may discover that training or experience that you had many years ago has contributed to your strengths in ways you take for granted.
2. Review each asset with an eye towards understanding how it contributes to your professional value. For example, I earned a business degree with a concentration in computer programming. After college I fell into the business of direct marketing and dismissed the programming background for many years. It wasn’t until I became an entrepreneur who wanted to save money by building my own web sites did I recognize the value of my programming background. Web 2.0 training is now an element of our offerings.
3. Take a step back and think about how what you love to do fits into this picture. Most people make the mistake of believing that their passions have no place in the hard world of skills and expertise. Yet when you separate heart and mind you’re not working with the whole of an individual.

By bringing all of who you are into the exercise, you will truly arrive at how you stand apart.

Dean and I had the honor Saturday of presenting to Job Connections, a wonderful group that supports unemployed Bay Area professionals. I lead the group through an exercise intended to bring their ideal career vision to the surface. Afterwards I asked what obstacles get in the way of pursuing that vision. The first reply was one I hear every time: MONEY.

There is no doubt that those of us who are not independently wealthy are more concerned with making enough money than nearly anything else. Yet most of us lose sight of how much control we do have over the money we make. Think about it this way. You are like a store that offers your skills and talents in exchange for money.

The amount of money you make is driven by:

1. The marketability of your skills and talents
2. How well you get the message out about the value of what you have to offer.
   

This holds true whether you want to maximize your earning potential working for a company or working for yourself.

If you are someone who has been a victim of a layoff, acknowledging your power over your paycheck may seem like positive thinking propaganda, but it’s not. You may be temporarily without a paycheck, yet you’re not without opportunities to increase your marketability and get the word out about what you have to offer.

In our quest to support individuals to create the careers they desire, Dean and I have recognized the real need to help people get beyond the fear of money. We have decided that we can do this better by expanding our training to more fully educate you in the hard skills that are necessary to be successful in today’s business world. For example:

• Learning how to be a more effective networker will enable you to exert your power to get the word out about what you have to offer.
• Learning how to blog will enable you to better promote your expertise to potential hiring managers or potential customers.
• Learning how to customize an inexpensive web publishing platform will give you the power to build and change your storefront without paying someone else to do it for you.

We’re in the process of adding this training to our event schedule. We are very excited about our mission to inspire you to reach for your dreams while educating you on how to use Web 2.0 technology to make your dreams reality. We’d love your suggestions on what kind of training would inspire you to take steps forward towards your vision.

I spent the most pleasant evening tonight with a wonderful group of women who gathered for the Flourish book club meeting to discuss my book, Inner Architect. Flourish is the vision of Anne Marie Engel, whose mission is to support women in navigating the challenges of balancing career and life.

Pursuing your passions in your work was a thread that weaved throughout our discussions. These accomplished, well-educated women shared their thoughts about leaving a secure, established career to pursue their passions. When you have built a level of success in a profession, letting go comes with its share of angst.

• What will other people think about my decision?
• How do I let go of being one role to move into another?
• How will I survive the early times of making a lot less money?

Having done so myself three years ago, I could relate to these questions they shared. Looking back now, I can see that the answers didn’t come until I took steps forward. And the good news is that dealing with these questions has been so much easier than I anticipated.

Lesson: We tend to give more power to our fears than they deserve.

Put your toe in the water. Take tiny steps towards the career you want and see what happens. Chances are the very things you worry about the most turn out to be more manageable that you would have thought possible.