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Health & Fitness

Budget Mondays

Monday – 11/4/2013

It’s Monday – a painful day for most people, yours truly included. Sometimes it is made even more painful as we remember just how much money we ended up spending over the weekend.

Budget

It’s one word that can make people cringe, angry and sad all at the same time, a rare occurrence indeed. There are plenty of reasons for this – people are told at work that their budgets are being cut, their ideas cannot be funded because they are not in the budget, and in our personal life, our budgets don’t usually quite match up to our desires.

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There has been a lot written about personal branding, building your personal brand, and protecting your brand equity. Especially following the economic crisis of 207-2008 and the sluggish economic recovery since, there has been a large movement among people to start their own ventures — whether these are part-time businesses to supplement their income, or full-time endeavors to make up for lost income, the importance of a personal brand is the same.

Every business is in business to produce more resources than it consumes, or put another way, the business is in business to make money. Brands can be a powerful marketing tool for a business of any size, but how can people like you and I ever manage to put together a comprehensive marketing strategy without spending large amounts of money.

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Here are some of the best tips and tools that I have found in my searching

1) Get a professional headshot — if you visit my Facebook or LinkedIn page you will see what I mean
2) Make business cards — Vistaprint and other business card providers routinely offer deep discounts of even free cards
3) Purchase your own domain name. For example I own ssteinsmith.com, which is hosted by WordPress. It is not that expensive, and very effective
4) Think of your brand as an investment — the education, research and time that your spend putting into your brand will return itself over time.
5) Create your own content and attempt to become a subject matter expert (SME) or “thought leader”

Food for thought indeed.

Happy Reading!

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