Personal projects are a great way to kick start your personal brand.
Have you ever felt this way?
Ji Lee is a Creative Director at Google Creative Labs. After 4 years in a past job, he felt stifled and frustrated by the lack of progress until he finally realized what his problem was: other people were holding him back. So he decided to take a risk by leaving and doing something different- a work project for his own professional curiosity and experimentation, that he funded and was completely responsible for its successes and failures.
The result?
The Bubble Project was wildly successful and went viral. (You know something is good when the people it mocks start to use it themselves.)
More importantly, his personal project created a buzz around him, opening up all sorts of job opportunities for him like never before and ultimately he did find a job where he no longer felt stifled and frustrated.
Here’s an 8-minute clip of him telling his inspiring and entertaining story, with lessons learned towards the end:
What about you?
Have you tried using personal projects to advance your brand and career? Tell us your success and/or failure story in the comments here below.
Thanks to Tina of swissmiss for bringing Ji Lee’s story to my attention.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
Related posts:
- Distinct or Extinct: 8 Tips to Turn Mundane Projects into WOW Projects That Build Your Brand Can you remember the last time you completed a...
- Employee Participation Breeds Recognition Successful personal branding tactics that existed before social media...
- Reader Branding Nightmare: Job Search Sabotage? Yesterday I had a conversation with a job seeker...
Loading ...
[...] the original here: The Branding Power of Personal Projects Share and [...]
Great video and great topic. Something that I’ve done as a personal project is to really develop myself as a bodybuilder and get in the gym, focusing on my health and image. As I’ve done that, and I would consider it a personal project even though it isn’t directly related to my professional, it did create that ‘buzz’ around me. My colleagues were all curious about why I had a protein shaker on my desk, or why I would eat less or more at different times of the year. Eventually it created so much of a buzz that higher ups in the company ask me where I go to the gym and seek me out as an expert in fitness around the office. My ability to add value to their lives, even personally created value in their opinion of me and in fact opened the door for them to A) get to know me and B) learn to respect my ideas and opinions. It’s a small example but after seeing this I know now what I did (before this video I didn’t realize that at all!). I’ll be trying this out more for sure!
To start off thank for this great and inspiring video. Ji Lee story is very similar to mine. After 8 years of working as for amazing brands like SUBWAY, Kellogg’s, and many others, I got to a point where I couldn’t take the leash they had me on. They were all afraid of change!
On January 7, 2010, I decided to “Crush It” – I resigned and instantly started my own marketing consulting company. I didn’t even have to sell anything, I just started pouring down my marketing thought on my blog and projects started lining up.
In the corporate world, I used to work for around 9 hours a day and felt that i had no time to do anything else. Now, I work around 14 hours a day, and i feel i have all the time in the world. So I agree with Ji completely, time can be stretched as much as your passion can – and that is endless!