Here’s the concept: Any powerful brand (Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, iPhone, Facebook) stands for much more than the products that it names. McDonald’s stands for more than just a certain kind of food, it’s also about kid-friendliness, reliability, cleanliness, and value. These attributes are incredibly consistent over the long term, and drive much more visibility and loyalty than just the food they sell.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

As the economy rebounds, companies will be reluctant to hire full-time employees.  Fairly obvious, right?  But this has broad implications.

First, why would this statement be true?

• Companies have recent painful memories of how hard it is to shed permanent employees.
• They will be unsure about the magnitude and longevity of the rebound.  Is it for real this time?  What happens if it’s slower than currently projected?
• Full-time employees come with the expectation of stability in job assignment.  There’s more flexibility with hiring contractors to address short-term pain points.

There’s some very interesting implications from this statement for anyone who’s in the job market:

• Be open to the possibility of part-time and/or contract work, possibly for the rest of your career.
• Tap the available resources to learn how to manage yourself as an independent contract business.  Fortunately, there’s plenty available.
• Market yourself as an excellent contract worker – this may well place you ahead of others who are only looking for full-time positions.  Change your résumé/CV, put up a website, and start describing yourself as a business.
• Start tracking what’s going on in your market – what’s happening with strategic moves at various possible employers, where pain points are emerging, and map that to short-term projects that you could engage with.

It’s tough to find a job right now, so anything you can do to increase your odds will be time well spent!

Here’s the trick:  You promote in a way which is well-founded, or where promotion isn’t the primary message.

Here are a few examples:

• Share the recognition.  The message is a lot softer when a group of us achieved something, as opposed to just my own personal accomplishments.  And it can be more powerful as well, because typically a group can achieve more than just an individual.
• Provide objective evidence.  The fact that I’ve published a book or delivered 433 hours of coaching is more powerful than just claiming that I generally have lots of experience.  In addition, the book is almost always a great conversation starter: people want to know about my writing and publishing experience.
• Relate it to a future goal.  I may not be the world’s best expert yet, but it’s very interesting to tell people about the business I’m building.  It’s not uncommon to find people who want to help me, then find that I already have considerable expertise to offer.
• Demonstrate expertise in a helpful way.  I often sell my coaching services merely by having coaching conversations with people, or as part of a presentation I might give.  When people like the way I come across, they see that I can bring them value in a paid coaching engagement.

More than anything, keep the conversation open, honest, and useful to your audience.  Let that work to build up the impression that you have expertise and experience.

Fortunately, this isn’t a totally new experience for me, so I have some aids to help me navigate through this swamp.

The most important thing I do, first, is to admit that I have a big gap in my knowledge and abilities.  Trying to fake it isn’t going to work.  So next is to line up resources that I have available to me:

• Books, websites, and other static resources
• Other coaches I know who appear to have worked past this stage
• Communities that I can connect to where I can learn from other experts

I started organizing my work by going to a class at the local Small Business Development Center and writing down my thoughts in my business plan.  Even though it’s sketchy, it’s helping me to get a feel for how large this area is.

More on a whim than anything else, I’ve started reading a book on B2B marketing.  I love reading, but oddly enough, I seem to learn more from discussions with people.  So I’ve started making a number of contacts with others who can share their expertise with me.  I also went to a couple of networking meetings last week, one of which was for small business owners in the area.

But finally, in the end, I have to put some trust in myself to just get started.  Learning and planning are great, but I need to move into DOING marketing and sales.  That’s what I’ll be focusing on this week.