Digital marketing expert, Joanne Tombrakos advises us to know every part of our story, even the bad stuff, and stay open to what happens next to create a successful personal brand. Joanne took a circuitous route from school teacher, through sales and traditional corporate media to her current position as “Chief Storyteller” of J. T. International. No one can be successful in sales without being good at telling stories. But she never would have believed that today she is an adjunct professor of digital marketing at NYU, digital strategist, writer, publisher of two books and marketing consultant of her own company. Underneath it all her goal is to help people, especially women, to find the path that works for them to find and create their personal brand in the digital age.
Joanne says that she lost her feminine, or creative self during 25 years of a corporate career. When Time Warner underwent reorganization and organized her out in 2008, she jumped headfirst into entrepreneurship to pursue a writing career. She feels that she used everything she learned along the way and relied heavily on personal organization, time management, and the emergence and evolution of media to design the life and career she is living now.
Joanne’s Brand Goes Back to Her Roots
Much of Joanne’s writing relies on lessons she learned from her mother. She writes of how her mother always helped people by baking for them, always generously helping when she was asked and how she insisted they always be on time out of respect for other people. This behavior has all become part of Joanne’s own personal brand. And when Joanne struggled to manage her own time as fledgling entrepreneur, she remembered her mother using her egg timer to time her naps. Joanne’s second book, It Takes An Egg Timer: A Guide to Creating Time in Your Life, shares how this works when applied as a tool for accomplishing your goals and many more tips to achieve what you want. In fact, Joanne warns not to make your list too long, as leaving long lists of to-do’s undone sets you up for failure.
In her own work Joanne carves out an hour in her day to accomplish a particular goal. She warns listeners not to try to cram in too much or to use your phone or other digital device to time your segments. The egg timer has a white noise tick-ticking the process that keeps her on track to complete her task and feel good about efficient use of her hour.
More Digital Brand Wisdom
Joanne believes that we all have something remarkable to share. She created “Your Digital You,” an online and on-demand digital course to help people learn more about how they can use this powerful connecting tool to identify and tell their stories. Joanne stays ahead of the curve using her experience about media to create new strategies using the media of today and tomorrow.
Check out more of her sound advice on her website and on Huffington Post. Then be sure to listen to this interview for more about the importance of human connection in this age of disconnect, and how to apply your own story to create your most successful brand.