Product Description

Real You Incorporated empowers women entrepreneurs. The book provides insights for women on how to discover and love their personal brand, and how to bring it into the market as a real business—unique and different. In the first section of the book, Find It Within You, readers will learn how to express internal personality, passions and essence to define the internal brand. In the second section, The Competitive Advantage, readers learn how to extend the internal message into the world—to their partners, employees and ultimately their customers.

Part branding—the author is a nationally known marketing expert—and part business inspiration, Real You Incorporated includes case studies of real women entrepreneurs from a variety of industries: manufacturing, retail, restaurants, real estate, publishing and many more. Their stories bring the book to life, adding inspiration and role models. The book also includes a visualization tool in the form of a chart that women entrepreneurs can complete and keep with them, to remind them of their Real You, no matter what phase their business is in.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62956 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470176580
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Inside Flap

It's a fact; every sixty seconds a womanstarts a business. And while women represent a dominant force in the ever-growing business economy, the demand to fit into the corporate "boys club" is still pervasive.In Real You Incorporated, Kaira SturdivantRouda reveals the secret to building a successful brand, and thus a successful busi-ness, by refusing to fit in. Being successful is all about being you—the real you.

Real You Incorporated offers women a bold and refreshing message: for a brand to truly, deeply resonate with customers, it has to be based on something truly genuine—yourself. Building that personal, genuine brand means being true to yourself in every part of your business—from how you promote your talents to how you interact with the people in your office and everything else.

Rouda's lively book provides readers with a helpful Real You Incorporated chart that captures the most essential elements of your business: you and your passions, brand, positioning, culture, customers, and gifts. Once you fully define your personal brand, Rouda shows you how to use it as a competitive advantage that will prove invaluable to your long-term success.

Each chapter includes profiles of successful entrepreneurs and provides inspiration and cautionary tales for every business woman.

Full of new ways to look at age-old problems—including handy tools like a "Snark Scale"—Real You Incorporated empowers you to join other women who are changing the face of business. It starts by discovering who you are and developing an authentic, unique personal brand, one based simply on being the real you.

From the Back Cover
Praise for Real You Incorporated

"What I admire about Kaira is her can-do attitude. She knows what it's like to be in a man's world, but still accomplish things her way. She's the real thing, and after reading this book, you'll feel more confident of being your real you too. Go for it."
—Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author of Never Eat Alone

"Kaira Rouda empowers the woman entrepreneur by simply telling her to be herself. Where other books urge women to fit in with the boys, Real You Incorporated shows you how to create your own unique and wonderful brand. The secret is building it around the real you!"
—Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group and author of If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails

"Really simple and really smart rules for all women. Follow them, and you'll build your brand and find real success."
—Laura Ries, coauthor of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

"Real You Incorporated is a courageous undertaking. Kaira Sturdivant Rouda is the kind of author who is uniquely suited for her subject—she is both a successful woman in business and completely unafraid to share her candid insights and advice. I can see this book being a blueprint for many youngfemale entrepreneurs."
—Justin McCarthy, Google

"Filled with keen insights, practical knowledge, and tactical tools to build your success, Real You Incorporated is a concise, friendly read for women who wantmore than just advice. They want answers, and this should be their first stop."
—Delia Passi, author of Winning the Toughest Customer: The Essential Guide to Selling to Women

About the Author
Kaira Sturdivant Rouda is a nationally recognized branding professional with more than twenty years of experience in marketing, brand building, and entrepreneurship. She is co-owner of Real Living, one of the nation's fastest-growing real estate firms, where she created and continues to manage the company's brand and culture. She is also a newspaper columnist, fiction writer, and frequent speaker on the topics of marketing and the power of women in business. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband, Harley, and their four children.

Customer Reviews

An incredible book for anyone with a business, or with a desire to learn more about themselves
A book that truly transformed my business - in fact, our motto comes directly from the work I did while reading your book. Beauty (Find Beauty). Spirit (Nurture Your Spirit). Passion (Live with Passion).

I would recommend (and have recommended many times) this book to gain clarity, focus, and a connection between yourself and your business.

Thank you for such a great book, Kaira!

Shelly Holbrook
President

Plein de Vie
[...]

You as a Brand
We all have business brands, but we also have person brands. Author Kaira Sturdivant Rouda does a great job in forming steps on how to have a real, authentic You brand which is part of your business and personal brand.

She offers reflective questions, exercises, suggested readings and also personal stories of not only herself, but other women as well. Although this book written with women in mind, the content of the book can be applied to men as well.

In this book find inspiration and help in your journey to becoming an owner and/or operator of your own unique woman-owned biz!

I liked this book. It's written by a woman for women and explains how women can have it all: kids and a successful career. And a successful career is one where the woman is in the driver's seat owning and/or operating her own company. It's very difficult (or impossible) to have kids, raise kids, and hold down a well-paying job where you collect a W-2. Something has to give in that mix since holding down a well-paying job usually does not allow for child-rearing time.

Women who want to create their own work world so they can earn significant compensation but also be able to rear their children must go the entrepreneur route. They have to start their own company or companies. And the author, who has gone this route and been successful at it, has written the instant book to share rules and lessons she has followed on her journey.

The author says there are 8 essentials women entrepreneurs must concern themselves with if they are to create a successful business where both the woman and her company thrive:

1. You
2. Your passions
3. Your brand
4. Your company name
5. Your positioning
6. Your culture
7. Your customers
8. Your gifts

The book is broken into two parts: (1) Find the company in you, and (2) Make the company successful by developing a competitive advantage within it. The first part is comprised of 3 chapters and nine "Life Lessons." The second part is comprised of 5 chapters and fifteen "Life Lessons." I found the grouping of three life lessons per chapter to be a good way to organize the book. As I read these life lessons I felt like I was re-reading parts of Jack Canfield's "The Success Principles" (ISBN: 0060594896) that I read a few years ago.

Countless times within the book I was presented with the following:

>>Questions to think about
>>Action steps
>>A real story
>>Recommended readings

I loved the real stories. And each one included a diagram of the featured entrepreneur and her company regarding the "8 essentials." Women who read this book would have role models and some sort of mentor in each of these real stories.

But even though I liked the book a lot, I did not love it. There is no mention of the need for doing investigation and research in order to write a business plan. There is no mention of the need for a business plan. The instant book focuses too much on the woman entrepreneur and creating a brand, and not enough on the real world and creating a viable business that has a neat brand. A new business can be innovative, but it still has to fit into the market in which it plans to earn revenues.

If this book had devoted a chapter to business plans and how important they are for success in starting a business, then I would give this book a 5-star rating. But it didn't. The book is really good regarding what it covers. But since I found the book to be a startup guide for women entrepreneurs it came up a little short on the content I felt it should have included. 4 stars!

PS. Look at the Search Inside material Amazon offers for this book in order to examine the Table of Contents. You will be able to see the titles to the 8 chapters and also the 24 Life Lessons mentioned.