(Business 2.0) – Six years ago, you probably didn't know Rachael Ray from Ray Liotta, Billy Ray Cyrus, or a manta ray. But unless you've been swimming with the manta rays ever since, you know who she is now. So how, in less time than it takes most of us to change our hairstyles, did she go from buyer at a gourmet grocery in upstate New York to nationally known TV star, magazine editor, and purveyor of kitchen tools? By marketing herself and her ideas as shrewdly as any multibillion-dollar corporation pitching its latest widget. On the following pages, Ray and four other name-brand entrepreneurs share the secrets they used to build their eponymous empires. Even if you don't aspire to have your name stamped on anodized cookware, you'll learn valuable lessons about selling your most valuable asset: yourself.

STORY CONTINUES INSIDE THE GATEFOLD

THE CHEF NEXT DOOR

WHO RACHAEL RAY

BRAND IDENTITY Gourmet made easy

BRAND EXTENSIONS Four Food Network shows; The Rachael Ray Show; five product partnerships; 16 cookbooks; Everyday With Rachael Ray magazine

As an eager young buyer for gourmet market Cowan & Lobel in Albany, N.Y., Rachael Ray spent hours spying on customers, looking for tipoffs to new trends. One odd pattern she noticed again and again: Many well-to-do shoppers would bypass the produce section and head straight for the prepared-foods counter. That gave her an idea: Why not run a cooking class for harried consumers, showing them how to make gourmet meals in 30 minutes flat?

To Ray, it was just a small way to prop up grocery sales. But a decade later, that simple notion has turned Rachael Ray into a brand on par with Martha Stewart and created a small media empire worth a reported $10 million. Since its debut in 2001 on the Food Network, Ray's top-rated cooking show, 30 Minute Meals, has spawned three more Ray-hosted shows on the network, 16 cookbooks, a self-titled national magazine, and even a syndicated daytime talk show.

How she got there, though, is a story more about old-fashioned perseverance than anything else. Her in-store cooking classes were an instant hit with customers, so much so that Albany's CBS affiliate, WRGB, asked her to host a weekly cooking show for its evening news broadcast. For two years Ray didn't receive a dime for her work; for the next three she earned a measly stipend of $50 per episode. To Ray, though, it didn't matter: She liked the gourmet-for-dummies appeal of it all, and she was making enough money from her day job at Cowan & Lobel. The exposure, she figured, would eventually open doors.

It did. First, in 1998, she put together a small cookbook based on a collection of recipes from the show. Then came calls from NPR and Today. By 2001, executives at the Food Network believed they'd spotted their next star. Why? Unlike the culinary elite that served as the hosts of most cooking shows, Ray exuded a kind of blue-collar charm. Viewers loved her. "I'm still very much the waitress," Ray says, "bringing people what they want."

Ray's girl-next-door persona made it easy to expand beyond TV and books. Her husband, John Cusimano, an attorney and Ray's self-appointed "brand manager," recalls that in 2003, "a lot of people at her book signings and at the show were interested in what knife she used and what cookware she liked." So Cusimano walked the floor of the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago, passing out homemade press kits, and within a year, Ray-branded lines of Füritechnics knives, Meyer Anolon cookware, and Salton microwaves and food processors hit the shelves.

"When she started, she didn't even know what a brand was," says Lucy Sisman, the magazine's first design director. "Her brand has been completely organic. It just happened through sheer hard work, application, and cheer."

The Man Behind the Pose

WHO BIKRAM CHOUDHURY

BRAND IDENTITY Yoga for the masses

BRAND EXTENSIONS Bikram yoga sequence of 26 poses; training courses; books and DVDs; clothing line; franchise operations (pending)

He claims his method of yoga treats everything from chronic diseases and gynecological problems to financial stress and marital strife. But hubris aside, he deserves all the credit for one landmark achievement: Long before anyone else, Bikram Choudhury figured out how to market yoga to Americans. And he turned his particular brand of yoga into the McDonald's of a $3 billion industry.

In the early 1960s, Choudhury was an up-and-coming yogi in Calcutta with a cadre of high-profile clients, including George Harrison and Shirley MacLaine. When some of them urged Choudhury to bring his unique arrangement of poses and stretches to America, he couldn't resist, setting up shop in—where else?—California. At a time when yoga was still a foreign concept, Choudhury began molding it into an accessible regimen for Westerners. He boiled down 84 ancient hatha yoga postures into a simpler sequence of 26 poses, taught in large mirrored rooms heated to 105 degrees, and motivated students with his boot camp–like cajoling—hardly the classic style of a yogi.

"He Americanized yoga," says Jimmy Barkan, who trained with Choudhury early on and later became his most senior teacher. "He kept the postures authentic but chose more basic poses better suited for the American anatomy. He made it more accessible."

In 1973, after opening his second studio in Beverly Hills, Choudhury started thinking about expansion. He began by offering courses to train and certify students in Bikram yoga. Promising students were invited to train with him in Los Angeles for up to four years (at a total cost of $2,000) to earn the master's certification needed to open their own studios offering the Bikram method. By the late '80s, more than five had opened, and many new Bikram yogis were sending their students back to Choudhury, providing the master with a constant stream of new customers.

"It was brilliant marketing," says Tony Sanchez, who attended one of the early training courses and eventually ran Bikram's first studio in San Francisco. "He got his trainees to go out and sell the program for him." Along the way, Choudhury was learning something about profit margins: By 1994 he had condensed the training into a 60-day program, raised the price to $4,000, and offered it to anyone who had taken at least six months of Bikram classes. Result: Teacher training only increased in popularity. Today he teaches 600 students a year at $6,000 per head—a $3.6 million nut that makes up the bulk of his overall revenue.

Although Choudhury supervised the opening of every new affiliated studio, some students weren't teaching pure Bikram, and the yogi eventually concluded that franchising was the only way to protect his brand. "You go to Starbucks and you know what you're going to get," he says. "It's the same with my yoga."

So in 2002 he began trademarking and copyrighting everything from his name and his series of poses to the dialogues he uses in class. More recently he announced plans to turn affiliated Bikram studios into dues-paying franchises. Lawyers are still trying to figure out a fee structure for each of the 700 studios. Choudhury says they'll reach an agreement by year's end but he's unconcerned about the details. His mind is already on plans for even more ways to expand beyond his line of yoga paraphernalia. Bikram perfume, anyone?

The BARON of BUZZ

WHO SETH GODIN

BRAND IDENTITY Marketing as a partnership between businesses and consumers

BRAND EXTENSIONS Ten books; a blog; nationwide lectures and seminars

Months before his first book was due to go to press in 1999, Web marketing pioneer Seth Godin talked his publisher into an unusual stunt for a rookie author: Godin wanted the image of his bald crown to dominate the book's cover, with Godin's name standing as tall as the book's title. "No one had done that on a business book before," Godin says. "I realized I could be sort of a living spokesperson for the brand."

The "brand," in this case, was the big idea behind (and the title of) the book. Called Permission Marketing, it defined one of the bedrock principles of doing business online: Traditional advertising methods were dead, and companies that could figure out how to share valuable information with consumers to get their attention would reap the biggest rewards.

Godin had run a successful Web marketing startup called Yoyodyne, where he helped teach clients like AT&T and H&R Block how to navigate their way onto the Net. But after Yahoo bought the company in 1998 for $30 million in stock, the serial entrepreneur decided it was time to move on. The book, he thought, might be the perfect vehicle for striking out on his own.

Permission Marketing became a runaway hit, selling 100,000 copies in the first two years, in part because Godin practiced what he preached. True to the spirit of permission marketing, Godin offered up a third of the book free via e-mail, and nearly 200,000 readers took him up on his offer.

Two years later Godin took the concept a step further with Unleashing the Ideavirus, a manual for creating buzz. This time he invited readers to download the entire book free of charge; 3,000 people did so in just the first day. Then, when he self-published the book in hardcover form and sold it for $40 through Amazon, Godin moved 25,000 copies—pulling in more profit than he had with his first, traditionally published book. "I became cognizant of the fact that, if I wasn't able to do the marketing, I shouldn't be writing about it," Godin says. "That insight took my career to a whole different level."

Godin makes money now as an author, speaker, and blogger, eschewing corporate consulting. And he's drawn such a following that his blog, www.sethgodin.typepad.com, has become a sounding board for new ideas about everything from why global warming is marketed badly to how to build a better homepage. The richest online material has become the basis for Godin's recent book, Small Is the New Big, a compilation of business ideas and anecdotes pulled from eight years of blogging and writing.

"Having a reputation for inventing something cool is great," Godin says. "Even better is having a reputation for thinking a certain way."

The WEB 2.0 Virtuoso

WHO AMANDA CONGDON

BRAND IDENTITY News and commentary for the Internet generation

BRAND EXTENSIONS Video blog "Starring Amanda Congdon"; weekly ABC News vlog; an upcoming HBO comedy show; advertising pitches

With little more than a laptop and a camera, Amanda Congdon has become the Jon Stewart of the Web 2.0 set. The struggling actress found her niche anchoring three-minute video blogs for Rocketboom way back in 2004, otherwise known as the pre-YouTube era. Within two years her snarky newscasts became a must-see, attracting as many as 300,000 viewers and paving the way for the Ze Franks and Justin.tvs of the world. Thanks to her shrewd maneuvering of multiple media channels, this Web celebrity has parlayed her online success into a career of still-unknown proportions.

Congdon started out by following chance wherever it took her: a low-level advertising job, a bit part in the reality show The Restaurant, modeling hats for catalogs. Then she answered a cryptic Craigslist ad seeking a host and co-writer for a daily Web news show. She earned $50 an episode to tap on an old-school keyboard and deliver sassy commentary on quirky news items and Internet culture. By May 2006, Rocketboom was pulling in an average of $20,000 a month in advertising revenue.

"What I saw was a fresh voice online," says veteran media critic and BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis. "And it's more than just how she performs on camera. She's a good example of what we're all doing in building brands."

By the spring of 2006, Congdon was eyeing bigger opportunities. L.A. bound, she signed with the Endeavor talent agency in May. But then a dispute with Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron left her off the air for 12 days. On the 13th day, she reappeared on her own video blog, declaring herself "Amanda UnBoomed"—in other words, off the show. A very public spat with Baron followed, as well as a lot of free publicity as the blogosphere chronicled the row and the New York Times and Fox News ran stories on her departure.

Congdon is one of the few Web 2.0 personalities who've built careers both online and off. By December she had a weekly news vlog for ABC. Then HBO came calling, and she signed on to do her own comedy show for TV and the Web. Congdon jumped at the opportunities but insisted that both deals leave room for "Starring Amanda Congdon," her personal vlog and yet another avenue for her musings. She also inked deals with Dove and DuPont to appear in online infotainment spots.

The result: She now has her hand in news, entertainment, and advertising—a concept that has rankled some fans. But Congdon couldn't care less. It's all part of her plan to be a brand that no one can quite pin down. "I don't have a manager, and I don't want one," she says. "There's no one better than me to manage myself because there's no road map."

The Inventor as Pitchman

WHO JAMES DYSON

BRAND IDENTITY Better living through better engineering

BRAND EXTENSIONS Dyson Appliances; three books; an engineering school

Entrepreneurs have a long history of using their names to launch household brands, from Ford and DeLorean to Bloomberg and Dell. But James Dyson—whose $1 billion company makes those amazing bagless vacuum cleaners—has taken the self-branding concept a step further by becoming the public face of his Dyson appliances.

Dyson will tell you that when it comes to marketing, "I don't really understand it." Nonsense. "I decided to call it a Dyson because one of the big differences between me and my would-be competitors was that I owned the business, I designed the machine, and I was making it," he says.

That story—and his self-deprecating wit—alone would distinguish the 60-year-old engineer from company founders in history who have simply slapped their names on products. And now Dyson is proving what real self-branding can accomplish. When it came time for U.K.-based Dyson Appliances to enter the U.S. market in 2002, Dyson took the role as the sole pitchman for his vacuums, which he'd been selling in Europe and Japan for nearly a decade. Working with the Fallon ad agency in Minneapolis, he launched a $30 million ad campaign. The television commercials starred the vacuum and Dyson, who explained how he came up with his invention and how it could suck dirt with the force of a hurricane and never clog. Dyson's affable "Mr. Wizard" charm clearly won over viewers. Dyson and his machines then made cameo appearances on Friends and Will & Grace, which put him on the talk-show circuit. Was it worth the $30 million? The company now sits on 25 percent of the U.S. market. "The commercials were not my idea at all," Dyson explains. "But someone said, 'Why don't you explain how you did it?'—and that's exactly what I did."

But behind the marketing was the machine. "I sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet a bit, but it was actually quite difficult to make it work," Dyson says of the first model he built. "It took 5,127 prototypes."

And behind the unassuming persona is a man who has all kinds of plans, though he can't talk much about them lest rivals catch wind of what he hopes to patent next. Dyson's already ventured into designing a better washing machine and electric hand dryer, and he's published three books: an autobiography, a history of great inventions, and a guide to design icons. He sends boxes of vacuum cleaner components to children's classrooms and recently invested $25 million in a school for young adults that will espouse his theories of creative engineering. Oh, and he's managed to get his machines—and his name—into 28 different museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art.