Ten years ago, Tom Peters wrote an article entitled "The Brand Called You" in the then hip magazine, Fast Company. I read the piece at the time and thought it one of the ghastliest, most irritating articles on management ever written.

Peters's idea was that people are brands - just as corporations and goods are. Each of us is chief executive of Me Inc and it is our job to manage our brand actively. The article ended on a hysterical, threatening note: "You are in charge of your brand. Start today. Or else."

Yuk! I thought. We are not cans of baked beans, we are complicated human beings and therefore not suited to crass branding activity. So I didn't start that day to create the Brand Called Me. Nor on any of the 3,500 days that followed.

However, a lot of other people did: in the past decade, personal branding has become a big thing. I still think it's ghastly, but now, belatedly, I have decided that I am a can of baked beans after all.

There are some differences in terms of size (I'm bigger) and colour (I'm less orange) and uniformity (my quality is more mixed). But, like beans, humans can be branded. We each have a name, an image, a reputation and something to sell. Which means it is sensible to think about how these things could be managed better.

This realisation has come slowly through the steady drip, drip, drip of proof. Every day I am exposed to the marketing activity of Brand Someone Else. A man I've never met has just sent me an e-mail saying "Lucy, watch me on Bloomberg TV today!"

Readers endlessly direct me to their personal websites. Even quite normal people boost their brands by routinely forwarding any complimentary e-mails to their bosses.

I used to think this sort of thing was not only naff but unnecessary: that talent would always out in the end. This is fantasy. Talent might out, but only after a lot of huffing and puffing.

I look at what is happening to some of my friends - clever, hard-working people of a certain age - who are stubbornly refusing to unleash Brand Them.

They do no self-promotion at all and are finding that, like cold, congealed baked beans, they are being left at the edge of the plate as a prelude to being put in the bin.

With a rather more open mind, I re-read Peters' s article last week and found most of it perfectly reasonable. Branding, he says, is about three things: "To grow yourself, to promote yourself and to get the market to reward yourself."

It is hard to argue with that. The trouble is that I have some hang-ups that are getting between me and Brand Me. The first is a linguistic hang-up over the idea of me growing myself: I might be a can of beans but am not a tomato.

My hang-up over promoting myself is more profound. Tom Peters is an American, which means self- promotion for him is as easy as breathing.

But I am an Englishwoman born in 1959, brought up to think that self- promotion boils down to boasting and there are at least four things wrong with it. These are:

1. It is bad manners, as it makes the person who hasn't done so well feel bad.

2. It is pushy and therefore vulgar.

3. To boast is to let your achievements get out of proportion. We should never forget that we are small cogs in a big machine.

4. Boasting clashes with the public- school English idea that everything is effortless. Any success must be taken in one's stride.

Some of this baggage is irrational and outdated, but it weighs heavy on the psyche nevertheless.

Still more profound is the hang-up over money. Peters says we must get the market to reward us, which can be hard to achieve when you were taught that to ask for more money was greedy and undignified.

I remember one occasion when I plucked up courage to ask for a rise but then felt such a rush of self- loathing I retracted the demand. I have no idea if I would have got more, though I expect I would have. In this area, those who ask, get.

I realise all this sounds ridiculous as I have a named column with picture, which implies some pretty determined behind-the-scenes promotional activity.

Yet, fortunately, the newspaper undertakes much of this on my behalf, leaving my own brand-building efforts amateurish and patchy.

Recently, I had to compose a paragraph about myself saying why I deserved to win a prize. "Lucy Kellaway's hilarious Monday columns . . . ", I began, deleted it and started again. "Lucy Kellaway is one of the most. . . ", I paused, lost for appropriate adjectives. And so it went. It was most painful.

To make it clear: my aversion has nothing to do with being nice or modest.

It doesn't mean that I'm not vain or grasping - my ego is quite large and ugly. All this means is that I can't do certain things without bending myself out of shape.

I realise that there are any number of career coaches who (at a price) can teach one how to boast, and loads of therapists to help on the hang-ups. But I have a better idea: to outsource it altogether to a branding agent.

My agent would handle all discussions about money.

They would be responsible for saying nice things about me so I didn't have to say them myself.

They would advise on brand building.

They would manage my web presence, designing a website and undertaking my self-Googling activity. They would have their ear to the ground for job moves and do tiresome networking on my behalf.

This is what it boils down to. Ten years on, I am ready to take office as chief executive of Brand Me.

Task number one: recruit a brand manager.