BizThoughts

Book: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
Author: Jim Collins

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If you're an entrepreneur, your "personal brand" is very important.

What do I mean by your personal brand? BuildingBrands has a great definition of the word brand: "A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer."

A personal brand is basically how people perceive you; it's the way they describe you to friends, the way they differentiate you from someone else, and the things they remember about you when you aren't around.

Online Personal Brand

There are lots of ways to can tailor people's perceptions of you. One way is through an online presence. Like a domain name! MikeLee.org is mine, obviously.

(True story: I used to introduce myself as "Michael Lee." Then I got the domain name MikeLee.org and started introducing myself as "Mike Lee." Yea, I know, I'm such a friggin' geek.)

Here are some great articles on how to build your online personal brand:

• Why You May Need an Online Persona from Web Worker Daily
• Online Self-Promotion Made Easy from Web Worker Daily
• How to Build Your Personal Brand Online from Web Worker Daily
• South Park, the Philosopher, and the Power of Visual Storytelling from Success from the Nest

If you create your own online personal brand, you'll have more control over it. More and more recruiters are using web search to find and research their candidates. I know this, because I myself did this as a manager. Don't let the one search result of you be a photo on a friend's web site—of you, drunk, nekkid, and puking all over yourself (I'm just sayin'). Let it be a brand that you created and tailored for your needs.

And if you have the time and energy, consider creating some content (i.e. blog articles, personal essays, free samples of your work, etc) and telling a story about yourself, as the above articles suggest.

Offline Personal Brand

Just as important as your online personal brand is, of course, your offline personal brand. Your personality and behaviors basically lay the foundation for this. And if you're an arrogant son of a motherless goat, well, then there ain't much I can do for you.

Self-marketing doesn't mean you have to be slick and polished. As Entrepreneur Magazine's article "Shut Up and Listen" writes: "entrepreneurs who practiced over-the-top self-promotion rarely captured the attention of others." Sometimes its best just to listen.

There are times when it's acceptable to be assertive about your offline personal brand, however. Like at networking events, conferences, etc. For those occasions, here are some great articles:

• Some Networking Power Tools from Duct Tape Marketing
• How to Be More Approachable from Duct Tape Marketing
• Your Business Card Is Your Offline Home Page from Success from the Nest
• Refining Your Personal Elevator Pitch from Web Worker Daily

If you're nervous about meeting new people (and I wholly admit that sometimes I am too), the easiest thing to do is to smile and nod at another person standing alone. (This can work for dating too, of course.)

At any networking event, you're guaranteed to find a few people wandering around by themselves, eager to meet new people but unsure of how to break into an existing conversation—same as you. (And hey, maybe you'll even get a date out of it!)

As the above articles suggest, getting into a conversation is just part of your brand building. Your business card is an important part as well.

Also, if you promise to follow-up with someone, do so. I can't tell you how many times I've been impressed by people who remembered some tiny aspect of our conversation, then followed-up with me later about it. Those are the kinds of people you want to know. Those are the kinds of people who also have a strong offline personal brand.

Now for some Friday fun. David Friedman of Ironic Sans has had some great product ideas, and some not-necessarily-great, but oh-so-funny ones too.

Of the latter kind, here are my top picks:

• Pre-pixaleted clothes for Reality TV shows

  You know how some people's t-shirts are pixelated on Reality TV shows? Here are some pre-pixelated t-shirts for you!

• The Ant Desk

  Here's a real ant farm that you use as your desk. Really.

• Pac-Man napkin holder with Ghost salt and pepper shakers

  The title pretty much says it all. Simple, yet fun for Pac-Man lovers.

• Commemorative T-shirts for Fictional Events

  How about a t-shirt for the Khan Con '89? Or the 1st Annual Agoraphobics Parade (22nd Annual Attempt)?

• A building shaped like Godzilla

  This would make a great tourist attraction for Tokyo.

• Paintings of descriptions of the paintings

  Imagine a large painting that said "Untitled #6" 2007 David Friedman (b. 1974)…

• Fun with facial recognition

  The Super Bowl Jumbotron could pick two people out of the crowd and show them side-by-side as a "Separated at Birth?" gimmick.

• "12"—a spinoff of "24" for kids

  Kids are half the size of adults. 24 is for adults. Half of that is 12. Get it?

• Lolcatvertisements

  Use cute lolcats in your marketing campaign for lots of great lolcustomer lolacquisition!

• The Alien Stapler

  H. R. Giger's aliens are perfect for busting through skulls, bleeding acid, kicking ass… oh, and stapling documents.

• Breed a "Mickey" Mouse

  This one's kinda freaky, but it's basically a "real" Mickey Mouse, sans the pants (though you could certainly add some pants).

• Celebrity middle finger coat hooks

  Ever have the desire to hang your coat on Johnny Cash's (or George W. Bush's) middle finger?

Is this guy a genius or what?

Here's a great idea. As green vehicles (like hybrid and electric vehicles) become more popular, there's going to be a need for service stations that specialize in them.

These could be fueling/recharging stations. Or maintenance and general service stations. Or both.

Since green vehicles have different internal systems and parts than traditional gas-and-oil vehicles, they're going to need specially-trained mechanics. Green vehicle owners will probably trust a service station that specializes in their cars, over a general-purpose service station too.

The stations could be outfitted with environmentally-friendly facilities. Like solar panels and energy-conservation equipment at the very least. Since a significant portion of green vehicles are within California, the first few pilot stations could start here.

Some of the challenges include still a relatively small (but growing) number of consumers, rapidly changing and advancing technology (which, operationally, would be a huge hurdle), a lack of parts suppliers, and a lack of trained mechanics. The break-even point may not be for a few years and would require significant capital. There's also the real estate to worry about.

However, if you were to establish a presence and brand right now, by the time this trend hits the mainstream, you'll have secured a strong position in the market.

I'd love to do this if I could, but don't have the know-how or capital. But if you do, I'd love to put up some capital and help out in any way that I can!

I just started reading Never Bet The Farm by Anthony Iaquinto and Stephen Spinelli Jr. This quote from the book totally jumped out at me:

Who can be an entrepreneur, you ask? Anyone who wants to experience the deep, dark canyons of uncertainty and ambiguity and who wants to walk the breathtaking highlands of success. But caution—do not plan to walk the latter until you have experienced the former.
- Anonymous Entrepreneur

What a great quote. I wonder who originally said it.

Now for some Friday fun. A friend just tipped me off about this. Two guys from CollegeHumor, Streeter Seidell (a Frontpage Editor) and Amir Blumenfeld (a Senior Writer) have been involved in a Prank War for last 7 months or so.

It started innocently enough, when Streeter played an iTunes prank on Amir. Then Amir retaliated with a fake date. From there, it gets nasty. Real nasty. The kind of nasty that makes you go "Oooo did he really just do that??"

The latest prank by Amir is a classic. I'd recommend watching the whole series in chronological order to see how they go from Ha ha! to Oh DAMN! But if you're the type to read the end of a mystery novel first, here's the latest (and greatest, IMO) prank:

Not only are some of these pranks hilarious, but they're also a great vehicle for self-promotion. These two have been getting calls left and right. Newspapers, radio stations, even DeadSpin.com interviewed Amir about this prank (to which he said, "I kinda felt bad about that").

Since these two guys are humor writers and comedians, this is some fantastic publicity. Sure, it's costing them a bit (in terms of dignity and girlfriends, perhaps?), but I'm sure they're going to get noticed by some "industry people."

It's probably also generating some great traffic for CollegeHumor. I myself just watched a bunch of other videos there, as I eagerly await Streeter's next revenge prank. Muhahaha!

Are you one of those people who can't resist blogging juicy conversations, chats, or emails? Raise your hand if you are. C'mon, admit it, raise your hand. Right there along with mine. (Heh, yea, I'm guilty…)

Seth Godin must have had one too many of his conversations, chats, and emails blogged. So he came up with "NFYB" (Not For Your Blog):

New times demand new conventions. In a world where twitter and facebook and blogs can spread an idea around the world in a few seconds, how do you have a conversation with someone in confidence?

Just say NFYB ("not for your blog.")

Just like safe sex, it might not be romantic, but it's something we need to talk about. So talk about it. The presumption is rapidly changing. It used to be that all emails or whispered hallway discussions were 'off the record.' Now, more and more, there is a bias to post/twit or share. "NFYB" clears the air.

When everyone is a journalist, most things are on the record.

Here's an amusing idea. Remember VH1's Pop-Up Videos? How about a product that offers a way to add captions, text, word bubbles, etc to videos?

Some sites offer this functionality for photos right now, though mostly to create lolcat photos (like Big Huge Labs and ICanHasCheezBurger Factory, of course).

Now extend this to videos, and there are all kinds of possibilities! Like:

• Karaoke videos
• Mishead lyrics videos
• Pop-up videos (of course)
• Comic strip videos
• Faux silent movies
• Instructional/how-to videos
• Presentations
• lolvideos?
• And many more!