Self-Marketing and Your Personal Brand

If you are 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 then is how people perceive you. It is 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 a geek.)

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

If you create your own online personal brand, you will have more control over it. You can expect every recruiter to do a web search on you nowadays. I did this myself as a hiring 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 (e.g. 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 your offline personal brand. Your personality and behaviors basically lay the foundation for this. And if you are an arrogant son of a motherless goat, well, then there isn’t much I can do for you. Anything you do online will be erased as soon as a recruiter meets you in person.

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 it is best just to be yourself.

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

If you are nervous about meeting new people, the easiest thing to do is to smile and nod at another person standing alone. At any networking event, you are 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. They are probably the easiest to approach.

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 about it later. Those are the kinds of people you want to know. Those are the kinds of people who also have a strong offline personal brand.

Ideas from Ironic Sans

Ironic Sans 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:

Is this guy a genius or what?

Biz Idea: Green Vehicle Service Stations

Toyota Prius 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!

A Quote From an Entrepreneur

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.

Prank War

CollegeHumor 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!

Not For Your Blog

Seth Godin 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.

Biz Idea: Video Pop-Ups

VH1 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!

World Trade Center 2.0

The New World Trade Center designs I still remember where I was six years ago today. Eating dim sum when my Dad called from New York to tell me what just happened.

After the World Trade Center fell, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani promised, “We will rebuild: We’re going to come out of this stronger than before, politically stronger, economically stronger. The skyline will be made whole again.” Then President George W. Bush declared, “As a symbol of America’s resolve, my administration will work with Congress, and these two leaders[, Giuliani and then-Governor George Pataki], to show the world that we will rebuild New York City.”

Even WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein spoke up and added, “It would be the tragedy of tragedies not to rebuild this part of New York. It would give the terrorists the victory they seek.”

Now six years later, what’s been done?

First, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was established by Pataki and Giuliani to distribute about $10 billion in federal funds aimed at rebuilding downtown Manhattan. Only this met with a lot of resistance and controversy.

Since the LMDC doesn’t actually own the World Trade Center site, differences of opinion with its owners—the Port Authority of NY & NJ and Silverstein Properties—led to delays. The LMDC was also criticized for not allowing the victims’ family members to participate in the voting of memorial proposals. After months and months of design proposals from all kinds of prominent architects (including the Donald-Trump-backed Twin Towers II), no single design pleased everyone.

Finally, the LMDC sponsored the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition and Michael Arad’s and Peter Walker’s “Reflecting Absence” design won. Having completed its mission, the LMDC then dissolved.

The new architectural plans call for:

  • Five new skyscrapers (1 WTC, Freedom Tower; Towers 2, 3, 4, and 5)
  • National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center
  • World Trade Center Transportation Hub
  • Retail Complex
  • Performing Arts Center

The latest news now is a finalized design being developed by Silverstein Properties and the PANYNJ. Construction is slated to begin next year.

That’ll be seven years later.

Which, in all honesty, is still pretty quick. Lots of people are complaining about how long it’s taken—and yes, it HAS taken a long time—but with a subject as controversial and passionate as the reconstruction of the World Trade Center, coupled with good old fashioned politics and trying to please the masses, of course it’s going to take a long time.

Anyone who’s ever built web software knows how big projects with a lot of stakeholders can last forever. Every chef knows that when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, consensus is rare. In the WTC’s case, the stakeholders and cooks are governors, mayors, real estate developers, architects, the public, and other prominent people with big egos.

No wonder it’s taken seven years to begin. Now I wonder how long the construction is going to take.