“Personal Branding” Makes You Look Like a Jerk

Written on February 16th, 2010 | Short URL: http://abcjr.me/o

Personal branding is about marketing and marketing is about positioning and promotion. As someone who loves the art and science of marketing, I’ve seen how effective the right mix of tools can get people to buy. But, does marketing/branding work when you’re talking about people?

As Seth Godin says, all marketers are liars. And, while this type of approach might work for an athlete, it’s rare that a squeaky-clean branded image of a person is remotely close to who they really are. Branding a human being like you would a product or company is an inauthentic and an incredibly sad and cynical way of looking at how you approach people. It might be worth it when you’re a billionaire and making your living on a false impression of who you are, but for the rest of us normals it looks inauthentic.

The most obvious recent example is Tiger Woods. Pre-Thanksgiving ’09, Tiger Woods was the representation of mental toughness and success. Companies closely aligned with his personal brand and based their entire brands on this one man (see Accenture).  What happened? He wrecked his car, a harem of women came forward telling the world about their sexual exploits with the guy, his wife almost divorced him, Accenture treated him like kryptonite and he hasn’t played on the PGA Tour since.

When I was younger, my now hall-of-fame uncle pulled me aside and gave me some advice. He asked if I had ever heard him talk about his basketball career/talent. I thought about it for a bit and realized that I hadn’t. He said, “Exactly. Other people talk about it. Be good enough that other people talk about you. When you talk about how good you are, you sound like an asshole and people start rooting for your failure. Don’t be an asshole.”

My uncle was talking about reputation. What’s the difference between personal branding and reputation? Think of this vacuum from Hoover. Hoover has a well-known, positive brand. Yay marketing! But wait, the reviews (reputation) say that this vacuum [ahem] sucks. It doesn’t matter how much Hoover says about itself, those people who gave the vacuum a one or two are going to think their products are crap. The spin doesn’t matter.

Do you want people to respect you, see you as competent, know you for your integrity and develop the type of relationships that are going to help you further your career? Then worry about your reputation, not your brand. Do great work. Help people connect with each other unselfishly. If you’re involved in social media, provide genuine value to others in the best way you know how. Work hard for your clients. Let others talk about how good you are. Mostly, stop being a self-promotion machine. It makes you look like an asshole and it undermines your ultimate goal.

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Persist Through the CRAP

Written on November 17th, 2009 | Short URL: http://abcjr.me/1l

Saw a TED video by Richard St.  John ( @RichardStJohn) , who discussed the 8 things that successful people do (video here). While the other aspects of his presentation might be things you’ve heard before (work, ideas, passion, focus), his perspective on persistence caught my attention, mostly because it incorporated mildly inappropriate language, a technique I enjoy using from time to time.

In his speech, he says that you have to persist through the CRAP – Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure. I hadn’t thought about it in such quite succinct terms, but that’s perfect.

Entrepreneurs have a unique expertise in persisting through the CRAP. Taken individually:

• Criticism — There’s no shortage of criticism. The risk of a selling a new, innovative product as a small company is full of pitfalls and opportunities for people to blow up your idea. I think that’s a great thing … people who tend to take the time to criticize are emotionally invested. Proving them wrong drives many of us to make it all work.
• Rejection — Funders, potential customers, friends, family … you don’t know what rejection is until you try to start your own company.
• Assholes — I don’t think I have enough time to cover all the different types. From the extreme critics, to the egotists, to the folks that have no problem wasting your time, they’re everywhere. Trust your gut and, if you’re not sure, ask around. Most of these folks have a reputation. If you hear from two people in close-knit community that the person is shady, run.
• Pressure — There’s nothing like the shut-off notice from the gas company, or a hungry family, to make you work extra hard to close a sale (or politely call every customer who is even 30 minutes past-due).

I’m going to think of my challenges this week in terms of persistence and in terms of CRAP. How many of them are just one element, or how many are all four? How do I manage those situations when I run into them? Am I as persistent as I should be? How does it change as a follower vs. a leader?

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership | Permalink | 2 Comments |

The Entrepreneurial Test

Written on October 19th, 2009 | Short URL: http://abcjr.me/1t

This is a cool quiz written by Northwestern Mutual that’s based upon research they and others conducted regarding the traits of entrepreneurs. I highly suggest that you take a look:

http://marriottschool.byu.edu/cet/startingout/test.cfm

While I’m not surprised by my overall score (37, which puts me two over the line for an entrepreneur), I was surprised by the scoring of a couple of the questions. For instance:

Entrepreneurs are not especially enthusiastic about participating in group activities in school. If you enjoyed group activities—clubs, team sports, double dates—subtract one. If not, add one.

I was pretty active in clubs and organizations in school (band, football, theater, and spending time with different cliques), which I would expect to breed the type of leadership skills that help foster an entrepreneurial mindset. Another:

Do you believe being an entrepreneur is risky? If yes, subtract two. If no, add two.

This really confuses me — doesn’t everyone consider being an entrepreneur risky? I obviously believe that it’s a risk worth taking, but I’m still surprised by the scoring on the question.

Has anyone else taken this survey before? What are your thoughts?

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Gen Y and the Entrepreneurial Opportunity

Written on October 6th, 2009 | Short URL: http://abcjr.me/1x

Generational issues have been a hot HR topic for years, and the urgency to develop a plan to integrate these generations is becoming even greater now that economic factors are forcing Baby Boomers to stay in the workforce longer than they anticipated. Along with this phenomenon, the workforce is integrating Gen Y workers, a group that brings a very different skill set  — and expectations — to the workplace. The anticipated workforce shortage that scared executives earlier in the decade is now simply a non-issue.

This presents an interesting challenge for Gen Y. What once appeared to be a fast-track to positions of authority as older workers retire is a now fierce competition for available jobs, a fight that pits early-career professionals with much more experienced counterparts. For Gen Yers lucky enough to have a job, the opportunity to move up and contribute to meaningful projects  (identified by Herb Sendek and Buddy Hobart in Gen Y Now to be one of the major needs of Gen Y workers) has decreased considerably.

The challenge, as Hobart and Sendek identify in the book, is leadership. Many Baby Boomer and Generation X managers have negative perceptions of Gen Y, which lead to managerial decisions that hurt everyone, i.e. the manager doesn’t get out of the employee what he or she needs and the Gen Y worker in turn doesn’t get the fulfillment/experience that they are looking for. The inevitable consequence is that the Gen Y worker “checks out” and eventually moves on. This situation is often blamed on the Gen Y worker (they’re lazy, they’re entitled, they don’t try to fit in, they’re babied, they’re spoiled, they’re not willing to ‘put in their time’) as opposed to the individuals who are leading them. For both short- and long-term results, organizations simply can’t function this way and hope to be competitive in attracting/retaining talent.

However, where larger organizations might falter in assimilating Gen Y talent, start ups and smaller entrepreneurial companies can thrive. There are several reasons:

Continue reading the post Gen Y and the Entrepreneurial Opportunity

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What Strategy Would You Use To Defeat Yourself?

Written on September 14th, 2009 | Short URL: http://abcjr.me/20

What a question.

It appeared in this post from the informal, slang-filled, business site called Trizle (I recommend it — a great jolt of reading at 30 seconds a day). The question hit me between the eyes.

Does anyone ever ask this? I’ve not seen it very often. Sure, there are senior executive strategy sessions that generate a nice little printable SWOT analysis that gets thrown into a binder and put right next to last year’s strategy binder. But, do these sessions really get to the core of what’s going on and, if they do, do they lead to the actions necessary to make it all better? I’ve always hated the statement “knowing is half the battle”, because I believe that, while knowing might be half the battle, you’re still dead if you don’t fight the other half.

Bad economy or great economy, we’re in global knock-out-drag-out fight for resources. If you don’t compete, you don’t win (or even get to stay on the field). That means that you don’t get the sale, you don’t get the donor, you don’t get the legislation passed. People lose jobs, companies close, mortgage payments get missed and it’s game over. The company/non-profit organization/public recreation center/corner doughnut shop dies, right along with the income and jobs. Them 1, you 0.

Discussing the issue is tough — the death of our job, the death of our organization — those are big scary things we just don’t like to think about. Senior managers don’t like the question either, so they bury their heads in operational issues while completely neglecting strategy. When the time comes to lay people off, close a plant, make people work more hours for less pay, outside factors are almost inevitably cited as the culprit. You’ll never hear a manager say, “I was asleep at the wheel, running away from my real job (understanding and fixing the real problems), waiting for everything to blow over. My bad.”

Be a better leader. Ask this question of yourself, your department, and your organization. Write down the answers. Take action to fix the problems. To do otherwise is not only to ignore your responsibility, it is putting other people’s lives at risk.

Posted in Leadership, Strategy | Permalink | No Comments |