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NBA Free Agents vs Personal Brand Free Agents

LeBron + NikeWe are on verge of one of the greatest free agent periods in the history of sports. With NBA stars LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and the host of other NBA players who will make decisions on where they will play.

The free agent period starts July 1st with an official signing date of July 8th. Careers, sports franchises and the lives of GMs, team presidents, coaches and their families hang in the balance. A wrong decision could handicap a team for many years to come.

Let’s first start with a quick history lesson on free agency. Do the names Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally ring a bell? Probably not. Well they ushered in modern day free agency in 1975 when they challenged Major League Baseball in arbitration and won.

As personal brands we are all professional business athletes but instead of playing on a field we work in a field. Let’s contrast NBA free agents vs personal branding free agents.

Free Agent Definitions

NBA: There are two types of NBA free agents restricted and unrestricted. For the purpose of this article we will focus on an unrestricted free agent, which is a player who can sign with any team he wants.

Personal Brands: According to Daniel Pink (Author of Free Agent Nation): A free agent is someone who works untethered from a large organization—a free-lancer, a sole proprietor, the operator of a very small business.
Should Daniel Pink’s definition of free agents extend beyond soloprenurs to include intrapreneurs as well who have positioned themselves for new opportunities?

Market Value

As I watch the story of Powered a full-service social media agency unfold it is a great business story on personal branding free agents.

How do you develop a team? In sports, teams can build through the draft getting young players and building around them. In the business world this would be the evaluate of hiring millennial and developing them. The other option is signing free agents or trading (acquiring). Recently Powered has acquired talent through the free agent route acquiring: Crayon (Joseph Jaffe), Step Change, Drill Team, and Conversation Agent (Valarie Maltoni). For more details on this story read Jeremiah Owyang, article, FirstTake: Powered, A Social Marketing Suite, Acquires Crayon and Social Media Agencies

Q: Performance impact in NBA vs. Personal Brands

• NBA: Stats and how you perform under pressure
• Personal Brands: Popularity of your blog (Adage 150, page views) and engagement online (Klout Metrics), book sales, and speaking gigs to name a few.

Q: Reputation impact in NBA vs. Personal Brands

• NBA: Background checks, family history, off the court history and run ins with the law
• Personal Brands: Online Brand Reputation, valid your activity in social networks, and listen to your data stream in your social networks

Total Compensation

As a personal brand it is a great time to diversify yourself to create greater marketing opportunities. Establishing a personal brand is really about more than just creating a blog and tweeting but being portable and leveraging your personal DNA being who you were designed to be.

Q: Endorsements for NBA vs. Personal Brands

• NBA: Shoe deals, product commercials, etc.
• Personal Brands: More and more opportunities for influencers with a strong personal brand presence to experience endorsements with large brands: For example Usage of Ford’s Fiesta Movement Challenge and GM’s Chevy SXSW

Q: Rock Stars NBA vs. Personal Brands

NBA: Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Dirk Nowitzki
Personal Brands: Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Charlene Li, Wayne Sutton

Would you rather be an NBA star or a strong personal brand? Goes back to the Michael Jordan v Bill Gates argument. Would you rather be an NBA Free Agent or a Personal Brand Free Agent?

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i Finish: The app that defines Personal Branding

One of the biggest challenges in life is not starting but finishing. Anybody can start something but to the finisher goes all the spoils. What if Fred Smith founder of FedEx stopped with his term paper at Yale, when his professor told him overnight shipping would never work? Fred is a finisher and the impact of his start is still being felt today.

History chronicles those that finish. We rarely talk about the runner-up, second place, or the 500-page book manuscript that you wrote but never published. Personal branding is captured in one word is finishing. One of the people that I have a great deal of respect for is Seth Godin who has talked about this topic at length and has packaged it as shipping.

Reasons Why we Like Starting Stuff

  • Big Bodacious Teams: At the start of a project, leaders and teams are galvanized and inspired to change the world.
  • The Shiny Objective Syndrome: People love working and focusing on new task, projects, and the flavor of the day. Even entrepreneurs believe that they can do the impossible.
  • Excitement – Launching an idea is typically very energizing.
  • Drinking Bathwater – People who would drink your bath water because they think you are the greatest thing since sliced bread gassing your head up.

What is the value of finishing?

  • Building Mindshare: Mindshare is owning a slice of mental real estate in the mind of your target audience. Building a strong personal brand is established over time by finishing projects that are consistent with your personal brand objectives.
  • Creating a culture of execution: You begin to approach projects, ideas, and businesses with the mindset of starting things that you are intentionally planning on finishing. Your life becomes a series of completed projects or ideas that slowly build or speak your consistency. People began to identify you as a person that executes.
  • Conversion: Finishing is about converting objectives into strategies. To complete anything that is significant you have to create small victories on the road of completion. Finishing forces you to strategically approach your work in a way that will result in measurable objectives you complete.

Tips for Finishing

  • Set measurable goals and objectives.
  • Validate the objectives align with your personal mission and purpose. The end result should add value to your personal brand.
  • Shorten your list: You are not creating a list to sound or look important.

What Finishing Means to your Personal Brand

Finishing is not about being a rocket scientist or throwing junk together but about establishing clear objectives and aligning strategies to make those objectives a reality. Personal Branding taken a step further is about completing projects that are mission and purpose driven and align with your passion, the way you are wired and your personal brand DNA. The end results is attaching your name and your legacy to finished projects, ideas, or products that aligns, builds, and strengthens your personal brand.

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#mbachat 05/31/10 7:30pm EST on Entrepreneurship w/ @SmallBizLady, @MattWilsonTV & @CindyWMorrison

The #mbachat is a 1-hour discussion on Twitter where anyone can participate in our open source conversation. The Twitter Chat is on Monday, May 31st 7:30pm-8:30pm EST we will have three serial entrepreneurs: Melinda Emerson (@SmallBizLady), Matt Wilson (@MattWilsonTV), and Cindy W. Morrison (@CindyWMorrison), and host Hajj E. Flemings who will answer questions that relate to Entrepreneurship.

Come and pick the brains of these practitioners who are living the entrepreneurship lifestyle and not just talking about it in theory.

How to Follow and Participate:

To participate you can use http://search.twitter.com or http://tweetgrid.com/. Watch for tweets with the hashtag #mbachat and follow the conversation on the @TechMBAOnline Twitter account.

This chat is sponsored by Michigan Tech MBA Online program: www.mbaonline.mtu.edu.

#mbachat Guest

Melinda Emerson – Author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 months/Host of #Smallbizchat

Melinda Emerson “Smallbizlady” is a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach. Her areas of expertise include small business start-up, business development and social media strategy. Melinda hosts #Smallbizchat, a weekly talk show on Twitter. #Smallbizchat is the trusted resource on Twitter to discuss everything entrepreneurs need to know about launching and running a profitable small business. Melinda has been featured on NBC Nightly News and in the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report and Black Enterprise. Melinda publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com and has several special reports including 44 Things To Do Before You Go Into Business and The 12 Cardinal Sins of Small Business—and How to Avoid Them! Melinda’s first book Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to Start a Business that Works!” was released in March 2010 by Adams Media. For more information, please visit www.melindaemerson.com

Matt Wilson, Co-founder of Under30CEO.com

Matt Wilson is co-founder of Under30CEO.com a website dedicated to giving young entrepreneurs the tools and resources they need to succeed. After using social media to create huge buzz online around the brand, landing Under30CEO on MSNBC and BusinessWeek, he began helping others build their brands online through his own digital marketing agency. Wilson’s passion for entrepreneurship began at Bryant University after where he led the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization to becoming the world’s #1 entrepreneurship organization and earned personal accolades as National Student Leader of the Year. His personal mission is to inspire young people to use technology to create opportunity and become leaders.

If Matt is around he will be easy to spot as his long luxurious hair is generally flowing freely in the breeze.

Cindy W. Morrison – Author of Girlfriend 2.0/Emmy Award-Winning TV Broadcaster

Emmy award winning TV Broadcaster Cindy W Morrison successfully reinvented herself after the economy lead to corporate downsizing. Leaving a 20 year news career behind, Cindy wrote a book, hit the speaking circuit and created her own consulting business. She now teaches people how to reboot, upgrade and reinvent through networking, social media and branding so they can make more money and live a better life.

Cindy’s new book “Girlfriends 2.0″ is already a cult favorite and she hosts a popular show by the same name for The WIN Online (Women’s Information Network). Plus, Cindy does a weekly radio show with the founder of the Diva Toolbox based on the Girlfriends 2.0 concept. The idea is to empower women to reboot and upgrade their Girlfriend Network so they can not only survive but thrive our changing times

Cindy also speaks across the country about “Reinvention 2.0″ and how anyone can network strategically to be more successful. In fact, Cindy is the media contributor to Startup Princess which has been named one of the top women’s websites by Forbes and Entrepreneur. As a consultant, Cindy’s clients range from TV stations to major universities to heavy hitting corporations. Cindy helps companies and individuals use social media to create brand loyalty and get the kind of media coverage that money can’t buy.

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Ignite Detroit: The Re-Education of the Disposable Worker - @HajjFlemings (Video)

The live video footage of Hajj E. Flemings speaking at Ignite Detroit on April 5, 2010.

The Re-Education of the Disposable Worker Speech Discription

We live in the era of the Disposable Worker (DW). How does Detroit/America re-educate it’s human resources to prepare workers for the new economy. This presentation will focus on re-branding, re-thinking, re-inventing and re-educating DWs into thinking about themselves as the new factory.

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Tony Hsieh – @Zappos CEO, “Delivering Happiness Book Release”

The poster child of corporate culture and the usage of technology to connect with customers is Zappos. Zappos is ran by one of the smartest, most relevant CEOs on the planet Tony Hsieh. What does Tony do? Does he build brands, create corporate culture, deliver happiness or all three? I had the opportunity to hangout with Tony Hsieh and the Zappos Team in March 2010 in Austin, TX on the Happiness Bus at SXSW. I experienced the Zappos corporate culture for a few hours and I will validate he is doing all three.

I am an avid reader and I am excited to share with you the latest book that I am reading, “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose” by Tony Hsieh. Tony is a proven leader who is living what he is teaching. He has developed two companies LinkExchange which was sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1995 and Zappos.com which was sold to Amazon.com for $1.2B in 2009.

Be a part of the movement his book ships June 7th purchase part of his brain for under $25, what a deal.

Zappos’ Core Values

The Framework of the Culture

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

Follow Tony/Zappos
Follow: @DHBook (Delivering Happiness Book Twitter Account)
Follow: @Zappos (Tony Hsieh – CEO of Zapppos)
Blog: www.DeliveringHappinessBook.com

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