The 92,000-hour challenge is a personal branding exercise that was birthed at Brand Camp – NYC on Tuesday, May 24^th as a method to get people (Human Brands) to re-think our life work (or what we were designed to do.)

What’s the significances of 92,000 hours?

The average person lives 78 years in the United States, which translates, to 683,200 hours that a person will live. Many people are starting to eat healthy and working out so many individuals will live beyond the average life expectancy. The two biggest activities a person will engage in, in their life is sleeping and working.

If a person works from age 21 until age 65 and works 40-hours per week they will work 92,000 hours. The data shows us that the average person will work past age 65 and works more than 40-hours per week. So the number 92,000 hours really represents the minimum number of hours that a person will work in their life.

How the Challenge Works/Requirements

Here is how the 92,000-hour challenge works. For the next 30-days, starting June 1, 2011 we are going to work on fleshing out our life purpose by creating a bucket list.

• Identify an Accountability Partner: You must identify an accountability partner. Your accountability partner will help to keep you accountable to following through.

• Get Listed: Add your name to the 92,000-hour challenge Google Doc list. The purpose is to develop a community of people that will be catalyst who will help us better understand what we were designed to do (optional) - (Must Request Access to be included on the list)

• Use the Hashtag: Use the hashtag #92khrs when you share your content in Twitter so that we can track comments.

• Create Weekly Blog Post: Each week you are required to publish at least one blog post whether it is video or text and share it via Twitter with the hashtag #92khrs.
• Create a Bucket List: The output is to create a bucket list of things that you believe that you would like to spend your 92,000 hours doing.

Weekly Blog Post Topics

• Topic #1- When I Grow Up: Create a list of what you wanted to be when you grew up! Identify the dreams you had when you were younger before people grown ups told you your dreams were not possible.

• Topic #2- Skill Set: Identify your skill sets and create a skill set inventory (This is not a list of things that you do on your current job.)

• Topic #3- Idea Job Description: Create your idea job description and work environment. Think about this from the perspective of being your own boss.

• Topic #4- Side Project: Create a side project that you could work on to give you some real world experience doing what you dreamed off.

Launch Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2011

End Date: Friday, July 1, 2011

Why are we doing this in a public domain? The reason is to make you and me more accountable. Making a public statement creates positive peer pressure and will help us stay committed to following through for the next 30-days of the challenge.

Please leave a comment if you plan on participating in the 92,000 hr personal branding challenge.

Add your name to the 92K Hours Challenge List in Google Docs: http://bit.ly/92khrs_list (Must Request Access by clicking the link)

Is personal branding important? The answer is yes, but it is more important whom you learn from than the fact you need to learn personal branding. It is becoming more and more difficult for people to standout. With the increasing popularity of social media the Internet is becoming more polluted with noise making it difficult to establish a strong signal. Everyday I read blog post loaded with tips from many individuals with no CASE STUDIES but the so-called magic dusk to transform your life.

Brand Camp – NYC is a one-day event that was created to help you (students, entrepreneurs, and professionals) to cut through the clutter and learn about personal branding from subject matter experts. Not just any subject matter experts but those who are living their passion and making real MONEY in the real World.

Register at: http://bcnyc.eventbrite.com

Our speakers have generated millions of dollars in companies they have grown and sold, worked with some of the largest Musicians in Rock history, and are working on cool tech startups or businesses that are transforming industries.

Our speakers have deep domain knowledge in the following area:

• Media (traditional and new media)
• Public Relations (traditional and new media)
• Tech Startups (Bootstrapped and VC funded companies)
• Personal Branding Champions: They have worked with Fortune 50 companies, athletes, and universities nationwide.
• Government: Those who have championed change and multi-platform communication strategies in municipal government.

Subject Matter Champions Speaking at Brand Camp – NYC

• Hajj Flemings (@Hajjflemings) – Founder of Brand Camp/gokit
• Peter Shankman (@PeterShankman) – Founder of HARO/The Geek Factory
• Tamsen Fadal (@tamsenfadal) - TV Anchor - WPIX (New York)
• Greg Clayman (@Clayman) – Publisher of The Daily (iPad Newspaper)
• Amanda Steinberg (@AmandaSteinberg) – Founder/CEO of DailyWorth
• Dayna Steele (@DaynaSteele) - Fast Company Blogger/Author of Rock to the Top
• Baratunde Thurston (@Baratunde) - Director of Digital at The Onion
• Desiree Peterkin Bell (@dpbell) - Director of Communication for the City of Philadelphia

You don’t want to miss Brand Camp – NYC on Tuesday, May 24^th at The Riverside Theatre

Photo Credit: I found the photo on http://kelleemontgomery.com/ (Designed by Roland Reiner Tiangco)

Today what do you SEE?

Why do some Creative’s, Visionaries, Leaders, CEO’s, Athletes, Educators, and Entrepreneurs SEE opportunities when others SEE: junk, risk, 0.4 seconds and a relentless defender, and under performing students (who are diagnosed as ADD -Attention Deficit Disorder because they are over mediated and under exposed to resources that could unlock their true potential). The Internet, TV, and digital technology are great tools but nothing parallels the ability of the human mind to tap into a reservoir of creativity, ideas, knowledge and passion to create something that has never before existed.

I challenge you today to Zig when everyone else is Zagging. I challenge you to write an original blog post versus copying and re-hashing old, tire content that isn’t original. I challenge you to work on that idea that you have sat on for the past 5 years and as Seth Godin says, ‘Ship it’.

If the idea that you SEE stays locked up inside of you and is never released it is useless and has zero value. The impact of your idea is only felt when it is birthed and set free to change the lives of others.

Today what do you SEE?

Photo Credit to Shawn Lee

It is that time of year again to identify my personal branding predictions and trends for 2011. I believe it is going to be a breakout year for personal branding. In 2010 we saw some trends that paved the way for what we will see this year. My predictions center around a few basic ideas: scaling, character, business models, disruption and co-working.

As personal brand strategist or whatever title my colleagues coin to identify themselves, we as an industry have communicated to people that they need to have an online presence. A lot of this advice centered around hanging a shingle in one or more of big three social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin). Anyone who has followed this advice should know by now, they have the equivalent of a modern day hardcopy resume. It is like saying if you put on a blue suit, shirt and tie you will standout at a job interview. In other words you are going to need to work harder to matter: to standout, and to create value.

5-Personal Branding Predictions

• Develop your Disruptive Talent – Me too technology and ideas are overrated. Disruption is the new normal. Disruptive technology is a term coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen to describe a new technology that unexpectedly displaces an established technology. In his 1997 best-selling book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” Christensen separates new technology into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Understanding disruption and it’s positive impact on technology serves as a starting point for understanding disruptive talent.

How do you translate the skills/talent you have into value? You will be forced to recognize not what makes you fit in but what makes you stand out. This will require some soul-searching and a very introspective view of who you are. Without identifying and developing your disruptive talent you will be unemployed, underemployed, or unfulfilled working at something you are not passionate about. Instead of ‘living the dream’ you will be ‘dreaming the dream.’ Key: Identify your disruptive talents.

Scale – Developing a personal brand isn’t the challenge. Scaling a personal brand is an even bigger challenge? Creating something that people want to connect with, that has value in your passion is a different story. The biggest challenge and growth area for personal brands is how to scale. As a person you can only be in one place at a time so scaling you is impossible. The foundation is that personal brands have to ask this critical question.

What is the difference between an idea and a business?

Business Models for Personal Brands – With the onset of the social web everybody has been running to try and figure out how to make money with it especially those with strong personal brands. The focus will need to be on business model development will be the key. What made the iPod so successful was not the fact that it was just a cooler device. The difference was the business model; Apple hit a home run when it developed iTunes. The business model for personal brands is still being defined. (1) Pure entrepreneurs, (2) Grustler or (3) somewhere in-between. The link between job creation and business creation was validated in a report by Kauffman Foundation.

Examples:

• Gary Vaynerchuk – Vaynder Media and Books (Crush It and The Thank You Economy)
• Chris Brogan – New Marketing Labs and Books

Character 3.0: Drives Profit – Tiger Woods in 2010 shows the cost of poor character, diminishing values and the impact that social media has on the personal brand. The Tiger Woods situation cost sponsors between $5B-$12B. We clearly saw the connection between character and revenue generation. With the increasing emphasize of company recruiters using social networks as a character validate will be come increasingly important to populate the correct the content online. According to Careerbuilder.com 45% of recruiters validate potential job applicants in Facebook and Linkedin. After those employers checked their profiles online 35% changed their decision based on the information they found. More importantly, lifestyle will impact revenue generation and business opportunities.
Anywhere Economy (Mobile Powered) – Use of mobile devices like iPhones, iPads and Galaxy tablets to share your experiences and increase brand awareness and share ideas in a creative and meaningful way. Mobile technology will be the engine that drives personal branding movement. The use of web enabled mobile devices will allow people to work creating the anywhere.

• Ball of Clay – The disruptive talent will identify ways to utilize mobile tools to scale ideas-to-businesses.

Co-Working Growth – The need for space to house the free agent workforce will continue to grow. In Michigan one of the premier spots is Urbane Space in Birmingham, MI. According to the Kauffman Foundation there were 558K businesses started in 2009. This was the highest entrepreneurial activity in 14-years. Some of this activity is driven by the economy. In the end we have more people how are working from themselves. I expect to see a substantial increase in co-working spaces to accommodate this engaged workforce.

List of Co-Working Spaces

• Urbane Space (Co-Working Space: Birmingham, MI)10 International Co-Working Spots

• 53 Co-Working Centers in the Top Cities for Entrepreneurs

• Loose Cubes: Global network of shared workspaces

I look forward to seeing you dominate in 2011.

Photo Credit: Troy Johnson - Covenant Digital Photography

Register: www.brandinsights.eventbrite.com

It is time to start working on your branding goals for 2011! Time to re-think your personal and corporate brand strategy for the new decade. We have created an experiential event in the Detroit Eastern Market on Thursday, January 20, 2011 to help you reach your goals.

Brand Insights Detroit: Personal and Corporate Branding Workshop was birthed out of my desire to provide personalized attention to entrepreneurs, business leaders, and business owners about branding. This event is designed for the business and interactive communities in the metro Detroit region.

One of the big questions I get is that people love Brand Camp but want a one-on-one experience so creating Brand Insights is a way to create that small group environment. This workshop is limited to 15 like-minded entrepreneurs, business leaders and business owners. The workshop is designed to provide personalized attention in developing and re-thinking your personal and business brands and how to integrate their missions seamlessly.

The Detroit Experience
I also wanted to do a project in Detroit and I couldn’t think of a better place than in the Detroit Eastern Market. You can experience the flavor of Detroit Eastern Market as we host our event in one of the premier Lofts in Detroit, FD Lofts on Russell Street and eat lunch catered by the famous Russell Street Deli.

Russell Street Deli

FD Lofts in Detroit Eastern Market

Learn in-depth insights on how to brand yourself and your business in an energetic 8-hour day. The workshop will be led by two branding and marketing minds (Hajj E. Flemings and Matthew Kruchko) in a unique hands on facilitated environment.

A large portion of the day will be dedicated to addressing specific personal and corporate branding challenges. The afternoon will be spent in full consulting mode we will review brand problems or ideas in front of the group so everyone can connect and collaborate in the learning process. The attendance has been limited to provide great opportunities for quality networking and building valuable relationships.

Schedule

Morning: 8:30am-12pm Personal & Corporate Branding Workshops

Lunch: 12pm-1pm Catered Lunch

Afternoon: 1pm-4:30pm Consulting on Brand Problems/Ideas

Expectations

• Each attendee will walk away with a brand brief that they have completed with the framework for their personal and corporate brands.
• Learn best practices on using social media to build brand awareness and market you and your business.
• Learn how to develop an online personal brand.
• Brand-Building 101: Basic Tools and Principles of Building a Powerful and Memorable Brand
• Understand what brands really are and how brand-building works.
• Introduces key elements of the basic brand communications toolbox and how they work together to enable you to tell your brand story with clarity, consistency and impact.
• Discussion (Q + A) and collaboration on brand challenges of attendees.

I came across an old work ID that inspired this blog post. I looked at the picture and thought how much I had changed over the past 14-years since the picture was taken. I interned with New Balance Athletic Shoe in Lawrence, MA, which is just outside of Boston. I enjoyed my days at New Balance I was the first out of state intern they had in their intern program. I owe a lot to Edith Harmon-Wiess who was the person that took a chance on me. She still works at New Balance as the VP of Advanced Products. Enough reminiscing. It is time to learn something.

Re-Brand yourself. Every brand has a life cycle and goes through the following phases: development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Over time every brand hits a plateau where the brand matures and faces the reality of decline. This forces every brand to make some hard decisions to re-think strategies, channels of communication and their end game. If a corporate brands need to create a personality and take online human characteristics to be relevant to the connected customer, then how much more do we as human brands have to evolve? (For example: Corporate brands go through re-branding phases like Dunkin’ Donuts did in 2006.)

Have you Changed?

As a personal brand you continue to change: your worldview, the online channels you use to communicate, your career goals change, your work style (the way your dress) and the way you look. Anyone who is growing is changing. Over time we are developing, learning, and growing into the person we want to be and working in the career that we have a passion for.

• How do people experience you? Is it different today than it was 3-5 years ago? When I started online about 4-years ago I connected with people via MySpace. Over time that has evolved and people experience my brand through different channels.
• Online Presence – Your online content should be updated frequently. For example your Linkedin profile should evolve as your career goals, work experience, and the content you curate changes.
• WorkStyle – Does your dress style reflect your brand? I have moved from being a company man to an entrepreneur and my work style reflects that. As you evolve as a person your style should reflect the stage you are at in life.
• Visuals – Your profile Photos should be updated every 3+ years at the latest. Think about how much you have changed over the past 3-5 years.

If you are doing the same things you did five years ago you are probably not relevant. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Food for Thought: We are constantly in a re-tweaking phase.

Are you living life in Default mode?

Wikipedia defines Default: “Default Values are generally intended to make a device (or control) usable “out of the box”. A common setting, or at least a usable setting, is typically assigned.”

The more time I spend in the branding space helping people and businesses transform themselves, the more I see default settings controlling the operating systems of people and businesses. Living life by Default versus design is the path of least resistance as well as least reward.

Why should someone hire you? Why should someone buy your product? Why should someone listen to you? Why should someone read your blog? Why do you matter? Do you matter? Does your work create conversation? Are you living an undervalued life?

I thought the concept of living in Default would be an interesting topic as 2010 is coming to an end and 2011 is quickly approaching.

Remember, “Success is a journey and a planned activity.” Without goals we are living life by Default. For many people 2010 was a year of change and as technology, the economy, and the world changes you can’t depend on ‘What Was’ to be ‘What Is.’

It is time to establish your goals for 2011 personally and professionally.

Food for Thought: There is a difference between ‘Out of the Box’ and ‘Thinking Outside the Box’.

We all live in a global village in a community that is not bound by geography but trust, where Social Media and social sharing is redefining relationships. Our network consist of a mix of friends that we know in real life and E-quaintances that we have connected with online. It is a common occurrence to strike up a conversion with someone at an event and say aren’t we Facebook friends.

Connected World

In this connected world the line is blurring between the digital and real, professional and personal, public and private. We now spend more time in social networks then we do on email, according to Nielsen it consumes 22.7% of our online activity. This equates to approximately 5 hours per day, which means it is impacting our relationships and decisions. The digital landscape is changing the way we consume our news, build relationships, purchase products, and how we engage in conversations, ‘In the Real World.’

Today we can talk to brands directly online (20% of the tweets mention specific brand names.) When we go to restaurants we can check-in online with location based social networks like Foursquare. We can share with our network where we are eating and our dining experience in real-time.

Building Trust

Let me be clear nothing in the world will ever beat face-to-face interaction. Social Networks however have become a very powerful tool in building trust in an attention-based economy. One of the most valuable currencies that we have is trust and those that are digitally savvy can leverage the power of social networks to build genuine relationships in the real world.

The ability to view a person’s status updates in their social network, their tweets and their online activity tells a lot about their behavior and who they are as a person. Engaging in conversations in social networks has the ability to increase the speed of transactions in developing relationships, doing a business deal, or getting to know someone.

In the final analysis in the digital world that we live in it is not about the Technology. As you look to navigate life on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and in other social networks remember the basics. You are having a conversation, you are connecting with people. How would you talk to someone face to face? Would you walk up to someone for the first time and say hey follow me and by the way would you by this product?

Tips to Remember

1. Talk to people online like you would if you were face to face.

2. Be Authentic

3. Relationships are fragile so treat them with care.

4. Remember that everybody has ulterior motives just make sure your building relationships that are mutually beneficial.

5. Relationships are not measured in quantity but quality.

Remember with every tweet, status update, comment, blog post and face-to face interaction you are either building or tearing down relationships.

I recently read an article by Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), which many people like Seth Godin have commented on, that was pretty much dead on when it comes to delivering a product. Here is an excerpt:

Usage is like oxygen for ideas – You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you‘ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it‘s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.

I think this applies to personal branding.

Although there are a bunch of us that understand the importance of personal branding, there are droves of our peers out there that are not completely sold on the concept. I believe MOST of that has to do with confidence. What if I am not good enough? What if I am not consistent and compelling? People take themselves right out of the game.

There is a unique paradox in personal branding about being consistent and frequent. I think this is is VERY true, but I do think its more important to be ON TIME, than consistent and frequent. Matt in his article talked about Apple and WordPress dealing with the challenges of delivering product. Apple products many times when released, albeit with ingenuity and gargantuan hype, at times fall short of what pundits say “the customer actually wants.” Much of that is due to the the fact that their philosophy is to deliver great product and develop it to maturity while it is in the market. I believe Apple’s reasoning for this thought process is that they feel many people don’t completely know what they want in a product until they start using it. I tend to agree.

This is the same way with personal branding. Many of us didn’t know what our personal brand was, until we started developing one.

Deliver your brand.

If you know someone who is discouraged by the enormous task of maintaining a personal brand, tell them they have lost until they deliver their brand. You don’t know what you are made of until you get in the game (sports analogy).

I believe it is very important to give your brand oxygen, and if you don’t know what your brand is yet, dig deep inside your heart and create some prototypes. You know the core you, but allow your audience to guide you to where you need to be.

P.S. Deliver Magazine is a great source of information for marketers and small business owners.

What are personal brands? Typically they are uniform thinkers. They are soldiers in a mass army. They follow orders well. They have developed online personal brand profiles that are a result of reading blog post that provide a macro view of basic online personal branding strategies. They listen to the pseudo expert telling them to set-up Twitter accounts and add thousands of empty bodies so that they can say they are influencers.

But a disruptive thinker realizes that owning the future has little to do with having a Facebook Fan Page or Twitter account alone. Disruptive thinkers don’t think linearly. They don’t add by addition. They think exponentially. They bring who they are to whatever they are working on which doesn’t fit in the current workplace.

• Personal Brands: A personal brand takes a hardbound book then looks to format it to produce an iBook as a glorified PDF file.

• Disruptive Thinkers: A disruptive thinker when he/she curates contents for a book creates a product that is multi-dimensional experience that traditional publishing would never do it justice.

Disruptive thinkers change industries. Disruptive thinkers make you have to take notice. They are going to force corporations/organizations/brands to change their corporate culture to mine them. In the future this type of talent won’t be attracted to your company by traditional means.

Note: This blog is a by-product of a recent post on Mashable.com where Seth Godin said he wasn’t Gives Up on Traditional Book Publishing and a conversation with Vincent Hunt.

Checkout Seth’s iPad Version of Linchpin.

It is time to be disruptive!!!

Today’s blog post is called driven by hunger. As a first time dad my newborn daughter Kennedy Nicole Flemings is teaching me business lessons that I will be sharing. After watching my daughter nurse for the first time I realized the power of the business lesson that I just witnessed.

A newborn baby is driven by hunger and their job, vision, and focus is for growth. How valuable would we be as business professionals to our teams, companies, and organization if we had that the same singular focus as a newborn. When a newborn nurses he or she latches on to get nutriment. As successful professionals we have to latch on to our vision and be relentless until we get what we need. Does your attitude and desire change the environment around you and demonstrate your passionate pursue of your goals?

How hungry are you for your vision?



One of the lessons that I received over the weekend, had to do with keeping your faith young. In most cases when we reach maturity in things we do, we are at our best. However being young in something doesn’t always have to be a direct correlation with immaturity.

I recently came a across a slide show that I put together for a really good friend’s wedding. On the soundtrack is a great song, called Forever Young, by Rod Stewart. Although the lyrics seem to be targeted towards a relationship with a son or daughter, I felt the song generally inspires us to stay young.

I strongly feel this is how we should approach our personal brand. Staying young in heart and mind allows you to stay invigorated, passionate, and most important - teachable. As we mature in life, some of the ways to maintain youth is to continue to learn different things that allow you to sharpen your skills and your knowledge base. Here are a few more things to consider:

Pay Attention to Accidental Inspiration
Although I think it is necessary to be purposeful in everything we do,inspiration and creativity many times is accidental. For instance a combination of experiences allowed for me to be inspired to write this post as explained above. I think it is always good to keep the juices flowing by mixing up the monotony and allowing yourself to be inspired by your experiences. Allowing yourself to be open to different genres and creating new relationships are good ways to mix things up. Just like a fruit smoothie, if you don’t mix it up you will find that all the good stuff is at the bottom.

Be Prepared for a Pivot
Good entrepreneurs are always ready for a potential pivot. Sometimes you start a business or initiative going in a specific direction. However things in the market could change or your customer evolves and you find that you have to take your idea in a different direction. To be prepared for a pivot you have your hand on the pulse of the market and be prepared to make a pivot in another profitable direction. Changing directions sometimes requires energy; it helps to stay young in the mind and be able to learn new things. This can apply to career’s and passion projects as well.

Maintain Momentum
Sometimes it is natural for us to get comfortable and on auto-pilot with our day-to-day responsibilities. Keeping our batteries charged through rest and recuperation, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and constantly staying in practice allows us to keep up with the pace of our purpose in life.

These are things that can edify your day-to-day duties on-the-job or business, relationships with your spouse and kids, and in our friendships. Stay Invigorated and Forever Young.

Personal brands operate in one of three worlds: Builders, Grustlers, or Leapers. Now let’s break down the three types, as you read through the descriptions identify which one you are. As a backdrop the workplace is changing, emerging technology is impacting the way we live and communicate, and globalization is shifting when, where and how we work.

Builders (Intrapreneurs) – A builder is a worker that is wired to work in an existing corporate or company structure. Organized working structures typically have regular pay periods, access to company resources, and systems/processes in place that allows people to work in a structured environment. This type of individual enjoys working for someone else and building someone else’s dreams while developing themselves and their personal brand. Most universities and colleges teach students to auto-follow this mentality regardless of how a person is wired because it has been the safe option historically. The biggest benefits of this category are the halo effect and company resources.

Benefits of Builders

• Halo Effect – Working for a large corporation can position you for great opportunities that are a direct result of your association with the company you work for.

• Company Resources – The resources that are available at a large corporation can be very beneficial to your career: experience using enterprise software, databases, cool projects and access to priority data.

• Expanded Network – Great network building opportunities: attending conferences, company networking events, and the visibility to higher-level executives.

Examples: Jeremiah Owyang

Grustlers (Hybrids) – GRUSTLE is the combination of a daily Grind (job) and a Hustle (your passion). In my book ‘The Brand YU Life’ the first degree (or principle) is ‘Identify Your Passion’ which is the cornerstone of Grustlin’.

Definitions

Grind: A grind is a job; employment; typically your primary source of income.

Hustle: A hustle is your passion, what you would love to do full-time and what gives you the most satisfaction. It is what you typically do after you work your daily grind.

Your career/job is the primary source of income that you use to seed your passion. This is a minimal risk option that allows you to develop and grow your ideas without the pressure or financial weight of doing it full-time. This personal brand type tends to operate as more of a transitional phase for people shifting from being a builder to a leaper. There are various forms of Grustle: (1) Being a college student and establishing a blog or having a 9-to-5 job and starting a business on the side are two examples.

Benefits of Grustlers

• Future Job Security – Operating in a grustle is a new form of job security. Depending upon a single employer or a single career to be your financial source for your entire career is more risky than ever before.

• Additional Financial Stream – Grustling allows you to add an additional financial revenue stream in your area of passion.

• Career Transition – It is a career strategy to enable you to transition into a new career that doesn’t mesh with your past work history or educational background.

• Practice over Theory – It allows you to demonstrate your capabilities in the real world versus claiming expertise in theory. It goes beyond what you learned in the classroom.

Examples: Gary Vaynerchuk

Leapers (Entrepreneurs) – Pure entrepreneurship doesn’t appear typically to be innate because it is talked out of us as a child by parents and teachers. In college we are brainwashed to think of ourselves as builders only. It is only after years of making someone else rich, being downsized, outsourced, or fired that we are forced to follow our passion. Some do arrive here after working for someone else and having a great work experience.

Benefits of Leapers

• You own the results – The risk and reward is greater but you own the results the fruits of your labor.

• Lifestyle Management – Leapers have the most impact on their work environment whether it is a home office, co-working, coffee shops, or cubicles.

• Leaders of Innovation – Small enterprises with less bureaucracy are typically the innovative companies which are lead by visionary leapers.

Examples: Kevin Carroll, Mark Zuckerberg

Note: It is possible to be a hybrid of each type as you transition from one phase to another.

People will tell you that you need to work on your own. That is not necessarily true. You have to identify how you are wired. The pressure of being financially responsible for a company is a hugh undertaking your timing and developing must be right. Being true to where you are is the key. There are great success stories in each category.

How you manage your online personal brand should be dictated by the type of personal brand that you are and the stage of your career that you are in.

Demographics

• Baby boomers (1946-1964) – This group was born during the automotive manufacturing age in the United States and they worked for someone else. If they went to college they were taught to be loyal to their employer. Category: Builders
  

• Gen Y (1965-1976) – This group started our careers in the end of the automotive manufacturing boom but were still taught to go to school and work and be loyal to your employer. Category: Builders
  

• Millennials (1977-1994) - Economy tanks. They are born grustlers. This hyperconnected group is blogging, multi-tasking and developing online businesses. Category: Grustlers
  

Identify your personal branding type: Builder, Grustler, or Leaper. The Leaper lifestyle is glorified because it can be a great rag to riches story, or one that changes the world like Microsoft (Bill Gates) or Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg). It can be a recipe of disaster if you are not wired for it.

We 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?

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.