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Deliver Your Brand

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.

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The Future Belongs to Disruptive Thinkers not Personal Brands

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!!!

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#digitaldad: Day 3 – Driven by Hunger (Biz Lessons from a 1st time dad)



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?

Driven by Hunger: Kennedy Flemings

How hungry are you for your vision?



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Staying Invigorated and Forever Young

Keeping Yourself Young

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.

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3-Personal Branding Types: Builders, Grustlers, & Leapers

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.

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