Needle, Meet Haystack

There’s a lot that’s been said about consistency in personal branding, enhancing your social standing through a single image, and being your truest and best self.  Most of it boils down to the philosophy that people should present themselves as honestly as they can while maintaining some semblance of “quality control” over how they come across to others.  But the problem is consistency.

We’re never the same person with all people.  In fact, it might be more problematic if we treated our family, friends, co-workers, significant others and strangers exactly the same.  We cultivate different relationships for different reasons, and we show disparate, sometimes opposing, facets of ourselves depending on our audience.  Consider a typical day:

Face 1a: The Riser If you’re anything like me, when you wake up, the first problem that arises is gaining full consciousness.  It takes a while for all of the mental batteries to boot up, so while your spatial awareness might come first, your memories from what exactly happened last night might be a bit dim.  This is your lizard brain of essential body function slowly evolving into your mammal brain of cognitive awareness.  It’s based on instinct over consideration, which is why hitting the snooze button is such a good idea, and we only curse about it later, when we get to…

Face 1b: The Morning Ritualist Think you don’t have any morning rituals?  Tomorrow, try to start brushing your teeth from a different spot than usual.  Or switch up the order of parts you’re washing in the shower.  Without making a conscious, committed effort, you won’t do it.  The time between waking and school or work is all about getting the things you need to get done finished, while your brain is preparing for the rest of your day.  You might come off as unintentionally scatterbrained, curt, or even overly aggressive if something (time , an extra errand, something you forgot to do) creeps up on you and disturbs the ritual.  Regardless of whether or not you’re a “morning person,” you will be defined by your morning patterns, all of which are done to get you on the way to…

Face 2: The Commuter The nice thing about driving to work is that you’re essentially anonymous.  The bad thing about driving to work is that other drivers are anonymous.  You can sing loudly in your car (with the windows rolled up), yell at the idiot in front of you who’s singing in their car and hasn’t noticed that the light is green yet, or can try to find the station with the music coming from that car next to you because it sounds really good.  Protected inside of the bubble-world of your vehicle, you can do whatever you want, without judgment from others.

Even if you take public transportation, you still have a good degree of anonymity.  The lines are often so clogged that other commuters will see you as one of a larger group, rather than an individual.  Unless you’re that jerk who hits the emergency stop button or who won’t give up their seat to someone more in need of sitting down, you can be virtually invisible on the ride, and can silently pass judgment on other commuters, read the paper, or try to get past level 4-14 on Angry Birds.  You can vent and de-stress before you get to your place of education or employment, at which point, you will find yourself making one of the following three faces:

Face 3a: The Boss For any who work below you, this is the face of experience, confidence and knowledge that you project.  You can be a little jovial, but try to remain more professional so as to better maintain your authority.  You keep this face stoic and reserved, making sure that you can command respect.

Face 3b: The Co-Worker The level at which you interact with your peers, trading information and resources.  Of the three faces, this is the most relaxed.  However, you may have different defenses by way of competition with your co-workers for a raise, promotion, or the attention of your superiors.

Face 3c: The Subordinate This is the face you make when with your superiors.  You are at your most reserved and supplicant here, deferring to others in the hopes of gaining their favor and merit points.  You’ll be at your most professional here, wanting to project the strongest positive impression that you can on the higher-ups.

You will flip through these faces at an alarming rate of change and regularity, often more than one at a time.  But once the work day is over, you will find yourself switching to…

Face 4a: The Friend It seems a bit disingenuous to group together all of your friendships under one banner.  After all, we never really have the same relationship with any two friends; it’s based on any number of circumstances, like shared experiences, mutual hobbies and tastes, and even the circumstances of how you met.  But nonetheless, the face you show to your friends is rarely professional (even if you work together) and is much more relaxed, open and honest.  It’s actually pretty similar to…

Face 4b: The Significant Other The personality that you share with your paramour will be different depending on what stage of the relationship the two of you are in, but it will always be separate from the side that your friends and family see due to the added element of romance.  In fact, some often believe this side of themselves to be their truest self, as they are more open with their partners than anyone else.  But for others, they find this to be the case with…

Face 4c: The Family Member Your parents, grandparents and siblings may have all known you since you were born (or vice-versa, in the case of the latter), and thanks to your mental development and upbringing, they have seen you go through numerous changes over the years as your personality developed into who you are today.  Though relationships with separate parents, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and different siblings may all be unique to the individuals involved, there is at least some pervasive behavioral trend that can best be seen at large family gatherings.

Face 4d: The Master People treat their pets in funny ways, but many times, it is because they see parts of their own personalities reflected back at them through the scaly, feathered or fuzzy faces.  In some cases, it can be taken a bit far and the owners make the pets independently wealthy, but the relationship that a pet owner/food provider/trainer has with their animals is different from what they might have with any humans.

Face 5: The Dreamer After you’re settled in and relaxed after a long day, the last side of yourself is one that you can keep to yourself.  While others might only hear snoring and see drool on the pillow, your brain is still working.  And depending on how you believe things work, your sleeping mind either enters another state of consciousness, pulls images from your day and combines them in an odd way, generates random coded messages to you, or becomes a plaything of the heavens.  Regardless, the way we choose to interpret our dreams (or ignore them) can literally change the course of our lives; sometimes, our dreams can even have a subtle influence on the other aspects of our personalities (or in some cases, entire personalities).

There are many faces that we all show to the world each and every day.  Sometimes, they work together, while other times, they seem to be completely opposite.  And though these different faces may struggle to find any consistency, they are all essential parts of the greater whole.  So embrace the different facets of your life, and don’t worry if you come across as someone a bit different than how you see yourself when you’re dealing with extenuating circumstances.

And don’t keep one face on for too long; it might stick that way.

I bought a pack of gum last week, and as soon as I tried the first piece, a strange feeling overcame me.  It wasn’t that the gum was rancid, poisoned, the cause of an allergic reaction, or anything like that.  No, it was that as soon as I tasted the flavor, I realized something: I was being lied to.

When you think of how a strawberry tastes, do you think of biting into the fresh fruit, or do you think of the stuff you get when you suck on a hard candy?  Does recalling a banana bring back memories of peeling a ripe one, or chewing on the taffy?  Think about all of these different things you have eaten, and try to figure out how you can possibly reconcile those two completely different flavors both being called “cherry.”

Don’t feel bad if you never noticed it before; it’s a trap, a habit, an odd mental block that many people never realize until it’s exposed in one mind-shattering moment.  It’s almost like the invisible gorilla, but on a tastier level.  We ignore some things when they seem inauthentic or too far removed from what we expect, falling into repetitions that blind us to the obvious.

Existentialists call this kind of rationale bad faith – the denial of truth to accept a false reality.  Maybe you take a compliment without reading  into the person and purpose for which it was given; you might put on a “professional personality” to better appease your superiors at work; it might even be something so simple as not considering what motivates someone to do something.  When the veil of bad faith is lifted, it’s often a shock – the denial of freedom or comprehension will lead to more surprise when the truth outs itself than if things are looked at with a cynical eye.

The gloss painted over authenticity is the biggest problem – the code of conduct we expect from others leads to incorrect assumptions of how and who they truly are.  While one of the touchstones of personal branding is purported to be authenticity, it’s often the most overlooked aspect – and the most vulnerable.

Let’s say that there is a blogger who works tirelessly to promote their brand and personality as a very specific type, drawing in attention for their writing style as much as their actual content.  They provide a unified front across social media, videos, posts, and interviews.  Now, let’s say you email or chat with this person, and find that they seem completely different to you.  The star attributes that drew you in are nowhere to be found in the conversations that you have.  You begin to realize that their personality is incongruous with their brand.  How would it feel to discover this lack of authenticity?

Making a discovery like this is akin to meeting your heroes, only to realize that they’re a bunch of jerks.  The disconnect can lead to a quick change of opinion, radically (and often permanently) changing brand alliances and personal preferences.  Being lied to or deceived is never fun, and discovering a lack of authenticity makes people feel like both have happened to them already.  Authenticity must be genuine, and a lack of it cannot be buffered.  Consider the public outrage over journalists who make up their stories, false autobiographies, or others whose lies are revealed.  The short-term gains of deception are not worth the long-term losses.  An exposed liar rarely goes back to being a trusted source.

Though our minds might try to use bad faith to rationalize these things at first, there comes a point where the realization becomes too strong to deny any longer.  At this point, there are only two choices: realize that the artificial flavors are not what they purport to be and enjoy them for what they are, or disregard them altogether.  Once you know something is inauthentic, it is not easily forgotten.  Acceptance, denial or abandonment?  That’s just a matter of taste.

I was never one of the cool kids.  Well, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t.  I mean, I had some friends who definitely ended up being cool kids later on, but we only hung out from first to third grade, so that might not count.  There may have been about 12 minutes during my PE class Freshman year when we were playing indoor soccer, but high school life is fickle enough, and I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t all that cool for the majority of it.  In college, people didn’t seem to care too much, except for the popularity-obsessed, but most of the rest of us kind of laughed it off.  And now, in the real adult world, being cool gets you about as far as, well, not being cool.  Which sucks, because I really think I was just a late bloomer on this whole coolness thing, but it’s too late to capitalize on it.

When we think about our reputations, we often go over them in broad strokes, wanting to be respected, well-liked, held in high esteem, and so forth.  The thing we don’t think about too much is how much work it takes.  I mean, being cool is hard.  You have to consistently do things like not pick your nose in public, only let off SBD* farts (and blame them on other people), keep up with trends, come up with new catch-phrases like you’re a mid-90s sitcom writer, and keep up appearances.  Meaning, you have to make sure that other people think that you’re cool, but make it look like you don’t care about it.

According to every piece of entertainment ever, the easiest way to do this is to “just be yourself.”  Supposedly, if you do that, you will earn the love and respect of your peers.  Hell, Time magazine said that being geeky is the in thing (okay, that was five years ago, but seriously – it wouldn’t be over that quick, right?), so all you chess clubbers, pocket protector enthusiasts and Dungeon Masters should be partying it up right now.  Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Oprah and VH1 dating shows, it’s that everyone has the potential to be charismatic and amazing**.  Or maybe it would be easier to be cool if you keep some of that to yourself.

There’s two reasons that I’m bringing the issue of coolness and popularity up: the first is Glee, and the second is something we’ll address in a minute.  Now, before we delve into this, you should know that I’ve only seen a few episodes – much like Jeff from Community, I don’t quite understand the appeal.  Well, the attractive people singing and dancing, I get.  But the one thing that boggles the heck out of my non-zeitgeisty brain is that all of these kids are supposed to be losers.  You have football players (including the quarterback!) and cheerleaders (including the head cheerleader!) in the club, and last time I checked, those are two roles that are still high up in the high school hierarchy.  Not to mention that these kids are popular enough to have a blog dedicated to the club (on the show, I mean) where others gossip about them, and they seem to be cool enough to get full auto-tune sponsorship.

Maybe I’ve just been out of the trenches of teenage school-going shenanigans for too long, but I don’t recall the cool kids being labeled as “outcasts” when they joined up with some of the nerdier on-campus organizations.  But Glee is a TV show, so I digress.

The other reason I bring up popularity is because its necessity seems to work in an almost hourglass-like pattern over time.  When we view popularity through the lens of youth, it seems crucial, because we’re still developing socially, and social proof comes across as an essential ingredient to success.  But as we get older, we settle into various social roles, and come to understand that some of the less concrete aspects of interpersonal relationships like coolness are more of a component to personal advancement.  Few people get promotions and raises for simply being “cool.”  Yet, for the higher-profile positions, whether it’s as a CEO, film actor, politician, musician and so on, popularity again becomes vital.  It’s a strange cycle that perpetuates ad-infinitum over the polar ends of the spectrum.

And the other thing about the whole “cool” concept is that people can get their self-esteem so entwined with a certain perception of themselves that they might not even notice whether or not they’ve actually got “it”(whatever “it” is).  With some, it becomes a part of their personality to such a degree that they cannot reconcile the possibility that the utility of being cool has an expiration date.  But considering that popularity operates on a principle of scarcity (not everyone can be cool, and the more cool kids there are overall, the lower the comparative social values of everyone will be), there will always be more kids who never sat at the “right” lunch table than those who did.  In fact, if we assume a bell curve distribution, the coolest kids are really the outliers.  For every 100 kids, there might only be 5 that are considered “cool” – meaning that most everyone might be awesome, but not as popular.

Still, there’s an allure to being one of the cool kids – the prestige and acceptance you gain, not to mention the ego boost and the reverence.  But it sure seems like a lot of work to have to constantly maintain that level of popularity, and it might not end up being as personally rewarding.  Unfortunately, I wouldn’t know – I never really was one of the cool kids.  But that’s okay; it doesn’t mean much now anyway.

* “Silent But Deadly” – ©George Carlin

** It helps if you imagine that that word was said in Oprah-ese, like, “AAAAA-MAAAAAAAAAAAZIIIING!!!”

Whenever we start a new relationship with someone, there’s always one piece of baggage that comes out before the others.  Maybe it’s a religious preference (or the lack of one).  Maybe it’s a dietary restriction.  Maybe it’s a hobby, or a middle name, or a past job.  This tiny piece of what we are as people, which seems so inconsequential to us becomes something pivotal to others.  But it’s impossible to predict what that thing is; it’s different for different people.

One of the ladies at my office doesn’t eat anything that contains dairy.  She isn’t lactose-intolerant; she just chooses to abstain from consuming anything made of milk.  So on occasion, when there’s pizza or sandwiches or (most) baked goods around, it comes up.  Someone who isn’t aware of it asks her why she’s not eating, and it invariably goes to a long conversation that seems like she’s at a bar and they’re asking her why she doesn’t drink.  And there’s nothing wrong with her choice – though we do tease her a bit about taking milk shots and wonder how she can pass up ice cream – it’s just a part of who she is.

When I was in college, my baggage was all based on my religion.  Most of the people at the university had never seen or met a Jewish person before, leading to the typical unintentional comment of, “You’re Jewish?  I had no idea!  You look so normal!”  This would eventually turn into a 30-minute Q-and-A session where they asked about everything from circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, kosher rules and regulations, yarmulkes, and something vague involving Jesus.

The baggage acts as a distinguishing feature for people attach to you immediately, defining you in a single dimension that encompasses you in just a phrase.  While this might be done initially as a way of remembering who you are, they can let the baggage become your dominant character trait, finding it in places where it isn’t there.  To acquaintances and those who barely know you, you can be nothing more than that single dimension.

We all want to think of ourselves as being multi-faceted, complex, interesting people.  And while we hope that our self-images extend into what others think of us, that isn’t always the case.  It can stick, long after it’s worn out its welcome.  It trails just a little behind, like a stray dog, on the periphery of our social senses.  There’s no way to get rid of the baggage.  After all, it’s a part of us.

Some people run as far away from the baggage as they can, denying it angrily, lashing out in an attempt to separate from it.  Others embrace it as a label, or as a stepping stone towards developing deeper relationships.  But the truth is, the baggage is neither a curse or a blessing.  It’s a shorthand description, a quick summary for those taking just a glance.  It’s just something we live with, bringing it along wherever we go.

People will define you in different ways.  You won’t always be able to control how, when, or why.  And you may not be able to change those definitions.  But don’t worry about the baggage.  The traveler is much more interesting.

Long-time readers will recall that on a few past occasions, I’ve mentioned my history in the dance music world.  It’s an interesting place to visit, full of colorful characters, although one’s definition of “colorful” might not always go with similar terms, like “sane” or “sober” or “logical.”

But then again, it’s a great location to scout for lessons on business, branding, and Gen-Y models, like our old friend, Deadmau5.  But there’s another DJ/producer who’s offering some great metaphors on success, branding, and the slippery slope that they are on.  His name is David Guetta.  And he’s either the stupidest or most brilliant man on the scene today.

Guetta has been mixing and making music for something like 25 years, having risen through the international club circuit to become a marquee name.  He has legions of fans who swear by his house hits.  He could keep on going as a big name in dance music for the rest of his life.  But instead, he decided to go pop.

Late last year, the dozens of people who still listen to the radio were probably scratching their heads when they heard the new Akon track, “Sexy Bitch,” which he did with some guy named David Guetta, despite the fact that no one but the minor-grinding, fan-tossing singer himself could be heard on the album.  But David was there.  In fact, he had a big part.

He produced it.

So for those who didn’t quite get it in the video why Akon was hanging with a 40-something French dude in Ibiza…

Consider that Guetta did the lion’s share of making the song.

Guetta’s had appearances in the videos for his other tracks, including “Gettin’ Over You” with Fergie and LMFAO…

“Waving Flag” with K’naan and Will.i.am…

The Step Up 3D promotional tie-in track ”Club Can’t Handle Me” with Flo Rida…

And “Commander” with Kelly Rowland, who’s on an opposite track, moving into doing more club vocals and less pop these days.

Even though Guetta is usually relegated to the sidelines in the videos, usually messing around with turntables or looking odd and French in the background, he’s doing something that’s pretty rare for a non-singing producer: he’s making himself a known entity.

Sure, there’s guys like Phil Spector, who revolutionized music with his “Wall Of Sound” techniques, but there are few other behind-the-scenes fellows who are quite as prominent, and they would rarely (if ever) appear in the videos for their songs.

This is brilliance on Guetta’s part, since he’s getting exposure to entirely new audiences, hitching his star to artists who are bigger names, but with whom he would probably be working anyway.  This in turn raises his profile as both a producer and performer, pushing him into new (and more lucrative) genres.

However, he runs the risk of pigeonholing himself.  For every listener who is interested enough to look him up online to find out why he’s in all these songs and music videos, there are at least two more who don’t bother, and remain confused.  Similarly, music video directors don’t have a good idea of how to integrate him into the videos, so they usually put him behind the turntables or in the recording studio, two places he is trying to get his image away from.

This might seem counter-intuitive, but it makes sense.  Guetta needs for people to understand his contributions, but the visual representation for this is one that usually segregates him from the other artists and leaves him as a background player anyway.  As long as the music video directors don’t have a clear way to illustrate who he is and what he does, all that he will be in his pop videos is the dude in the DJ booth or the background.

The current branding struggle of David Guetta shows us a few of the ways to succumb to both good and bad branding strategies.  By moving laterally within his field of popularity and expertise, Guetta has leveraged his existing brand to connect with bigger stars to find new fans and a more prominent role in modern music.  But at the same time, working with people who don’t know how to promote his contributions in a new way leaves him stuck in one spot, making it harder for his brand to really grow and evolve.

Even contextualizing Guetta’s presence seems tricky – Flo Rida gives him a shout-out at the beginning of their track like a good hype man, but the director squanders this by keeping him in the booth.  In the beginning of the video with Fergie, he is clearly in control of the production, but he could just as easily be replaced in those shots with a random actor and many viewers would be unaware of the difference.

Guetta’s branding strategy leaves him open to more success and renown, but also constrains him to his former role.  Perhaps if he maintains a larger presence in the videos, like those with Akon and K’naan, he can move past this barrier.

Maybe this would help people to understand that the guy they don’t recognize in the video is probably the same guy whose name is on the track that they weren’t sure of.  That might not sound like much of an improvement, but it’s a definite step up from, “Why do they keep panning over to the DJ?”

You remember that kid who was picking his nose in class when you were in high school?  Or what about the girl who didn’t brush her teeth?  Do you work with someone whose work day seems to rotate around sending you stupid Internet videos?  What about that dude at the gym who screams every time he does a rep at the bench press?

Do you snore?  Pick at your teeth?  Chew your nails?  Blame your farts on someone else (or your dog)?  Cut in line?  Do you dislike people who do that stuff?

Bad habits and practices, whether intentional or not, are all a part of a person’s personality matrix, which is a key component of their personal brand (aka reputation).  Having behaviors that are looked down upon by others, whether you blame Puritanical and archaic social mores or not, is something that we all deal with.  But it’s okay!

Back in my high school days, not only was I a jerk, but I also had a reputation for being an overachieving glory hound who looked down on other people and had an unjustly inflated ego.  Okay, maybe that’s how I remember it now.  Or maybe that’s how I am now.  But the point is, despite this negative reputation, I was also known for being an efficient, effective, creative and diligent worker.  As a result, people who might have been put off by some aspects of my personality still wanted to work with me because of my big, sexy brain.

You’ve no doubt teamed up with some of your nemeses (but not your archenemy – ever), people who you despised, because you found the utility in their contribution to achieving your goals.  Whether this was for a book report or a pitch to a new client, you were able to push down your mental list of cons about that person long enough to focus on the pros to get the job done.  Or you were at each other’s throats and sitcom-like hijinks ensued.

When you boil it down, the math for the situation is pretty simple:

reward gained by working together > reward gained by working solo

Or, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Personal branding experts will tell you to put your best foot forward, to carefully manage the flow of information about you, and to maintain your interpersonal relationships carefully (well, at least I do), but that can’t always be the case.  You can’t micromanage your reputation – it’s ultimately not up to you as to how other people interpret what they see and hear about you.

So if there’s a few bad things some people might say, don’t worry about it.  Being a control freak or a procrastinator isn’t the worst thing if you deliver on your promises.  Chewing loudly with your mouth open can be overlooked if you make meaningful contributions to your team.  And even quoting Family Guy every five minutes is excusable if you have killer leadership skills.

So don’t sweat your reputation; just make sure that people are hearing plenty of good things about you, and you’ll be fine.

Let’s be honest here: personal branding is often anything but.  People will use facades, deceit, and selective messaging to put their best foot forward – and in the case of this metaphor, they’re not even using their own shoes.  But regardless of how one uses their personal brand, it’s far more critical to manage it properly.  Here are five common mistakes that can destroy an (in)credible brand in next to no time:

1. Using disqualifying statements. You absolutely cannot be self-deprecating or wishy-washy about your skills.  Admitting that you are delinquent in an area you profess to be knowledgeable about will lead to lots of trouble, and mistrust from your personal brand’s consumers.  In fact, disqualifying statements work a lot like negatives – they remove your authority and put your expertise and reliability into question.
2. Not monitoring your output. Every bit of contact you have with others is branding currency: emails, social network messages, texts, blogs – all of it is a traceable history and record of your activities and opinions.  If you refrain from making sure that your message is consistent across all fields, you will come across as scatterbrained and two-faced.  Doing everything from setting up Google alerts for your name and branded content to self-editing your conversations in IMs and emails can ensure that you have a stable brand message.
3. Leaving large gaps in your brand identity. Do you appear on the first page of search results for your name?  Are you involving yourself with people and organizations that can help promote you and your brand?  Does your email address or website reflect your name or brand?  And if not, how many people do you think are missing out on your content?
4. Reliance on external sources. If you quote others more than creating original content, be it on a blog, Tweets, or daily conversation, you’re not showing yourself and your brand to be creative, innovative or particularly interesting.  Your audience wants someone interesting, not a parrot.  If you find yourself too involved with pop culture and quoting to distance yourself easily, go on a media fast and break the chain cold turkey.
5. Not controlling the conversation. Are you aware of what people say about your personal brand?  Is there an easy way for them to get in touch with it?  What public image are you putting forth?  If you don’t make sure to have an open dialog with your brand consumers, you will be asking these questions constantly, almost always to an empty room.  Involve yourself with those who are interested in what you have to say and offer – you’ll be able to shape your brand the way you want it with less trouble or negative feedback.

Sure, it’s not as bad as unknowingly killing your career, but if you don’t take care of your personal brand, who will?

During my Junior year of college, I spent a semester in London.  And while I was there, I discovered something wonderful.  The American accent (non-regional diction, in my case) can be sexy.

Just like hearing a British accent on this side of the pond, there’s something foreign and exotic about hearing an American talk if you’re English.  We have different names for clothes.  We call the “pavement” the “sidewalk.”  And this was a turn-on to the British ladies who were quite tired enough of guys who sounded prim and proper and James Bond-like, thank you very much.

So what did I do with this new-found knowledge?

I exploited it.  Who wouldn’t?  But more on that in a minute.

The interesting thing about being a foreigner is that you are automatically interesting.  Your looks don’t really matter.  Your personality itself doesn’t really matter.  All that matters is that you’re from somewhere else.  And the accent is a key component.

We are often deceived by the possibility of something new or alien to us.  But the longer it’s around, the more we get used to it.  Barely more than a decade ago, sushi was considered a “fringe” food, eaten only by the Japanese and weirdos who liked their fish – yuck! – uncooked.  But now, it’s everywhere.  And while you might not be able to get a California or Philadelphia roll on the streets of Tokyo, the mystique of the food is gone.

So the key to being new and exciting is not to linger.  Now, back to Past Me:

The first thing that I would do would be ask for the girl to get me a drink.  I discovered early on that whoever pays for the other person is giving up power – if a man buys a woman a drink, she is under no obligation to talk with him for longer than it takes to get the drink.  So she winds up with a free beverage, while he is out for a few bucks.  The opportunity cost of the action doesn’t quite level off.  And it’s always nice to get a free drink.

The next thing that I would do would be talk to the girl (or girls) by asking them open-ended questions about themselves (couldn’t be answered with a simple yes or no).  This kept me from displaying the phenomenon known as Foreign Guy Who Doesn’t Shut Up, and made the experience seem more personal to them.  I would hardly talk at all – I would be an active listener, and would wind up getting compliments on my superb conversation abilities!

During my entire time in London, I can count on two hands the number of times I paid for my own drink.

When you’re new to a group, be it a company, team or even an entire city, people will be interested in you because you’re new.  If you’re able to manage your image well and make sure not to show all your cards right away, you can leverage your interesting features into more than just a story you tell at the bar.

At the end of last year, I compiled a list of the Top 9 Blogs of 2009.  If you look at the post, you might notice something doesn’t quite work with that title – the badge and link itself both say “Top 10.”  There are only 9 blogs listed there because I wasn’t about to mention any of them without the express consent of their authors, and I never received a response from one of the bloggers on my list.

This is a story about the 10th blog.

I’m sure that Dan Schawbel of the Personal Branding Blog is a busy guy.  He’s running a terrific site, has a book out that I’ve put on my Amazon wish list, and has a ton of speaking and consulting gigs.  It’s not hard to imagine that my hastily-written email got lost in his inbox.  Considering how clogged my gmail account is without being a personal branding rock star like Dan, I’m definitely sympathetic.  And he’s been nice enough to tweet about some of my posts, which is always great for blog traffic.

Dan is truly a guru in an age of expert backlash, and his posts have helped me develop my own personal brand more than I would ever have been able to do on my own.

That being said, I’m going to take a few risks that might shove my personal brand in the toilet, and they fly in the face of a lot of what Dan preaches.  The approach is twofold:

1. I moved my blog, which has (so far) provided me with a 7/8 drop in readership.  Or in other words, almost 88% of my readers haven’t followed me over (although a lot of the traffic was due to random searches through WordPress.com, so maybe I’m a bit inaccurate).  I’ve decided to completely change my direction and move away from my niche (discussed here).
2. I co-founded a new site called DumbassBoss.com, an FML- and MLIA-type site where people can share stories of the incompetence – or competence – of their bosses.  And did I mention that all submissions are anonymous?  I’m pretty much encouraging people to tell the world how dumb their bosses are.  If that doesn’t hurt my chances at getting a job, I’ll be very surprised.

I’m taking a huge risk with my personal brand that has a high potential for failure and decreasing my buying temperature.  But you know what?  I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.

So thanks for the personal branding lessons, Dan.  Even if I’m not going to completely follow your advice, it’s helped me out a lot.  And no matter what anyone says, your blog will always be the 10th of the Top 10 of 2009 to me.

On Monday night, I was out at a bar with my best friend, celebrating his birthday.  We were watching ESPN highlights (mostly about Mark McGwire’s recent announcement or the Cardinals game on Sunday) when a commercial break came, and Anthony Sullivan appeared to promote a new drain unclogging wonder that could be bought For Only $19.95 (plus shipping and handling).  ”I can’t believe that [Sullivan] has been getting all Billy Mays‘ work since he died,”  my friend lamented.  ”How did that happen?”

Which got me wondering – how did that happen?  How did Billy Mays become such a cultural touchstone that people are sad that he’s no longer making infomercials?  He was a TV pitchman, a role that isn’t typically associated with celebrity.  And then I remembered how Dick Van Dyke got famous.

In some PBS special I watched too long ago to remember the name of, Carl Reiner was being interviewed about The Dick Van Dyke Show, and was telling the story of its name.  When the creators were developing the show in 1961, they were having trouble finding a hook to draw viewers in.  None of the actors were well-known at the time, and the generic names the network offered for the series didn’t work.  So the creators took a gamble and named the show after their leading man.  Dick Van Dyke wasn’t a celebrity then, but his eponymous show created self-fulfilling prophecy that made him a celebrity.  After all, he had his own show – he HAD to be someone!

Similarly, Billy Mays was endorsing a lot of products with the strength of his pitches resting on his opening line, “Hi, Billy Mays here…”  Who was Billy Mays?  Well, if he was on TV endorsing something, he HAD to be someone!

The key is total brand confidence.

Both Dick Van Dyke and Billy Mays were thrust on stage (metaphorically speaking) and through sheer force of will and conviction, people accepted that they had value and were worth paying attention to.  Sure, it’s a more risky gambit than creating a persona over time, but if you can present your brand with enough charisma, and then back it up by showing utility, people will take notice and follow.

However, this move can be overplayed.  After all, what’s more pathetic than someone saying “Don’t you know who I am?”  If you have to resort to this, you’ve already lost, and your brand loses value.  All you need is to confidently say something that gets across the message, this is who I am, and this is what I can do.

It might sound simple, or even a little contrived.  But getting by on the strength of one’s name has worked since the early days of television.  So give it a try – there’s no shipping or handling involved.