A Personal Brand lesson worth sharing
When I moved into my house a couple years ago, it wasn’t long until I found a nice little neighborhood wine bar right down the street. A lively spot, it was perfect for entertaining friends, or meeting new ones. They also had free wireless, and late one afternoon I needed a quiet place to concentrate on a report I was writing, so I packed up and spent the afternoon parked at one of their hightops, cranking out my report (with my creativity fueled by a nice glass of Cabernet). At one point I was having a brief chat with the owner. He asked me what I did for a living. When I told him, he said “Huh, I always thought you were an artist or something.”
The office where I work is very close to Cleveland’s Chinatown district and one restaurant in particular is so close it might as well be called our company cafeteria. I go there when I’m in a rush for lunch, I go there with co-workers for lunch meetings, and it’s a very convenient location for introductory business meetings. I was having a chat with one of the owners the other day who had asked where I work. When I told him, he said “Huh, I thought you were an attorney.”
You can’t control initial impressions
Well, I am neither an artist nor an attorney, although for a variety of reasons both these initial impressions make a lot of sense. The fact that I sometimes ate alone and sometimes had an intense business conversation was perceived by the restaurant owner as how attorneys acted. At the wine bar, I usually visited over the weekend when my attire was much less business and more on the eclectic side; so pegging me as an artist type also made perfect sense.
The fact of the matter is we are all lots of “nouns” rolled up into one. While it isn’t hard to see how one person saw me as an artist while another saw me as an attorney, I’m sure there are plenty other people who see me as an athlete, an executive, a tourist, a techie, their old friend and everything in between. Initial impressions are an intersection between your actions and appearance with the observer’s background and biases. That’s a roundabout way of saying it’s all about perception in an isolated situation.
So what CAN we control?
I was reminded of these two stories after the same comment was made to me by two different people over the last couple of weeks. On two separate occasions, once by someone I knew and the other by someone I just met, a reference was made to this blog and the person asked if I had stopped writing. While the comments on the blog were both flattering, it was the question on whether I was still maintaining the blog that really stuck with me, especially by the person I had just met.
Here was someone I didn’t know, but knew me – at least through my writings. What I found interesting, and what made me think of the two stories I started this post with, was that through this blog I had influenced this person’s perception of me without even meeting him. In fact, the influence probably extended well beyond what we might call an initial impression.
This is the concept of Personal Brand, one which I’ve written often on before and still greatly interests me. We may not be able to control what someone thinks of our suit, but we can become our own Chief Marketing Officer and control to a large degree the information others use to form their initial (and ongoing) impressions of us. With the advent of the Internet and the number of applications and tools available these days, it is easier than ever to establish your own personal brand.
The importance of consistency
While taking control of our personal brand and greatly influencing those initial impressions was the general observation I made, there was also an important lesson to learn – that once you take control of your personal brand, it’s yours to maintain. I remember an article I read years ago when I was doing research on opening a restaurant. The article touched on all aspects of restaurant operations. When it got to talking about hours of operation, the message was simple; it matters less which days/hours you are open and more on always being open at those times. People want consistency; if they get used to stopping by at 2:30 for a slice of pie, but sometimes your open and sometimes you’re not, eventually they are going to stop coming.
It’s the same with your personal branding efforts, whether they be twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogging, or any combination of those platforms and others. Once folks get comfortable hearing from you now and then, even stopping by to visit, pulling a vanishing act only leaves them to wonder where you went, and what might have happened. If life or business priorities change to the extent you no longer will be maintaining one or more of your branding efforts, then share that message with the community you have targeted. They will appreciate knowing why you are “signing off”, and you have an opportunity to not only thank them for staying engaged, but possibly to bring them along with you to your next endeavor.
My next steps
I didn’t start this blog as a personal branding effort. While this is not my first blog, it certainly is the most personal. I enjoy writing, and when new career opportunities combined with a view on life and business I felt was under-represented, it seemed time to hang out a shingle. I’ve had a great time writing on the blog, made some “internet friends”, and established some new connections with old contacts.
When my passion for running blossomed last year into a journey to transform into an endurance athlete, this blog suffered. The initial effort of that journey, while a lot of fun, took most of my excess time and energy over the past year. Things have begun to normalize and I’m looking forward to resuming my writing on this blog, in addition to the running blog I’ve linked to above. There are many shared themes between the two blogs and I’m looking forward to continue to write about personal excellence, positive leadership and entrepreneurship here on DCO.
My entrepreneurial scorecard
Flickr: ghewgill
Lists of entrepreneurial qualities abound on the web. Heck, I even ran a couple surveys when I first started this blog. After a couple years of working with entrepreneurs and start-ups, I’ve come to the conclusion that while entrepreneurs in aggregate do exhibit many similar personal qualities, the success of their start-up is a different issue altogether and tied to a much more subtle and extensive set of factors.
That observation combined with my natural orientation to practical, real-world information, and I’ve personally grown very tired of talking about entrepreneurial qualities. I’ve met plenty of passionate, committed, tireless, social, driven, etc., etc., etc. entrepreneurs whose start-up didn’t succeed. I’ve also met a handful of very successful entrepreneurs. While it is true that they exhibit quite a lot of the qualities generally subscribed to entrepreneurs, I personally think that success requires much broader support than simply the personal qualities of the entrepreneur. (Not to mention that any tight cohort most likely exhibits similar qualities. That’s why they are a cohort. Let’s not confuse shared experience with success. While most squirrels in my neighborhood are brown, simply being a brown animal doesn’t make you a squirrel.)
So my personal “scorecard” for initial evaluation or entrepreneurs includes both personal factors and opportunity factors. I typically look at four factors in each category. What follows is a quick overview of my though process in an initial meeting with an entrepreneur.
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Do what you say you’re going to do
I was excited to get home tonight and head out for the evening’s run for a number of reasons. First, after some morning showers, it turned out to be a gorgeous Spring day – sunshine and mid-50′s. Since Sunday is my long run day and Monday is my traditional day to recover, physically I’m usually in pretty good shape come Tuesday so I can do a tempo run and push myself. Lastly, since there was some construction by my normal weekday trail, I decided to run my favorite trail. It’s 3.2 miles long, so I set out to run it twice.
Physically, running can be a funny sport. Some days you feel terrible, then go out and have a great run. Other days you’re on top of the world, and fight just to keep going. Unfortunately tonight, the run quickly devolved into the second category. I greatly suspect my lunch (late and heavy on the pasta) was a prime culprit.
Good Cop, Bad Cop
It didn’t take long before I started thinking about only running one loop. It’s funny how it creeps up on you, isn’t it? Sure you’re struggling, but you came out with a goal regardless. Then out of the blue comes the first unbidden thought: “what would be so bad about just running one loop?” From there it’s like a good cop, bad cop scene where you literally argue with yourself; one side taking the position that there’s no shame in quitting if you don’t “have your stuff” (and you can always do extra in the coming days), the other side sticking to toughing it out and saving some self-esteem.
The issue, as we all know, is that history tells us that we don’t make up for it in the coming days. While we may struggle to get through the task we’ve set before ourselves from time to time and not complete it as quickly or as eloquently as we had hoped, the fact that we did complete it greatly helps balance out that minor disappointment.
So this back and forth in my mind went on for the better part of the first run, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do as I rounded the final turn and headed up the last hill toward the parking lot.
But I kept going
I’ll jump to the end of the story and tell you that I kept going and did my second loop. The satisfaction in doing what I said I was going to do absolutely made up for the crappy, sub-par run. And you know what? The second loop was far better than the first. Sometimes if you just stick with it long enough, things work themselves out.
So what trick did I employ to talk myself into running the second loop? What incentive did I use? What logical argument won out over the bad cop? Actually, I don’t really feel like I did anything, it all kind of took care of itself. What I can tell you is that it was really the opposite of all those questions I just asked:
I simply stopped trying to talk myself out of it.
That’s right – as I rounded that last corner and headed up the hill toward the trailhead, without even thinking of it I just kind of stopped trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t continue. I let the goal of running two loops settle back into my subconscious, and my active mind just re-occupied with random thoughts of the trail and the day. After that everything took care of itself. As I came up on the trailhead, I just kept running without thinking and continued on to my second loop.
Sure, it’s not always that simple, but…
…then again, maybe it is. We spend so much time and effort trying to look for ways to do what we say we are going to do, that sometimes I think we end up spending more effort than if we would just keep running in the first place. Plus, we all know what it feels like when we don’t do what we say we’re going to. It feels pretty crappy, right? But following through and staying true to our goals feels pretty awesome right? So even though my run tonight didn’t satisfy my evening goal I stayed true to my long term goal and I did what I said I was going to do. On balance, I’ll take that any night.
Why it’s hard
I just killed a Beast.
The particulars aren’t important, although it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick. But I can tell you I’m looking at a hot, steaming pile of freshly slain EXCUSE on my living room floor, and I moved one day closer to my personal goals.
Why it’s hard
It’s hard because it’s so much easier to come up with reasons not to do something versus reasons why you should:
- I’m tired
- I’ll do double tomorrow
- I don’t have enough time
- I’d rather do this other thing
- I have so many other things to do
- etc., etc.
Even more nefarious is the reasons not to do something always somehow seem to make more sense than the one or two reasons you should. “I’m really tired today and maybe getting sick” seems like a really good reason to not do your workout compared to “I know I should”.
So, how to make it easier?
Sorry, kids, I don’t have an answer for this one. If there was a secret, someone would be making millions off it, and if it was easy everyone would be doing it. But there isn’t, and it’s not. It’s a one day at a time affair; you against The Beast. All I can say is that when it comes right down to it, right now this second, you can either decide to DO what you’ve said/promised you will do, or you can decide to NOT do what you said/promised you will do. And making that decision, really, is pretty easy either way.
What’s the payoff for slaying the Beast?
Ah, that one I can tell you and it’s pretty sweet. You know that feeling when you decide not to do something you’ve promised yourself you would do? Feels pretty crappy, right? And it doesn’t feel any better tomorrow. Well the feeling you get when you slay that Beast, and you follow through on your promise, and you do what you promised yourself you would do, is a thousand times better.
And, as an added bonus, it may be tomorrow, it may be next week or next month, but the next time The Beast thinks about sniffing around your rodeo, I can guarantee you it will think twice.
Good hunting, my friends…
Welcoming “The Beast”
In my first review post, I wrote on a central theme of the book, the “secret to their success”, which is bringing a sense of joy to your life. This sense of joy is what the author largely credits to the Tarahumara Indian’s ability to run 100 miles or more, all with a smile on their face.
With this post, I’d like to focus on a short segment in the book that I found particularly inspiring. It’s about The Beasts the ultra-distance runners in the book encounter and how they respond to them. While the stories in the book are told by these runners, they nonetheless have just as much relevance for all of us. Even as most of these runners do what they do because they love it, a point that really stuck out for me is that when they race, they are challenging themselves by not only attempting something most rational people would think verges on the insane, but doing it while pitted against some of the best in the world that do the same thing. It dawned on me while reading the book that this is an apt metaphor for our own most aggressive, visionary and challenging goals, whether business or personal. Some use the term BHAG to stand for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Those goals that will truly stretch us, where there is a good chance if not high probability of failure, and which (unfortunately) we are usually up against some world-class naysayers.
So, whether you’re running 135 miles through 130F heat, or tackling your own personal or professional BHAG, eventually you’ll bump up against The Beast.
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Plenty of lessons in here for all of us…
Following is a “farewell” op-ed letter from Evan Bayh, courtesy of the New York Times. Now before any of you cry foul, accuse me of political leftism, or rightism, or being too centric, please read the letter below in the context of two of this blog’s goals: positive leadership and personal excellence. The lengthy discourses on filibusters and campaign finances aside, I find lots of suggestions and lessons in this letter for all of us.
So what?
At one point in my career I worked for the U.S. division of a large, international consulting firm. I held a variety of positions, the last being account executive. This company wasn’t as rigid as some I’ve seen with enforcement of “officially sanctioned” sales presentations, but toward the end of my time there, they became more prevalent. The presentations themselves were actually well done with one exception. I always got a chuckle out of the “Key Differentiators” slide. They were things like:
- On-time delivery
- Project management expertise
- Local presence
- Senior staff
I remember thinking these sounded more like must-haves as opposed to key differentiators. The thing is if you’re going to start talking about key differentiators, aspects of your business that set you apart from your competitors, they really should be different.
So was born the seeds of my “so what” question. I’ve since turned the question into a facilitated process I run entrepreneurs and personal clients through. It can be helpful in a variety of ways, but I find it’s best suited to helping companies get to the bottom of what is really special about their company/product/service.
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The Secret to Success from Mexican Outback Runners
So what’s their secret?
Well, my take on it is a bit more involved than the writer is, but in a nutshell their secret appears to be something we all remember fondly, is well within our grasp, but we (wittingly, or unwittingly) choose to live without on a day to day basis.
Their secret is to combine their running with pure, childlike joy.
Yea, right, I hear you saying. For many of us, it wouldn’t matter how much you smile, you wouldn’t be able to run 10 miles, let alone 100. Let alone without resting. And there is where the book gets more complicated, but also where I think the message gets more relevant and more broadly applicable. In fact, I’m taking notes and hope to write a small series on the personal growth and excellence lessons I’m learning out of this book. For now, I’ll tell you the following story.
I AM a runner. I’ve had my ups and downs over the years, but I do enjoy the sport. Much like the Tarahumara, I generally shun sidewalks and roads and do almost all my running on trails. I tend to be a short to middle distance runner preferring outings between three to six miles. Luckily, I’m blessed to live in an area of Ohio loaded with nature trails in that range that are not only beautiful, but challenging to run. There’s nothing like flying down a hill, half running, half jumping, testing your legs (and the trail) with a do-or-die proposition: either I’ve still got the energy after four miles to jump these three steps and still stay running, or I slide headfirst down the rest of this hill and probably end up in emergency. (Yes – it helps to be a little crazy to be a trail runner. Or trail runners just are a little crazy, I’m not sure which).
But that’s the essence of the book – because I can guarantee you whenever I’m running down those stairs, jumping two or three at a time and challenging my body to keep me upright, I’ve got a huge smile on my face. And anything you’re doing, personally or professionally, that you do with a smile on your face, gets done better and feels better doing it.
I tested this theory out over the last week. I like to stay in shape over the winter so I run treadmill a lot in my basement. I’m sure many of you can sympathize with me when I say treadmill running is boring at best, a grind at worst. There is nothing joyful about running on a treadmill. Or is there? In anticipation of better weather, I have been slowly increasing my distance, which correspondingly was increasing my boredom and ability to stay focused. So the other day midway through a 5 mile run on the treadmill, I started imagining myself running outside, jumping from rock to rock on a hillside trail overlooking a beautiful vista. A half-smile came to my face which I let blossom into a full-blown one. Immediately, I could feel a change happening to my body. A slight energy increase, a lessening of fatigue, a greater connection with that “runner’s high”. Literally before I knew it, I had put in my last two miles or so.
I’m sure to many of you this sounds like new-age hocus pocus, and that’s fine. If you’re a runner, or if you just like interesting stories, the book is still a great read. Runners especially will appreciate all the information on how all the foot, shin and knee injuries that 80-90% of us experience every year, started occurring only after the introduction of the high-tech running shoe! I’ll be talking about the Tarahumara’s answer to that one too. The stories about some of the ultra long distance runners and races where the Tarahumara ran with them are simply a blast to read as a runner. You will really enjoy this book.
But for those of you committed to excellence, whether personal or professional (or both), try a simple experiment. The next time you’re doing something that is complete drudgery, remember a time it wasn’t drudgery or tie it in your mind to something else that makes you smile and brings a bit of joy to the activity. I’ll be interested in hearing your feedback, even though I already know what will happen…
Look forward to more on this book in future posts.
Rethinking / Refocusing
I read a couple blog posts over the last few weeks that have me thinking. The first was written by a pretty successful blogger who writes on the topic of professional blogging. His point was not to look at the “A List” bloggers for inspiration or ideas on how to make money on your blog. His point was that those folks had so many resources, so much more support, etc. that you shouldn’t use them as your model as how to be successful. Instead, this blogger (whose opinions I respect) advised going deep instead of wide and tightening down your topic content to be much more focused: become an authority, write from your heart, take a stand.
Shortly after that I read a post by another blogger I follow. He was recounting a lunch he had with a friend of his. When his friend asks him what he’s been up to and he says blogging, his friend rolls his eyes and says “you’re still blogging? When are you going to give that up? Are you making ANY money?” The guy took it as a challenge and read his recent blog posts, asking the question “If I wasn’t me and just happened across this blog, would any of this stuff mean anything to me?”
His answer was no. (Kudos to that guy for the brutal self-honesty).
Well, I went through the same process and honestly – came up with the same answer.
I’ve had plenty of distractions, both personal and professional, over the last year to blame for both both the lack of quality and quantity of posts, and in some cases validly so. But a quick review of my last couple months of blogging has really convinced me that not only have I been playing it safe, but I’ve spent way too much time on topics, or at least contexts within topics, that I’m either not passionate about or knowledgeable about.
So, some things are going to change. First – I want to re-focus on what I’m truly passionate about and can speak from authority. So while that will still include plenty of business and personal topics, I’ll be mixing in a fair dose of technology articles, re-focusing most of my business writing on small to medium-sized companies, and speaking on Leadership more from the point of view of the individual, as opposed to corporate leadership. I’m also going to write a little bit more about things that may be considered off-topic, but are interesting nonetheless.
Extending the conversation
If all this post did, was recap some personal musings on this little blog, then it would be of little value to you. I think the bigger point is that if you are committed to continuous personal and professional improvement, then it helps to:
- Stick your head out of your shell once in a while and take a look around,
- Be honest with yourself about where you’re at, and
- Change course if necessary.
So what do you all think? Make sense? Is this something you do, and if so what’s the process you go through? I’m interested in how others think through what they are doing in the moment versus the path they set out on and where they want to get. How have you changed course recently and why?
10 Questions With… Rich Fialkoff of Chide.it
I’ve written a couple times before about a one question survey, even investigated different customer surveying models. Obviously, I’m a self-admitted fan of customer surveys. There are also different kinds of surveys for different audiences. On this blog I’ve mostly talked about surveys that fall in the “customer satisfaction” heading, but your customers are only one of your audiences and their satisfaction is only one measure of success (and frankly of interest to a limited, but important, audience).
I manage an incubator for high-growth technology companies. As a good portion of my funding comes ultimately from public sources, it’s important for me to be able to show the success of my program – what my funders might call “leverage”. So while I do some satisfaction surveying here and there, the majority of the surveys I perform with my customers (the entrepreneurs in my incubator) is geared toward capturing information to help prove the success of my program and the leverage on the public dollars entrusted in my program. I, along with my sister incubators across the State of Ohio, use something called Table 3. Table 3 captures a myriad of relevant growth statistics on our tenants, but for many the stats on revenue, investment and job creation are important metrics on how much leverage an incubation program has created with their funding. (If you’re interested, I recently published my 2009 year-end statistics.)
All this is to say – “I know me some surveying” – and have used a number of offline and online tools over the years. When the National Business Incubation Association announced a strategic partnership with chide.it, offering a free account for their FluidSurveys product, I was eager to sign up. I was happy with my current provider (PollDaddy), but it’s hard to argue with a free basic account, which is what FluidSurveys was offering any incubation program through the partnership with NBIA. That said – so called “free” programs sometimes aren’t worth it, so I did a little homework before signing up.
I’m happy to say that not only is the free account chide.it offered to us incubators was really free, it was also a fully functional account, limited only by the absence of some advanced features that I don’t use. The best part is chide.it has agreed to renew our incubator’s free account every year. Thanks chide.it!
The person in charge of the partnership between chide.it and NBIA is Rich Fialkoff. Rich was included in all the introductory E-mails NBIA sent out and responded promptly to all the questions I had about the tool and the partnership. Given that Rich is responsible for the U.S. introduction of chide.it products, this responsiveness was even more impressive. After getting to know a bit more about chide.it (somewhat of a start-up themselves) and Rich (created and led several start-up business within larger companies and founded a consultancy focused on software startups), I asked Rich if he’d be willing to participate in my 10 Questions With… series.
If you run an incubator and you’re a member of NBIA, be sure to check out FluidSurveys – not only is it free through the NBIA partner program, but it’s a great tool and just makes it so darn easy to create a survey. (If you’re not a member of NBIA, then you really should be. It’s a great organization with extremely helpful members and two very useful conference every year.) Chide.it is offering it’s second product, MyReviewRoom, at a discount to NBIA members. MyReviewRoom helps teams facilitate application acceptance, evaluation and decision making. I have an application process for the incubator that would be greatly facilitated by this product and I’m looking forward to the demo Rich has promised me.
So, on with the interview…
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