Threads of your life
In the digital marketing world, one of the most difficult tasks we face is determining our own personal brand. Much has been made of promoting it, of sharing it with the world and being known for being remarkable, but much less has been made of actually finding it within you.
How do you know what story to tell about yourself?
One of the ways to find your story, to find your brand, is to look for threads that are consistent throughout your life. Take the time, as Mitch Joel urges, to write out your own life story.
Once you’ve written out your story, look for common themes. Look for the ways in which you’ve helped other people, made contributions to their lives. Chances are, you’re going to find some threads that run throughout the tapestry of your life.
For example, when I was 7 years old, I was in the local bowling alley youth league. The bowling alley was run by a retired ex-Marine who loved his sport and his business, but was deeply averse to technology. That year, in order to stay competitive, he had installed automatic scoring machines on his lanes which caused him no end of trouble. Each Saturday morning, I’d help him get his scoring machines up and running. In return, I’d usually get a slice of pizza and some soda for my time, making it my first paid technology gig.
This is a theme that would recur over and over throughout my life. I earned money in college working at the help desk, built a persona reputation for knowing what I was doing with technology professionally; heck, at one point my graduate school created an award (The Boston University MS/MIS Outstanding Technology Service Award) to acknowledge the work I had done in my program.
That was one thread. There was a second thread running through the years of my life. I vividly remember giving many speeches throughout high school and being fairly good at convincing people to follow a course of action, so much so that I ended up being class president, which for a nerd in a school with a popular and strong athletics program was no small feat. Along the way, I helped a few other like-minded nerds work on their “election” campaigns, doing everything from copywriting to graphic design. For one year, the various student bodies at my high school were all run by nerds.
This thread continued throughout college and graduate school as well. I remember being one of the first students to make use of the all-school email list (much to the annoyance of the system administrators), setting up one of the very first web sites for my martial art on the Internet in 1994, running discussion boards, doing banner ads, and much more. This thread of marketing runs through my life fairly constantly as well, showing up over and over again.
It’s no surprise, then, that I’m finding happiness in using these two recurring themes together professionally and that I’m fairly good at doing so. The story of my life indicates that these are core strengths of mine, things that have been with me since my earliest years. They’re the things I’ve been doing for longer than nearly anything else, so it makes sense they’d be strengths.
What are the common threads that run through the tapestry of your life? What is life constantly tapping you on the shoulder about, reminding you of the compelling message of your life, indicating and pointing, perhaps even shoving you towards the work you’re supposed to be doing?
Your life is not an accident!
Look at it again through this new perspective and see what life keeps telling you that you should be doing!
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It’s all about “with”
I was talking recently with a friend who is a job seeker, someone who has been out of work for more than a little while and was trying to add some new skills to their portfolio to improve their chances of finding work. His strategy was simple: learn PHP and MySQL and attempt to enter the Web 2.0 economy after leaving a biosciences background.
During our conversation, he indicated they’d be completely leaving behind the biosciences field as they pursued their new field and I suggested that was a huge, critical mistake. Why? PHP/MySQL folks are a dime a dozen. It’s one of the first combinations of platforms to be taught to aspiring technologists and as a result, nearly everyone has it on their resumes. It’s so common, in fact, that you can find an experienced developer overseas that will work for less than the guy flipping burgers at your local fast food joint. Unless you are the very best of the best, pursuing it by itself is not a formula for winning.
So what is the winning formula? The ability to code in PHP and MySQL in combination with something else. I said in conversation that these platforms by themselves are somewhat uninteresting now, but if you can combine them with something else, bridge the gap between different areas of expertise, then you’ve got something relatively rare and valuable.
For example, in my friend’s case, knowing how to write and extend web services while having a biosciences background and knowledge of the field means he can write very specific solutions for that field, knowing the ins and outs far more than an overseas outsourced contractor ever would. He knows what people in his field are looking for, what their problems are, and how they prefer to solve those problems.
The future for the successful job seeker follows one of two routes: either be the very best of the best, or find a niche that allows you to combine different areas of expertise together in combinations that are rare and valuable. Pursuing a commodity skillset or degree by itself will not guide you to the success you seek.
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Insanely great
There are two lessons of vital importance we must take from Steve Jobs’ legacy:
One man can change the world. His life and work touched as many lives as Edison, Ford, and Rockefeller, perhaps more. Steve proved that it can still be done, from a garage in California with nothing but intelligence, resilience, and an uncompromising vision of how the world could be if we set our potential free.
The time to be remarkable is finite. Every day counts.
Ask yourself this as a simple exercise: when it’s your time, what will be written about you? If you don’t like the answer, then get started doing the things you need to do to change your world, even a little bit, for the better.
Farewell, Steve. May we all strive to leave a world changed for the better even a fraction as much as you did.
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Differing perspectives on reality
What a fascinating couple of days it’s been. Over the weekend I was at New England Warrior Camp, an annual gathering of ninjutsu practitioners to explore, challenge, and develop our warrior spirits, and now I’m at the WhatCounts Email Summit at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
Both places, both locations, have very, very different takes on reality. Warrior Camp focuses on reality in the here and now. You have to be in the moment, undistracted, or something as simple as walking to a training location can be hazardous, since you’re in the woods and a misstep on a rocky pathway can lead to a sprained ankle. Las Vegas focuses on avoiding reality at any cost, avoiding everything that might lead to the acknowledgement that reality might have some unpleasantness to it.
What’s even more fascinating is the way each location tries to set itself up to reflect its philosophy. Senior master instructor Ken Savage hosts Warrior Camp in a “rustic” Boy Scout reservation in metrowest Boston. There’s not a lot of comfort to be found, to better make you aware of your surroundings and not lull you into distraction. Usage of mobile devices is discouraged and there’s barely electricity, much less Internet access. You rise early and train late into the night to experience all of the different conditions in which you might need your skills, and you train rain or shine. At Warrior Camp, everything is structured to make you focus inward, to help you find and focus on your own goals and self.
Las Vegas casino resorts go the opposite route, trying to provide as much comfort as possible. Bright lights and game sounds provide ample distraction, and not a clock or window is to be found anywhere on the gaming floor so that you lose track of time and your surroundings. Games themselves harness every possible addictive behavior, from animation and primary colors to randomized rewards. Alcohol is provided freely or at very low cost to better dull your senses and judgement. Nearly endless buffets sate appetites and scantily clad cocktail hostesses distract and divert even more. In Las Vegas, everything is structured to make you focus elsewhere, to distract, divert, delude, and ultimately to serve the goals of the casino.
Each accomplishes its goals admirably. The reactions of the people in each place shows the length of their successes. Warrior Camp participants emerge recharged, ready to face renewed challenges in their martial training and lives. Las Vegas visitors emerge entertained, distracted, diverted, and in many cases, much, much poorer.
What’s of interest to me is the startling contrast between the two, going from one to the other. The choice of surroundings and the way that each environment is set up changes the people in those environments drastically, and in both cases can leave lasting changes.
The question for you as you read this is: what does your environment set you up to do? Are you set up for greater awareness or greater distraction? Does your daily life focus you towards your own goals or towards the goals of someone else? If your environment and surroundings aren’t focused to accomplish what you want to accomplish, how can you adjust them so that they are better aligned with your goals?
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Reclaiming authority
At PodCamp Boston 6, I asked Tamsen McMahon, after her excellent session on Standing out in a Sea of Same, how you would reclaim terms that have been overused. We talked back and forth but concluded that reclaiming any one term is extremely difficult. If you want to be able to capture someone’s mind immediately, your best bet is likely to be what I call stacking heuristics.
If you’re not familiar with the term, a heuristic is a decision shortcut. Wikipedia defines it as such:
“In more precise terms, heuristics are strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings and machines.”
A single term like social media expert that has lost credibility is still a heuristic; it’s just one that tends to not convey a lot of value. In order to overcome its dilution, in order to reclaim authority, you have to stack additional snap decisions on top of it.
For example, let’s say you used the term social media expert but also were a published author. Now you’ve got two heuristics that automatically reduce the number of people who can claim both simultaneously. (even if it seems like every monkey has a book these days) What if we stack a third heuristic on top of that, such as university professor?
Heuristics also have layered values to them as well. For example:
- Author
- Published Author
- Bestselling Author
- NY Times Bestselling Author
Each title you use has value and a separate snap judgement but in concert with each other, they paint a picture of value very rapidly without asking your audience to do a tremendous amount of extra thinking. The more you can stack and layer credible titles on top of each other to take advantage of people’s heuristics, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to convey your value very quickly and reclaim the authority you have earned.
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