The reason why your personal brand sucks

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Feb 26, 2010 in Awakening, Jedi mind tricks, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin | 65 comments

Mitch Joel recently highlighted the army of clones out there that are all trying to use the same personal brand, thus more or less killing personal branding. He’s dead on. Go search for the number of social media experts on Twitter to see just how much personal branding has turned into Attack of the Clones.

Here’s why your personal brand sucks. Here’s why you’re trying to be a clone of Chris Brogan or CC Chapman or Whitney Hoffman and failing miserably at it. It’s not because you’re stupid (well, most of you aren’t, except for the folks who repeatedly get phished on Twitter for clicking on “LOL iz this u” links – yeah, you’re stupid), it’s not because you’re boring (again, most of you aren’t, but if your Twitterstream is filled only with “New Blog Post: …” – yeah, you’re boring), it’s because you’ve failed to distill your essential quality.

Your essential quality is something that transcends any particular job, technology, platform, or idea. Your business card may say that you’re a database engineer or a sales associate or the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation, but that’s not what’s essential about you. What’s essential about you is a quality, a trait, a method of working in the world that is unique to you and very difficult to even put into words, much less copy.

Your essential quality will take you years, possibly a good chunk of your life, to even realize. Once you know it, though, once you find it and cultivate it, you rise rapidly above your peers. You rocket past them because you know this strength of yours and can focus what you do in your life to feed it and deliver results that no one else can deliver.

It’s taken me close to two decades to figure out my own. Put into words succinctly, I’m really good at playing with blocks. I used to call it derivative thinking, but that’s largely meaningless outside my skull. What I mean by playing with blocks is that I can see all these different pieces of systems and put them together in new and different ways. I’m a bridge between different worlds. This lets me do things like make odd Twitter videos combining tools and techniques together. This lets me be a competent martial arts practitioner, breaking free of only pre-arranged routines to use the tools in whatever fits the moment. This lets me talk to people of wildly different professions and trades and find ways to make whatever I have work with their businesses, and vice versa.

What you’re good at, what your essential quality is, what makes you who you are isn’t something anyone else can tell you. Others can’t see inside your head, just the results that you produce – and how you got to those results is different from your perspective than anyone else’s. Defining and refining your essential quality takes a lot of introspection and a lot of self-honesty, because as you investigate yourself more and more, you realize all the things that you’re not good at, some of which may have defined your very identity in the past.

You’ll have to let go of an awful lot that you think is you. For years, I thought I was a damn good technology professional. I’m not. I’m a certain kind of thinker whose essential quality happens to work well with technology. In the past half decade or so, I’ve thought I was a marketer, and heck, other people think so and even made me a professor of marketing. I’m not. My essential quality works well in marketing, too. In another decade, who knows what I’ll be doing, but it will have that essential quality at its core.

The one suggestion I can offer if you have the guts, the bravery, to set out on that journey is to find a creative outlet for expression of some kind. Photography, art, music, dance, playing World of Warcraft, writing, speaking, martial arts, anything that lets you express yourself will do, because it will help you to pull out of yourself the various ways you express your essential quality. The process of figuring out what I’m good at took years. Most of it came from practicing the martial arts, because the method in which I train is ideally optimized for this kind of thinking, which means I get to practice the pure form of how I think on a regular basis in a way that delivers instant, unmistakeable feedback. Your method of figuring out what you’re good at will differ, but I recommend it be something expressive so that you can see your essential quality in action.

Once you figure out your essential quality, your personal brand will take care of itself. You won’t even need to name it or publicize it on your blog or Facebook page, because you’ll be so damn good at being yourself that your name will become your brand. Folks might not even be able to put into words why it is they like you or want to work with you. They’ll just know that they do, that they want to be around you, that they want to work with you, hire you, marry you, etc.

You will transcend personal branding itself, and ultimately live the life you were meant to live: yours.

Good luck on your journey. It’s long, but the destination is worth the journey.

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Celebrate your victories

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Dec 4, 2009 in Awakening, Jedi mind tricks | 9 comments

Ever heard someone be congratulated and their reply was “Aw, it was nothing”?

Ever listened to someone recount a tale of legitimate good work and say that it wasn’t a big deal?

Don’t ever do this to yourself. Why?

Part of our personal power is our ability to draw upon not just the knowledge but the emotion and energy of past successes to generate future success. Tap into all that was, all that you’ve done, all that you’ve achieved in order to firm your resolve against future obstacles. You know in your mind, in your heart, in your spirit that you do have what it takes to win in tough situations, that you can pull victory from the jaws of defeat.

Unless.

Unless you diminish and demean your past successes with diminishing words under the excuse of modesty. Unless you undermine your own past power by calling it nothing, by calling it a little thing, by saying that what you have done wasn’t a big deal. The words you use to describe what you’ve achieved color how you perceive those achievements. If you were trying to set up your life for failure, for frustration, for mediocrity, this is exactly the approach you’d take – amplify your failures and diminish your successes in your own mind, through your own words, and failure is guaranteed.

Modesty has its place, to be sure. One of the traits of the folks in my life who I consider to be very successful, very powerful people is that they happily acknowledge and celebrate their successes, modestly outwardly but strongly inwardly. When praised, very often their response is simply sincere thanks. When I receive praise, I copy my role models and simply express thanks and gratitude externally.

Internally is a different story. I reaffirm successes, relish the feeling of winning, and use it to steel myself against future battles. “I think I can” becomes “I know I can, because I have and I celebrate those past victories as the key to even more victory in the future!”

The habit of celebrating your successes becomes even more important when you face enemies who will seek to make you doubt yourself. If you live in the habit of saying that a success was nothing, an enemy need only encourage and amplify those words to steamroll you. They face a much tougher battle when you bear the shield of confidence built from past success (and celebration of it) and their efforts simply bounce off you. These enemies need not just be in the boardroom or on the golf course – they can be your own internal demons as well. Celebrate your successes and every additional success diminishes their sway over you.

Make sure you celebrate your successes, lest you rob yourself of the power you will need to drive even more success ahead.

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A better way to be thankful on Thanksgiving

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Nov 25, 2009 in Awakening, Jedi mind tricks, World of Warcraft | 5 comments

Something to think about this Thanksgiving (for those who celebrate it, for everyone else it’s World of Warcraft’s PIlgrim’s Bounty):

Don’t just be thankful for the things you have in your life that you appreciate.

That’s good and a good start, but if you want to take it to a different level, ask yourself this:

How can I create or foster more of what I’m thankful for in the world?

• If you’re thankful for family and friends, how can you help reinforce strong family and good friends in the world for others?
• If you’re thankful for health, how can you bring a healing presence to those around you?
• If you’re thankful for wealth, how can you help others achieve what you’ve done?

In short, what do you stand for? What do you want to see more of? How can you create more of that in the world, in your community, in your life?

As you do your prayers, meditations, gatherings, and offerings over the holiday (or any day, really), think about that cornucopia on the table. From nothingness appears a Pilgrim’s Bounty of what’s needed to bring life, health, and prosperity to your life.

Ask how you can create more of that for yourself and everyone you care about and the universe (or *.deity if that’s your belief system) may just agree to a win-win situation in which everyone gets more of what they want and need in your life.

Happy Pilgrim’s Bounty!

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Doing More With Less

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Nov 22, 2009 in Awakening, Conferences, Jedi mind tricks | 3 comments

Doing More With Less

I had the pleasure and privilege to present at the Web 2.0 Open conference in New York City recently on the topic of Doing More With Less, a topic near and dear to everyone. The session itself is based on so much of what I’ve learned from Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center and his teacher, Stephen K. Hayes. Here’s the funny part about the session – I can’t replicate any significant part of it here on the blog.

The content is entirely provided by you, the audience. I’m more or less just a tour guide. No slides, no PowerPoint, not even a real presentation, just a guided experience in which you and your fellow audience members discover new things about yourselves.

I called the session the most technologically advanced session of the entire conference, and in a way, it’s true. The human technology was what we explored. I made the analogy that gear and tech will only get you so far. Hand a rank amateur a $50 point and shoot camera or a $2,000 DSLR and you’ll get about the same number of lens cap photos. The gear and tech can improve bad photos potentially to mediocre, but that’s about it.

Conversely, a truly skilled photographer? Give them either camera and they’ll create amazing works of art that nearly ignore the limitations of gear. Don’t believe me? Check out the cameraphone category on Flickr to see some amazing works.

In the session, we investigated four areas of doing more with less:

1. Redefining less. With friends, we examined what less was with our training partners, and then looking at less from a different perspective to gain some mental freedom from a poor resources mindset.

2. Finding authentic self. With friends, we examined things that have always been a part of our lives and how we can align ourselves and our careers, lives, and businesses with our inherent strengths to do more, plus looked at the difference between our current selves and our superhero selves.

3. Reclaiming responsibility. With friends, we examined aspects of our life that appear as luck, good or bad, and how we can change our perceptions from luck to being in charge of our lives.

4. Empowering our minds. We examined in a distilled fashion the idea of using your iPod to control your emotional state.

It’s nearly impossible to convey online any significant part of the experience, so if you weren’t able to make it, I hope you can attend a future version of this, or attend the seminars and workshops given by my teachers. If you were there, I look forward to reading your feedback in the comments.

You can also pick up some of the source material from Stephen K. Hayes as well.

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What Seinfeld can teach you about social media

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Oct 22, 2009 in Jedi mind tricks, New media, Social networks | 7 comments

Seinfeld. The show about nothing, or so it was billed, but one of the most successful shows in the world. I’ve spoken at conferences before and asked audiences when Seinfeld was on. More than a decade after it went off the air, people still remember what station it was on, what day of the week it was on, and what time.

What made it a great show? The same thing that Jerry Seinfeld was known for on stage as a standup comic, and the same thing that can take ordinary social media efforts and make them shine: universals.

What’s a universal? It’s something that an awful lot of people share. Seinfeld and George Carlin were both masters of pointing out the universals in our lives. Seinfeld had a routine about the secret lives of socks that neatly explained the inexplicable, like the lone sock in a laundry basket (its partner escaped) or on a sidewalk (an escapee that failed) in compelling stories that made a peculiar sort of sense. George Carlin made a living pointing out our inability to use the English language, especially when it came to things like airplane safety protocols (“What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?”) and political correctness.

These are universals. These are comedic references to daily life, outside of corporate babble, outside of hollow, shallow press releases. Universal experiences are experiences that many, if not all of us, have shared. They’re the weak social glue that give us common ground to start conversations.

Ever wonder why so many conversations start with the weather or sports? They’re our universals, things that are interesting enough to talk about but still safe, still common, shared experiences. Try starting a conversation with politics, sex, or religion and you’re just as likely to deeply offend the person you’re talking to as you are to engage them.

So what does this mean for your social media efforts? Take a look at what you’ve produced so far. Go on, look at your history. Look at what’s in your Twitter stream. Look at what’s on your blog. Look at your wall on Facebook. If your social media channels like this:

New blog post about our $#!&: xxx
New blog post about our $#!&: xxx
New blog post about our $#!&: xxx
Buy our $#!&!
New blog post about our $#!&: xxx
Have you bought our $#!& yet?
New blog post about our $#!&: xxx
New blog post about our $#!&: xxx
A press release about our $#!&: xxx
New blog post about our $#!&: xxx
Did you know we’re an industry leader in this $#!&?
New blog post about our $#!&: xxx

…then frankly, you fail at being human. You fail at creating any kind of universal that someone else can latch on to in order to start a conversation. As a result, your social media efforts will be relegated to mediocrity at best and perpetual ignorage at worst.

Try being human. It’s okay to talk about the game last night even on your corporate account as long as you use common sense and decent language. It’s okay to talk about the restaurant you ate at or the coworker next to you who has different music tastes (again, using good common sense and tact), because it conveys to the people you’re trying to reach that you’re human.

Here’s a parallel, a universal. Ever been to a bar and seen that guy? Yeah, you know the guy. He wears a cologne called Desperation and everyone in the bar mysteriously creates about five feet of space around him and avoids eye contact at all costs.

That’s your social media efforts if what you produce looks like the example above. You’re that guy.

So how do you stop being that guy? Look for universals if you have no idea what to say. Listen to other people. Actually make an attempt to discuss something other than what you’re trying to sell. Go back and watch Seinfeld re-runs or catch his standup routines. Go listen to George Carlin, Sam Kinnison, Chris Rock, and the legion of other comedians who have made careers out of universals (and the most successful comedians do, because niche comedy only goes so far). Then bring a little of that back into your social media efforts.

I look forward to a hearty laugh reading your newly universal social media.

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Fighting museum syndrome

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 26, 2009 in Jedi mind tricks, Marketing, Video | 15 comments

Ever heard of the marketing problem known as museum syndrome? Probably not since I just made that up. Museum syndrome is simply this: an individual masterpiece in an art museum is a wonder to behold. When you place a masterpiece against a wall with dozens of other masterpieces, your ability to appreciate that one piece becomes more difficult. Consumers have a finite amount of attention they can spend at any one time and place, and if you’re fortunate enough to be the recipient of that attention (fleeting thought it is), you need to help the consumer appreciate what’s in front of them.

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make – myself included – is the error of putting a buffet in front of someone who wants a snack. The sheer amount of choice can be staggering, but more importantly, every offering is diminished, no matter how good it is. Every offering is diminished because that finite amount of time and attention is divided among the number of offerings.

That’s why sites like Woot.com, for example, are incredibly popular. Instead of asking consumers for their attention at a million different products at once, Woot slaps one product up and says, here, pay attention to this only. It’s the equivalent of a museum curator locking the rest of the museum up and placing one masterpiece on a podium in the lobby with a spotlight on it only.

Marketers face this problem writ incredibly large in the digital age, when media is so available and abundant that the consumer’s attention is always being split. There’s the DVR in the living room, the iPod on your hip, the smart phone in your pocket, the endless depths of the Web on a browser near you, social media conversations flying by, books both analog and digital piled up on the nightstand – media everywhere, all begging for a slice of your attention. How, as a marketer, can you present what you’ve got in such a way that you beat museum syndrome? How, as a marketer, can you create that masterpiece experience for your product or service?

I’ve been thinking about this a great deal as I get ready to revamp the FAFSA application guide site I run, FAFSAonline.com. This topic, more than any other in the world of financial aid, is bewildering to consumers and especially to those who don’t have a good head for numbers. More students lose financial aid each year from issues and errors on the FAFSA than pretty much anything else except not bothering to apply for scholarships. So my challenge in the next few months as I get ready for the 2010 FAFSA season to start is to figure out how to beat museum syndrome in the world of financial aid.

Why? Here’s what’s at stake: if I can beat museum syndrome on this topic, it may mean that thousands of kids will go to college that in previous years would have been defeated by the FAFSA process. Big stakes, big chance to make a difference.

How will we make this happen? I’m looking around constantly for more examples of ways people have beaten museum syndrome. Woot.com is one. Another that’s been working is the way I have the homepage of the Financial Aid Podcast set up, with a single video that introduces the user to the site, focusing attention and eyeballs on the visually compelling cue of a video.

What ways are you beating museum syndrome in your marketing?

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