These days, I meet lots of young people, and by young I mean anyone under 40, but especially under 30 and even under 20. If they are talking with me at all, it's about the future, their future, so they are asking for advice, and I've never been shy about offering that.
It occurs to me sometimes I should bottle my standard rap, package it, and sell it somehow. But since I am terrible at marketing, unlike the hundreds of people each month who continue to invite me to follow them on Twitter or "friend" them on Facebook, I'll continue to give it away for free, here, or in the coffee shops around here, where the young ones kindly agree to meet me in person.
You, whoever you are and whatever you do, have a personal brand. In this new world of ours, that brand is potentially your most powerful possession. It doesn't matter so much what you know how to do, comparatively speaking, but how well you understand the power of just being you.
I know this sounds crazy, but what I am describing is the flip side of the new global marketplace that has been created by the Internet.
You can be a stupid fat guy in Idaho, but guess what? If you are the stupid fat guy in Idaho who everyone in India or China wants to get to know, and you have a way to monetize that status, guess what?
You are a rich stupid fat guy in Idaho. And not all that stupid, actually.
For all of my young creative friends, this is an obnoxious story, and I apologize for that.
But bear with me here, because I am actually describing my own slow migration to a better future, one where my own brand becomes more prominent, no longer buried in the shadows but shining in the desert, properly defended against the sun.
p.s. I admit this much: I'm neither stupid, fat nor live in Idaho. I'm in fact a reasonably handsome older man, according to my friends, in reasonable shape, nothing special there, living in San Francisco. But I am no better at managing my brand than that other guy. In fact, he's better than I am. And that is precisely my point
-30-
1 comment:
It doesn't matter so much what you know how to do, comparatively speaking, but how well you understand the power of just being you.
This statement you made is true- not just of this computer age- but at any time in our lives. If we can just learn to be ourselves- there is a great power in that.
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