Have you ever reached a point in your career where you had everything figured out? I value quality… Therefore I am quality. I will consume and preach it. Pretty soon I become the authority on quality, develop a whole persona around quality, and hopefully make some money consulting at it.
But what happens when you build your life around a concept that doesn’t always stick? For instance, Paid Search. 5 years ago as a PPC consultant you might have been living the high life, pumping out adwords for $100/hr like it was your purpose on Earth. And now? There are programs that can do it for you for free. System crash…Reboot.
Without considering the sustainability of your niche, personal branding can be a dangerous, career-altering maneuver that can equate to broad generalizations about your experience and result in lost opportunities. Why dig yourself in a hole when you don’t have to? Because it was all the rage on Twitter last year?
If I can give any credit to my short but moderately successful career thus far, it’s that I built it on being flexible. I’ve done well at *not* branding myself, not tying myself to ideas and industries that are short-lived (either internally by my own interest level or externally by market demand). I’ve done well at being the person that people need me to be, when they need me to be that person.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t have values, or become a money-grabbing politician for any cause that might pay the bills, but if you’re considering tying yourself to a service or concept for the next 5-10 years (because that’s likely how long it will take for you to wash your internet history of it), I’m saying think about it first. Think about the sustainability of your brand, the lost opportunities it means when it rubs others the wrong way, and the ease of which you can rebrand yourself if you need to.
This is a great reason why so many people quit their jobs for another offer. They get to RESET their brand again, which is hard to do once you’ve worked in a company for a while, say 5 years.
Brenda,
Great article. Over the 15 years I’ve been in the Internet marketing business I’ve had to rebrand my offering about once every three years as my focus has shifted to the next big thing that I’m passionate about. Fortunately, I’ve taken the approach that it’s always a lateral shift. And like you, I think that’s happened organically due to my flexibility.
The latest came when I moved from offering full service SEO to exclusively offering SEO audits and action plans. And I bridged the two over several months, phasing out the former as I ramped up the latter. And I’m already focused part of the time on transitioning to one day only blogging, something I’ve been doing about 15 hours a week for a while.
I can’t imagine having to completely rebrand from top to bottom after becoming entrenched.
It’s not that you are unbranded. The brand is being the person that people need you to be. In other words, that is a problem solver.
Wow- thanks for the comments all 🙂
Brendan, whole-heartedly agree that not all brands are unsustainable… I do believe though that people need a balance between being adaptable and “sticking to their guns” and always have a plan to rebrand if needed. Times change, the world evolves and you need to evolve with it to whatever degree necessary.
Matt – Yeah, I face this problem all the time. Every day I think of new things I could do to brand myself on a more personal level… but something always stops me from hitting “post.” Fear I think… It’s much safer to brand a company than yourself because you can untie yourself at any time.
Chad – Interesting to think that “unbranded” can actually be considered a brand. But you’re right… if it’s who I am and it’s how I identify myself, being flexible/adaptable could probably be my new tagline 🙂
Hugh – 100% could not agree more.
The Tao teach not to attach yourself or your success to a particular brand / product / service. Everything is fleeting. We should invest in ourselves and be able to adapt and flow with the ever-changing world around us.
HI Brenda,
I agree it can be naive to market yourself with only limited skills (such as PPC in your example), however I don’t believe ‘flexibility’ is the right solution for everyone. I have seen amazing opportunities for those who end up being the one of the remaining specialists in their field.
Brendan
You say: “I’ve done well at being the person that people need me to be, when they need me to be that person.”
That is a brand.
I have stalled for fear of having this exact problem: building a brand that I ended up not being happy with. My results… nothing’s changed on my end. To combat this, I’m going to build brands that can stand by themselves. Brand the company, and I work for them (even if I am them). It may be harder, but I think it’ll give me the flexibility that I desire.