When clients talk about you, more specifically when they talk about you and you’re not in ear shot, what do you think they say?
Even more importantly what do potential clients say after your initial meeting or conversation with them?
Having an accurate understanding of the brand you present is ever more important. Especially when you have increasingly less control over it.
I met Gary Vaynerchuk briefly at Inman Connect in January and his self assessment (“Most people who don’t know me think I’m a loud, obnoxious East Coast guy [] ‘He’s a dick’. But when they meet me they can see that I care.”) is an accurate one. The more I know about Vaynerchuk the more my opinion changes (in a positive way) and the more I respect his message. Vaynerchuk’s keynote at Inman was my personal highlight, something that made the whole conference worth attending.
“Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape” is another Vaynerchuk keynote from the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC, September 2008. In it he observes; “Legacy is greater than currency. Has everybody completely grasped that your great, great, great grandchildren are gonna watch and see everything you’ve ever done? I think about that every single day.”
So what will your legacy be? Legacy and personal brand are closely related especially because of the ever increasing lifespan of your online persona. What people say about you, your tweets and your blog posts are being indexed and backed up and reposted and archived for an eternity.
And so the question that has to be asked is: Will your personal brand do your legacy proud? Or put more bluntly; will your great, great, great grandchildren think you suck?
Note: The following video contains language that some people might find offensive (e.g. Gary talks about the New York Jets…)
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