Personal Branding – A Critique
Recently, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about personal branding. No, not my own personal branding, but the concept and its popularity more generally. While this issue might seem trivial to some, I think that there is something quite interesting to all this, both intellectually and as a way to look at contemporary culture and tropes of personal achievement. Simply put, we live in an age where a number of individuals – I’m thinking mainly of people like Dan Schawbel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Guillebeau and Timothy Ferriss – are making careers out of telling other people how they should “develop their personal brands”, “become lifestyle entrepreneurs”, and similar things. This is pretty far from what the grand-daddy of personal branding, Tom Peters, talked about. His notion of “Brand You” was mostly about how we all need to think about what we do and try to be something more than cogs in a machine – choose fun projects, think about what your CV says about you, and so on. The new cadre of personal branders are far more… vivid.
Their approaches are somewhat different. Dan Schawbel is branding himself as the main personal brand in personal branding. Timothy Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuck are telling us how to “crush it” or live a life with a “4-hour work week” in the interest of lifestyle management. All of them are insistent that all it takes it chutzpah, devoting yourself to something that you (hopefully) already love, and just going all out with social media. The aim is to a) become and expert, and b) not having to work very hard while still raking in cash, which obviously is something a lot of people would like. Their methods are also very much alike, and they tend to reference each other a lot. As I am fascinated by the business of advice, and larger than life personalities, I can admit to being attracted by the wares on display. Also, as I do work as a business speaker, I’ve come across similar people, and had the cult of (particularly) Vaynerchuck presented to me. So I got interested. I’ve read the blogs and the books, watched the videos, and generally immersed myself in the gospel of personal branding. I’ve thought a lot about their message. And I’ve discovered some things that are rarely mentioned in the effusive exhortations to “crush it” or “relentlessly brand yourself”. Some of these things are presented below. Some of these things are condensed presentations of what the luminaries of personal branding preach, if stated in a way that they might not be altogether happy about. Others are musings about the problems inherent in some of their message. None of this is meant as an attack, however, merely some less than upbeat musings on a topic that has recently become a very hot topic indeed.
THE STRANGE ECONOMIES OF PERSONAL BRANDING
The key element in all books about personal branding is that one should find the one thing that one is truly passionate about, and capitalize upon this (and if your true passion is personal branding, jump straight into the meta (see below)). The logic is, if you’re the world’s leading expert at something – or at least a decent enough approximation – people will come along to help you build an empire around your passion (Learn how, for only $149! No refunds, as it in the end is your fault if you fail.). And obviously there is an almost primal attraction to the notion that your unique obsession with all things Smurfette might net you a nice income rather than odd looks and no girlfriend, ever. However, there is something rather wrong about the notion here, a very odd disregard for some basic economic truths.
Ever since Chris Anderson came out with his theory and book about The Long Tail, people have been bewitched by the idea that any niche, no matter how tiny or obscure, could be enough to make them rich. The gurus I’m addressing here, particularly the ones who claims you should “cash out on your passion”, are very keen to keep this idea alive. And not only alive, but blooming in all the colors of the visible spectra. However, there is a tiny detail, a little notion graspable by anyone who ever took Econ 101, that creates a problem: The profitability of a niche and the likelihood that it is crowded are directly related.
Let’s pretend you take the gurus of lifestyle entrepreneurship at their word, and start to consider turning your passion into a business. What you need to consider is a) are you a big enough fan of this thing to be an expert-in-becoming, b) are there enough people who would be interested in sharing your passion. Now, if you think about this for a moment, you’ll realize that these two are very closely related, but not in a way that’ll help you. If enough people are interested, there will already be a lot of people trying to be the number one expert. If there aren’t that many people interested, your chances of being king of the hill go way up, but the hill will be less and less likely to be valuable. You can in all likelihood become the worlds pre-eminent Smurfette-blogger, but will there be enough people with a Smurfette-fetish for this to translate into sales/revenue (unless you write the book “Adventures of a Smurfette-Entrepreneur, or How YOU Can Translate Your Fetish Into Cash!” and become a guru of smurfstyle entrepreneurship)?
Ah, say the wily guides for the contemporary micro-entrepreneur, the trick is not to make tons of money, it’s to make enough to live life! AKA “making due with less”.
MAKE DUE WITH LESS
It is interesting to observe that much of what is written about personal branding is in fact very close to what is written about in the huge literature of “how to become rich”. There are tons of books out on how to become a millionaire or at least very wealthy, and they all boil down to one thing: Cut down on the inessentials, save money by being thrifty and smart, and invest the surplus wisely. Not bad advice, by the way, in much the same way as most books on dieting can be boiled down to: Eat less junk (junk food, processed garbage, white bread and sugar) and get more exercise. If we compare to the personal branding literature, much of it starts from a pretty similar standpoint: Cut down on the stupid stuff. Stupid stuff includes spending time in a job you hate, mostly in meaningless meetings. Again, difficult to argue with. Interestingly, most books on personal branding and life management also point out that your life becomes a whole lot easier if you ditch the trappings of the petit bourgeoisie – the constant updating of TVs and sofas, the station wagon, the holiday to Disneyland. By not focusing on that, they say, you can focus on doing the stuff you really want to do.
And here of course is the crux. The high priests of personal branding and lifestyle management all assume that their life is the one we should all strive for. They are young, they’re (almost) all men, and they despise those who would live lives not attuned to the “art of non-conformity“. In other words, they say that if you lead a middle-class life, you’re a putz. In many cases, they may be right, but it is an interesting notion that we should all strive for the kind of life a few internet lifestyle mavens have adopted. Particularly as one of the key elements seems to be that we should adopt their choice of devoting tons of time to social media and their choice of paring down on things. Please don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not trying to big up materialism. What I’m trying to do is to highlight that there are great similarities between the manner in which guides to personal finance operate and the way in which personal branding and lifestyle management advice are narratively constructed. And the key element in both is the following: Don’t get kids.
BE SINGLE AND CHILDLESS
A key element in becoming the kind of person that is admired in the personal branding circles is to not get children. Children do have a tendency of tying you down (all that pesky education stuff), and they also tend to come with additional financial burdens – they get sick, need their own rooms, break stuff, and often want things like food and toys. Such needs are normally completely outside of the “lifestyle entrepreneurs” scope. As the gurus of the field are invariably young men, the problems people with spouses and kids have are all effectively ignored in the giddy exhortations. What if your kid really needs stability and to stay in school? What if your time to engage in personal branding is rudely interrupted by your partner wanting some quality time (or, perish the thought, wants to make a career of their own)? Of these things, the gurus are very silent.
Granted, if you really want to optimize your time use, it is doubtlessly true that going to hookers (or rampant masturbation) is preferable to settling down with a woman/man. Also, there is less of a risk to procreate. However, as lifestyle management goes, a method that emphasizes not getting children seems very specialized. Of course, it is easier to pare down your life, and devote hours in mornings and evenings to social media, if you don’t have people coming to you insisting that you play Star Wars with them (or, for that matter, needing to be bailed out of jail). But for many people, if developing a personal brand means being single and childless, the brand really is empty and meaningless. Fucking a hooker is cost- and time-effective, but at some point one needs to ask just how much efficiency you want to go for… What I’m trying to say here is that much of what is written on personal branding and lifestyle management builds on very specific preconceived notion of what one’s lifestyle is and what it should be. And this element is repeated in the entreaty to become a freak, or as the gurus would rather have it “a unique personal brand”.
EMBRACE YOUR INNER FREAK
The first time you see Gary Vaynerchuk rant at a camera, you get taken aback. He is loud, brash, gimmicky, often quite funny (in a fratboy-humor kind of a way), anything but subtle. And in the world of personal branding, this is a good thing. Subtle is out, wacky is in, for it’s all about being different. The more different you are, the better. It’s also about self-promotion, tons and tons of shameless self-promotion. Constant name-dropping? Check. References to how great you are? Check (Double-check if you are Timothy Ferriss, a man whose life-long goal seems to be to become a Chuck Norris-joke). Re-iteration after re-iteration about how great you are, how great others think you are, and how important the thing you talk about is? Check, double-check, and that’s-fucking-right-check.
Most of the gurus of personal branding are clearly the spawns of that old archetype of the American business world, the huckster. Constantly selling, relentlessly pitching and always chasing that dream. Willie Lomax on steroids, metamphetamines and Prozac. But the new gurus have an added sheen of the freak, the stand-out. Whereas the pitch-men of old tried to portray themselves as regular Joe’s, if a smidgen more successful, the new breed is more about standing apart. If others yell, they yell louder. If other people have been to a hundred countries, they have to go to 200. They want to be freaks, the kind of people others look at in awe. They enjoy the stage and the interviews and the adoration, and will not let this go.
And they turn it into a recipe for success. Read the books, and you’ll find an endless diatribe about how you should differentiate, stand apart, not listen to others, blaze your own path. In many ways it is of course business literature as usual (Tom Peters is nodding in the corner), but in others it sounds an awful lot like revenge of the nerds. The kids in school who didn’t fit in have now found a way to turn the table on the bullies. “You’re a popular jock? Whatta loser! Being the spaz is the new hip thing!” This, the power of difference is the most important ware they’re selling. It is the core of all the books on personal branding, and central to all tomes of lifestyle management. It’s the loner kid turned into a business model. And sold as soothing panacea to others who feel they don’t fit in.
LEARN TO LOVE THE META
In the end, the most curious thing about the men that sell the dream of “Brand You” and living your life on the beach while a money-making machine deposits cash into your numerous accounts mainly seem to be hard at work establishing themselves as experts in just that, expertise. Their personal brands are about personal branding, not about making money in retail or consumer goods. They may refer to good cases, but these are more often than not books about personal branding, courses in personal branding, consulting in personal branding or talking about personal branding. While Timothy Ferriss seems to have made some money in nutritional supplements (which should not be sneezed at), today he seems most comfortable selling the dream of a 4-hour work week. Gary Vaynerchuck seems less and less interested in selling wine (which he started in, and quite successfully), and more and more interested in teaching people how to become as passionate and shouty as he is. There is nothing wrong per se in being a meta-brand (a brand about a brand), but clearly this is a business with higher and higher barriers of entry. The meta-issue is rarely addressed, for if it was, the key problem of the field as it stands today would become apparent. Personal branding is increasingly important, and a good idea. Life management isn’t a bad idea either, and the lucky few that can actually become lifestyle entrepreneurs should be applauded for it.
But what happens to those who have not become meta-apostels of personal branding and lifestyle management? What of those who cannot find the sweet spot in the strange economies, or who have children who get sick and cost money? What of the shy ones, the ones who enjoy a 9-to-5 job? Clearly, these are not the people who the mavens of this new age are talking to. But among them are many who get enticed by the promises, who dream similar dreams. And they are the ones who buy the books, who subscribe to the newsletters. They are the audience of the personal branders. One would hope they got a little respect as well.
A LATE ADDITION:
MAKING YOURSELF A TARGET WITH PERSONAL BRANDING
An ongoing insistance in the personal branding literature that you should find a niche and then brand yourself around this. The manner in which this is done varies, but the preference seems to be for something along the lines of reinventing yourself as Johnny Appleseed – THE Online Smurfette Expert. In other words, take something you’re passionate about and make this the capstone of your personal brand. Get a tagline, and repeat it endlessly. Well, for some it has worked – the “Rich Dad” thing seems to be a brand that keeps on giving. But still…
There are two things I dislike about this. One, it makes you a target. You’ve staked a claim, and every claim can be challenged. Unless you are absolutely sure that you are the number one expert in your field, you could be in for some really nasty surprises. A younger, hipper, sexier expert can make you seem rather sad and shabby. An older, more knowledgable competitor may make you seem like a bit of a lightweight. A case in point: Social media. At present, there seem to be about as many social media gurus as there are Justin Bieber-fans, and at some of the conferences you can’t turn around without bumping into at least two. In the crowd there are both the old guard and the hip new things, and the whole scene seems so competitive that personally branding yourself as a social media anything seems a completely lost case. In other words, I wonder if staking a distinct claim is always a good idea – particularly if you’re just getting into the whole thing. You’re tagline will by necessity look rather sad in comparison.
The second thing I dislike is that this kind of tagline thinking is reductive. You become branded as one thing, as a specific entity, and will have made it really difficult to develop and grow. You’re just the online Smurfette expert, and every time you try to branch out, the tagline is there to haunt you. All these people branding themselves as social media gurus, what will they do when the hype dies? Take up a new hype, and thus look like they’ll sell anything that’s new and shiny? Stick to their cultivated tagline and look sadder and sadder as the term wears out? I know, I know, the personal branding crowd (who also will suffer this fate, BTW) will say you need to “reinvent your personal brand”, but why not think of yourself as something that progresses and endures rather than as a commodity that needs to be repackaged with the seasons?
A lot of what is said about personal branding is smart and on point. But some of it sounds an awful lot like making yourself into an easy to attack target, with built-in obsolescence. And that just doesn’t seem that smart to me.
