Excuse the personal nature of this post, but what I have to say here is important, painful, embarrassing even. It has been sloshing around my head for a few weeks now. I was going to wait to write a long personal letter in an email to all of my contacts and friends, and I still might. But I just don’t want to wait any longer.
The truth is that despite a lot of success lately, I have done a poor job of branding myself, of educating and informing the various networks I belong to, of exactly what it is I do. You see, I haven’t always been a digital strategy guy or a marketer. I spent a long time in the financial world, a career I’ve alluded to and written about many times in this space. And after I left finance I started blogging and tried to produce a TV show based on that blog. And then, all of a sudden, I had a social media strategy firm.
My failure was in not effectively communicating this transition. And over the past year, as I’ve slowly, (very slowly at times), built my business, it has always irked me to discover that someone I knew, someone that I thought should be aware of my transition, wasn’t. They’d ask me how Farm to Table (my previous project) was doing. That is because I was much more forthright and open about marketing that project when I was running it.
The Full Menu
I haven’t treated my consulting firm the same way and I only realized why in the past few weeks. When I redesigned my front page a few weeks ago, it became apparent the extent to which I had failed to reveal to my networks what I was doing.. And because so much of the web is visual, even my website was misleading. It still looked like a blog! And here I was running a serious business, with serious clients, and my website wasn’t even close to what it should be. It still isn’t though you can be sure that before long the rest of this site will evolve in very much the same way that my front page has.
So WHY Did I Fail Personal Branding 101?
Because I was afraid. I was afraid that people wouldn’t take me seriously. That because I had put so much effort and personal capital into Farm to Table, that now that I was building something else, somehow that would be callously translated into failure. Failure in one project can lead to failure in another right? Only recently did I recognize the negativity and pessimism inherent in this reasoning. People who build things frequently fail.
People who are successful though, keep trying until the right project comes along. But they shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging that they’ve moved on. Farm to Table wasn’t a failure, it was a huge success. It didn’t achieve everything that I thought it could or wanted it to. But it was a lodestar community blog in the local sustainable food movement. Why wasn’t I proud of that? And why did I let it morph into something that I couldn’t talk about proudly? The truth is that ZAC, Digital Agency would not exist, COULD not exist, were it not for the 18 months I spent building Farm to Table, learning content marketing, learning how to effectively use and connect using social networks. Using the metrics and information overload inherent in digital marketing to produce something real and tangible and effective outside the box of the browser.
I failed personal branding 101 because I wasn’t sure if ZAC, Digital Agency, would truly be the project it has turned out to be, something totally my own, that I literally and figuratively own, and the template with which I am using to to make my life exactly as I see fit.
Now that I’ve recognized where my failures have been, I can take action and correct them. I am not ashamed that I’ve made this transition. I was afraid of failing. And that is natural. But when something you are afraid of ends up becoming central to your conception of yourself, when one’s personal and professional success become assured, being ashamed of it does you no good.
So I’ve resolved to never apologize again for switching tacks because what I am doing now is exactly what I want to be doing. It is important, it is real, it is actual. Here I am, take it or leave it. Just don’t apologize for it. Personal branding is about totally and completely encapsulating your project across all the networks you are a part of.
Image Courtesy of TerryJohnston on Flickr
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! This is so what I’m needing to hear these days. Thanks for your honesty. It is a motivation.
Love this post. Felt the same way when I left a big fat job at Sotheby’s to start Blaise + Co. Contemporary Art. You’re doing better than great, ZAC. x
Blaise Thank you. That fear is important. The opportunity to work with amazing, creative people like yourself, who are activating their passion projects, is reward enough!
z
I just stumbled upon you while searching and searching for social media that contained some “content”. I like your post. I stopped, I clicked, I read, and I am taking the time to write. Honesty is always respected and being personal is always appreciated. Congratulations for jumping in rather than wadding. I wish you all the best in your endeavors… see I feel like I kinda know you…
mission accomplished.
Casey, that is awesome. Thanks so much for the lovely note and the words of encouragement. It really does mean something, every time
Z