Salamon Rules of Personal Branding: Rule # 5 — Be Consistent

Good brands build over time. 

In the first four editions of ‘Salamon Rules of Personal Branding’ we learned how to set your personal brand up for success.  We learned that you must know how to mass-communicate.  It is the basis of creating a recognizable name.  We learned how to improve your ‘product’ and how to refine your unique value proposition to the world.  We showed that you have to have an innovative take on the world and your specialty.  And last, we learned that your brand has to be accessible—that is, creating a relationship with your customers is far more powerful than any barrier to entry you have set up. 

The fifth law in my series is consistency. 

The reason consistency is important is because, consistency isn’t a one off.  Consistency implies that your brand will be interacted with on more than one occasion.  Wow someone once, and that’s great.  But in order to create a loyal following a build your name brand, you need to be patient and win people over one experience at a time. 

The best brands in the world are consistent.  You know what you will get when you interact with their brand.  It is the reason why established brands are so successful.  For the most part, you know what to expect when you go in.  Consistency breeds trust, and trust breeds good experiences and good word-of-mouth.  William Arruda explains the value of consistency in this article where he says, “When everything is consistent about your brand, you can become known for something. A successful personal brand is always the same. It’s your promise of value to your customers, clients, managers, peers, etc.”

Build yourself a code of consistency to live by, and start being consistent! 

Separate Your Sounding Board From Everybody Else

I’m an ideas guy.  When I have an idea, I run it by my brother, my girlfriend, my few best friends, and my mother (unless the idea has anything to do with sports or technology).   It’s great to have such a supportive group of people around to help me clarify my thoughts.  They know me well enough to give me honest feedback and I know if I run my ideas by all of them, I’ll get a good sense of what people will think.  They are my sounding board. 

I will run dozens of ideas by them on a weekly basis.  I am not trying to impress them, recruit them, or sell to them.  The only thing I care about is refining my ideas, that way when I do meet someone I’m trying to make a good impression with, I know how to project focus & progress.  These are the two things you want to show people when interested in impressing, selling, recruiting, partnering, etc.  You must show that you have focus on your goals and that you are making progress getting there.  Without a formalized sounding board, you are very likely to crap out all of your pent up thoughts and ideas to the people you should be messaging clarity and progress.  Without a sounding board, your ideas are less crisp.  You haven’t had the practice of delivering your 30 second pitch and you’re less clear about your direction. 

That is why it is important to remember to keep you sounding board within your tight knit group.  Your sounding board should be exactly that–a group of trusted advisers that can help you with ideation, not execution.  

Let’s Bring Back The Karaoke Machine

When I connect with someone for the first time via email, I will usually ask the person if they ever make it to Austin, TX.  It’s too easy these days with social networking, email, and blogging to neglect meeting someone in real life.  It’s comfortable and we can get away with it, but there is no substitute to meeting a person face to face.  Sharing an experience in person, builds a relationship beyond what you could ever do through technology.   

I like to meet people in person because it’s more fun.  You can have experiences together like watching live music, having dinner, enjoying cocktails, and yes even karaoke.  Activities like this give you chances to have fun with each other.  When you have fun with someone, the emotional experiences you have carry on throughout your entire relationship.  Your closest friends and business partners today are your closest precisely for those reasons.  It’s the reason that Asian cultures embrace getting to know each other through dinners, parties, and karaoke as a way to build experiences and relationships before business is ever brought up. 

This is also why I tell my friends who want to “network” to connect with someone on a human level rather than a business one.  When you connect with someone on a human basis, your relationship will have more depth and breadth.   It won’t be easily classifiable.  And that’s a great thing.

I’ve found that part of connecting on a real basis involves revealing vulnerability.  Talking about issues that make you seem more human is a relief to people meeting you for the first time.  They are more willing to reveal their own vulnerabilities.  It’s a beautiful thing to see.  You can watch the layers of someones persona peel off like an onion as you get closer and closer to the core of that person’s self. 

So of course, I will tell all of you, when you’re in Austin, let’s go get some margaritas, eat Tex-Mex, and go out on the town.  Let’s get a group together and have fun.  Let’s remember to live first, and remember that everything else will follow.  Connect with me now, and when we’re in the same town, we’ll go get in some trouble. 

‘Curiosity is the opposite of Creativity’

Gary Hoover once told me that ‘Curiosity is the opposite of Creativity’.  He recently gave me a tour of his house where he showed me his personal library with over 45,000 books!  Everyone of his businesses (i.e. Bookstop Books, Hoovers.com, and Storystores) was based on the principle of curiosity. 

In my opinion, creativity and curiousity fuel each other.  Have them both and you’re golden.  As an individual looking to build your brand, come to the table with the mindset of mastery and innovation.  Sam Decker, over at Decker Marketing, says that if you combine the two with the addition of competence and the entrepreneurial spirit, you will have a workplace mindset that will set you apart from your co-workers and spark your career.  You no longer fill a role at your company, but you solve a problem. 

How do you balance curiosity and creativity?  Do you think that too much of one without the other is harmful? 

Radiohead on the Future of Content

Radiohead’s next album In Rainbows is being released on October 10th.  The album is only available via the Radiohead website, and the catch is that they are letting users decide how much, if any, to pay for the content.  This is a brand that is already proven.  They already have a following and can easily monetize from it, but have decided to be one of the first “name brand” bands to completely disregard the music industry.  See, the music industry (and iTunes) has held musicians hostage for years.  That is, musicians relied on distribution as a means to communicate.  With the internet as the main mode for users to get access to content, musicians like Radiohead have the ability to distribute their content directly without the use of a middle man. 

Radiohead realizes that users would have downloaded their songs for free even if they didn’t offer this option.  Radiohead has done something very profound–they’ve realized that by offering their content for free, they are building a relationship.  They are telling their current fans and prospective fans, that their relationship is worth more than $15 dollars.  Guess which will pay off in the long run?  How many more people will be exposed to their music as a result of tearing down these barriers? 

Imagine what would happen if you charged people to read your content?  Would you have as many readers or loyalists?