Nance Rosen Blog

You take your clothes to the dry cleaner. They say it all be ready on Saturday. You go in. Not ready. You’re leaving for New York and they’ve got your best suit. It’s the lucky one – the one where you’ve gotten every offer or every deal in the last two years. Your suit is being held hostage.

What do you do?

Do you listen to the excuses and nod knowingly?

Do you get loud and insist that it must be done right away?

Do you worry that your lucky suit won’t be so lucky when they are finished with it?

How you act in the bad times, the challenging times and the times when you are furious – that’s part of your personal brand. And, depending on what you do – especially if you do a lot: these “challenging” times will come pretty often.

Anger is not only bad for your body but it’s really bad for your business. Anger is bad when you feel it and it’s bad when the guy you’re interacting with has it. Anger makes people stupid. Furious makes anger go faster.

Reach for a better feeling thought. Tell yourself a different story. Get creative before you get enraged.

They do have your suit. Or your footage. Or your case. They haven’t done the job. It’s not going to get better if you get louder.

It will get better when you use your indoor voice. Coke doesn’t scream at its competitors. Coke exacts its revenge by cheerfully attracting more fans.

When vendors go bad you’ll find this to be true: the angriest people are going to be the ones who did you the greatest harm. If the conversation gets louder, you’re still going to wait for it – it just won’t be in great shape when you get it.

How well does anger play into your brand promise?

It shouldn’t be part of it, unless you are a watch dog – whose job it is to make people afraid and back off. Not follow-through.

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Great parties like great sex depend on variety. Different styles, attitudes, even intentions: spice it up – give it that zing. Really great parties, like great sustainable romance, need surprise, along with the two other key elements of happiness: pleasure and meaning.

So if your life or your job is no party: you know what to do.

How often do you surprise the people around you? How often are you surprised?

How often do your bring them pleasure (brilliant work, letting them go home while you take the late shift, or cleaning up after the big project goes out). How often do the people around you bring you pleasure?

And meaning: what are you doing? Are you just making money? Not good enough to sustain your effort. You’ve got to make meaning; ideally you’re making it with the people you work with.

We just celebrated two birthdays with a great party on Saturday night: my boyfriend and his dad share a birth date. They are separated by 21 years and typically 3,000 miles. So Dad bridged the gap and flew into LA with Mom. And, we invited our 35 of our closest friends, who brought 15 strangers who are now friends. I dubbed it the “Meet the Parents Day” party.

Here’s what’s cool.

Guests ranged from 20 to 85 years of age. We had a mash up of personal brands. Outgoing, smart, funny, pious, ambitious, lay back, experienced, newbies, literate and kinetic.

We had dueling men of the cloth (actually 5 religions present), attorneys, business owners, professional athletes, students, receptionists, our maintenance man at work and a guy who raises exotic lizards (who knew?). Twenty countries represented if you include this generation and back one more to ancestors. There isn’t a composite that would represent “friend” in our lives: not anything that could be combined to become a persona that we could recognize as people we adore. As a marketer, that stings: we like target markets that think alike, act alike and buy alike. In the house Saturday night, the only thing we all had in common was we were glad to be together.

We laughed, ate, sang, chatted, took photos, drank a bit and some of us: a bit too much. We built a cupcake holder in the middle of dinner, filled it and then ate the contents.

Our clean-up crew didn’t show: so the partiers danced and did dishes to heavy metal music. It was like being in camp, making a show, being players and audience, being chefs and hoppers, eating and then doing KP.

Life doesn’t mean a thing, if you don’t get that zing. When was the last time you danced and did dishes? I hope really often.

Get outside your personal brand and the tribe you always hang with: so you can see how you mesh, complement, clash and makes a mess with people who are so not like you. Go out of your way to like them. Find something to enjoy in even the challenging people around you.

This is your party.

It’s life and work, friends and family, staying home and traveling, working out and eating too much. You can have it all, if you venture out. Give yourself a way to mix it up, surprise yourself and others, give and get pleasure and always seek to make and find meaning.

The birthday boys nearly forgot to open presents. That’s how great a party can be.

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What ARE the right key words – especially, OMG if you are actually talking to someone face-to-face – or at least cell-to-cell? What are you saying – and how clearly are you communicating it online and offline? You get so much good stuff about your online behavior, I want to touch on the you that is hopefully off the computer from time to time, and on a call, presentation, meeting or some other conversation.

The rules don’t change from online to offline – which means your online self must be aligned with your real life self, unless you’re doing something that would disgrace your family.

When successful personal brands speak, they are crisp, clear, compelling, consistent and relentless. That doesn’t mean bombarding someone with “why don’t you buy from me?” messages. Or, “buy now or risk losing out!” Those are pretty clear, but fail the test of the other rules.

The bar for your personal brand’s key words has got to be what is:

1. Authentically true for you
2. What you want people to see you as a purveyor of
3. Clearing connecting with your audience’s interest and concerns
4. Legitimately delivering so that your audience receives the utmost results
5. Promoted in a way that delivers your intention as much as “the goods”

 Leave Your Passion in The Bedroom – or Hobby Room.

Definitive keywords are not about passion. Passion doesn’t play a part in personal branding. Passion does play a part in personal development – and that is the distinction.

Developmental psychology addresses the stages of maturation, and sets standards for what you do as a normal 8 year old, that isn’t the right behavior on a date when your 28 years old.

In other words, passions change. Think of when you were drinking wheat grass everyday, or desperately wanted tickets to the Goo Dolls, or dated your neighbor. Some passions leave more residue than others. I may be revealing too much here. 

On the other hand, if you are a passionate person – someone who invests themselves fully, and unceasingly strives to bring benefits to others: you can keep up your passion play. Personal brands are passionate about their audiences or as Seth Godin calls them your tribes.

When you see yourself not in the mirror but as a metaphorical bridge between your audience’s real lives and their ideal lives, you’re starting with a winning strategy.

Do you know your audience and their unmet needs?

Exactly who are the people and businesses you seek to serve and derive revenue and profit  from?

Where are they? 

Have you chosen a large enough segment so you don’t have to do an endless number of one-offs, but can syndicate the time it has taken to learn what you do really well?

When you are keyed in on the words and thoughts that express the pain and craving your can remedy, you begin to SEO yourself. You become a walking, talking advertisement for who you are and what you do.

Only then is my adage true: if you can say it, you can live it.

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“When is it appropriate for me to criticize my co-worker?”  I got the question from a young manager in my course: Pitching the Perfect Presentation, on campus at UCLA last week.

I felt flooded by the power to disabuse an entire group of people about an entirely inappropriate – yet pervasive – kind of communication: delivering unasked for criticism. I thought I’d expand on my academic platform and let you in on the etiquette.

Have you ever asked for permission before you criticized a colleague, friend, family member, neighbor or significant other? And not, “Hey, it’s time for me to criticize you: ready?” Nor telling them to brace themselves, “Here’s a heaping cup o’ criticism, coming your way!”

The concept of delivering “constructive criticism” is often obfuscation. It masks the intention of unloading a gnarled mess of “perspective” on someone who is (or is not) living out your dream of how their job (or life) should be done.

Maybe you don’t think you need to ask. After all, if your personal brand is “boss” or “know-it-all” then: fire away, right? Or, because your personal brand is defined as “role-model for those behind me on the path,” you have a duty to be corrector-in-chief, doncha?

So, I stood in front of the class and thought about the God given right to criticize. I thought about when God would give it. Other than “back away: the stove is hot!” do we have a duty to admonish someone on something where we know better? Or, think we know better?

It is a funny question because I teach. I coach. I talk at people from inside the television and tell strangers what I think they MUST do.

My personal brand and my job title invite people to come to me when they want to move further and faster in their careers. When someone signs up for that, I make sure I’ve been deputized to deliver feedback as part of our working relationship. In fact, I make sure that honesty isn’t optional and that I’ll only talk about what I know at a world-class level. Only then can I deliver feedback.

Feedback is not criticism.

What does feedback look like? Direction. Encouragement. And, when necessary: the recommendation to change course, see additional choices or consider that one choice obviates another. You cannot be both an astronaut, and Kate plus 8.

So what’s the difference between criticism and feedback? The giver and receiver must think of feedback as a gift. You wouldn’t package poop and hand it to someone as a gift. You wouldn’t accept that as a gift.

And, you must have permission. As my friend Bob Gregoire says, simply ask: “Would you like my feedback on that?”

Here’s my feedback protocol.

1. Share what you see as positive and powerful about what your receiver is doing – or wants to do – or has made an effort toward doing.

2. Then, share what would strengthen their performance, product or presentation.

And, if you are throwing a lateral – interacting with a peer, co-worker or friend – be as quick to ask for feedback, as you are to give it.  That will slow down the urge to share, won’t it?

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How are you doing amidst the piles you’ve created? You know, the piles of old bills, dirty clothes and detritus of your hobbies (like your carnival stuffed animal collection or unusable swag from less than stellar events)?

Maybe it’s not your clutter. Maybe it’s your roommate’s mess, or your office mate’s. Maybe you inherited it from a well-meaning relative who filled up your place with her old furniture or your work ancestor: the person who sat at your desk or cubicle before you arrived.

Are you worn down, filled with disgust and furious while living in the small margins of space that aren’t covered with dust or mold or worse? Have you come to hate the space you occupy? We know if you have, even if we haven’t seen the place you’re at. Hating disorder and not taking action to clean it up is fomenting a negative attitude toward the world, and making a marked, negative impression of your personal brand on us.

Things that would be trash often surround us in life. Why does this make us mad – either crazy or crazy plus angry? Because it is irrational to be burdened by garbage you must face or sift though in order to do something rational: like live well or work smart.

Don’t kid yourself that someone in Haiti might need a pair of running shoes that are stained from two years of roadwork, accompanied by the molting socks you left in them. Anyway, stashing them in a pile in the corner is not serving the needy, who are not so needy that they want to wear your garbage.

Maybe Your Space is Clean but Your Mind Holds Toxic Waste

Some of us enjoy near pristine physical environments while surrounded by virtual trash: like brain litter born of mean-spirited emails and IMs. Our minds are juiced with the debris of unfair accusations about our talents or intellect. Our honest accomplishments are stacked up on a musty, dusty foundation of “you are less and I am more” reviews of bad bosses, jealous colleagues, dysfunctional family members and BFFs who have breached what you deserve: a sarcophagus of self-worth.

It is my experience that people who come from clutter: space wise or brain wise, speak the angriest and ugliest words. It’s like a haze of brown and grey smog infects them and thwarts oxygen or common courtesy from entering their brains. And, we all have experienced GIGO: garbage in and garbage out. Garbage doesn’t require a fancy algorithm to display results. Garbage is a pretty straight-forward producer of more garbage.

So, how are you doing, as we turn the corner on the second half of this year? It is too late for Spring-cleaning, but you can still lose weight for summer. That is: take the time to toss the stuff that is weighing you down before the days get shorter on their own.

Personal brands: unburden yourself now and let the sunny side of life lift you up and past your old behavior or the behavior of people who should be dropped off in the don’t recycle bin of “toxic people I used to put up with.” Go through your so-called friends or followers and hold onto the real, good ones: the nourishing, wise and in-your-corner ones.

With the spaciousness you create in your real, psychological and social media space you’ll re-gain the ability to map out what you really want in your life. If you got a holiday day off or two, come back into our lives free of the clutter that’s made you mad.

Infuse and surround your personal brand with the best stuff: inside and out.

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Are you playing “dress up” to match the expectations of others? Is there an ever thinning veil, between the real you and the ideal you that you’ve invented and are now struggling to project?

Are you still clenching to maintain the “first date” behavior code with recruiters, your boss or clients? Is your armor cracking (or scorching, if you saw Iron Man 2)? Is it becoming clear that the emperor (or whatever title you hold) has no clothes?

How did you get in this mess?

You pretended to be detail oriented, self-motivated and an early riser. You pretended to be an advanced user of Excel, Final Cut, Wordpress and Spanish. You said you were willing, in fact eager, to work weekends, late nights or be on call 24/7/365.

Are you faking it in hopes that you will be making it sometime soon? Are you keeping the lid on your volcano of real strengths that are now screaming to be exploited while you ply your trade with your weakest suit?

Or have you simply outgrown the persona you still attempt to play by being underemployed or dys-employed or just phoning it in?

What is the naked truth about who you really are and what you really want to do?

The closer you can get to the true you, the happier and richer you will be. Richer: as in making lots of money. Happier: as in rich in every way: spiritually, mentally, physically and once again, financially.

Why? To have phenomenal success in any field or even with any project, you have to have unstoppable, intrinsic and sustainable motivation. Problems have to appear as puzzles that you are delighted to decode.

A deep vein running through you must declare: I would do this even if I won the lottery. I might wear better shoes or drive a cooler car and take way better vacays, but I would still be doing “this” for work, for this company or my own company, and my clients, or whatever the “this” and the “who” are for you.

A lot of us have names for your Highest Goal (Michael Ray), your Sweetest Fruit (Laurel Mellin) or Ultimate Outcome (me). These are just labels for your IT. What is IT? IT is the thing screaming to get out of your mind or body and put onto this planet. It is the truth you may be hiding from yourself, as well as others.

Here’s my embarrassing truth. I am someone who needs other people’s dreams and ambitions in order to be self-actualized. I am meant to help, encourage, find the right way, take the first bullet, stay up all night to get it done on time, and make the most money possible for the people I work for.  I respond so easily to the red light on the camera because I believe I am helping the audience. I teach for the same reason. In fact, it’s why I write to you each week.

My clients often write “thank you” in the memo of their retainer checks.

If I were a dog, I’d be a golden retriever – a working dog that loyally runs into the rushing waters of a cold river to get the stick and get it back to you. Simply put, my personal brand is this: I am a helper, with vision and grit.

If we stripped away all the varnish (and that’s the nice word for it), what is your naked truth?

Planet Earth is 71% water. Take a skinny dip into it, baring your real personal brand.

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