Do you own YOU?

I’m reading the news this morning, and two things really collided in the metaspace between my ears.  Who owns YOU?

Part 1

Let me set this up… I’m not as old school Internet as some people my age, I got on in 1993 with a 14.4 modem on a 386 33Mhz computer.  I know, I’m a noob.  Back then, everyone had a handle, like Acid Burn and Zero Cool from Hackers.  I thought I was genius, I was “amaddeus” with two D’s.

Then came Social Media, and I realized that nobody cared who amaddeus was, I needed to be my name, control my brand that is my name.  You can be an handle, but BE thand handle.  I decided to not split being my name some places, and a handle in others.  Naturally for me, the first thing I did was register jeremyvaught.com, jeremyvaught.net, and jeremyvaught.org.  And a year ago I got jeremyvaught.tv (a work in progress).  I own me.  The other 5 Jeremy Vaughts I’ve met on Facebook are nameless.  I registered my kids names so they will have them when they are older.  It is important to own you.

Part 2

Layoffs.  They are everywhere.  Are you branded by your company?  From the paragraphs above, you know my stance on that.  Don’t let yourself be branded by your company.  If you want to blog about your company and what you do, don’t be XavierAtXcompany.com, although I see that kind of thing all the time, be YOU.  What happens to Xavier when he gets laid off, or moves on for his own reasons?  He loses his entire audience.  Be company-proof.

Examples

There are plenty of exampls out there, here are a few.

Christopher S. Penn Chris lives a breathes financial aid for college students which is his day job.  He has been with one company, as far as I know, for as long as I’ve known him and known of him.  He has used his name to position himself a leader in that space, and the company the works for, a leader in that space.  If Chris left tomorrow to go to another company, his audience and reputation will follow him where ever he goes.

Scott Monty I first heard of Scott doing silly Simpson’s voices on his company podcast when he was at Crayon.  I thought he was a bit goofy, apparently you can be goofy and know your stuff.  Scott eventually moved on from Crayon to run Social Media for Ford Motor Company.  I’m sure in no small part to his personal brand equity he has built.

C.C. Chapman Another Crayoneesta who’s brand has withstood change.  I first learned about C.C. when he was heading up the Digital Marketing something or other at Babson Business College and he was the host of his music podcast, Accident Hash.  C.C. was part-time with a pioneering podcast company who lost it’s way, and at Babson, started a new podcast about digital marketing podcast called Managing the Grey, left Babson to join the new company, Crayon, and then left that to start his own company, The Advance Guard.  But what is the constant there?  C.C. Chapman

Ron Ploof Not as dramatic as CC, but started his blog, RonAmok.com, to talk about his lessons learned in trying to get his fortune 500 company to embrace New Media.  He was seemingly making strides, when he was given a pink slip.  But without missing a beat, Ron had built his brand equity around RonAmok, and launched on his own to be a New Media Consultant and is doing quite well.  Ron didn’t let the company own him, Ron owned Ron.

Bringing it all back together

What got me thinking about all this is a story on Yahoo! News about layoffs and book publishers Simon & Schuster and Random House.  The story talks about industry heavyweights getting moved around and moved out.  They may get by on their reputations, but what about those that aren’t the heavyweights, do they have enough reputation, have they been building it?

The second part of this is there is an announcement by CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Michael Hyatt.  Michael owns Michael.  The story quotes his blog which is MichaleHyatt.com.  I went to his blog, and he has a facebook profile, is on Twitter, LinkedIn, and shares some posts he reads on Google Reader.

Wrapping it up

Own your brand.  If you don’t at this moment, you better do it by this afternoon.  If you don’t own you, somebody else will.

I leave you with Gary Vaynerchuk discussing owning your .com or .tv name.

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Dude/Dudette! Thanks for coming back, you make my day! :D Contact me at jeremy@jeremyvaught.com and let me know what you are up to.

Cheers!
--Jeremy

Tagged as: brand equity, hackers movie, layoffs