Personal Branding

A NEW LEARNING
I met an interesting man the other day. He and is wife made the decision many years ago to live on a sailboat at False Creek in Vancouver. A 42 foot sailboat is their home and also their RV when they choose to navigate coastal waters and beyond. It can also serve as an office for his new employment as an environmental real estate agent. Having retired from a different occupation he is now seeking to market himself effectively and that is why he came to mind now.

I alluded yesterday to the importance of personal branding in order to enhance one’s reputation, credibility, recognition as an expert and to advance one’s career. Personal branding describes a process where individuals differentiate themselves from a crowd by articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leverage it across platforms with a consistent message to achieve a specific goal.

And here is the stunning reality. At 66 years of age if I want this kind of recognition, I either have to research the ways or higher someone to assist me. Other responsible adults similarly find personal branding impossible to fit into already busy lives. Generation Y however knows how to brand themselves instinctively using media tools such as blogs and social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Brazen Careerist. They become well known this way.

Gen Y is marketing itself without thinking about it. It goes online more than any other generation and cell phones are an extension of their hands. It instant messages and Skypes and podcasts and blogs and twitters and YouTubes and is getting the word out about themselves and so are we every time we use one of these networks. The fact is Generation Y needs to be good at these marketing tools because as it matures, jobs are declining, industries are downsizing and cutting back. They are under pressure to rethink how they are perceived and how they can stand out from the pack.

PASSED OUT

A NEW LEARNING
Guess how vulnerable I feel.
Not a classy move.
I woke up, gradually, with some neck pain; face down on the bathroom floor. Christine trying to get my attention.
Four in the morning. Customary nightly pit-stop but something went wrong. Some synapses misfired.

I can recall walking rather thick-headed from bed to bathroom, thinking some muddled thoughts and sitting down on the throne. Now as I contemplate, maybe I fell asleep. Perhaps I just dozily tumbled over on the floor and cracked my noggin. Actually writing this episode is therapeutic because I have been somewhat paranoid about this event. It rendered me fearful.

Four summers ago I suffered a grand mal seizure, unconsciously convulsing on the kitchen floor. Christine witnessed this and called 911 and the rapid response team of paramedics arrived in force I have been told, subdued me with a tranquillizer and whisked me away to the hospital where I gained consciousness three hours later. Fifteen minutes of violent physical thrashing left me with two weeks of muscle pain. Beyond that however, I spent the next four months with driving privileges withdrawn, going through most medical examinations known to medicine. All serious causes were eliminated and the seizure was termed an anomaly. It was acknowledged that blood sugar imbalance might have caused this. So life resumed, cautiously, always with a remote fear of a recurrence. Then this.

Well there is no resemblance between the two situations. Nonetheless, to wake up face down and pajamas down as well, is disturbing at the least and concerning, certainly. But as I say, writing about it has been good for me because I have been unnecessarily anxious that I am vulnerable, when in all likelihood I was simply not awake enough to assume the throne position. I hate to think where my head may have ended up had I been standing upright at that appliance.

I can’t blame anyone. I am my own pain in the neck.