For years in the branding, marketing, and design worlds, there’s been much talk about “personal brands.” Individuals like Seth Godin were a leading voice and a go-to resource for marketing strategy and thought leadership. For me personally, Godin’s book The Purple Cow was a huge source of inspiration and encouragement in thinking about how to truly make yourself, your product, or your business stand out.
Others like Tesla founder, Elon Musk, have more of a world-changing product focus, but Musk has become his own personal brand in being the leader in envisioning and bringing to life truly helpful and effective products across the globe. Granted, he has several billion dollars to work with, but his ideology is to build the concept and use every ounce of energy and support from those around him to see the concept to completion. Now I’m sitting here dreaming of owning a Tesla Roadster, but I digress.
Locally here in Nashville, author, speaker, and generally great dude, Dave Delaney is a true agent for connecting people and businesses in a way that shares ideas, collaborates, and sees great ideas come to life. His book New Business Networking is not only a great and recommended read, but put him on a path that now people say “Oh yeah, I know who Dave Delaney is.”
These three individuals all have fairly different focuses and niches in which they work, but the through line is that each of them are smart, driven, and willing to share their ideas with the world with the expectation that great things can be done across many different and unique platforms.
It shouldn’t be a goal to become a “personal brand”, but rather should stem from thinking critically about passionate ideas and being willing to take the risk to share those in a way that inspires collaboration, innovation, and true change for the better.