Personal Branding

Step Out, Stand Out, Freak Out

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

There’s something about American culture that is all about Standing Out, and I think it explains a lot of our problems. Or is part of our problems – our many, many problems.

Anyone remember when Personal Branding first hit? I actually loved it because it was a vision quest to ask who you are and communicate it. In time it became more about standing out and marketing, being visible but not being who you are. I probably “got out of it” too late for my own dignity, but in the end I realized it had become marketing and standing out.

Then there’s all this Influencer Culture. I keep trying to figure out what’s there, but there’s no there there – it’s standing out so you can sell projects. The goal is to be Known but not be something worth Knowing. I resent the fact that, to understand the world, I actually have to understand who Mr. Beast is – and further resent he’s not a metal singer or superhero.


Then there’s the usual business advice of standing out. I think I resent that a lot as a Project Manager, because my job is to make sure nothing noteworthy happens. If my status reports are not filled with the color red and panicked comments, then I did my job. But a lot of business gurus and youtubers want to tell me to stand out even though if what I do is interesting it’s probably time to worry.

But standing out is part of our technology, economy, and culture. And I think it’s a problem because it seems it may be all there is in our politics and economy.

We’re conditioned to stand out, to market ourselves, to be noteworthy. Sure, it gets into the job search, but Social Media has made everything about standing out. We’re in a race to get hits, get likes, be better than that other Instagram addict. The Modern Web 3.0 feels like everything is a social media competition and a job search. In short we’re all trying to be Influencers without being anyone.

(While of course the Social Media companies make bank).

So many people are now in a competition to be celebrities, we also treat people who have made themselves into celebrities as the most trusthworthy. How many people out there with real financial, cultural, and yes, political influence are indistinguishable from some supplement-hawker Social Media Influencer. You can’t tell the difference, and maybe they can’t either.

Survival of the fittest? No survival of the most noticeable.

Being noticeable gets you money. Being noticeable gets you elected. You can end up getting people to throw venture capital at you, CEO positions, etc. It doesn’t mean you’re good at any of this, but boy will you get it handed to you especially if you fit certain demographics.

When getting noticed pays off, then that’s all you do. That’s all you aim for. That also attracts a certain kind of person that probably should not have their sweaty hands on the levers of power and loads of money. Once you have loads of money you can buy people to say you’re right, and you probably believe it.

It doesn’t seem to be working out for us. I want my politicians to solve problems, not be posting internet memes and Instagram photos. I’d like to see more talk of people doing their job as opposed to making that killer LinkedIn profile. I want to stop having the suspicion that people with lots of power and money are so performative that’s all their is to them.

I kinda want things to be like me and my status reports.

When standing out is all that matters, people’s ability to assess aptitude and character atrophies. It certainly isn’t doing too hot to judge by the state of the world.

Steven Savage

Geek Job Guru: Marketing Is Inevitable

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Marketing Is Inevitable

Ever get tired of how we pros “have to market”? You see ads all over the internet hawking things from megacorporation products to people’s webcomics. “Personal Branding,” a term I’m fond of, seems to be on it’s way to becoming a dirty word. If you’re looking for a job or working on your career, which is probably why you’re reading this, chances are you’re sick of being told to “market yourself.”

I’d even give odds at one point someone told you to “go market yourself/your book/etc.” and you responded with a rather creative use of obscenities.

We know we need to market ourselves these days. Gotta hustle the artbook. Have to make connections for the job. Time to get people to buy that indie game. The market changed five minutes ago and you have to refocus on a different audience. You may even work in marketing, which these days has to be a pretty crazy adventure to judge by my friends in the industry.

I’m entirely sympathetic and I’m a guy that enjoys marketing himself. We’d like to get away from it, probably because we’re tired of hearing about it all the time. “Marketing” is becoming like “Networking” in that everyone tells us we need to do it, and at this point we’d like them to dearly shut up about it.

Be it your career or your small business or your side gig, I’m sorry, marketing is inevitable as part of your job or jobs. It’s not going away any time soon barring societal collapse, and in that case we have lots of other problems. But knowing it’s inevitable I’d like to talk about why it became so inevitable in our daily lives and professions and even hobbies.

If we understand why we can’t avoid marketing, we can work it into our job search or our consulting business or whatever geeky ambition we have or hope for. We may not always like it, but we can see the outline of why this is almost inflicted on us and make it work.

Or at least tolerate it.

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The Job Search: Start Judging Yourself

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Lately, when I talk to people about their job searches, it seems that a lot of them are worried they're being labeled in their job searches by recruiters.  They worry these labels are at best limiting, and at worst, detrimental.  With so much labeling, there's honest fear the judgements being passed are harmful.

Here's my take: yes, you're being labeled.

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