Never Eat Alone Read online

  "Kevin, that's just self-defeating crap. From the first day I joined Deloitte—that's a pretty large consulting firm, right?—I went out of my way to take on projects no one wanted and initiated projects no one had thought of doing. I e-mailed my boss, and sometimes my boss's boss, ideas. And I did it almost every day. What was the worst thing that could happen? I'd get fired from a job I didn't like anyway. Alternatively, I'd make the effort to create the job—regardless of where it was—that I thought would make me happy."

  FerrazziGreenlight's training-and-development division does a lot of training at professional schools and new-hire training for big companies. In our training, we try again and again to hammer home the message that your career is yours and yours alone to manage. Every job I've ever had, I've made an effort to brand myself as an innovator, a thinker, a salesman, and someone who could get stuff done. When I was just a management trainee at ICI, my first job out of college, I sent a set of recommendations to the CEO. So he never responded. But I never stopped sending those e-mails.

  It's just silly to think you can't impact people's personal and professional expectations of who you are. By making the effort, you can break the glass ceiling by expanding people's view of your capability.

  Peters tells his own story of an airline stewardess who suggested that her airline put one olive in their martinis rather than two. The suggestion went on to save the company over $40,000 a year and the stewardess was—instantly—branded. Today, she's probably a vice president.

  The novelist Milan Kundera once reflected that flirting is the promise of sex with no guarantee. A successful brand, then, is the promise and guarantee of a mind-shattering experience each and every time. It's the e-mail you always read because of who it's from. It's the employee who always gets the cool projects.

  To become a brand, you've got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value. And I promise you can add value to whatever job you're doing now. Can you do what you do faster and more efficiently? If so, why not document what it would take to do so and offer it to your boss as something all employees might do? Do you initiate new projects on your own and in your spare time? Do you search out ways to save or make your company more money?

  You can't do all that if you're solely concerned with minimizing risk, respecting the chain of command, and following your job description to the letter. There's no room for yes-men in this pursuit. Those with the gumption to make their work special will be the ones to establish a thriving brand.

  You can't do meaningful work that makes a difference unless you're devoted to learning, growing, and stretching your skills. If you want others to redefine what you do and who you are within organizational boundaries, then you have to be able to redefine yourself. That means going above and beyond what's called for. It means seeing your resume as a dynamic, changing document every year. It means using your contacts inside and outside your network to deliver each project you're assigned with inspired performance. Peters calls this the pursuit of WOW in everything you do.

  There are a whole lot of road maps out there these days to selfincorporated wow-ness. But the maps often rely more on intuition than navigation. The key generally comes down to a few simple things: Shake things up! Find your value! Obsess on your image! Turn everything into an opportunity to build your brand.

  So how do you create an identity for a brilliant career? How do you become the swoosh of your company? Of your network? Here are three steps to get you on the road to becoming the next Oprah Winfrey:

  Develop a Personal Branding Message (PBM)

  A brand is nothing less than everything everyone thinks of when they see or hear your name. The best brands, like the most interesting people, have a distinct message.

  Your PBM comes from your content/unique value proposition, as we discussed in the last chapter, and a process of selfevaluation. It involves finding out what's really in a name—your name. It calls for you to identify your uniqueness and how you can put that uniqueness to work. It's not a specific task so much as the cultivation of a mind-set.

  What do you want people to think when they hear or read your name? What product or service can you best provide? Take your skills, combine them with your passions, and find out where in the market, or within your own company, they can best be applied.

  Your message is always an offshoot of your mission and your content. After you've sat down and figured out who you want to be, and you've written goals in some version of ninety-day, threeyear, and ten-year increments, you can build a brand perception that supports all this.

  Your positioning message should include a list of words that you want people to use when referring to you. Writing those words down are a big first step in having others believe them. Ask your most trusted friends what words they would use to describe you, for good and for bad. Ask them what are the most important skills and attributes you bring to the table.

  When I was once hungry to become chief executive officer at a Fortune 500 company, my PBM read as follows: "Keith Ferrazzi is defined as one of the most innovative and bottom line-focused marketers and CEOs in the world. His string of dramatic 'firsts' have followed every position he has held. His passion gives off a light that he carries wherever he goes."

  Package the Brand

  Most people's judgments and impressions are based on visuals— everything other than the words you speak that communicates to others what you're about. For everyone in every field—let's be real—looks count, so you'd better look polished and professional.

  There is one general, overarching caveat in this step: Stand out! Style matters. Whether you like it or not, clothing, letterheads, hairstyles, business cards, office space, and conversational style are noticed—big time. The design of your brand is critical. Buy some new clothes. Take an honest look at how you present yourself. Ask others how they see you. How do you wish to be seen?

  The bottom line is you have to craft an appearance to the outside world that will enhance the impression you want to make. "Everyone sees what you appear to be," observed Machiavelli, "few really know what you are."

  When I was younger, I used to wear bow ties. I felt that it was a signature that people would not quickly forget, and it worked. "You were the guy who spoke at the conference last year wearing the bow tie," I'd hear over and over again. Over time, I was able to give up that signature, as my message and delivery became my brand and I didn't think the bow tie corresponded to my evolving image of someone on the cutting edge of ideas.

  Why not create a personal Web site? A Web site is a terrific and cheap marketing tool for your brand, and a great way to force you to clearly articulate who you are. With a good-looking site, you look as polished and professional as any major corporation on the Internet.

  This may sound trivial, but it's not. Little choices make big impressions.

  Broadcast Your Brand

  You've got to become your own PR firm, as I'll talk about in the next chapter. Take on the projects no one wants at work. Never ask for more pay until after you've been doing the job successfully and become invaluable. Get on convention panels. Write articles for trade journals and company newsletters. Send e-mails filled with creative ideas to your CEO. Design your own Me, Inc. brochure.

  The world is your stage. Your message is your "play." The character you portray is your brand. Look the part; live the part.

  24. Broadcast Your Brand

  Now you have your "content," and the beginnings of a brand. You're getting good, really good. That's how you've become an authority in your company. But your job is not done. If the rest of the world isn't familiar with how good you are, you and your company are only gaining part of the benefit. The fact is, you've got to extend your reach and level of outside recognition. That's how you'll become an authority not just in your company but in your industry. It comes in part from visibility. I'm not suggesting you stand on your local street corner with a sign on a sandwich board exclaiming, "Put me on TV!" Though come to think of i t . . . w
ell, let's hold off for now. I've got some suggestions on high-stakes self-promotion that will make your effort becoming known a little bit easier, sans the public embarrassment. And I'm no stranger to embarrassment. I've taken a few knocks to learn the right and wrong ways to let others know about what I do.

  You don't have to look far to see why increased visibility might be important for your career, and for extending your network of colleagues and friends. Take, for example, self-promoting phenom Donald Trump. How many other real estate moguls do you know offhand? Right—I can't name anyone else either. Why is the "The Donald" considered the ultimate dealmaker? Probably because he's called himself that a million times over in any number of articles and television interviews and now a highly rated TV show. Because he has a book entitled The Art of the Deal.

  But his self-promotion is not just ego (though by how much, I'm not quite sure); it makes plenty of business sense, too. His buzz-worthy brand now has a value unto itself. Buildings with his name on it are more valuable and bring in higher rental fees. When The Donald went bankrupt, banks that would have otherwise foreclosed on any other struggling mogul gave Trump leeway, not only because they knew he was good at what he did but because they knew his name alone would go a long way in helping him recover from his setbacks. Trump is a talented developer, but then so are a lot of other people. The difference? He promotes himself.

  The fact is that those people who are known beyond the walls of their own cubicle have a greater value. They find jobs more easily. They usually rise up the corporate ladder faster. Their networks begin to grow without much heavy lifting.

  I can hear the groans of discomfort already stirring. You may be thinking, "I'm shy. I don't like to talk about myself. Isn't modesty a virtue?" Well, I can assure you that if you hide your accomplishments, they'll remain hidden. If you don't promote yourself, however graciously, no one else will.

  Like it or not, your success is determined as much by how well others know your work as by the quality of your work. Luckily, there are hundreds of new channels and mediums for you to get the word out.

  So how do you promote Brand You?

  Every day, you read or hear about companies in newspapers, magazines, on television, and on the Web. Most of the time the article or story is about celebrity CEOs and big companies. It's not because they are more deserving of the press than you or me. It's the result of well-planned and strategic public relations. Big companies have PR machines working for them to shape and control their image (though not always successfully).

  Smaller companies and individuals have to do it themselves. But by using some pluck and a strategy of your own, access to the media is not as difficult as you may think. Journalists do less sleuthing for their stories than you'd imagine. They get a majority of their stories from people that have sought them out, and not the other way around. And like everyone else in any profession, they tend to follow the herd. Which means once you get written about, other reporters will come calling. Assigned you as a subject, they'll do a quick Google search, and presto: They'll find you are an already cited source and will seek you out to cite you again.

  One article creates visibility, which in turn will put you in front of other journalists, creating the possibility of more articles and visibility. A journalist's deadlines make magazine and newspaper work the art of the possible, not the perfect.

  The key is to view the exposure of your brand as a PR campaign. How are you going to get your message out there? How are you going to make sure that the message gets out the way you want it to get out? Sure, your network is a good start. Everyone you meet and everyone you talk to should know what you do, why you're doing it, and how you can do it for him or her. But why not broadcast that same message to a thousand networks across the country?

  Now we're talking.

  As I mentioned before, when I became CEO of YaYa, it was a company with virtually no revenue, and clearly no recognized market. We had visionary founders, Jeremy Milken and Seth Gerson, but we needed a market.

  There was, however, one company with a similar product. I'm going to call them Big Boy Software. They had created a software tool that facilitated the actual creation of high-end games. They too were trying to find their business model and generate revenue. Both of us were in a race to become the established brand in the new market we were creating.

  Soon after we defined the advergaming space, Big Boy saw how YaYa was picking up steam (and generating operating revenue) selling games to big brands. They followed suit, positioning themselves as competitors to YaYa. The main difference between them and us was that they had way, way more money. They had raised a huge amount of capital that put our resources to shame. There is no need to go into the comparative details of who was a better company (I'm a little biased, of course). But the fact remains, they had tons of resources and we did not—at all.

  So how did YaYa become the market leader?

  The answer is, we created buzz: that powerful, widespread phenomenon that can determine the future of individuals, companies, and movies alike. Buzz is the riddle every enterprising person is trying to solve. It's a grassroots, word-of-mouth force that can turn a low-budget flick about a witch into a multimillion-dollar blockbuster. (Ever hear of The Blair Witch Project?) You feel its energy in Internet chat rooms, at the gym, on the street, and all of it is stoked by a media hungry for the inside scoop. Buzz is marketing on steroids.

  Here's an example of how well it works: Remember Napster? One day it was a clever software idea hatched in some kid's dorm room allowing users online to link up and share MP3 music files. Six months later, it was a Silicon Valley start-up, the source of a major lawsuit, playing bandwidth havoc with servers around the country. Even when it was shut down, the name had enough buzz to be bought for something like $50 million.

  Advertising or a life-empowering endorsement by Oprah had nothing to do with it. Napster was, well, cool. And as a result of buzz, it was very famous.

  As a marketer, over the years, I have developed an idea of how buzz is created. One way is to generate what I call "catalytic moments." When you watch a big football game, have you noticed how the tide of a game will suddently turn in favor of one team or the other? It starts with a huge play, and in many cases is followed by more key plays. Buzz is like that. It needs a situation, a pivotal moment, an inside scoop, a crazy giveaway—something that will get the crowd whispering. Unfortunately, YaYa was too young and poor for such a strategy.

  Another way is to report compelling news by leveraging the power of the media to get your brand sizzling. The Jesse Ventura for Governor of Minnesota campaign is a perfect example. Significantly outspent by two major competitors, Ventura gained valuable media exposure by persuading the media to report on things like his creative use of advertising and a G.I. Joe-like action figure. Similarly, I look for compelling stories that create buzz within the news media.

  That's where feeding the "infiuentials" comes into play. Infiuentials are what marketing wonks call those people who can ignite brand buzz. They are the small segment of the population that will adopt a cool product early on and infect everyone else with the bug. They are also the celebrities and experts whose word is gospel. It's imperative that you identify those people and get your brand in front of them.

  I mentioned the KPE agency before. They were just what I was looking for. An interactive marketing and technology consultancy on the cutting edge, KPE had taken an early interest in the new space we were creating. They were a recognized name among Fortune 1000 companies known for spotting the newest trends. Happily, their head of strategy was Matt Ringel, whom I had gotten to know from our mutual interest in the nonprofit devoted to preserving objects and places of historical significance, called "Save American Treasures."

  I reached out to Matt and proposed that he lead an effort to write an article introducing this space to the market. I knew that a white paper (research documents that consulting companies put out on hot topics of the day) introducing us and the tec
hnology from an unbiased perspective would be far more effective and lead to more credibility than anything we could do ourselves. I worked with Matt and his right hand, Jane Chen, for weeks on the paper, giving them examples from YaYa, getting clients to speak with them, introducing methodologies and insights that we had gained through our experience. I had gone to analysts before this who were interested in the space and were now willing to speak to Matt about what we were doing as well.

  I was giving KPE another opportunity to look cutting edge and take a leadership position in the space, while in return, just by dint of the access I was giving KPE, I bet that YaYa would be the primary example in the case study. Great things came from the article, including the new name for the space, which we called (thanks to the creativity of Jane Chen) "Advergaming." The name alone had buzz.

  One lesson we learned from the experience is that your PR campaign has to be realistic. More often than not, you will have to start small. You'll be forced to focus on your local paper, high school and college newsletters, or industry trade journals. Or perhaps just a white paper listed on some consulting company's Web site. The point is to light the fire.

  When the white paper was completed, it received amazing publicity thanks to KPE's PR engine (which, unlike us, they could afford), and we indeed came out as the instant leader of the space. As an interesting side note, I subsequently recruited both Matt and Jane into YaYa (I wanted the founders of advergaming in my organization).

  It took less than a year for us to appear on the cover of BrandWeek, in the marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal, in the technology section of the New York Times, in a feature for Forbes... the list goes on. I was consistently on every panel with the competition (generally I was invited for free while "the boys" paid for the opportunity). While money can certainly be a substitute for good PR, it's hard to have enough of it to offset the credibility one gets from just one article in Forbes or the New York Times.