Today, I spoke with Kevin Maney, who has experience as a journalist, blogger, author and song writer. In this interview, I try and figure out how he manages all these brand identities and how he manages his time. Are you suffering from multiple brand personality disorder? I sure am!
I’ve been storing every interview I’ve conducted on a special tab within this blog. If you are interested in reading past interviews click here.
Kevin, you have a very impressive background. You’ve extended your personal brand into publishing, journalism, music and speaking. How do you manage to spread your brand in each of these areas, remain sane and keep everything consistent?
Who says I’ve remained sane?
- Key #1: To whatever degree I’ve successfully done this, I think there are two keys. One is that, as much as possible, I do stuff that I enjoy. I write books and columns and stories about things I like to write about. I enjoy the speaking gigs. And I love writing and playing music. As long as I find it fun, I can get up the energy to do it. I know that when I accept some assignment for a story I don’t believe in, I struggle to get it done.
- Key #2: The second key is that I try to make the different pieces work for each other. So I write songs about technology topics and use the music to boost my visibility in the tech community. The books help get speaking gigs that put me in front of people who might then go read my magazine stories. And so on.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoPsBdvFxUE]
You wrote a book that explored Thomas Watson Sr.’s life and the making of IBM. What qualities did Thomas have that helped make both him and his company successful?
You probably don’t think this way about IBM now, but in its early decades of existence, it was a little more than slightly crazy. This was because Watson was a little more than slightly crazy. He made some enormous gambles that paid off. You could say that was luck, but I think he made his own luck. I ended up admiring him for it.
You also wrote a book about the leaders and losers in the communication industry. What are 2 winners and 2 losers and why?
That book came out in 1995, so I wrote it in 1994 – before hardly anyone even heard of the Internet. I was writing about the vague beginnings of the digital age, and no one had any idea how it would all unfold. As it turned out, I was pretty on target about the big trends – but way off target on specific companies that would be helped or hurt. Let’s just say that, like everyone else at the time, I thought Apple was heading for doomsday.
You’ve been both a traditional journalist and blogger. Which format do you like better and why?
Hard to say. I love the long-form story-telling I can do in a magazine. But blogging doesn’t come with editors.
Do you have any time management and “work-life balance” tips? You seem to be able to do everything and still enjoy playing and coaching soccer.
I don’t sleep a lot. And I hardly ever have a real day off, even on weekends. I fit work into available pockets – like a quiet evening when there’s nothing else on my calendar, or a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. I do find time for my kids and for myself. But I often long for time to just chill out and read or watch TV. That almost never happens.
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Kevin Maney is a contributing editor at Conde Nast Portfolio and a blogger for Portfolio.com. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM, published in 2003 by John Wiley & Sons. Fortune magazine made it one of four suggested books to read in the summer of 2003. BusinessWeek named Maverick one of the 10 best books of 2003. Maney also wrote the 1995 BusinessWeek bestseller Megamedia Shakeout.
Maney is often on television and radio, and appeared regularly on the PBS show “This Week In Business” during its two-year run. He is also a regular keynote speaker and on-stage interviewer, appearing at university events, conferences and company events around the world.
