I just plunked down a sizeable portion of my total net worth, investing it with someone I believe in. He’s a first time entrepreneur, except for being the helpful, handy neighbor boy while he was growing up.
Among his credentials is this: no one has ever handed him anything – he’s always earned his way. And, by the way, he doesn’t have a clue what a personal brand is, whether he has one or what it could be.
The relentless brand
Long ago he created his company’s name and drew its logo, thinking one day it might make a great tattoo. He’s kept a notebook about his vision hidden in his bookshelf, along with artwork and other little known talents tucked away because they’ve been called unrealistic. He was too humble to think that his vision would be more than ink on his skin.
What impressed me was how hard he’d always worked. It’s an ethic that started way before I knew him, when he was about eight years old. He got a wheelbarrow and some mix to make concrete. Then he went neighbor by neighbor asking if he could patch up the short wall that stood between their houses and the lake they surrounded. He did it year after year, adding snow shoveling, and leaf raking to his services. He liked the feeling of being a little handyman, earning his own money and self-respect.
More than daydreaming
By 14, he joined ski club in school and was the only kid who doled out $100 of his own money to buy a ski jacket. He bought his bikes, his video game tokens, his books, his cars and so on, as the prizes of his desire got bigger. Eventually, and I mean eventually – about ten years – he worked his way through college. By then he had worked as a chef in a fine dining restaurant, when he turned down the offer of a full time job there – because the drinks were free and he couldn’t recall a day without a beer, actually several of them.
Oh, and on one of the three jobs he did to keep himself in school he was blinded when an industrial lawnmower launched a rock at his face. The doctors said his eye had exploded and they would have to remove it. In fact it didn’t, so he got to keep it, but he never regained much sight in it. Yet, he’s a free ride downhill mountain biker, mogul skier and the guy who believes, “if you can’t get killed doing it, it’s not my kind of sport.”
The most remarkable theme that runs through his life is how many people doubted his will, his talent, his aptitude, his abilities and his character. The only other consistent theme is how he persisted against the odds.
So, when I met him I was pretty impressed with his relentlessness. If I would get to name his personal brand promise, it would be complicated. He is courageous, strong, meticulous, resourceful, charismatic, honest, strict with himself and a great judge of character. The only things he hates are intolerance and eggplant. He plays a great bass guitar in his garage.
As if the universe is making up for a lifetime of being discounted, he now has an abundance of people cheering him on in his new venture. I am only one of them.
Personal brands: what would your prospective investors, referral sources, recruiters, clients, prospects, boss, co-workers, and the janitor say about you?
Do you help the box boy pack your groceries?
Are you first to offer jumper cables?
Would you wake up early on Saturday to help a friend move a couch?
Personal brands: Avoid anyone who’s telling you “you can’t succeed,” or “this is a tough economy,” or anything else that makes your life more difficult. Focus on being more than a human doing; consider who you are as a human being.
Just because things don’t add up logically, don’t think your dreams don’t count.
