I heard a great personal branding story on a visit to my former hometown of Montreal.
The story was about what happened when my friend Amiel Bender of Beth Ora Synagogue in Montreal met one of the most famous Canadian hockey players ever, the great Jean Béliveau.
If you’re not familiar with hockey, Béliveau played on 10 championship-winning teams with the Montreal Canadiens, and his name appears on the champions’ Stanley Cup another 7 times as an executive of the team, for an amazing total of 17 engravings, which is more than any other single NHL player or team appears on the Cup. A Hockey Hall of Fame goal scorer who’s won every NHL offensive trophy at least once, only one other Canadiens player got more points in their career.
So in hockey-mad Canada, he’s pretty famous. Royalty.
Among other things, Reverend Amiel Bender is 2nd Cantor at Beth Ora. One of his side activities is in composing Jewish music. In his additional capacity as Synagogue Youth Director, Amiel and an associate recently met with Mr. Béliveau, and here’s what happened.
After talking for about 30 minutes, Jean offered to sign some autographs. Once called Hockey’s Ultimate Pen Pal because he responds to every piece of fan mail, Jean has signed tens of thousands of autographs and he knows that people want them. Amiel knew that, was expecting the offer, and was ready.
“Let me sign one for you first,” Amiel responded, earning a surprised look from Mr. Béliveau. Amiel then proceeded to pull a cassette tape from his jacket with a marker and wrote “To Jean, Best Wishes,” and autographed it. Handing it over, he said “this is a collection of my Jewish music, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.”
Mr. Béliveau couldn’t believe it, saying “No one’s ever offered done that for me before! Thank you.”
Whenever Jean Béliveau is reminded of Jewish music, he’ll never forget Amiel Bender and his autograph.
Have you ever made a memorable impression on someone famous? Tell us your story here below.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
