Millenium Marketer

The more I look at Facebook recently, the more I see baby pictures. And when I say baby pictures, I mean newborn sons and daughters of friends who are newly parents. I browse these pictures with great interest and can see myself as a doting aunt, showering presents, organic cotton blankets, BPA free sippy cups, baby carriers or other baby things that are en vogue.

Even so, to see myself as parent is an anxious vision, a possible threat to my career and personal growth. Am I alone in this worry, I wondered. Right now, simply balancing work, writing, friends, family is difficult, more seems impossible.

I wanted to find out how others have approached work life balance with children so I took this scenario to a jury of skilled careerists: What would negatively impact your personal brand, if anything, should you choose to have children?

There was a gentle scolding for thinking about prioritizing career over children, and was reminded that children can be negatively branded too if exposed to workaholic parents: “Worrying about your personal brand while raising children causes me to question your sense of priorities.” Miri, a mother of two boys, said that it doesn’t negatively impact career, but it does change things a whole lot, “depending on the decisions you make.”

I also liked this idea from Ashley Feader, who says, “Your personal brand should reflect your values and your life as a whole – not just work.” I agree with this wholeheartedly because it is important that perception from others does not dictate how a person lives his/her life.

Even so, Raquel Elle Bell, CEO of 23 Degrees Branding, reflected my fears the best: “If I walk into a board room pregnant with a bunch of executives, usually all men, will they take me seriously?…I also wonder if people will take me seriously in being driven in my business if my focus is not 100% on building my company.”

Even now in 2011, there is a looming worry about males in the office, while politically speaking, they’d have to be understanding, you just can’t know how it impacts you in terms of missed opportunities or their perceptions. Because work and home life are still somewhat considered separate, talks at the watercooler are mostly about work or the weather, a pregnant woman in the office can do the unthinkable just by standing there, remind others that there exists a gray line between work in the office and caring for family at home.

Clearly Raquel and I, we’re not alone in this fear, according to a blog post in the Wall Street Journal. A study by McKinsey & Co. says women are less likely to believe they have opportunity to advance the more children that they have.

Disclaimer: this chart was an attempt to give you a visual, but without knowing the details of the McKinsey study, we don’t want to jump to too many conclusions

One of the reasons women could feel this way is somewhat tied to the gender gap in salary pay, because employers are more likely to perceive women as holding two shifts (work and children) and thus deserve less pay. At the same time, there were past trends during the recession indicating that there were more stay at home dads, because women could be paid slightly less than their male counterparts, and save companies money. Certainly there must be other factors at play? Would you agree/disagree that the study holds any weight at all?

As always, if you have an opinion on this topic, feel free to comment about the subject, better visuals, or more. If you have children, how has your career been impacted? And if you don’t have children, what are your hopes or fears about that coveted work-life balance?

Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love writes that every person has one single word that they live by.
I had to remind myself today that my word is not “marketer.” A little bit shocking given the name of this blog, but marketer suggests a professional or expert.
Have you ever had this experience? You’re so entrenched with reading social media blogs and are so on-trend and steeped in marketing theory, you forget to connect with your actual customers.
At least that’s what was happening to me. So I had to tell myself this.

News flash, ace, your audience is not other professional marketers, it’s people who want to be marketers.

Identifying your Influencers is a Catch Phrase
A couple of years ago, when social media was still growing, I read a lot of catchy buzz phrases through the blogosphere.
Listen to the conversation.
Identify your “influencers.”
Engage or die.
Target your key words and measure your traffic.

I have to say the messages are changing a bit, and I don’t deny that they are true in their own way. The problem is that many bloggers (including myself) have gotten in the habit of repeating these catch phrases. I’ve gotten a bit tired of experts standing on their soap box, because if you are to follow their steps, you may not get your desired result. (A while back, I took some of Chris Brogan‘s advice about blog ideas way too literally. I managed to take some pictures of my neighborhood and post them on Flickr. In hindsight it is funny to me because none of those posts resulted in any of the conversations I desired to initiate.) The point is I started following instead of reaching out to others in diverse contexts.

And, Reciprocation in “Being Social” is Not Equal
Look at Freakonomics on Twitter, how many people do you see Freaknomics following?

The All Stars are few, and the chances that I will collaborate with THEM, are very slim. I may shake hands with an All Start Social Media talking head. It will satisfy that “can I have your autograph, I’m Starstruck” impulse. Still, these are people with already busy lives, families and many other fans to tend to, and I am not writing this blog to impress them.

There are so many more of the RIGHT people who want to have their 5 minutes of fame. So many more who would love to have their say, and who want to talk back.

Truth Is, Real Connections Happen in your Target Community
I met a blogger last week. His name is Will, and he is on a blogger network called Brazen Careerist. He has an awesome blog called Peoplegogy and has been very successful at bringing in guest writers. It is pretty cool, you can see people coming from different backgrounds talking about their lives. He likes to write, and clearly has an interest in social media as a means. I don’t think he pays much attention to the talking heads, the All Stars. He focuses on his audience.

What do you think? Is connecting with your audience hard or easy? How do you initiate conversations about the things they value and want to talk about?

A Victim Treats His Mugger Right : NPR.

A Facebook friend led me to this story, and I was so touched by it when I read it. I  especially admired Julio Diaz’s courage and how he was not afraid to do the right thing.

Said Diaz: “”I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

My sister, a musician on a much more unconventional career path, often says this: “You are your own path.” And more recently, she asked me, “Are you doing what you wanted to do when you were a child?”

It’s a poignant question, and I realize that this year, I have not yet sat down to do a personal branding audit. It is crucial, every individual “careerist” should do it, every business should do it, and the number reason to do it at all is to find your center, your mission and who you are all about. Whether it is to affirm the current path you are on, to remind others of what you are about, re-assess the path you are on, or to move in a totally different direction, your story is the one way you can build your own path.  With all the demands of every day life, responsibilities that we enjoy, it’s important to come back and remember who YOU are and what that means.

That “path” is not always defined by technical skills. It is also your character and how it is a unique character from others that will allow you to stand out against someone with equal talent. So, I took the Strengths Finder 2.0 (by Gallup) recently and out came some cursory answers or pointers to who I might be.

My top 5 strengths are:

• Connectedness: This works for me on two levels. On an intellectual level, I make quick connections to ideas, events or people, even if they do not seem related to the present subject matter.  It comes in handy when someone is looking for a reference, or when patterns in data come out of the woodwork. On an emotional level, I care greatly about how actions and words affect relationships between friends and family. (Although sometimes I miss the mark on this, and am myopic at times with my own friends)
• Empathy: People with this trait can quickly develop intuition about how others are feeling at a given moment, or anticipate an occurrence before it actually happens.
• Intellection: People with Intellection are avid readers and have a strong memory. I find myself sometimes remembering inane events or statistics that aren’t necessarily useful. In other cases, I can remember minute details that I need to access quickly, mostly because it is something I have read and understood many times over. Intellection also suggests that I prefer a world of ideas and theory than practicalities.
• Adaptability: “By nature, you realize that each day offers its own surprises. You trust you can handle whatever occurs. Even when you do not know exactly what to do, you probably know someone who does.” I would atribute this potential trait to my many travels and early trips volunteering in Asia.
• Responsibility: As for this one, I can sum up the one thing that stood out most for me on this one. When people ask me to do something, I want to do it, and it is very hard not to get overwhelmed by over-committing. I have had to learn to push back and pick the things that I want to do, but on the flip side, I get so easily interested in so many things it is not easy to say no. :)

Now, by no means do these Gallup traits really “form” my personality, but it’s an interesting jumping off point to keep developing my story, or my unique value proposition. Because, there is one truth that stands out in my mind: no single person is like another, not even siblings or twins, and to be reminded by a simple quiz that each individual has the potential to stand out is a small comfort.

What are your top five strengths? I’d love to hear about your “aha!” moments and what got you closer to understanding yourself better so you could share that message with other people on your same career path.

Thanks to blogger friends for the kernel of this post: John Saddington, who says “I am not defined by any “Personality Profile” nor is my identity found in them”, although he and I would share the idea that it is important to be connected and self aware, and Rebecca Thorman, who also likes to be connected.

I’ve been following the story of the Gulf Oil Spill, and been quiet about it because it puts me into a panic when I think about it.  How can we experience another crisis after Hurricane Katrina in the same area as before?

There are so many complicated aspects about this issue, and it has the oil issue so poignant for many, many Americans.

Economic: Previously, the oil industry supported the fishing industry, and now it’s destroying livelihoods.

Environmental: Because of the high demand for oil, animals are now suffering for those mistakes.

If anything, when I listened to Van Jones speech, it lifted my spirits and quells anxiety levels, if only for an hour or so. Can’t deny it: better speaker than Obama, and uses less parallel sentence structures. Van Jones is definitely the kind of speaker that I would love to have as a role model.

Van Jones Forecasts Green Job Revolution : NPR.

If you want teams to work better together, create spaces that enable more “clicking” between individuals and teams.

I especially like point #3: create safe havens. It’s important to foster environments where there are clear ground rules for creativity and constructive criticism.

‘Click’: Techniques for High Performance Teaming

Just logged on for a quick blog.
Since it’s the middle of the year, it’s a good time to look back at the last 6 months and consider where I am right now in the end of June 2010.
Since the Greener Mind Summit, I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude. In its purest form, it is the simplest way that a single person can motivate others to action.
Or more important, it’s the best way you can motivate yourself. So in risk of seeming like an egomaniac, here are some of my goals wrapped up in gratitude. But truly the first thing that we can do to put things into action is commit to the things we say aloud (or write aloud).

The first thing I am grateful for: my friends and family. That goes without saying. And, the people I met as part of Net Impact who have inspired this post. ;-)

The second thing I am thankful for is the privilege to eat as I want. Every other Wednesday I get my box from a farm near Davis.
Today, we received a box with a mini watermelon, some corn, carrots, red grapes…I can tell you they are really worth the investment. (On a side note, that is what Community Sustained Agriculture is about, it’s not necessarily what you pay for is what you get, part of the benefit is the feeling that you are part of a community contributing to this farm that is doing the work we aren’t doing, because a lot of us work on swivel chairs typing on the computer, as I am doing now. So today I am thankful for the farmers still sustaining that life.)

The third thing I am thankful is my body and my health. After some months of working really hard, I forgot about my body. It was being sacrificed for the sake of efficiency, avoiding the winter rain and many other excuses to be had. So this week I made the conscious effort to remember to eat well and exercise. Today, I started training for a new goal: 50 miles on bike.
D and I just got home, and I biked 10 miles in 45 minutes (at the gym). I imagine I will have 35 miles more to complete by Sunday, so 10 miles again at the gym, and a 25 mile ride this weekend.

At the end of this month, it will also be about 3 or 4 months into my new(er) role at the marketing research firm where I work. Thank goodness for the everyday challenges and for everyone I work with.

Now that I’ve shared some of my goals, what are some of yours?

Having just come back from the GreenerMind Summit in Mendocino County, thanks to Net Impact SF, HUB SF and YWSE, I just wanted to jot down a few notes on Leadership. One of my favorite sessions at the Summit was about leadership as a driver of change.

Speaking of change, that definition is: execution of ideas, values and goals into something that has impact on the individual personally, the community and the larger world. It can have impact on the environment as well if that is part of your goal and value set.

Leadership, then, is the function of inspiring, empowering and communicating with others. A good leader doesn’t let power “intoxicate” them because they know that people have chosen to take the time to help because of common interest and goals.

Read more….
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Lately, life has felt like a marathon. For a while there, it worked like a well oiled machine: wake up early, take the train, go to work, solve problems, have discussions, etc., etc. come home, cook dinner and then go to sleep. Do it again, four more times. Until, the routine just seemed too much of the same. It felt like I was running as fast as I could and for dear life.

It was just earlier this month when I got sick with achy muscles that wouldn’t move right that I realized I had not stopped. I was frantic, and my mind was running a mile a minute. During intense periods of work, lunch would become a work-and-eat affair over my keyboard, and I had forgotten on many occasions to stay hydrated and drink more H20 than I would coffee.

Then I had some very simple advice, so simple, that you wouldn’t think it would change your perspective. You can’t run a marathon (or a 100 mile bike ride) without training. Training a marathon means you track your progress, celebrate the wins and take time to evaluate where to go next or how to improve. Work, believe it or not, can be the same way.

When setting goals or setting your to-do list, your goal is to identify one of three actions as you check things off the list: execute, assess, or reschedule the task for another date. Having a system is important to keep order and I think it also helps the brain’s long term memory to keep a system that repeats itself daily. This way the brain doesn’t need to remember the routine and can focus on more complex problems.

One of my big problems was that I would forget to drink water. But, by scheduling water breaks, it suddenly was not something I had to remember to do, but rather something I had planned to do, like another task in my day that had to be checked off. And checking it off my to do list was both satisfying analytically as it was gratifying for my body to get much needed hydration. :D

One tool I have found very useful to do this is David Seah’s 2010 Emergent Task Planner. It allows me to estimate how much time a goal will take and then mark how much time it really takes. While timing yourself might seem like a good way to be in a rush, actually the opposite is true.

For people who simply like to count things, putting on a stopwatch will seem satisfying enough. But for contextual thinkers like me, estimating blocks of time allows me to ask big questions like, did the task get executed well? Where do I need to improve? Why did it take less (or more) time than usual? And so on.

What are some of your favorite productivity tricks? How did you like the ones suggested? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Coast's Ri Rea Top, a brand message aspiration

I have many, many problems to solve at work. Many.
Aside from everyday challenges, which you don’t want to hear about in technical detail, here is one challenge that you may have faced before.

Re-vamping personal style = continuous work on personal branding message or branding strategy. Whether you’re looking for a new job or vying for the next promotion, this is a piece that is often discounted but actually quite important to communicating effectively to someone else about who you are.

It’s not very different from giving a brand a new name. Network Appliance, for one, rebranded themselves by shortening their name to “NetApp”.  While I may be strongly familiar with the qualities and attributes of my personal brand (i.e. hard working, creative or whatever else that is credible), being able to communicate the right message is top priority.

Some people invest a lot of time in making their personal style work, but this is really challenging to do when I have other competing priorities at work or at home.

The first step is to have the right essentials that will help keep your brand message consistent on a daily basis. With Tim Gunn’s top 10 Fashion Essentials, I can at least state this message simply and effectively.

Hmm…at least I’ve got a few items on this list, including a black dress and a white shirt. Score!

Then the part that is really hard, because time is so limited for us, is being able to choose the right pieces at the right price. Call it the extra “razzle dazzle” of your brand message, if you will. For some inspiration, there is no better resource, next to hiring a personal stylist than tapping into the fashionista and personal style community at Polyvore.

At Polyvore, you can ask for advice from aspiring stylists, view sets made by community members, or create your own. It’s an awesome way to learn to set up your personal brand and decide what really says that it’s you. You can experiment by putting together “sets” and see what each piece might say about  you. You can also <a href=”http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/advice.browse”>ask for consulting advice</a> in exchange for giving your own advice, too. Already, I’ve been recommended satin blouses to go with blazers–like the one on the right, which with the right pieces will say, I’m nice, a little feminine, and ready to work. I’m excited about the prospect of learning more so I can share more with these hardcore brand strategists or brand managers :)

Overall, it’s important to send the right message, but equally important is to remember not to obsess over your look, because it’s just a thin layer between you and the other person. It’s important to keep a good attitude, of course, and always smile while working hard!

This post is a nod to @trishaisworking who is an awesome brand strategist herself, and who has been great to encourage me, reminding me that I probably know more than I think I do about making my clothes work for me.