3 YOU ARE WHO YOU SAY YOU ARE

Personal branding also involves a lot of storytelling. I like to think of it as the evolution of the résumé—our own brief history of who we are. Résumé is a French word that means “summary” and directly translates into English as “abstract.” Our résumés define not only what we have done but how we think. In today’s world, the résumé is for everyone, not just job-seekers, and it is not limited to a sheet of paper. Your résumé is everywhere. We use résumés to decide whether we want to pick up people for ride-share services; we use them to determine whether we want to swipe right on someone’s profile in a dating app or even whether we would invite them to dinner. The résumé has evolved into a sort of wiki for our lives.

Technology has evolved as well, and no one will wait for your résumé to decide whether they want to meet with you. No one is going to wait until they’ve met you on a first date before looking you up online. Today, even your grandparents communicate with you more frequently on Facebook than by telephone. We should all be aware that pretty much everything about us online is fair game for someone to make an assessment about our worthiness for new opportunities.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE RÉSUMÉ

Who wrote the first résumé? The first use of a résumé is credited to none other than the great Italian artist, architect, and engineer, Leonardo da Vinci. In 1481 or 1482 (the actual year is unknown), da Vinci wrote this handwritten résumé to the Duke of Milan:

Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to anyone else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things that, in part, shall be briefly noted below.

  1. I have [plans for] a sort of extremely light and strong bridge, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also, methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.

  2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions.

  3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.

  4. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion.

  5. And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and defense; and vessels that will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes.

  6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.

  7. I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance.

  8. In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type.

  9. Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.

  10. In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one place to another.

  11. I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also, I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.

Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency—to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.

Da Vinci’s résumé is the perfect kind of story that all résumés in the form of personal branding should tell. Today, you would strive to be less direct and use more signaling tactics, but that is the message.

Write a blog post about certain situations you face or your opinion on how to face them, and then post it on your LinkedIn. For instance, if you want to be a thought-leader in wealth management, identify a potential negative situation and write a post about what you would do if you were the one to solve it. Then, whenever people look at your LinkedIn profile or search for you online, they’ll find that story—the story of you solving their potential problem.

Just as da Vinci did, make sure you keep a few personal notes in the brand mix. In How Google Works, coauthor Eric Schmidt discusses how he decides whether or not to hire someone, which Fortune magazine relays as, “Imagine being stuck at an airport with a colleague; Eric always chooses LAX for maximum discomfort (although Atlanta or London will do in a pinch). Would you be able to pass the time in a good conversation with him? Would it be time well spent, or would you quickly find yourself rummaging through your carry-on for your tablet so you can read your latest email or the news or anything to avoid having to talk to this dull person?”7

If your personal résumé, digital presence, and personal brand messaging are all business, you are going to be labeled “boring.” No one wants to work with boring, and no one wants to hire boring to speak at their events. They want people who are qualified, ambitious, and know how to hold a conversation. Leonardo da Vinci knew this. He wrote a résumé that identified problems, provided solutions, and gave insight into his personality and hobbies. This is something to think about as you craft your personal brand story online. What are you saying to people? Does your personality shine through, or is it all business?

THE POST–DA VINCI RÉSUMÉ

Here we are today, 450 years after the first résumé was created. Following da Vinci’s résumé, we don’t see résumés in widespread use for another fifty years. In the 1930s, we can see the reemergence of the résumé (still handwritten) and how it slowly starts to pick up traction.

1940s: Women are discouraged from writing résumés, and men are told that theirs should include a photo, marital status, age, social background, height, weight, and religion.

1950s: Résumés become commonplace and are expected at every job interview.

1960s: People add their personal interests such as hobbies, clubs, and sports to their résumés.

1970s: Technology is moving forward, and people start typing their résumés instead of handwriting them.

1980s: How-to books on résumé writing begin popping up everywhere. In 1985, background checks become common. In 1987, the fax machine comes into play, and faxing becomes the professional way to send your résumé.

1990s: With the growing use of the World Wide Web, everyone is on email, which means that all résumés are emailed directly to the recipients.

2000s: LinkedIn is founded, and we start posting our résumés online.

What has changed? Well, what we can see from the résumé timeline is that résumés themselves have not changed much, but the way we deliver them has. In the 2010s, we have websites and access to digital media, which enable employers to search for you on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. Of course, we also have review-based websites, like Ripoff Report, Mugshots.com, and Yelp, where employers can find information about you (and you can find out about them).

You can think of personal branding as the art of writing your abstract—the summary of your life. What you don’t want it to contain is the content you can find about yourself online that appears without your consent. You know: the content you are not proud of, the picture you regret having taken, or even the car accident you were involved in. People will use this content to define you whether the material is relevant or not. We all have a brand already; people have an opinion of us, much of it shaped by what they find and read online—or don’t. We need to take back our stories, edit them, rewrite them, and improve them. We can be the narrators of our own digital stories, just as we have historically been the writers of our own résumés.

KNOW WHERE YOU ARE STARTING

Everyone already has a brand online. The difference is that some people control their brand and some people don’t. The first step in owning your online presence is to understand what to avoid putting your name on and what not to do online. Then you can start doing the research and working to change what is there. If you go through all of the work to tell a beautiful brand story without knowing how to manage it, then you are setting yourself up for failure. When in doubt, stop and ask yourself, If I post this, click this, or connect with this person or thing, who can see it, and what message will it send? If you can’t answer, then you should reconsider doing it. Here is a list of actions that I always avoid doing online.

Before you leave a review anywhere, think about the consequences it might have, or make sure the account that you are reviewing on is set to Private. I have had clients come in for audits, and when we take a deep dive into their digital footprint, we find unflattering Amazon reviews (some left by their children when the clients left their Amazon accounts open), their scathing reviews of restaurants, or even reviews of their medication on the pharmacy’s website. Do yourself a favor: make sure that whatever you are reviewing online while logged in and using your own name isn’t something you don’t want people to know about.

Don’t leave reviews that you don’t absolutely mean. I know we all get upset in the moment, but we don’t need to blast every person or every company’s bad day. Not every review is worth leaving. I have declined to take on clients after finding reviews they wrote online that were unbelievably unnecessary. One potential client had left negative reviews of four different psychiatrists, and one of the doctors actually responded that this person was unwell. The reviews included bold claims—a clear warning to me that gaining this business wasn’t worth exposing myself to this person’s behavior.

We all have social media and digital accounts that we have lost access to and wish we were able to access for the sole purpose of removing them. Refrain from visiting those websites. For me it’s LiveJournal, the online diary for dramatic teenagers in the early 2000s. For some people it’s old blogs or Twitter accounts. Don’t visit those pages. The more attention you give them, the more relevant they become to the search algorithms.

Just as you would remove your high school and college jobs from your résumé, when you start or redirect your career you should also remove (or make private) the parts of your life that are no longer relevant to your current objective. That picture of you dressed as an alien and drinking cheap wine from a bottle at a college Halloween party is doing nothing for your future. Set the image to Private or For Friends Only.

HOW TO PROPERLY RESEARCH YOURSELF (AND OTHERS)

How the digital world sees you is the way many people who find you online will perceive you as well. This is how the content delivered to you is decided, how the suggested searches you appear in are surfaced, and how your actions online shape who you are perceived to be by certain categories. What you want to do (just as you would do with a résumé) is remove the irrelevant and focus on the best references and parts about yourself.

Do a thorough search and try to find everything you can about yourself online. If you can find it, someone else can get to it, too. When you search for yourself, make sure you are not logged in to Gmail, YouTube, Google, or any other platform, and use an incognito window if you can. This will ensure that you get an unbiased set of results. For a list of websites where you can find out more about what information is online about you, go to pipl.com.

Type in your phone number, email, name, or usernames from social media. The information online may be outdated, so try running a few variations of your searches. For a deeper search and more results, use focused-aggregation search engines, like those listed below, which pool results from several search engines instead of just one at a time. The results may not differ much from what you find on other search engines such as Google, but it is worth doing if you want to find as much as possible. For in-depth social media searches, you can use the Intel Techniques search tool. (We will go over this later.)

≫ www.dogpile.com

≫ www.webcrawler.com

≫ monstercrawler.com

≫ inteltechniques.com

Let’s review all of the information about you that is out there. The goal is to find out as much as possible about your online brand so that you can add, correct, or remove information. Create a content table to keep all of your information in one place. Make your own chart or follow this link to use mine: cynthialive.com/platform. The table should have a column for each of these categories:

What You Don’t Want

How Facebook Categorized You

How Google Categorized You

Top Ten Results about You in Search that You Didn’t Expect

Once you have filled in the table, look at how many sections match what you have written in the What You Don’t Want section. Draw a line through anything that qualifies as something you don’t want associated with you and leave everything else to be explored and used as your primary focus, until you add or remove more information. This will help you find the right direction by guiding you away from the wrong one.

Take note of the categories you find yourself in; then start protecting your image and shaping your brand by planning to change them. Here’s how.

Amazon

  1. Go to www.amazon.com/adprefs.

  2. Make sure your advertising preferences are set to Do Not Personalize Ads from Amazon for This Internet Browser.

  3. Click Submit.

  4. You should get a green box with a check mark that says “Thank you.” Your preferences have been saved.

Facebook

  1. Go to www.facebook.com/ads/preferences.

  2. Click on Your Information to see what information they are using. Then click Your Categories to see how Facebook has categorized your interests.

  3. Write these categories down for future reference; then remove the ones you do not want to be associated with by clicking the X in the right corner of each.

  4. Go back to About You and make sure to remove any information that you don’t want them to use.

  5. Go to Ad Settings and update each setting to your preference.

  6. Go to the Hide Ad Topics section and to the sensitive ads you are targeted for. You can turn these off permanently.

  7. You can also suggest other topics to remove permanently in this section.

Here is how Facebook categorized me for reference:

Google

  1. Log in to your Gmail or YouTube account.

  2. Go to adssettings.google.com/u/0/authenticated.

  3. You should see a list of categories that Google has collected for you.

  4. Write them down and then remove the ones that you do not want to be associated with.

  5. If you want to turn off your ads personalization (which I suggest), click the slide button in the top right corner of the Ad Personalization box to the left.

  6. A box should pop up asking you whether you want to turn these off. Click Turn Off in the bottom right corner. Another box will pop up; click Got It to continue.

Here are my Google categories as an example:

For the complete list of advertising settings, go to cynthialive.com/platform

Once you feel like you’ve done everything to clean up and fix your abstract, ask your mom or the mother-type in your life to do a search on you and find whatever they can. If you get nervous at the thought, you haven’t done enough. Go back and keep cleaning.

Consider the narrative that your findings tell about you. Determine what information you want to emphasize and what you want to expunge. Identify the content you wish you could remove, but cannot. Develop a plan for de-emphasizing or suppressing the unremovable content by working with Google to hide specific search results if they are damaging to your character or by proactively creating new content that will appear before the old material in searches. Ways to achieve that are:

≫ Joining a new social media platform and becoming active

≫ Starting a blog

≫ Buying a web domain

≫ Interacting on websites you want to be associated with

Assume that everyone will search you before or after you meet. If there is something scathing about you on the internet, don’t pretend it isn’t there. People will find it, and you should get ahead of it instead of letting them find it first. If you’re confronted with regrettable findings in an interview or a meeting, own up to it. Why? Everyone has faults, and honestly, how bad could it be? People will forgive your mistakes, but they won’t trust a liar. Make sure you do your research about people you meet with as well. Find out their personal interests, possible connections between you and them, where they went to school, and so forth. Mention something about them to show that you did your research and watch the conversation change.