What’s an old fart like Len Berman doing on Twitter? That was the subject of his recent talk at Mashable. Personal branding is important for us all and as Len Berman explains, using web 2.0 and social media to brand himself has been the key to continuation of his career. Exerpts:
To watch Len Berman’s entire 15 minute talk at the Mashable conference, click here. Long, but worth it!
Summary: When you invest your efforts to create a product for someone else, you can be the best at what you do and still lack power and the control of your destiny. When you create a valuable brand of your own, that gives you power and something to leverage.
Len Berman did this to create professional life post Ch. 4 local news, something he did not expect to have to do. As he says, he had complete tunnel vision about he professional career for 40 years (his first reaction to Twitter was, “Who Gives a Shit?” !!!)
Now, Len Berman is Twitter’s biggest fan. Social media provided him both the blueprint and the toolkit to develop his brand.
How inspiring! Its quite a struggle to consider whether it can truly be fulfilling for your blood, sweat and tears to benefit someone else. I’ve always like Len Berman and was sorry to see him dismissed from network TV. As someone looking for my ‘chapter two’ I can only hope it turns out as well as Len’s is.
Many people manage their career based on an old paradigm of loyalty, when the new paradigm is all about free agency and Brand “me”. Hard to get used to the new normal.
To your point about fulfillment and satisfaction, it’s OK to create value for others with one’s human capital, and derive satisfaction from that exchange. But the reality is that human capital is a depreciating asset, that peaks in value mid career and then begins to decline. To maintain the possibility of deriving satisfaction from work, one MUST develop one’s own brand to extend the life of and add value to one’s human capital! (can you tell I was an econ. major in college?)
Re: personal situation, it is both scary and exciting to figure out how to fit into the new paradigm. Investments in human capital always a good idea, which education certainly is. Interesting to see how it will turn out for all of us in same boat!
Two years ago none of us even thought about Twitter, so the question really is – what comes next and can we adapt? We need open minds. If even Len Berman can figure it out, there’s hope for the rest of us too.
A guy named Tom Martin (who writes a really cool blog at Converse Digital, by the way) made the same exact point….the online world is changing so fast, being an “expert” is less important than being an “explorer”…and the really valuable skill is not in looking back, but in our willingness to change and adapt to new realities going forward. As you point out, things will certainly change. For instance, Facebook was just a college student app in 2006! Embracing change is the key (a la Len Berman!)