Rothacker Reviews

The Call of the Wild and Personal Branding

Do you know what made the Cluetrain Manifesto so darn intriguing? The authors burned the bridge after writing it. In the lads' own words:

SO WHADDYA THINK? WILL CLUETRAIN BE THE NEXT BIG THING? Not if we can help it. Deep-six the bumper stickers. Forget the catchy slogans and funny hats. Let's not write the bylaws and pretend we did. Let's not start another frickin' club. The only decent thing to do with the CLUETRAIN  is to bury the sucker now while there's time, before it begins to smell of management philosophy.

Do you know what is starting to smell of bumper stickers? Personal Branding. I love everything about personal branding. But there are a whole lotta people jumping on the PB bandwagon and I am afraid we're already awash in a mudslide of frickin' clubs. 

What can we do? Deep-six the gurus and let Buck guide us.

In the book The Call of the Wild, Buck, a dog, journeys from a soft life in California to a demanding yet fulfilling life in the Yukon Territory. He transforms from a domesticated dog back to his ancestral roots, his authentic, wild self. Buck's wild self was always there. It was just buried under layers of domestication. At first when Buck tuned in, the wild side called to him in a faint whisper. The more he immersed himself in the wild, the louder the call became.

Buck didn't need a bunch of merchants selling him shovels and supplies to help him find gold, find his true self. He just needed to listen to his inner voice and follow its direction.

We too are capable of tapping into our inner voice for directions on how to be authentic. We truly do not have to wear a bunch of funny hats and draft up a bunch of bylaws. After all, do we really need to follow a prescribed method to discover who we really are?

Listen to the voice. Be true to who you are at all times. The secret is to be. For when you be, that's all the personal branding you need. Matter of fact, the gurus can write a bunch of catchy slogans and forge a management philosophy from your example of just being...and they probably will, will repackage it and sell it to others who are looking for their own pot of gold.

Just be.

The Technician Shop

The Technician Shop is a career, work, education and life resource for technicians.  A technician is a person who works in a residential or commercial setting to repair, replace, maintain or install various things.  From an A/C technician to a window cleaner to a landscaper with a million professions in between.

I created The Technician Shop to help technicians grab hold of their career, work, education and life.  So often I would hear, "my manager doesn't appreciate and recognize me for what I do."  While management should be held accountable for their inadequacies, I must ask, "are you doing everything necessary to be appreciated and recognized?"  Most likely, on this two way street, both parties are at fault.

My message is: Perform your work with passion, care and quality.  Design both a career and educational plan and follow them.  Do it to the point that you can hardly not be appreciated and recognized.  Take care of your health, family and life. 

I'll be reflecting more about this endeavor here at Rothacker Reviews. 

Stop over for a visit and let me know what you think.

Purple Cows Don't Age

Services that are worth talking about get talked about

Seth Godin wrote this statement in his 2002 book titled Purple Cow. This one sentence is the very essence of the book.  One could design their entire company around this one sentence.  These words of wisdom will never become outdated.  At one point in your life, you must read Seth's book.  Period.

Pic of cow from dcbprime on Flickr

Escape From Cubicle Nation

Escape From Cubicle Nation is your personal key to freedom!  Like a weary soul who scraped, clawed and crawled his way across the desert in search of water, I smoked Pamela Slim's most excellent book in search of liberation.  From the tiny molecule in my soul who is standing atop the mountain screaming "no more bosses!" to my entire and collective soul who is getting dry heaves even thinking about Monday mornings, I simply cannot make a more heart felt and direct recommendation: Buy Pam's book today!

Escape From Cubicle Nation is a treasure and as such, I will dip in and review parts of this book with care and reverence.  I will treat it like a fine wine or a seminal Clint Eastwood classic, to be sipped and reveled upon.

Visit Pam's new format at Escape From Cubicle Nation for more info.

Dan Schwabel: Interviewing Interesting People

In his book The Millionaire Mind, author Thomas J. Stanley talks about being a collector of information and then leveraging it to produce value.  Thomas interviewed tons of millionaires and then leveraged his information and data to write a handful of books.

Personal Branding aficionado Dan Schwabel collects conversations.  Dan has interviewed a slew of interesting people, collecting a ton of advice, knowledge and wisdom.

I am in the process of reading every single interview (135 as of this post).  I am interested in personal branding.  So I pull up my personal branding journal and make notes while I read. 

Dan has written a book titled Me 2.0.  I am currently reading this book and will do a review in the future.