You Are Your Product (Or. . . “Johnny Didn’t Tell Me What to Name This Post, so I Picked a Name Myself”)

[Note: This post is from a questionable character named Johnny.  It’s a dam good post.  Enjoy!]

Sometimes, people come up to me and say, “Hey, Johnny, what exactly are you going to be doing as part of the Project Mojave faculty?” And then I say, “Who are you, and how do you know me?” At this point, my inquisitors usually vanish into a swirl of color and hippie music, and I realize that I’ve yet again fallen asleep in an unventilated closet filled with open cans of paint thinner.

But it would be shortsighted of me to dismiss these people’s questions simply because they don’t exist. What are you doing? It’s the same inquiry I get every time I try to walk out of Dunkin’ Donuts with one of their ovens. It deserves an answer. People are hopping on board with Project Mojave, and they know they can expect solid advice on five clear topics from five very cool other people. But what about me? Who is Johnny B. Truant, and why is he stealing our ovens?

I’m a lot of things, and I’ll be a lot of things to Project Mojave. But for the purposes of this post, you can think of me as the guy who’s going to keep people from getting boring. If I have to enlist the help of Director of Ass-Kicking Jonathan Mead to make sure that happens, I will. I’m going to make sure that PM members learn to be themselves, to be out there, to be interesting, to be their own brand. I can do that. I have a title that says so.

Stay with me, Sparky. Half of you are rolling your eyes, but I promise there’s an actual business point to all of this if you’ll just hang tight. And here we go.

You Are Your Product

Well, okay, not all of you. I realize that there are a bunch of different strategies here, and some of them are fairly automated and impersonal. But in most cases, what you’re really selling is you. If you’re selling an insomnia cure, you’re selling yourself as an insomnia expert. If you sell pet training advice, you’re selling yourself as a person worth learning from. If you sell widgets… well, there are a zillion widget sites out there. If you want to stand out, you should sell yourself as this interesting person who sells widgets. Which, by extension, are maybe interesting widgets.

This is all especially true if you’re selling expertise. Eventually, you’re going to ask your prospects to pull out their credit cards to hear more of what you have to say. Before they do, part of their brains are going to ask, “Well, who the fuck are you?” And the answer had better be good.

This is branding 101, right? We all know this, you’re thinking.

But do you? So many people — especially solo entrepreneurs — put all of their time into their product and sales and forget that business is about relationships, which means putting your personality out there and building a brand around it. It’s not enough to write a compelling sales letter. When you’re not selling, what are you doing? Are you out there relationship-building, being cool by giving away interesting tidbits, and just being yourself? Do you feel to your prospects like an online friend?

If the answer is no — if you’re just sort of out there offering widgets and being boring — why should people like you enough to buy what you’re selling?

Let’s take me as an example. When I started online, I did so as a humor blogger with a nice little cult following. I wrote about weird and funny stuff, and people passed me around and got to know me, my family, my town, my pets. I got some fans.

I became “That funny weird guy.”

Then I started writing a weekly column on IttyBiz, launched a second blog, wrote a free e-book about how to launch a blog super-easy, and became the funny, foul-mouthed guy who makes technology simple. I wrote basic, stupidly easy, step-by-step tutorials. I started a service where I set up blogs for the low low price of $39. You end up with a pimped-out blog on your own domain, and it’s totally badass, and a good deal. But out of all of the tech guys on the Net, why should you read my stuff? Why should you hire me, even for just $39?

In other words, Who the fuck am I?

Well, if you knew me personally, you might have an answer to that. You would say, “Johnny’s this cool guy I know,” and all other things being equal, you’d be more likely to hire me than some random person in the Yellow Pages. My ability to win your business would depend in part on my ability to present an interesting, possibly fun and engaging image. My skills themselves are a commodity; if they’re there, they’re there.

When you operate online, personality still gives you that same insider’s edge. Developing a strong, engaging online personality will make people feel as if they know you, and make them more likely to do business with you. But online, you’re handicapped. You don’t have your facial expressions and body language to win trust. You don’t have tone of voice in most cases. You don’t have a firm handshake. In the vast majority of cases, you only have words on a screen and a few visuals to showcase yourself.

Your personality is assessed in large part based on how interesting those words are. Being boring online may not make you look like a scam artist, but it’s the equivalent of having shit stuck in your teeth or a dead fish handshake. No personality to the words, no personality to you. That means you’re just one of the horde, with nothing to make you stand out — and that means you’re relying on luck and gaming the system to make sales.

But if you’re interesting? If you’re a neat personality who infuses humor or sentiment or desire or beauty or controversy into your online presence? Well, that’s a leg up. That turns you into “This interesting guy or gal I know about.”

In other words — and this is especially true if your skill isn’t 100% unique — being interesting sort of becomes your unique selling proposition, or USP.

Like, in my case, I’m “the funny swearing guy who makes technology easy.”

Or, “That weird guy who launches blogs.”

Or, “Snow.”

I called Clay the other day* to discuss this post and we got to this point and he said, “Snow? It that your alter-ego?”

“It’s a nonsensical joke. You remember Snow. He had that song ‘Informer.’ It went, ‘In-FOH-MA! Yessee a skiddly bumbidy bumdee len. A leaky boom boom now!’”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“1992? White rapper, thought he was cool, was incorrect?”

“I was eleven.”

“He was like Vanilla Ice?”

“Vanilla Ice?” **

That’s when I hung up. Damn kids today. ***

And I thought, Maybe my USP is that I’m the guy who goes off on nonsensical tangents. I’m the guy who will write a joke that one in a thousand people will get because it will be so worth it to that one person. I’m the one guy in the world who remembers Snow.

But it’s at least interesting. Admit it. You’ve never seen a white rapper diatribe in the middle of an online marketing article before. NEVER. Years from now, you’ll run across me online and you’ll think, “Do I want to buy from this guy?” And then you’ll be like, “He was the one who talked about Snow and Vanilla Ice. I remember him. So, no. Hell no, I’m not going to buy.”

But hey, better than being boring.

P.S: Comment if you remember snow. Don’t be embarrassed.

—

* Conversation may not have occurred.
** I actually think that Clay does know who Vanilla Ice is, but that’s only because I’m pretty sure he is Vanilla Ice. I mean, have you ever seen the two of them in the same room at the same time? No? Well, then I rest my case.
*** This is exaggeration humor. I’m 33. It’s not like I’m Methuselah, although I do admire his beard.