Ocean’s 11, the big gamble, and a lightness of being

Today as I walked up the very same hill I’ve been walking up for 4 years as a government employee, there was a beautiful, dusky light, filtered through the trees and spilling over softly onto the road. Everything felt like cotton candy, with no edges, rolling together as easily as waves abundantly tidal and endless.

Because today I was no longer an employee, but an entrepreneur. I’d just finished teaching social media storytelling all day for Continuing Studies at Royal Roads University under my company name, ‘What Is Your Story?’. It has been a long journey, and for some of us born with this gene, liberty and our own path, no matter how difficult looking or risky it may appear to others, is as important as air. Oh, the breath I took today! Deep, from my toes, filling my lungs up, so my cheeks smiled in recognition it had been a long time I’d been holding my tight, struggling breath inside.

It kind of felt like this scene from the Ocean’s 11, you know the one? After all their hard work, they pull it off.

Find your own message!

I am really struggling with the very thing I say that I can help small business’ with. Message. At first I wanted to call my new business a ‘name’ then I began to think, why? What is the purpose of it? What I am saying? What is the benefit to calling it a name versus just being myself, as in Margaret Doyle?

Identity is hard. Because it is involves commitment. Commitment to a service, to a goal,  to a brand philosophy. So do you go with a ‘personal brand’ or create a brand separate from your personal life? Brian Solis advocates we brand ourselves or someone else will. In his three part series called, The Socialization of Your Personal Brand , he posits that “Relationships are the new currency of the Social Economy as they fuel and extend interaction, insight, and loyalty, and in turn, contribute to the social capital of the individuals who actively invest in their personal branding portfolio.” (Retrieved online April 3, 2010)

When did we start talking about relationships as currency and our lives as social capital?

As soon as we started tweeting about our breakfast. There is no going back–the days of the telephone attached to the wall are utterly, and irretrievably over. Our social life is public and you had better get used to it. Oh, you don’t like twitter? You don’t like Facebook? Black magic you say? Well, I’m afraid to tell you someone you know has posted a picture of you or talked about you online and therefore you are part of the global conversation whether you like it or not. Your opinion has little to do with it.

What you can do in light of the tsunami of personal information that is released each day like a vast helium continent of cloud intel is take control of your online identity. But how?

I’m in the process of doing just that and will post as I go. I haven’t got it all figured out just yet. It’s a process. But I know I have to do. As Brian says in his series, there is an ‘art’ to lifestreaming and we can all be our own curators.