Enhancing Personal Brand

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Fredrik Härén, and Fredrik is a world-renowned expert on creativity. He grew up in Sweden and is currently based in Singapore and the author of two books. Fredrik, that's how I found out about you.

The first book is called The Idea Book. Brilliant on creativity, and part of the brilliance is the structure and then the developing world, which is about creativity and innovation and how it is growing and waning in different parts of the globe. Fredrik, thank you for taking the time. I know it is late in Singapore, so thank you for staying up with us.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me.

Anita Brick: Let's start at a really basic level. Having done some research, learned a little bit about— you've really built a brilliant personal and professional brand. How would you define a solid and effective personal brand?

Fredrik Härén: First of all, I am a speaker and author, which means that the product that I am selling is myself. It's my thoughts and my ideas, either in the case of someone paying me to go to a conference to hear my ideas about something, or someone buying a book, which is all about what I've written down, how I see something.

In my case, I write books and business books on creativity. So I guess in that sense, as an author and a speaker, you're the extreme version of a personal brand. How do I look at a personal brand? For me, it's what other people think about you—what you are, what you can do, and who you are, and that coexists with how you want other people to look at you.

My personal brand is I am the creativity guy ....

Anita Brick: And you are, definitely.

Fredrik Härén: It happens to me quite often that people come up to me and say, oh yeah, you're the creativity guy. They do not know my name, but they know that I am the guy who writes books on creativity. So for me, it's about—you know, promoting your name, it's not just— it’s about promoting what you stand for and what you are an expert in—that is what they need to remember about me.

Anita Brick: It's interesting because there are a couple of questions. One from an Exec MBA student, one from a weekend MBA student. I think some people have an idea that they want to change their brand. Both of these students have been in technical roles, and they want to be viewed more as businesspeople, as strategists. And yet they're kind of stuck and having a hard time doing that.

You didn't start being the creativity guy, the innovation guy. What are some key things that can help someone shift their brand, especially if they want to be viewed differently?

Fredrik Härén: Yeah, I did shift my brand because I started out as the internet guy. I wrote my first book in 1994. It was called The Internet and Marketing. It's interesting when we talk about branding because you introduced me as someone who's written two books, but actually I’ve written seven books.

Anita Brick: Oh, I didn't know that.

Fredrik Härén: Two are published in English. The first book I wrote was on the internet and marketing in 1994, and I was at a time when, well, hardly no one knew what the internet was all about. So very quickly I became an expert because there were very few books on the subject. Period. So suddenly I wrote a book on the subject and I was an expert.

That meant I went from nothing to being a brand on a subject in like six months. And then for five years, I was going around doing a lot of talks about what the internet was all about. Around 2000, everyone knew what the internet was all about, and I started to find it less interesting, because I realized that what I actually had liked about the internet was not the internet, it was the fact that it was something new.

So I transitioned myself from talking less and less about this new thing called the internet, and more about talking about this new thing, whatever that is. So I transitioned myself from the internet speaker and author to the creativity speaker and author.

Anita Brick: How did you have credibility to do that? I mean, because I think that people often want to make a shift, whether they're entrepreneurs like yourself or they're in a large company, but somehow they can't get enough credibility to launch a new brand. What are some things you did and that people could do to actually help them be taken seriously in a new area?

Fredrik Härén: I have a saying or a phrase that I put down to myself: nothing is a revolution. Even revolutions are evolutions. Nothing just happens. And if you’re going to go from, OK, I'm a tech guy, but I want to be a strategy guy, you can't do that with any kind of credibility. You have to evolve from one position to another position.

That is how you keep your credibility as a brand. You can't just say, oh, suddenly we are going to do this just jumping around, and brands don't jump around. Apple Computer dropped the word computer a few years back because now they say we're not a computer company anymore. Yeah, the company's in music and we do all this other stuff that they're doing now.

They did that in a transition kind of way. And you have to do that too. As a person said, I am going to change who I am—if you're going to do this with any credibility, you have to do it one step at a time. So in my case, for example, I didn't go from being an internet speaker to a creativity speaker.

I just started talking more and more about how can we use this new thing called the internet in a new way? I remember I had an epiphany when I did a talk about the internet for a travel agency, and I realized I'm not talking about the internet, I am talking about the travel industry. How can the travel industry use the internet?

So then suddenly I was doing the travel industry speech instead of the internet speech. And then over maybe two years, I transitioned myself. And after two years I was talking strictly on creativity and not on the internet anymore. It took me two years to kind of rebrand myself like that.

Another thing you have to understand about branding is it can go very quickly. Like in my case, when the internet came, because there was no one there. To really build the brand takes time. I've been talking about business creativity for 10 years. I've been doing it more than a thousand times. Doing this 200 speeches per year for 10 years, and I've been doing it across the country. That, now, is a brand. And I sold 250,000 copies of my book, and I self-published my book.

Anita Brick: So it sounds like the same thing is true with individuals with careers. So if you are moving from tech to strategy, or even there was an alum who wanted to break into the senior ranks in his organization—even to do that, as you need to start moving in that direction, it sounds like from what you're saying and demonstrating the real value that you bring in the area that you aspire to, but that it may take time and you may have to build in terms of size and scope and scale and even diversity of geography over time. It's not that everyone's going to embrace you, but you have to find a foothold somewhere and expand from there. Is that accurate?

Fredrik Härén: Yeah, and I read that question. You don't get into senior ranks because of your brand. You get your brand when you are in the senior ranks. Your brand is built upon what you have done. You shouldn't focus too much on how you build a brand. If you're going to be seen in the senior ranks, you have to be competent and that's what you should focus on.

Anita Brick: It's a really good point because it's very consistent with an alum who talked about working as a finance executive in Mexico and doing all the financial planning analysis, wanting to move and be responsible for things like marketing in kind of general management and supply chain. It sounds like building on the strong competency in finance and working more directly with supply chain and marketing to develop knowledge and expertise, and maybe even competence in those areas would be the best way for him to evolve, rather than all of a sudden learning a lot of stuff and making speeches and starting a blog on supply chain and marketing.

But he could do something that would show how supply chain and marketing rely on finance and the role that finance plays in those roles, because it's sort of a bridge there.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah, correct. Then you're back to transition. You can't go from being a finance person saying, oh, I want to be a marketing person. Maybe start by talking about, OK, how could finance tools be used in marketing? And suddenly then you're the finance expert in marketing and then you transition yourself into the marketing area. You can't do it by saying, I'm going to change my brand.

You start whatever position you can get into, let's say in marketing. So you learn a bit about marketing and then you take whatever you learned there and combine that with whatever you knew in your other position, and then you create something new out of that. That's— for example, I was a creativity expert in Sweden, and then suddenly I decide I'm going to move to Asia.

So when I moved to Asia, I had no experience whatsoever about HR. So I said, I need to learn about this. For the last five years, I've spent a lot of time. I've been to 18 different developing countries. I interviewed 200 people about creativity in developing countries, and now I would definitely argue that I have interviewed more people in more countries about creativity in developing countries than very, very few people in the world.

But it took me five years to build that brand of me, Fredrik Härén, the creativity guy who knows about creativity in developing countries. And there are very few people who do that.

Anita Brick: True. It seems like you seem masterful at identifying areas that interest you, but then backing it up with doing the work to create the knowledge, the network, and the experience to then have credibility to talk about it.

Fredrik Härén: If I, let's say I'm working in a company and I want to build a career, or if I want to be an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter. People come to me to say, OK, how should I do this? I usually tell them, OK, what is your two key interests, and what are the two things that you are the best at?

And you combine those two. A lot of people are good at, let's say, marketing. And then a lot of people are good at, let's say, finance. But very few people are good in finance and marketing, right? You add those together, you get a sweet spot where very few people are.

Anita Brick: I can't wait to hear about I mean, I know you’re going to tell us today, but about what the next step is because it sounds like you are clearly an evolutionary, you know, in terms of your own path.

Fredrik Härén: The next book I'm writing is about globalization, but not the globalization that we have today, but the next version of globalization that we will have two years from now. And when I interview the business leaders—like I sat down with the head of Lufthansa Asia yesterday—what I interviewed him about was my next book, which are things he didn't really think about until I started asking those questions.

If I start asking questions to them and they say, “Oh, that's interesting. I haven't actually thought about that. But you're right,” that means they are going to write a book.

Anita Brick: There you go. And I guess the same thing is true with an individual. You need to think about what are the goals, aspirations, and challenges ahead in the field that you're in. So you can start preparing yourself to be a solution to those, to be a leader in those, down the line.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah, but I saw also that a few of these questions who are saying I was laid off or I got moved to a lower position or something like that, and I hit the bump in my career or something like that.

Anita Brick: I was going to ask you next, how do you dig out of a hole like that?

Fredrik Härén: You have to understand that careers don't. What did you say? …

Anita Brick: One evening student said “My company was reorged, reorged again, and then sold. I survived all that. Staying with the same group, I got shifted to an hourly position similar to 90 percent of the department. I'm still doing professional work. I have gained a lot of new tasks. They're considering converting me or reconverting me to a professional level, but nothing's happened. I'm close to retirement, so maybe they think they can wait me out. In past companies I was a product manager, but now I'm in a rather undesirable,” as he says, “rat hole.” What's the first step to dig out of your rat hole? And I guess the question is, you know, if you were in one kind of role, and I would guess that he's a bit demoralized, too, because of all the reorganization and how he's being treated, what's the way to leverage your way out of that, recognizing or revitalizing the brand that was there all along? But what do you think?

Fredrik Härén: That sounds like he really lost confidence in what he actually can do. So if that was me, I would say, OK, but obviously you were good at something before he got into this position before. So I would—actually, I would backtrack. I would go back and say, OK, you know, identify the people you were working with at that time, customer or clients or whatever, colleagues. And say, why was I worth this amount of money? Why was I worth this position at that time? Why was I unique? Why was I offered this position? Because you need to be reminded of your good, that sometimes you lose confidence in yourself. It's not, you lost the skill. You still have the skill. You lost the confidence in your skills.

Go back to where you had the skills, like you lost your path. What do you do when you lose your path? You turn around. You go back until you recognize where you were, and you start over to that person and say, go back until you find where you were good and start over from that.

Another question from an individual similar to this, careers don't take hits. They take detours. Famous speech of Steve Jobs, and he talks about his career and how he got fired from Apple and why that was a good thing because he met his wife, right? That's how he defines being fired from Apple; I got to meet my wife, and I got to read, to think about what was important, and that was part of who he is today is that that happened to him.

That's how you have to look at it. I think it's— of course, it's good to have a long-term goal, like a plan. How do I want to be remembered when I'm dead? Not the straight, clear path, but an idea. Because then you know that whatever happens to you is part of going to lead you there. You can't just ignore it.

You just have to learn from it and say, OK, now I have this experience that most people don't have and you make that into something positive. But if you try to hide it or ignore it, first of all, it's not credible. Brands can't do that. They can just ignore that something happens. You have to acknowledge it and then make it into a strength. That's what strong brands do. Look at Al Gore—talk about a career hit.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right.

Fredrik Härén: Vice president of America, and then boom—lost everything. And that is what I call a career hit. But what did he do? And that is his hair. You know, let his beard grow. And he sat down with his wife and said, OK, now what? You know, what can I do after this? And he said, wait: what core values were important for me? What did I believe in before I got all caught up in becoming president? Talk about a career rebound, right?

Anita Brick: Oh, big time.

Fredrik Härén: His personal brand is bigger than if he would have been president, if you ask me, at least globally.

Anita Brick: What you said is really, really crucial. You have to know what you stand for. You have to know what your values are and what you feel your purpose is. Because when you do that, there are different ways of getting there. Then the quote unquote hits or setbacks or however you want to describe them can potentially be fuel for growth rather than a derailment.

Fredrik Härén: Right. And that is why it's important to know where you're sailing, and a wind hits you off target, you just react. You turn your boat back to where you were going. But if you don't know where you’re going and the wind both hits you, you're just lost.

Anita Brick: That's brilliant.

Fredrik Härén: It’s important to know who you are, because then you are not toppled over, and also important to know where you are going. And the brand is that over time.

Anita Brick: I love what you just said. There are two questions related to what is your true brand. Now one person said, “How do I keep my professional—being a manager—from my personal, which is having a dry sense of humor?” And the other person saying, “How do I develop two separate brands? One, say, being an executive and the other being a spokesperson?”

I thought that was interesting because I think having two brands, you see it on the web. There's someone I know who's in marketing, and he also has a passion for tango, and he has these two very distinct brands on the web. If you do a search on him, they both come up. How do you manage two potentially distinct brands at the same time?

Fredrik Härén: You don't. You cannot have two brands. You can only have one brand. So if your brand is, say, a great marketing director and you love tango, you have to … you can't have two brands, period. You have to have one brand, and then you might be the marketing director who knows tango.

That could be a brand if that's what you want. For example, in my case, I have written seven books, which are business books. My next book is a novel, which is coming out in Sweden in May. Mystery, science fiction kind of novel. Are you trying to be Malcolm Gladwell or trying to be Paulo Coelho? Come on, you can't be both, right?

Right, right. But for me, it's very simple to argue here, I would argue, I write books on creativity and writing a novel is one of the most creative things that you can do. So instead of just talking about creativity, I'm actually going to show that I can actually also use creativity in writing a novel. So in my case, it became very simple. I'm always the creativity guy at the bottom. I mean, that's what I do. I will talk on creativity.

Anita Brick: And it sounds like the person who says he or she is interested in being both an executive and a spokesperson …

Fredrik Härén: In that question, I would say you should be the industry expert, right?

Anita Brick: Right. That they should be compatible.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah. I would not try to be the spokesperson for a company that's not the personal brand. That is the equivalent of being Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. Right. If your idea of a personal brand is I am going to be the spokesperson of my company, that works until Mrs. or Mr. Smith decides that he is going to divorce you and then you're suddenly nothing.

If you build a brand of being a spokesperson for a company, then when you quit, then what are you? Say you work for Amazon, and you're going to be the spokesperson on cloud computing for Amazon. If I was that person, I would promote myself as I am the expert on cloud computing who is now working for Amazon. If I switch to working for HP, I'm still the cloud computing expert; now I just happen to work for HP.

Anita Brick: And the other person talking about having a dry sense of humor really isn't a separate brand. It's just an aspect of that person’s personality. It's part of the brand.

Fredrik Härén: … the grumpy politician who was very good at delivering one liners. That's part of his personal brand. He has a dry sense of humor. Yeah. You emphasize that you are the guy with a dry sense of humor.

Anita Brick: And that's why they should be compatible. There was a question from an MBA student. This person said, how can I assess the potential value of my personal brand and make it visible across companies?

Fredrik Härén: What I thought when I read that was actually that in the end, you have to look at the personal brand and ask—what is the name of that book? Me, Inc. You have to stop looking at this house, as you are not promoting yourself across companies. I would say, OK, this is a company that I actually would love to work for, and then you start positioning your brand towards that, not across companies or across industries.

Where do you want to be perceived as an expert? And then you work towards that. There's a very funny Swedish novel about an advertising agency that is doing ads for a banana company, and they buy all the billboards from the home of the CEO of the banana company to the office of the CEO of the banana company. So every time the CEO goes to work, he sees all these billboards for his products. But they only bought those billboards. But he's very happy with the campaign, because he sees these ads everywhere.

So if you say, I want my brand known across industries and companies, you know, that’s not specific enough. I think that is specific about what your goal is with your personal brand. If you say, I want Google to see me, then you focus on how do I get Google to see me more specifically, more targeted?

Anita Brick: Got it. There was a question about the use of social media, and without going crazy and spending all of your time, are there specific things that you think are important on the social media front, whether it's Twitter or blogging or Facebook or LinkedIn that you would advise?

Fredrik Härén: I'm actually doing a speech next week, and the title is how to make $1 million in a year. As a Singapore-based speaker, I still have two months off to write a book, which is what I did. Yeah, and the funny thing is, as I went through, I did 150 speeches last year, and I went through that— my first speech, OK, where was it? Who was it for? And most importantly, how did I get it? I just did that now, recently. And it turns out, of course, that I got the vast majority of the 50 speeches because someone heard me speak. So what I'm going to tell all these aspiring speakers is don't spend your time on Twitter and Facebook and building social media. Spend whatever hour you're spending on that to make your speech better.

That's how you build a brand. So if you are spending time on Facebook and Twitter, I wouldn't do that. If I'm trying to build my brand, I would try to do that on spending my expertise ... This is how I look at social media. You don't build a personal brand because you spend time there. You build a personal brand because people connect to you.

I never connect to anyone on Twitter. I don't befriend anyone on Facebook. I only say yes— or LinkedIn. I only say yes to the people who connect to me. This is how I measure my personal brand. How many people want to connect to me without me trying to do anything to promote myself? If you have a full time job, of course, the absolutely best way to build a personal brand is to go and speak at conferences. That's how you build a brand.

I have a friend here in Asia. His name is Benjamin Joffe. He's an expert on social media in Asia. People don't even know … like they don't know his name, but they know he’s the social media Asia guy, and he's building a very good brand, talking at conferences. If you want to build a personal brand, that's what you should do, obviously. That's the best, absolutely best way of doing it. Instead of sending to Facebook and Twitter ..

Anita Brick: It can waste a lot of time.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah, I identify it like this: 99% of people do not like doing pitches. And the 1% who do like it— Most people, they don't mind doing it, but they just have other things to do. So maybe 1% likes to do it and wants to do it. And then out of that, it's only 1% who are good at it. So 1% of 1% of 1% are good presenters at conferences. If you develop that skill, you can build your brand so quickly, because most people are just terrified of doing it.

Anita Brick: It's a good point. Do you have time for a few more questions?

Fredrik Härén: Sure.

Anita Brick: OK, so there was a woman who asked a question—an Evening MBA student— I want a brand of quiet, courteous confidence like Joe Paterno—you know, the football coach. But I'm starting to believe that I have to be in a high-level position before I can speak quietly and not be ignored. I'm not sure I agree with her. What do you think?

Fredrik Härén: If you do 150 speeches in a year, that means you hear a lot of speakers also, right? Because you go to a lot of conferences— I speak very quickly. I speak very fast. It's how I speak. The best speakers are the speakers— it’s Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa, the ones who go up and very softly speak. Those are the ones that people—and especially in a world where more and more people are trying to scream louder and louder, it is so amazing when someone goes up and that's what you do.

Anita Brick: And it sounds like maybe what she needs to do is think about an area that she would like to develop and become an expert in, and maybe not even force the issue inside her company, but begin to get some visibility outside. And sometimes that can actually help you with your credibility and visibility inside.

Fredrik Härén: But being the quiet, thoughtful, slow-speaking kind of person, that's the most difficult rhetoric there is. You have to be really, really good. What I would tell her is to really study rhetorical rules and tricks and tips. If you are screaming loud, people will notice you even if you do it rhetorically badly. But if you are the soft-spoken type, speaking, then you really have to be good at how you present.

So I would recommend that she— and people come to me all the time and they say, oh, you're a creative individual. No one listens to me. I have all these great ideas, but no one listens to me. What should I do? Right? And that is very much about building your brand, right? They are frustrated because no one listens to their great idea. So I tell them, well, maybe your idea sucks. Have you ever thought about that?

Well, if no one listens, maybe there's a big chance the idea is bad, right?

Anita Brick: True. It's possible. Yeah, it's absolutely possible.

Fredrik Härén: So my first advice is go back and make the idea better. If you have done that and you think no, my idea is great. It's just that no one understands it, then you suck at rhetoric. That's the only two things. Either your idea’s bad or your rhetoric is bad. Because if you have good ideas and you are good at selling it, people are going to buy it. Period.

So study rhetoric. It's as simple as that. That means your brand. And most people don't do that. They watch great speeches, but did they ever think about why it's good? So study rhetoric. And rhetoric is not about, you know, being a presenter on stage necessarily. It's about selling ideas, selling yourself—the most powerful unused tool in life, if you ask me.

Anita Brick: That's a really good point. There was one more question and then I have a final question for you. There was a question from an alum. He said, I'm an American with a lot of professional experience in Europe and Latin America. This is great for my expat career, but will it be detrimental if I were to become interested in returning to the States or the UK?

How do I cast myself as a developing-world exec, but at the same time, someone adequate for a mature economy role?

Fredrik Härén: OK, I would say that person, he or she has a rhetorical problem here. This is a good example. How can I cast myself as a developing-world executive? Well, you don't. If you want to have a job in the developing world, that's how you position yourself. But if you want to go back to the developed world, you don't promote yourself as being a developing-world executive.

You promote yourself as being a fast-changing-market expert. You know, I have been able to handle chaotic markets, fast moving and, you know, in the environment and …. It's like saying I have sailed around the world on the big seas, and now I'm going to sail in this little lake. That's how you’re positioning yourself.

It's not “I have experience in developing-world markets.” If I have experience where things happen much faster than they do here, that suddenly sounds like an advantage. A lot of people in developed countries will not look at the developing world as an advantage. They should, but they don't. Feel free to change the argument to something that they would like better.

Anita Brick: It makes sense. That totally makes sense. One final question: what are three things that you would advise someone to do to either begin or to enhance their personal brand?

Fredrik Härén: Well, the first one I would say is it's not about you, right? This is my speaking and personal brand. It's so close to each other. Hey, look at the good speaker. As soon as they just start talking about themselves, you totally lose interest. People like every speech. If it's about the subject and they know that the person talking is passionate about this subject, it's the same with a personal event.

It's not about you. It's about your skill. It shouldn't be called a personal brand. It should be called the competence brand. It's about your competence, not about your person. You don't have to know my name. I'm the creativity guy. Remember that about me. First, it's not about you. Then, it's about your competence. So then make sure that your competence stands out by making it special.

That's why I said, you know, find your two passions. Find the two things you are good at. Now write those four things down and combine them. I love horses, I'm very good at finance. Then you should be the finance expert for the horse industry. If horses are your hobby, that should be … that could be the end of your career.

… So you're talking about that as you like dance and you like marketing. Well then, you're the dancing marketing director. Whatever it is, combine the two. Now most of the time it will look, it will sound silly, like a dancing marketing executive doesn't sound right?

Anita Brick: You’re right, it does sound a little silly.

Fredrik Härén: OK, OK, so you cross that brand out and you use it, and you rearrange those four until you find someone that sounds good. This is actually something that sounds like a strong brand. And then you develop that, become an expert. But from what is uniquely you, don't turn it on “Oh, now social media is very hot. I think I should become a social media expert.”

No, only if that's what is your true passion. If your true passion isn't about old media, then be the old media expert when everyone's on social media.

Anita Brick: Good point. Any final … ? And if not, that's OK.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah. That's it. That is the third one. You know, it's not about you. It's about your competence. And your competence has to be unique. That is for the brand. You own a unique position. And then you use rhetorical skills to make it sound like you are the one to go to. I met so many people who may state, especially speakers, that they don't … they haven't done this, so they wonder, why do I only get to do 50 speeches in a year? Because people don’t know what you do: I’m a little bit of this. I'm a little bit of that. No. Then you're nothing.

Anita Brick: You're right. And it drives me crazy. Someone gave me their business card, and so they did 12 different things. I didn't want to work with them for anything because they couldn't have all 12 strong.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah. Yeah. Cutting away things, cutting away everything until there’s only the core left. You still have to have the core. One of my favorite quotes of all the time: You can make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. So don't cut away everything. Don't cut down to the bone. Cut down everything that is not important. I'm going to have one thing that is me and no one else.

Anita Brick: Got it. I thank you so much. This is fun. Thank you very much for taking the time.

Fredrik Härén: But I wouldn't be selling my personal brand if I didn't say, if you want to know more, you email Fredrik@Interesting.org, right?

Anita Brick: Absolutely, and you beat me to it. I was going to say, if you're interested in learning more, certainly read more on our web page. And Fredrik's web page is.interesting.org. Fredrik, thanks again for making the time.

Fredrik Härén: Yeah, thank you for the fun.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.