What I’ve Learned After Six Months of Consulting and the Downside of Personal Branding

One of my mentors gave me this advice a few years back, “Never believe your own hype.” At the time, I didn’t have any hype, so I just tucked that little tidbit away for future use. Now, after achieving some level of professional reputation through my blog, I understand exactly what she was getting at and it has a lot to do with personal branding. Some people may have never met you before and have no personal knowledge of your work experience, yet hype you up online as a result of your personal branding efforts. That’s because there can be a huge difference in the work that you do versus the way that people perceive the work that you do.

I recently interviewed actor/music producer Sam Jones III for an upcoming issue of Personal Branding Magazine and he shared a good way to think about building your personal brand as a two-part process :

1. Focus on being good at what you do.
2. Focus on being famous for it.

For five years, I only focused on the first thing: 100% on getting really good at fundraising and capacity building as part of the work I was doing in my various nonprofit jobs. I even got a Master’s degree in nonprofit management to increase my knowledge along the way. So when I decided to move on to the second piece about getting famous for my work by starting a blog, I had no idea that it would impact my life so greatly. I think I might be in what Jonathan Fields calls “personal branding hell”:

“Building a strong personal brand—being known as the go-to person in a specific niche—has it’s ups. Everyone turns to you for information, for ideas, for thought leadership, for advice, for strategy, for connections, for presentations, for favors, for opportunities, for jobs, for partnerships, for salvation.”

But it also has its downs.

“Because, there are only so many hours you can bill for, so many planes you can get on, so many individual conversations you can have before you…and your life…implode. Especially if you’ve also got a family you actually want to see, friends you love to be around, other activities, passions and hobbies you love to engage in and a commitment to taking care of your body and your mind.”

Hundreds of people now know more about me and my life and work than I can ever possibly know about each of them. I meet people at events that come up to me as if they’ve known me forever, as if we’re long-lost friends. As an introvert (or just a weirdo?), this sometimes freaks me out. And I still get uncomfortable when people come up to me and tell me they’re a big fan of my blog. I hope that what I write in this space helps some people, inspires others to action and informs the rest. It’s just deeply humbling for me to come face to face with the reality that I’ve done that for someone.

I’m also realizing that some people have really high expectations of me just because of how visible I am and I have to constantly manage that. There is the real Rosetta and then the image that people have of Rosetta. So I try really hard to be as open and authentic as possible online so that there’s no disconnect offline.

And I try not to believe my own hype. Yes, I want you to hire me. But I’m still growing and learning in my own leadership journey. People may think I’m a “guru” or an “expert” on a lot of things, but I still make mistakes. I still fail, just like you. It’s a delicate balance.

So, yes, personal branding has a downside. I gotta keep it real with you, especially those who want to get to the same level of visibility. While personal branding is absolutely one of the most important career tools for young professionals, you have to be able to take the good with the bad. In the past six months, I’ve also learned a few other things about consulting and my experiences with personal branding.

The more popular you are, the more critics you’ll get. Recently, a commenter blasted my blog on the Chronicle of Philanthropy, pretty much saying I wasn’t qualified to write for them. And then a commenter here called me a homophobe because I used the word “queer” in a blog post. All I can say is I’m glad I have thick skin. And I’m glad that so many people are reading!

The work will come, but you have to be the one to decide what kind of consultant you want to be. People ask me to do all kinds of work – fundraising, social media, speaking, strategic planning, coaching – the work is definitely out there for nonprofit consultants. But I really wanted to practice leadership in my consulting work instead of just helping people do stuff and get paid for it. One example: after quitting my job as a development director, I was determined not to do fundraising for a while. It just wasn’t rocking my world anymore, so I declined all of those client requests. It felt weird, like what kind of consultant turns down work? But I realized that if you try to do everything and chase all the money that’s out there, you’ll just be burnt out, frustrated and not good at the work you’ve been hired to do in the first place. Which brings me to my next epiphany.

There’s a big difference between short-term and long-term clients. I had already been consulting for two years before I hung my full-time consultant shingle in January. But since I was working full-time, my consulting work was on a short-term basis – helping organizations craft leadership programs, speaking at various events around the country, and teaching workshops on leadership, diversity and social media. These engagements never lasted more than a few days. When I quit my job to consult full-time though, I did it with the security of having six-month contracts with two great organizations. Combined, I worked about 20 hours a week for them and though it provided a steady stream of income, the hands-on management work is just not for me. My favorite activities are the ones I’m best at: writing and teaching. So that’s why I’m now figuring out how to focus my business around that work instead of having long-term clients.

When you suck at time management, having administrative support is really important. It was easy to manage my time when I worked a full-time nonprofit job. The hours were defined. No one expected me to work late into the night (although sometimes I did because I wanted to). Now, there are no defined office hours and I work around the clock. And presumably I have “all the time in the world” to meet with people who want to “pick my brain” or ask me for career advice. I could spend all day meeting with people and helping people, but then I’d never get any writing or client work done. Or sleep. So hiring my assistant Chelsea was great in that in allows me to have a buffer for requests on my time as well as support for a lot of the little details that go into the work I do.

There is no way you will ever answer all of your email. Ever. I get several dozen emails every day asking me to do something – do work for a client, speak at an event, do an informational interview, give career advice, write a guest post or article, share information, blog about someone’s program, help someone find funding, help someone find a job, meet for coffee or lunch – the list is endless, especially when most of these requests are coming from people you don’t know. You have to pick and choose how responsive you can be and still do the work that you set out to do in your business. And still have some semblance of a life. I hate acting like I’m some bigshot CEO that’s too busy to respond to all of their email, but it literally would take over my life if I answered them all. Even though I’ve given myself permission to let a lot of non-urgent messages fall into cyberspace, I still sometimes find myself up at 2am responding to a reader with advice for where to look for a nonprofit job in DC.

This is my life now. It’s amazing and I’m not complaining. But I do want you to understand what’s happening behind the scenes and be a part of my journey.

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