Everyone’s a salesperson, right?  The question is, how do you sell yourself without becoming a dick?

Lately I’ve been thinking and exploring a lot of ideas about selling yourself and making what you do into not just your résumé, but a brand.      Why should I care?   Well, it seems to me that people get further when they’re instantly associated with doing a particular thing, or they’re well-known for something, or they have a very distinct way of presenting themselves.   This is how stars on YouTube are born, celebrities make a splash, and impressive professionals leave an indelible impression on everyone they work with.

I was talking to my wife about this because we’re trying to come up with a solid representation of her crafting work as a brand that we can use to do up her website, make business cards, brochures, and generally give her something distinct that she can use over and over and everyone will know what, “Kanga Crafts” is at the end of the day.    It’s a way to make it easy to identify, easy to market, and something that will leave an impression.

Think about the most popular brands you know and how they are all-pervasive — Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Wal*Mart, and even places like Fuddruckers, while slightly offensive, are nonetheless very well-known.    It’s an imagine, right or wrong, pleasant or horrible, that everyone can bring to mind right away with just a single word, image, or mark.

But there’s a limit to it, too.    There’s plenty of marketing folks and sales folk and PR people and companies that go too far and make an impression that just stinks of ego and hubris.   They radiate “dick” thicker than musk and just choke the life out of everyone they encounter rather than enhance it.    Even in the blogosphere you hear all about SEO, high-ranking, monetization, optimization, and so forth, all with the sole intent of making a website a cash cow.    It’s why I shy away from making this an ad-driven site because even I block a lot of that content these days.

For a good example of marketing over-dick in progress, check out this video of Joel Bauer describing the marketing power of business cards.     Don’t you just want to whack him with a broomstick?  And I know it’s an act for a purpose, but at the same time, wow.

So, there’s a right way to market and brand an idea or a service and there’s definitely a wrong way.     I think for the most part I’m not marketing myself or my abilities nearly enough, and my wife and I have to figure out how to really pass off her elite crafting skills as a household name, but at the same time trying not to come across like a pompous jackass.

And you thought closing a sale looked easy.