Call meJeffrey

This past week I watched two different documentaries about skateboarders from the 80′s who lost touch with their roots, struggled to adapt to the changing environment of their profession, and ultimately bottomed out in very sad ways.

“Rising Son” is a documentary about legendary skateboarder Christian Hosoi – one of the first skateboarders to make an incredibly successful living as a pro rider in the 80′s. The creator of the then-groundbreaking “hammerhead” shaped deck, Christian not only had the skill to rise to the top as a professional skateboarder, but also had an entrepreneurial drive that in many ways helped to shape the modern skateboarding industry today.

He is now 42 years old and only recently resumed his professional skating career after twenty-year hiatus through which he battled with drug addiction and served a 4-year prison stay on drug charges.

“Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator” is a documentary about controversially loved and hated ex-professional skateboarder Mark “Gator” Rogowski. After he rose to fame as a professional skateboarder, Gator gained near-celebrity status in mainstream media (during what I feel was skateboarding’s “glam” period), proving that if skateboarders had the right image to match their talent, brands could be built around them (in his case, Gator was to Vision Street Wear what Jordan was to Nike).

At 43 years old, he is now serving a 39-year sentence for raping and murdering a girl in 1991.

Pleasant stuff, eh?

For both of them (though, Gator more so than Hosoi) the skill that got them to where they ended up became secondary to the image they focused on upholding. What they had in common, in my opinion, was letting their personal brand blind them from the reality of fleeting relevance as their industry shifted focus (from vert to street skating).

Because their brand was so prevalent and so strong, it didn’t allow them to be nimble enough to change with the times, which lead to a sad, far-and-fast fall from the top.

So, what’s the point?

While it may require hard to work to achieve a successful personal brand, it unfortunately doesn’t require any actual skill. In fact, there’s no inherent factor in personal branding that requires you to continue to do what you did to get there once you find success. Why? Because it’s entirely possible to achieve great success in personal branding while having literally no marketable skills whatsoever (*cough* Paris Hilton *cough*).

If you’re not careful, personal branding could easily overshadow your actual skill-set and then you’re the person who is well known… but… what was it for again?

Watching these two documentaries, I saw the parallels between what happened to Hosoi and Gator in the 80′s (and others in the skateboarding industry at the time) and the rise of personal branding in social media today. I find myself sometimes wondering “OK, I know of this person – but why? What do they do again?”. Personal brand can grant someone scene celebrity in an relatively young industry which has been built on innovation, hard work and relationships (much like the skateboarding was in the 80′s) – merely by focusing on the relationships part.

I’m not saying that it’s not important to put yourself out there – because like it or not – these days it is. However, don’t let your personal brand shift you from person to persona as it gains traction. You’re here for a reason (unless you’re the offspring of someone who already has found tremendous success), so don’t lose touch with that reason. Your skill-set that jump-started your personal brand needs just as much work as your brand does (if not much, much more).

Innovation, hard work and relationships fuel the business we’re in (or at least the one I’m in). Those values are listed in order of importance. Personal brand only deals with the 3rd in the list, and alone has little to do with industry relevance. Focus too hard on that, and your creativity/innovation and hard work suffer.

Relevance is one of those things that you don’t realize how important it is to have until it’s gone. In my opinion, that lead to the fall of Hosoi and Gator – let it be a cautionary tale for us all.

I have a flight at 7:30pm to head to San Francisco to spend time with my girlfriend and also to connect with some folks for work. There’s nothing abnormal about this routine, but on this night – I’m missing out on something that I’d like to have been a part of. Tonight at 10:01 (my time) I will be missing out on being “able to choose a username for [my] Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to [my] profile.”

Basically what that says is that as long as I’m sitting on an airplane, I’m not in front of a computer, trying my best to snag facebook.com/jeffrey. It’s ok though, and here’s why. I’m not Jeffrey. I’m Jeffrey Kalmikoff. Besides, as long as there’s that bastard giraffe hocking toys to kids, I’ll never be the Jeffrey. And really, if Toys ‘R’ Us folded tomorrow, and I did become the Jeffrey, it’s still really just be Jeffrey Kalmikoff.

I was talking to my younger brother Josh on the phone as I drove to the airport. We discussed a few things, including a really kick-ass idea he has for a gaming website, but also talked about snagging his Facebook vanity URL. His point of view, “if someone gets what I want, I’ll just think of something better. Something wittier.” “Josh” I said, “do yourself a favor and just get your name – that URL will likely outlast whatever you found funny or witty or interesting about something like Uncler3mus (his twitter name).” “Just trust me on this one,” I said.

Even in the last 6-7 months the shift from pseudonym to real name in one’s online identity has been pretty prevalent. Many of my friends (myself included) went from pseudonym to real name – and some from real name just down to initials. What the shift really means is that everyone is seeing the value in having a single name – or at least a few names that all essentially mean the same thing. For me I’m Jeffrey (twitter), JeffreyK (skype), Jeffrey.Kalmikoff (gmail), and the one I’m starting to phase out FancyJeffrey (aim) – which at the very least still has my name in it.

I wanted to share those anecdotes to illustrate what I’ve come to terms with, and I think that it’s important that other people try to realize it as well. Your name only matters as a way to be a linkable entity to an action. Having an awesome “online handle” isn’t going to make what you do online (or off) any better than if you would have been using your own name. We’ve learned this lesson in the last 10 years as we started out being scared to have people learn our real identities online, so we created fake ones (mine used to be iFDL). The time of fear online is long since past, so it’s time to stop hiding behind “RadDude199″ or “ButteflyGrl22″.

As the time ticks away until Facebook opens the flood gates to vanity URLs tonight, maybe try to resist the urge to go after your current online moniker or pseudonym, and just go with what’s real. Just be you.

The other night, I watched a video by my friend Gary Vaynerchuk in which he was saying how he felt that the use of press releases are obsolete. His point is that you have a better chance at winning if you’re that “big fat-ass Italian uncle who tells a story and crushes it” – someone who has a conversation with people, rather than just blasting out information at people.

So, are press releases dead? A relic and a reminder of a way of doing business that once was? For Gary, yes – 100%. For others, maybe not so much. I happen to agree with Gary that if you tell your brand story well, and you have an openness with your community enough to have a dialog, then press releases are likely not necessary. However, any tactic should stay in play until it no longer provides value. So, what if you’re sending out press releases and they continue to provide value? The answer should be obvious: keep sending press releases.

This isn’t about press releases though. Not for me, at least. The bigger picture that I’m talking about here is tradition – and in particular, how tradition relates to business. A tradition is a long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting; a customary or characteristic method or manner in which one does something. Let’s look at that definition and try to extract the “value adding” words: Long-established? No. Inherited? No sir. Customary? Nope.

My issue with those words is that they all imply that there’s build-in respect. But why should we respect something in business just because it’s something that people have been doing for a long time? The answer is we shouldn’t; and therein lies the problem with traditions. But, lets first get to the core of a tradition and discuss how it came to be.

Any tradition begins simply as an idea or solution that once created value. It worked its way from idea to tradition as time went by and the idea went unchallenged – and that’s the key. Unchallenged ideas that provided value at one point are ideas rife to become traditions. This is bad for business because if you never challenge you own ideas periodically, how do you know if they’re still relevant? Think about it this way – if you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with a problem that requires medication, do you get prescribed once and take that medicine forever without periodically getting checked? If you wouldn’t treat yourself that way, why would you treat your business that way?

We’re huge proponents of this at Threadless. We’re a business that started in a very non-traditional way. We’ve told the story many times about how our business started by accident, and we grew by only doing things that made sense to us – only taking steps that we were comfortable taking. Essentially, we did all the things that seemed like a good idea at the time. With all of that said, it wouldn’t make much sense for us to not constantly be challenging our own ideas, considering that the initial success of our business was an ongoing series of trials and errors.

While working to keep traditions out of our business is a logical thing to do considering how we began, that doesn’t mean that traditions should have a place in business that began in a more traditional way. The upside to this point of view is it really doesn’t take much to “de-tradition” your business. All you have to do is simply challenge the agreed upon “good” ideas to ensure they’re still relevant. By doing that you very well may discover that all your ideas are still good ideas, and nothing changes. However, you also may find that your ideas need to be tweaked slightly to regain relevancy. That’s not a bad thing, is it?

Ideas are not immune to the aging process. Like wine, they get better with age only if cared for properly (right Gary?). This care involves always challenging an idea to ensure that it’s still relevant. Double-checking the relevancy of your ideas is an important exercise because by doing so, you get to ensure that your ideas are working for your business and not against it. In the end it’s important to realize that no one is smart enough to come up with an idea that is so brilliant that it stays relevant forever without being cared for.

So what’s the bottom line? If you have a tradition of bringing in pizza for your whole staff on the last Friday of every month should you stop? Of course not. There’s a difference between traditions that effect the culture of your business and traditions that effect mechanics. Obviously, I’m speaking about the latter. A tradition is the antithesis of a nimble organization and can keep you from seeing how ineffective your once effective idea has become.

First I apologize for the “half-head” shot. I’m still getting used to recording on a Flip and like a kid potty-training… my aim is a little off. I’ll get less messy, I swear.

Anyway, I’ll (regular) blog about this later, but I wanted to throw the idea out there that by simply doing what we do – we create an economy of inspiration. There are no rules as to who produces and who consumes. It’s a completely free market, I hope that everyone adds value to both the producer and consumer side to make this economy of inspiration a thriving one.

It’s 12:15am. I have a 4:30am wake-up call, and I even opted for the reminder at 4:45am. I’ve been in Chicago since Saturday and I go to NYC tomorrow at 8am for meetings and to speak at The 99% Conference on Thursday. I leave Thursday night to head back to Chicago to be in our office for meetings on Friday before I head back to Colorado on Saturday. I leave for San Francisco for a week seven days later.

I should be asleep, but instead I’m totally awake. I can’t turn my brain off to save my life.

I was thinking about how much you hear people talk about just doing what it takes to get work done, to hustle your way to success, to push yourself to make things happen. It’s not an uncommon thing to hear me say when I speak, and in fact, it’s the topic of Jake and my speech at 99% “The Do-First Work Ethic.”

What you don’t hear people talk about very much is the time in between “killing” one thing and “crushing” the next. These are the times I find the most important. The moments of clarity that support my sanity while I’m so up-to-my-eyeballs in work that I feel like it will never end (and it rarely ever does).

I don’t like to say “this will work for you”, rather I like to say what works for me in hopes that you can find your own calms before the storm. While I was in Chicago I made time to have lunch with my Mom, Step-dad and sister Lisa. I made time to have a drink and say goodbye to my best friend Burton before he and his girlfriend Sarah moved to London tomorrow. I made time to see my friend Ben and take my brother Josh and his college roommates out for dim-sum (and also got pulled over for talking to my girlfriend on the phone while driving in the process). I made time to have dinner with my oldest friend Scott and his lovely girlfriend Audrey. I made time to have chicken wings with my Dad (our ritual) and visit with my Step-mom and sister Katie. I made time to watch two movies in my hotel, and spend an extra few minutes in the shower each day with the water extra hot, just concentrating on breathing.

This may seem like a lot of time, but in reality it wasn’t. I said “I’m really sorry, but I have to go” more often than I would have liked to. The little bits of time I took to connect with my family and friends, watch movies alone and steal moments of silent meditation are the times that keep me going when I’m feeling worn down and have more things left to do than things that are done.

Why am I telling you this? I feel that I have a tendency to push the idea that life is about work and it should be the priority. For me, this is basically true, but as the saying goes “if you love what you do then it’s not work.” However, loving what you do doesn’t make you immune from fatigue. It’s so important to me to steal as many personal moments as I can in between. So, for as much as I have a lot to say about how to work, here’s some advice on how not to: don’t forget to make the time for things you enjoy (however short of time it may be) and stay grounded in reality by staying connected to those you love.

If beginning tomorrow there were twice as many hours in the day, I’d certainly use them, but even a hustler has gotta sleep.