"potentialKEN" might be a fun place to begin.
I’ve been “potentialKEN” since the waning days of the last millennium.
My approach to my ‘personal branding’ has garnered a variety of reactions and inquiries over the years.
I originally wrote what follows as a response to a recruiter who wanted to know why I had chosen potentialKEN@AOL.com as my e-mail address (and have repurposed that response a couple of times since).
It seems like a good foundation for my blog to post my original e-mail response here as an addition to ‘the public record’ and as a way of introducing myself as ‘author’.
Read on if you dare…
(Re-posted from my original e-mail response)
It’s a somewhat involved response to a short question.
But you did ask and, after all, who doesn’t like to talk about themselves.
Many people comment on the name but few ask “WHY”.
KEN
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“Self naming” is an important rite of passage in many cultures. Back in the ‘early days of the internet’ I was all over ideas like how e-mail names intersected with the metaphysics of identity and stuff like that.
Choosing an e-mail address is sort of like picking a tattoo. It’s probably better to select one that you can live with for a while and that can grow along with your evolving notion of self. Not wanting something like “penguinlover4562” when choosing an e-identity this is where I ended up. I’ll confess to having a variety of other cyber aliases but potentialKEN is my core cross-platform identity.
potentialKEN is not simply a “business” identity. I’d like to believe that it is relevant in many contexts of my life including “artist”, “academic”, etc. I sort of “am what I do” and I endeavor to be that in ‘all contexts’ whenever possible. What I do for a living is a big part of “who I am”. Rather than being the type of person who “works” to pay for ‘what they really want to be doing’ (family, leisure, something else entirely) I’ve tried to build a career that is consistent with other aspects of who I am ‘philosophically’, ‘artistically’, ‘intellectually’, etc.
For good or bad, having the first several companies I worked for crumble around me along with the ‘new economy’ led to subsequent years of wandering the professional landscape. Rather than being able to hang my hat on the identity of “KEN from X company”, and not necessarily being interested in starting my own company, it has become a way to maintain a modicum of personal equity in what I do as I mature in the practice of my chosen craft(s).
As Huxley wrote in The Doors Of Perception; ‘more or less successfully we each act the part of our own favorite character in fiction’. PotentialKEN is sort of the identity of ‘my own personal cartoon character’ such as it is or could be.
I’ve been potentialKEN for a long time. A lot of people know ‘me’ as ‘it’. It’s become a kind of self feeding cycle of projected and actualized identity.
I view “potentialKEN” as my personal brand.
As any brand should:
- It is succinct and memorable
- It embodies many elements of my identity
I consider “potential” a strong and evocative word. It is about ‘creating something from nothing’. Or, more precisely, identifying what something could become and then helping it get there. I like the way that [I think] this fits with my portfolio history of ‘doing that which hasn’t been done before’
Also, as a manager, I tend to be less bluntly ‘directive’. I see myself as a bit of a ‘Socratic nurturer’ with both clients and agency team. (I’m the end product of hyper-intelligent hippie educators during my college years.)
I like to think of myself as a well intentioned (and often unintentional) “change agent”. If you’re comfortable with me using words like “shaman” in a professional context; I can tell you that in most of the personal/professional environments in which I’ve operated, ‘my viral reality-warping influence ripples fractally’. (Then again, that sorta stuff usually scares the ‘MBA’ folks.)
On the other hand, consider that ‘strategy’ is often about:
- First becoming aware of the ideas around you in the group
- Then guiding the shared hallucination of how everyone is thinking
- To tell the ‘unifying story’ of where everyone is trying to get to
“potential” is about what we want to become.
I get how having “potential” in my personal brand can be a ‘negative’. It might imply that I am ‘incomplete’ or not fully formed. Then again, life is a journey. And, as my resume shows, I’ve reinvented myself a number of times. I also recognize how I don’t necessarily always realize my full potential. In many ways I can be a textbook underachiever. I do get blocked and many times I require the support of outside forces to accomplish what I do. Sometimes I fail. Many times I succeed at doing cool and unprecedented things. It’s all part of the mix.
I’ve toyed with “professionalKEN” but somehow that seems more limiting in the broader sense of my ‘total identity’.
[All caps] “KEN” hits on a couple of other issues…
I have a background in Womyn’s Studies and Gender Theory which causes me to carry some baggage with regard to primogeniture and family names.
I really respect ‘first name basis’ cultures like, for example, Disney. I usually just introduce myself as “KEN”. You know when you go around the table at the beginning of a mixed meeting… “Hi I’m KEN… I’m a strategist.” In part it’s a ‘tool’ to ensure that clients filter conversation through the biz dev/account person. I like being a ‘back channel problem solver’ for the clients who call me directly but I also see the value of positioning myself as an intellectual commodity that the sales folk can rep. Although arguably good tactic when acting on behalf of an ‘employer’ because of the firewalling effect to aid the folks selling the ‘knowledge work’ to the client; this approach does sometimes come back to bite me when I’m ‘in the market’. Still, it’s one of a variety of ‘identity’ tools that I like to play with at inter-agency roundtables, brand ‘off sites’, and such.
“KEN” also owes a bit to my academic background in Asian studies and cultural theory. Although kind of the reverse of the Asian perspective on prioritizing the ‘family name’, I take some inspiration for Japanese culture where a personal ‘stamp’, not a ‘signature’, binds legal contracts. The lack of a ‘binding signature’ was one of the ‘issues’ in the early early days of e-mail’s rise against snail mail. Signing as “KEN” is sorta my ‘signature stamp’.
[All caps] KEN has engendered a variety of reactions over the years
Still, love it or hate it…
All the folks I’ve crossed paths with over the years:
- know exactly which KEN they are corresponding with
- potentially think of ME when they see any all capped name in the future
Long answer to a short question.
However, I hope it gives some insight into both:
- my generally hyper-thought-through nature
- my perspective on personal branding
‘Cult of personality’ can be a powerful tool when you want to project that you have a ‘unique perspective’ to offer. Part of being a “shaman” is about “vibrating at a different speed” than those around you. Sometimes being willing to get strange looks from others is a prerequisite for being able to see what others miss.
Good or bad… I’m a “Superhero” at heart.
If/when I fall short of that, I at least try to be an “artist”.
KEN
PS. Hope you don’t think I’m too nuts.
Or, at least, I hope that you think that I am ‘nuts’ but in a good way.
Regardless, I hope that this doesn’t affect you interest in further discussion.
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