Gabriel Hummel » Personal Brand

Start A Business Now

Gabriel Hummel — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:53:56 +0000

Like working for the man? Enjoy your drudging 9-5 lifestyle? Do you absolutely adore your round table discussions at the water cooler?

Hell no.

Anyone in there right mind wouldn’t want to sign up to do someone else’s bidding for the rest of their god forsaken lives. While sometimes you have to do what you need to do, other times it better to tell your boss to, “Piss Off!”

That is why I am writing this post day, both in reparations for my lack of activity on this site and also to show everyone how kickass it can be to run your own small business.

Everyone is good at something, even mentally handicapped sociopaths can be good at making models of cars. This means, that you too, have a talent that is not currently being unleashed in the world.

Chances are you are not making money doing something that you love, or doing something that is tolerable but offers the lifestyle that you crave. Starting your own business is your Dr. Feelgood for this common cold.

Don’t get me wrong, its a hell of a lot of work on the back end, but once you get going, you become a wrecking ball of productivity and accomplishments. Pretty soon everyone will be breaking your door down and offering you their first born son to take care of the things in there life that you find a walk in the park.

So what the hell are you waiting for? Start doing something right now and stop doing all the work you hate so much.

Cheers

Gabriel

Top 10 Company Slogans (Complete With Child Labor Laws)

Gabriel Hummel — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:21:58 +0000

So you went through my whole process of creating and developing your own brand to push out into the masses and decided to stand out for what you believe in. Now isn’t it true that most brands change their logos, slogans, and company principles from time to time? Of course, that is what we in the personal development industry like to call growth, the opposite being death. So maybe a few years, months, or even weeks from now you will decide that you are not happy with certain aspects of your personal avatar, and some changes need to be made. Where does one start?

I have created a list of my top 10 company slogans and their accompanying logos to serve as a template for the creation or future alteration of your personal brand. Some of these companies adhere to poor business practices and ethics, but that doesn’t matter because we are not trying to emulate other brands. These companies offer at least a good logo design and general slogan that can serve as a platform for filling that empty space that is blindly accompanying part of your brand and its design. So remember to take a step back, open up the right side of your brain a bit, and be creative while you are busy furiously writing an email boycotting gabrielhummel.com for its promotion of Nike

10. What happens here, stays here.

9. Reach out and touch someone

8. Because I’m worth it

7. Share moments. Share life.

6. The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

5. We try harder.

4. There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard.

3. Have it your way.

2. Think different

1. Just do it

Creating A Personal Brand (Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is)

Gabriel Hummel — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:09:02 +0000

So you have decided to be your own original brand and even create an awesome pseudo logo in order to commemorate your general awesomeness. Awesome, now comes the hard part. This is the final, and most important, part of this whole ridiculous exercise that I have had you do.

Anyone can decide who they ought to be like, and agree that being original and not another Heineken toting, football watching, and shopaholic redux version of Apple or Pepsi. But when it comes time to step up and stand up for what you and your brand are all about, many people reside to putting their tail between their legs and watching the box set of Friends like a good little boy or girl. I am here to tell you that your whole life is going to be a total cookie cutter joke if you do not stick to what you believe in and stand behind your personal brand 110%.

Of course you will agree that sticking up for what you believe in is an important facet to anyone’s life. And while this doesn’t mean starting a fight with every person who tries to mess with your head and tell you that you are retarded for believing x, y, or z (and take it from me personally, I get that a lot) it is equally important to be firm in your understanding of what things you believe and do not believe in. Sticking to your guns, as they say, is the core of having your own brand (fancy logo and all) and being true to it.

So this sounds all fine and dandy, but what the hell do I mean anyway? I mean when someone tries to compromise one of the values of your brand, you don’t allow them to. Gasp! This might mean you will inadvertently step on a few people’s toes a little bit as a result of sticking up for who you are and what your brand is all about. Believe it or not, by having your own limitations, goals, and general strategy for who you are and what you are trying to be is an admirable quality. When you don’t allow someone to compromise who you are (even in a slight way) they will inherently have more respect for you as a person. Do you think that many of the greats of world history compromised who they were when it was convenient for them? How would have Gandhi ended up? Or MLK? What about Bill Gates and Wayne Gretzky? The common denominator behind all of these people is the same, they stuck to who they were and what they believed in and as a result led a life that they could be proud of.

Now having a personal brand isn’t always going to be a defense based effort, there are going to be many opportunities for you to exert your brand onto others in an effort to help them and somehow help to benefit someone other than yourself. This philanthropic nature is critical to the success of any major company, brand, or person, so you must a conscious effort to put your beliefs on the line to educate, motivate, and help others who may or may not have the means to help themselves.

Say for example that your brand is a strong supporter of the arts, specifically that of music. In order to put yourself and your brand on the line, you need to go out of your way to extend yourself in ways that will put your passion for the arts into the hands of people who will appreciate it. This could mean any number of things from offering free music lessons to the unfortunate, to volunteering to help conduct and lead a local school musical production. You could promote other organizations that support arts programs in schools and donate money to help keep music and art programs an integral part of a child’s life. The options are literally endless for any aspect of any brand. All you have to do is put forth some effort that is no half assed and decide that putting your passions on the line in order to help others is something that you want to, and should be doing. Trust me, even if you think that running over to your local school right now to offer your services free of charge is a pointless effort that will be refused, it’s the effort that you will continually put in that will have big long term payouts for you and your brand.

If you take anything away from this series, just make sure that you don’t let anyone compromise your brand, and always put your brand on the line for the right reasons, and you will go far in life.

Cheers

Gabriel

Creating A Personal Brand (Arts and Crafts Day)

Gabriel Hummel — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:48:45 +0000

Okay now that you have realized that you need to create your own logo for your brand of your life, and not try to be like mike or calorie count until you have a logo as lean as Jillian Micheals, but what now? Its simple really, you just need to break out a bit of your right side of your brain and create a logo with your own two hands.

Are you f&*^@ing serious?

Yes I am dead serious, you need to actually sit down and make this artistic masterpiece that will soon be your ever changing brand for 2010 and beyond. But before you dig out your finger paints and research ways to fedex dog shit to my doorstep, realize that what we are making does not have to be some artist rendition of Michelangelo. This is a simple, easy, minimalistic way of getting the things you love in life consolidated into a collage of pure win.

So where do we start?

On a simple piece of paper, or in WordPad (No, you cant use Word) write down a list of things that interest you. It can be anything from material things to feelings, places, and even wierd cartoon characeters on TV.

Examples

Art collection
Happiness
Family and Friends
Books
Love
Travel
Bungee jump
Hanglide
Skydive
Passion
Surf
Courage
Spanish
Screenplay/movie
Drive
Energy
Scuba dive
Europe

After you have a list that is at least 15 things long, start breaking out the old magazines or making use of google image search and find one great image for each of the things you have written down.

Cut out or copy the images and be sure to place them on a blank piece of paper or a blank document on the computer (I use photoshop)

Arrange the images around in a collage and write your initials with a ruler (or with outline tools on the computer) on your piece of paper

Paste down the images where you want them (keepig in mind we are going to cut along your initials)

Place the images over the outline of your letter(s) and cut around the outline of your initials (or crop it in photoshop).

Like magic, you have not only passed 3rd grade art class, you also have a first draft to your personal logo

Have fun finger-painting

Gabriel

Create A Personal Brand (I’ll Be Gentle)

Gabriel Hummel — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:42:53 +0000

In all my years of personal development, the one question that everyone tries to tackle for everyone else is the notion of, “Who am I?” Everyone who dares venture into the self improvement category of your local borders and begins to read the book synopsis is bound to lose their mind, literally. You could walk into a personal development aisle knowing that you loved being a firefighter and walk out not knowing left from right and questioning why the borders security team is asking you to step away from your fetal position at the base of the frappuccino machine.

Finding out who you are or define who you are trying to be by some fancy nouns or goals is a recipe for failure. Worrying about every single goal that you have and tyring to tackle them all in an effort to change your, “image” is like committing suicide. All of these personal development authors place way to much emphasis on find out out who you are and what your calling is. While it would be easier for someone to come down from he heavens and throw a dart at a board for you and determine the outcome of your life, it doesn’t quite happen that way. Instead a shift needs to happen in people where they stop looking and start creating your own brand for life (in a series of course). But how exactly does one look at their life like a Nike swoop or Ronald Mcdonald?

All major brands have some baseline for defining what they are all about, like certain keywords that are commonly associated with the brand (Read: MacDonald’s, think, throw up). Luckily this is something that I don’t want you to worry about at all because ultimately its a waste of time.

STOP TRYING TO BE THE NEXT PEPSI

The important thing you need to do is to stop trying to define who you are. Trying to through out some nouns or verbs to describe your life is like watching the Lord of the Rings on a TV from the 1960s or in a movie theatre, its as if you are cheating the production quality. Accept that your life, or your brand is a dynamic concept. By accepting that you and your brand are dynamic, you can accept the fact that you have a general format for who you are as a person, but just like Pepsi, you could change your look, interests, entire sexual marketing campaign, in order to better meet with who you are trying to be as a person.

This is the most important aspect of creating a personal brand and pretty much key to loving yourself and not banging your head against the wall chanting how much you hate your cubicle and your wife’s small dog. Having your own brand, or own take on life, is really as simple as knowing that you will never lead the same life as someone else, and run with the knowledge of understanding that you have total control over the details (Read: everything) that occur in your life.

This was the single biggest issue that I struggled with when looking in the mirror in the morning. And while i was simultaneously practicing and extreme body builder diet, writing a book, traveling around the world, and pretty much have my whole life up in tornado of self doubt, I realized that all of the details don’t matter. When someone asks me who I am/what I do for a living, I tell them I am a renaissance man, or I just parlay my current interests to them (which would currently be nutrition and cooking). When I took a moment to relax, and realize that I don’t have to have to fit into some preset notion of who I am and who I want to be, I was able to shift my focus onto doing the things in my life that will create those amazing experiences that everyone was so busy talking about. Imagine that? If you spend less time thinking about something, and more time just doing something, you will create those nouns and verbs that describe your brand, your life.

You may or may not hate me after this section coming up, I am going to ask you to break out your arts and crafts supplies and make something on a computer or *gasp* with your hands