Hooray. Pamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation points out in Your Personal Brand Can Run But it Cannot Hide Online that one logical offshoot of a new world of new media is that it’s hard for one person to be several different people. Who you really are is going to come out, somewhere — unless you’re really dedicated to hiding.

Pamela does that by piecing together two different elements. The first, a book about the unpleasant experiences of somebody trying to get a job by pretending to be somebody else.

I just found it kind of amusing that she had trouble getting career advice, networking and landing a good job when she (the book author) was pretending to be someone she was not.

Second, this two-minute video by Gary Vaynerchuck which, Pamela says, “so clearly describes our inability to tell lies about ourselves.”

This seems like good news to me, just as Gary and Pam point out. I haven’t forgotten that awkwardness last year when it turned out that the CEO of Whole Foods was running around investor sites commenting on his own company while pretending to be somebody else. Being just one person at a time is a really good idea.

Tim Berry
President
Palo Alto Software