Good Life Project - Should You Brand Your Face or Your Work?

Episode Date: November 3, 2015

What's more important for people to know, your face or your work?This question came up at a recent dinner with a few author/founder types.We were talking, in particular, about whether you should have your picture on the cover of your book, or something else.But, the conversation is really about something much bigger.It's about how you want to bring yourself and your work to the world.It's about how you want to become known and what you want to become known for.One of the big awakenings for me has been that, whether you lead with your image or your "personal brand" or not, if the quality of work you're creating is remarkable, people will want to know more about the person behind the work.That's what we're talking about on today's short and sweet GLP Riff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I've got kind of a funny question on today's Good Life Project riff. And that question is, should you brand your face? So I was at dinner recently with a couple of friends. And one friend said, I tell all people, everybody, that they should have their picture on the cover of their books. Because it helps you brand your personal brand a lot faster. And at first I thought, well, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Then I started thinking a little bit more deeply about this and it brought up a few questions for me. One is, do you really want to build your personal brand or do you want to build the brand of something

you're creating as a standalone entity? It's not like there's a right or wrong answer to this. It's just, it's a question that a lot of people often don't ask this, you know, they start out thinking about themselves, rather than is it actually better for me to focus my energy on the larger thing that I want to exist at some point without having to be tied to me. And then that sort of moves into another exploration, which is even if you do want to focus more on your personal brand, does having your image, your face front and center on everything really do what you think it'll do? Will it really do what you're hoping it will do? And if you think about

the biggest books of all times, for the most part, the author's faces were not on the cover. So I wasn't really sold on the theory. So I did what I always did. I looked for evidence and I started pouring through the best-selling books of all times, generally non-fiction books of all times, because actually most of the best-selling books of all times are fiction books. And what I discovered was that sure, some authors with already existing massive personal brands have their faces on the covers of their books. People like Joel Osteen or Oprah or Susie Orman, you know, they're just a handful of examples. But also what I came to believe is that the reason their faces were on the cover of the books was largely because of the equity already built up in their personal brands

and the fact that that was already so huge by the time the books came out that having their images on the cover sold a lot more books. So that was a marketing play, leveraging their existing image and personal brand as a tool to move more books. If it had any impact on furthering their brands, it was really more secondary. So meanwhile, equally and arguably far more famous authors do not appear on the front of their books. People like, you know, Palo Quelo wasn't on The Alchemist. Cheryl Strayed was not on the cover of Wild.

Elizabeth Gilbert, not on the cover of Eat, Pray, Love, or Big Magic. Brene Brown, not on the cover of Daring Greatly or Rising Strong. Seth Godin is not on the cover of any of his, I believe it's almost 20 or so books. Yet on a personal level, they are still among the most iconic and most easily known personal brands on the planet right now. So maybe in the end, what really matters in the quest to build awareness around who you are as a creator is not whether your image is plastered on the cover of your work. Maybe it's actually far simpler than that. Maybe when it really comes down to it, it's all about the work. Write a stunning book.

Do remarkable work that changes people's lives. Make your offering across any media or any mechanism unputdownable. Create something people cannot shut up about. Something that moves them to tears, to laughter, to action. Something that creates genuine, deep impact. Then let the quality of your work, rather than the lens upon your face, speak to your worthiness of their investment and attention moving forward. Let that be the driver for people to then turn around

and ask, wow, who made this? I need to know more about the maker. And then that becomes the source of building awareness around you as an individual. If circling back to that first question I asked, in the end, it really even matters. So something to think about as you explore how you bring yourself to the world and build attention and investment around where you want people to focus their attention and investment. As always, I hope you enjoyed this Good Life Project riff. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.