Controlling Your Narrative | Multithreaded Income Episode 13

And it's kind of exciting to see this new energy come in and really you want to see them go off and do great things. And if you're out there listening and you are interested in a free challenge where myself, Chad and Sean are going to kick your butt into doing something, whatever it might be. And that's part of the challenge is figuring out what you want to do. You should go to. mti. to slash challenge and get on the list for the next challenge.

We're going to run here in, uh, well, depending on when you listen to this in the near future, but that's not what we're here to talk about today. We want to talk about the last episode with Mr. James Q quick, and get the Q. And there was a whole conversation I had with James before we started recording that discussed why. Do you emphasize the Q and going back through James's social media through his YouTube, through everything, it's James Q quick.

And I really appreciate the branding aspect of how you put yourself out there, how you control your narrative. And I think James did a really great job of kind of conversing why he's interested in controlling his narrative. So I think we should kind of start the conversation there. Uh, I'll start with I have always tried to be brand centric, like selling my brand, Kevin, Kevin, the developer, Kevin, the dot net guy, Kevin, the community guy. There's a lot of different narratives.

I do a really poor job of focusing on how I want people in the world to see me and I really should spend more time on that. I should. Find an exercise or something to do, but I'm conscious of it. I don't do a good job of it. Like James, James does an amazing job of it, but I always felt this was important because when, especially in consulting, when people need certain skills, they go looking for specific folks.

And if you're either not out there, you're quiet or you're selling the wrong persona. It's could be really easy for someone to overlook you, but if you focus down and you're very deliberate about how you want people in the world to, to see you. And so I want someone to see me as Kevin, the. net Azure guy, when they have a need for material I put out or for training I offer or for consulting services I provide, they know directly that.

That is the guy to go to for, for a certain set of content, a certain, certain set of skills. Like if I'm going to quote Liam Neeson from Taken, I have a particular set of skills and I need people to know what those particular sets of skills are. Sean, I know you and I were chatting a little bit about this before we jumped on the call, but what's kind of your take on the, the branding aspect of anyone that's trying or should be trying to put themselves out there.

And I've toyed around a lot, uh, with LinkedIn, with my LinkedIn profile. That's one place. I think a lot of people really don't pay a lot of attention to. So a tip for me would be pay more attention to your LinkedIn and update it and make it seem like, I mean, I really seem like you probably are this person, but maybe you don't.

give yourself enough credit, but make it really seem like the, you know, the valuable person, the valuable skills, engineer, whatever you are, whatever you want to call yourself title that you want to be, or you want to get more jobs doing as update your LinkedIn to, to make it seem like you're, you're that person. And I actually own, I love how. He talked about the personal brand because I think probably what 90 percent of engineers probably own their name. com or something similar.

That's something I think personally, I could probably do a little better at cause that really does start to create some authority more and more in your, not only your network. But you can do certain hashtags and such too.

So people can see a lot more activity for the areas of work that you're posting about or at, you know, in all the time I know paid speaking was in keynotes was one of the things James, uh, Q quick mentioned, and we'll talk about that more here in a minute, but I guess there, cause I'm always going two different routes, so I have my main gig, right. Where I'm the VP of engineering. And then I also have my side hustle, entrepreneurial stuff always going on as well.

I have a, uh, software consulting company that I run as well. And one of the things I'll put on there, believe it or not, I control the narrative of that, right? So I'll put on there, I've done work for a multi billion dollar fortune 100 companies because I have as an employee, but I've also been consulted for some, most of my consulting gigs have been for small to medium sized business, haven't done any large enterprise type consulting work.

But I have, and I do have experience, um, you know, performing software jobs or, um, you know, managing engineers, outsourcing engineers, doing the work myself as an engineer in these large, large enterprise corporations. So that's something I can definitely put on my portfolio that I have experience working in so I could use that experience both in the consulting field and, um, and picking up new clients as well as, uh, pursuing the career corporate ladder track at the same time.

And one of the things that I'm VP of engineering now, next step for me is CTO. So that's what I'm trying now. And after, actually, after the episode, I think it's something I've known I need to probably pay more attention to is that like personal image on LinkedIn, if that's the next step, maybe trying to control the narrative a little bit more around, uh, I don't know, like talking more about. The things I'm doing strategically for my company, right?

And, uh, maybe the networking with other CTOs, like, you know, maybe a mastermind group or something with other CTOs connecting there. So the personal brand controlling that narrative, it it's important in both fields, you know, whether it be your employment field or your individual, you know, multi, uh, side thread that you got going on

And he should have been putting more time and effort into the LinkedIn, into the thought leadering. I know we hate buzzwords, but he should have been putting out content thinking about Cementing himself as an expert in a particular set of skills.

So you will be found right through platforms like linkedin and you do control the narrative on those you even in your resume if you're posting for a job you control all the The the lingo and verbiage and the way you're formatting that as well. So give yourself a little bit more credit

We dealt with all this like data stuff, but if I'm talking to a business minded person or someone I potentially want to see as a, as a colleague or a person to hire me for higher level skills, I'm going to use the fanciest language possible. I'm trying to control that narrative to make. The simple thing I did seem a lot more complicated. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on the personal branding conversation? Sorry, Sean and I have just been going back and

Um, but what was interesting was back in the days of Myspace. So this is forever ago, somebody else grabbed that name. And at the time I was, I don't know, I was in my, I don't remember how old it was, but it was, you know. However, however long ago, uh, Myspace was, um, so I was mid twenties, late twenties, I don't even know now. But anyway, it was a 14 year old girl that grabbed that. Uh, grabbed that name and I thought, so I have the same mentality as a 14 year old girl. That's good.

That's wonderful. Uh, but other than my space, uh, everything else, all, everything else, I kind of grabbed, uh, grabbed that. But what I found is, um, when I was doing more things professionally, I try to rely more on my name. And, uh, but there's a lot of Chad Carter out there. There's a blues singer, Chad Carter, and there's a few other things. Um, and I do have one of the domains, chadcarter. net though, couldn't get, uh, uh, the dot com.

I ended up having Um, or hearing about, uh, this thing called the Jake, JK five methods from Jenna Kutcher. So it's her method, JK five. And she talks about, it's mainly around Instagram is kind of where her focus was, but it's all about whatever, wherever you're putting your content out that you pretty much kind of have like five things that you're known for, if you will. And so when I did my site at check hard. net.

I actually kind of put those five things on there, which was simply Christian, entrepreneurial, investor, technologist, and gamer. And then on my Twitter, or now X, I kind of have the same thing. I put a few other things in there, but I try to have that consistency between those two. Um, so from a personal branding thing, I definitely don't have that dialed in.

Uh, like I should on the, on the flip side, I will mention this, I'm also kind of big into the NFT space and in the NFT space, uh, everybody has their profile picture as an actual, you know, uh, NFT, usually some cartoon imager or whatever, uh, for that project that they care about. What I'm really big into this one, uh, project called Drill Club. And all the people that I'm around have all these drill PFPs, it's like a mandrel, a cartoon mandrel.

And I'm the only one, for the most part, that's really active in that community that doesn't. It's just my face, the same avatar image that I've had for the last, what, 10, 15 years. And I've done that for consistency. And I've told the folks that said, well, once, once these NFTs are selling for a certain price, uh, then I'll, I'll switch over, um, whatever I have. So when that does happen, then I'll actually switch to this cartoon picture across the board.

And that's where, and that's where I'll be versus right now. It's this one thing. So while I'm not really good at the whole personal branding thing, I have tried to be consistent across the board because if you find me on YouTube or Twitter or LinkedIn, you know, it's me. Because it's the same black and white image, uh, that I have the, um, uh, the Jenna five, uh, JK five.

Uh, the idea with that is you try to have, you know, the five things that you care about, the five top things you care about, because like on Instagram in particular, again, I'm not on Instagram, but when she's talking about putting things on Instagram that you actually post around those five different topics and you're not kind of wearing things out right now. My posts on Twitter again are all around Drill Club because that's the main circle that I'm in.

It is there when what would be ideal from a personal brand is actually kind of back out of that. Some not be so focused on that and kind of, you know, filter other things in as well. Um, and yeah, LinkedIn, I just, I've not even fooled with LinkedIn in forever. So I was looking at something like five years old, I think last time on that thing. So, so yeah, I have some work to do there.

Uh, because there are a lot of folks, we had David Neal a couple of weeks ago and there were, there was a time where everyone was supporting a David Neal avatar and that actually kind of goes against the theory. Like that's not authentic version of yourself. Um, you have to think of it from the other side. If I'm an employer or a potential, uh, person looking to hire you for consulting or for any other services, and I'm stalking your social media, whether it's your LinkedIn or.

Twitter, Instagram, wherever you might be, because people do that. They, they stalk anyone that they might not know personally, and they see an image of me as a David Neal avatar. They might have a different opinion of me as they would with my, my avatar is just me smiling at an angle. Uh, And so they might have a different opinion of you, depending on that.

And as we know, and because it's a conversation about branding and controlling your narrative, you, you want to be able to control that first impression that people have of you.

And either come to the conclusion that if somebody doesn't want to work with me because of this, then so be it, probably won't want to work with them anyway. Or, no, that's actually a very important thing, I should actually taper this down a little bit so I do present myself in such a particular way. I think it's something critical to keep in mind.

And those are usually at high, high ends, private technical conferences, but I've never been paid, I would say for a keynote or. Uh, at a community event to, to be a speaker more times than not. Those are volunteer basis. You might be covered for your travel and for your accommodations while you're there, but you're not paid for being there. And the conversation with James, he's trying to make that jump where he wants a company or maybe some sort of social group to pay him to come do a talk.

And I think that's fascinating. And. I chalk it up to, I'm just jealous because I would love to achieve that too. I've just don't understand the process of how you go from speaking primarily at, let's call them, uh, speaking for free to speaking for pay, uh, over time, over time. Love to see if you guys have any thoughts on that. Sean, we'll start with you.

You were doing lightning rounds, like quick little speech or talks right before the main speaker would get on and do their talk and always encourage everybody, Hey, anything you're learning or, you know, doing sign up for a lightning talk. It doesn't have to be, you know, super polished or anything. It's not like you're the main presenter of the night, but you can hop up here for 10 minutes and do a quick little discussion on something.

Get a little practice speaking and you'll probably learn something from speaking out of it at the same time. And that actually worked. I think I did one on TypeScript when I was learning TypeScript. Uh, got up in front of everybody and did a little lightning talk. It went pretty well, uh, enjoyed it. And that was really the first time ever, um, I think got in front of people physically to do a speech. I've done a lot virtually and it's completely different. I can talk to people virtually.

I can do presentations online all day long, easy peasy, but in person, it's just a different feeling. And it's a lot, much different experience than I'm used to.

a paid speaker is that you can really only have one or two talks and it's one or two talks that you have just honed. Just to be so precisely presented that you hit very specific key marks and it's documented. You're going to talk about X, Y and Z, and then you take these talks and you start doing them for free or at a very low cost.

And the big thing you do is after you've presented that talk and if it's well received, very much assuming it's well received, you go to the folks in charge and you ask them, can you refer me? To other people in this space who have similar, uh, similar groups. Uh, so a couple of case studies in the book are specifically about people who started with, had a talk, it was well received, was then referred to other groups where they went and did the same talk.

They refined it, also refined it for the audience that they knew they were presenting to. So depending on what it is, if your group always. Talking to the developers, you're probably going to have one stick to stick to, but if you have something that's a little bit more generic, maybe you can talk to a group of doctors or a group of.

Laborers or you name it, the, the group is going to change the, um, the dialogue of the talk a little bit and being aware of who, who you're going to talk to helps to talk immensely. But so I want to recommend the book for everyone out there. The Referrable Speaker. I haven't finished it, but if you finish it before I do, you should come talk to me about it. Think it's a good idea to kind of distinguish the types of paid speaking. , I think what James is trying to get into is the.

You're going to pay me for a keynote. I want to get up. I don't want to talk for 45 minutes. I'm done. And you rinse, repeat that a couple of times a year that can turn into its own, very good form of income. Um, In the referable speaker, they talk about folks who basically create a full time job just out of speaking where they originally doing their day job and they started speaking on the side and the rates for their speaking went up and the number of inquiries for the speaking went up.

So naturally, their full time job just becomes speaking, and I think that's what James is trying to transition to.

But, uh, that could be a benefit if you do decide to, uh, go down the painful process of writing a book.

And I know there's a lot of private people, a lot of introverts who shiver at the thought of being a public person, but in a lot of cases, that's the easiest way to succeed is just putting yourself out there and that way people know who you are. They know what, what kind of quantity you are. All right, guys. Well, it's been great catching up and talking about the James Q quick commentary. Looking forward to chatting with you guys next week and everyone else, thanks for listening.