A few months ago, I wrote a post on personal branding following a training session on the topic I gave at Mercer Capital.  The post was interesting and I received a number of comments both on and off this blog.  The post also triggered a request for me to provide a webinar for the Practice Builder Academy (PBA).

The PBA is an academy formed by two friends of mine, Rod Burkert and Mel Abraham, to help professionals in the valuation and forensic accounting spaces develop business more effectively.  I was flattered to be asked and so I prepared for and did a webinar with them.  This post addresses some of the things I talked about in the PBA webinar on Personal Branding and Business Development.

The Beginnings of My Personal Branding

First of all, why should anyone pay attention to what I have to say about personal branding and business development?

• I have no degree in marketing or any related subject
• I did take one (really lousy) undergraduate marketing course, but didn’t learn much
• I’m by nature a very private, reserved, pretty determined and quite analytical person
• I tend to be somewhat opinionated, and
• I’m definitely not a “born salesman”

But we all have to begin somewhere…

During my nearly four years as a young officer in the U.S. Army, I learned a few things about how not to build a great personal brand – at least in the military.  I learned that if you tell your superior officers what you really think too often, it impacts what you do and on your OERs (Officer Efficiency Reports).  I did learn that my particular set of skills and attitudes were not well-suited to a military career, and so I “retired” as a young captain in 1974.

Upon returning to the United States and Memphis in early 1975, I launched a national job search and went to work at First Tennessee National Corporation, the holding company for the then First National Bank and a string of other banks across Tennessee.  With a bit of luck, I was assigned for a short stint with the CFO and assigned to be a primary staff person on a major expense reduction initiative (following real estate problems and the recession of 1974-75.  As a result of that job, I became the reporter on financial progress to the entire management team and became a regular in that role for the remainder of my stay.

What I learned at First Tennessee is that if you can create a good analysis of financial performance and communicate it in writing and in spoken presentation forms, then your personal brand grows.  And it did, internally, at First Tennessee.

I’m not a born salesman, but my “personal brand” as a good banking analyst and communicator translated into what I discovered was, in fact, a real selling job.  I became the bank stock analyst for a smallish investment banking firm, Morgan Keegan & Company (since acquired by Regions Financial and then by Raymond James).  My job was to analyze, report on and recommend bank stocks for the firm’s cadre of retail and institutional equity brokers.  I discovered very quickly that being a successful stock analyst involved more than picking stocks that went up in price and writing compelling stock reports.

The majority of equity sales by volume was handled by a small group of institutional salesmen.  I realized that these guys (all men at the time) had to get to know me, to like me, and to trust me.  They had to trust me because it was my job to talk to their best customers about the state of the regional bank equity markets and our current recommendations.  If I wanted to succeed, I had to develop good relationships with these brokers – and then do a good job at everything else.

That experience as a bank stock analyst at Morgan Keegan (1978-1982) was my trial by fire introduction into personal branding and business development.  It was during those years that I began to learn something about selling/developing business valuation services.

The Beginnings of Personal Branding at Mercer Capital

It was a good thing I learned something about personal branding at both First Tennessee and Morgan Keegan.  In June of 1982, I left a really great and lucrative career with Morgan Keegan and started Mercer Capital.  I took a couple of weeks to get organized and rented a two-room office.  I purchased an Osborne 1 computer, which was one of the very first transportable personal computers. My printer was a Smith Corona TP-1, which could print letter quality at the blistering pace of one page per five minutes.  And I bought a used thermal copy machine.  I hired a graphic artist to produce my first brochure, letterhead, business cards, and a couple of other collateral items.  And then, it was time to get started.

After being consumed for more almost two weeks with just getting things organized and set up, I remember sitting at my desk in my almost functional office.  I looked out the window and looked at the green grass of the lawn outside in the sun, I guess, to see if I could watch it grow, and feeling so…

Alone…

It took me a few minutes to work through that feeling of aloneness.  And then, it hit me.  With no degree in marketing, and only one ineffective course, with being a reserved, shy and analytical person, and not being a born salesman, my sense of determination won out.  I realized that I simply had to overcome all of my negative self-talk, learn from my earlier experiences and introduction to personal branding and business development, and get on with building Mercer Capital.  I picked up the phone and started calling people, and I and Mercer Capital have been outbound ever since.

Wrap-Up

I’m glad that Rod Burkert and Mel Abraham asked me to give a webinar on Personal Branding and Business Development.  I’ve been talking about these topics within Mercer Capital for many years and, occasionally, to outside groups.  Interestingly, preparing for the webinar triggered a series of thoughts that I hope will result in a significant new initiative to reach out to business owners in a couple of new ways.  I’m reminded once again that the teacher often learns far more than the students from preparing to teach.

Please feel free to comment on this post, or to me directly.

Until next time,

Chris