Small Business Labs

Harvard Business Review on Personal Branding

Creating and maintaining a personal brand is important for everyone. But it's especially important for freelancers and independent workers - their brand is crucial to securing and keeping customers.  

Harvard Business Review's A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand provides the best overview of the steps needed to create a personal brand we've seen.

It also nicely describes why you need one. Key quote:

For better or worse, in today's world everyone is a brand. Whether you're applying for a job, asking for a promotion, or writing a dating profile, your success will depend on getting others to recognize your value. So you need to get comfortable marketing yourself.

The article covers a seven-step process for personal branding. The steps are:

1. Define your purpose by exploring your mission, passion, and strengths, and thinking about whom you want to make a difference to and how.
2. Audit your personal brand equity by cataloging your credentials, doing a self-assessment, and researching how other people view you.
3. Construct your personal narrative by identifying memorable, resonant stories that will best convey your brand.
4. Embody your brand by paying attention to the message you're sending in every social interaction.
5. Communicate your brand story through speeches, social media, the press, and other channels.
6. Socialize your brand by getting influential people to share your stories.
7. Reevaluate and adjust your brand by doing an annual audit to find deficits to fix and strengths to build on.

The article goes into greater detail on how to accomplish each of the seven steps.  

We've used a similar approach since we started our business over two decades ago. For example, we started this blog in 2007 to help communicate and socialize our brand.  

And we completely agree with the article's conclusion and believe it's particularly true for small businesses and independent workers:

The personal branding process takes work. But we know from research and experience that it will allow you to better control your professional and personal image and thus the success and impact that you can have in the world.

Americans' Retirement Confidence Declined in 2023

According to Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI), Americans' confidence in a comfortable retirement declined the most in 2023 since the 2008-09 financial crisis.  

As the EBRI's chart below shows (click to enlarge), only sixty-four percent of workers feel at least somewhat confident about living a comfortable retirement, down from 73% in 2022.

The reasons, according to Barron's The Baby Boomer Retirement Crisis Is Here. Why the Richest Generation Is Struggling, are:

• A lack of retirement savings by many baby boomers
• Debt levels at retirement age are higher than in prior generations 
• Recent stock market declines
• Rising costs, especially for healthcare and long-term care
• Concerns about the viability of social security and Medicare

One way to help, according to many sources, is to work a bit longer - full-time or part-time - in retirement.  

The New York Time's How a Solo Gig Can Give You a Stronger Retirement says:

Adding a few more years of work to your retirement plan can be one of the best ways to improve retirement security, and some find that the best way to keep income flowing in one's later years is a sole proprietor business. 

The Motley Fool's Here's Why It Pays to Join the Gig Economy Before You Retire suggest starting a side gig before retirement. This gives you time to build the side gig into a successful business before entering retirement.

As we've noted in the past, older Americans have the highest rate of self-employment.  

And the growing interest -and need - by baby boomers to work in retirement is one of the reasons we continue to forecast growing numbers of independent workers.

See our Baby Boomer section for more on this topic.

Is the Metaverse Dead?

Yes, generative AI has replaced the metaverse as tech's next big thing. Despite that, we think the answer to the title's question is a resounding no.

But there are lots of articles proclaiming that the metaverse is dead. Our favorite is Insider's RIP Metaverse. Key quote:

"The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. It was three years old."

We also like The Guardian's A moment's silence, please, for the death of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse. It focuses on the vast sums of money Meta has spent on its metaverse vision, which has yet to generate much revenue or excitement.

Couple these views with the enormous hype around generative AI, and you can see why many think, as the Insider article puts it, the metaverse is "the latest fad to join the tech graveyard."

But the reasons we disagree are simple:

First, the metaverse includes a wide variety of very successful online games (think Roblox, Fortnite, etc.). So the gaming metaverse is already a large and growing industry.  

Second, the use of metaverse tools for industrial applications continues to expand. As the Harvard Business Review article Yes, the Metaverse is Still Happening points out:

"Look at how many companies are adopting "digital twins," or a virtual representation of a physical object, person, or place that is created using real-time data and advanced simulation models to provide a comprehensive, digital view of a real-world process.

At the moment, digital twins are most apparent at work, enabling a new world of possibilities across industries ranging from automotive to architecture, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and beyond."

The digital twin market is already large and expected to grow rapidly over the next decade. 

And third, the metaverse is already making headway as a tool for education and training. Again, this is a potentially large metaverse market.

We agree that the hyperbolic noise and expectations about the metaverse are over.  

But we believe the metaverse will continue growing - and be an important technology - especially in the abovementioned areas.

NPR's The Indicator on the Influencer Industry

The Indicator is an NPR radio show focusing on economics, work, and business. The shows are only about 9 minutes long and generally cover a single topic.

Recently, The Indicator did a week-long deep dive on the Influencer Industry- which is a big part of the creator economy - and one of the faster-growing segments of independent work.

The episodes are:

• Monday: The origins of the influencer industry
• Tuesday: The economics of the influencer industry
• Wednesday: Gen Z's dream job in the influencer industry
• Thursday: The dark side of the influencer industry
• Friday: Final thoughts on the influencer industry

The series provides an excellent overview of the influencer industry, and the key issues influencers face pursuing this path.

See our creator economy section for more details on influencers and the broader creator economy.

Also see The Creator Economy: Staking out New Territory, a recent research report from MBO Partners (we worked with MBO Partners on this study).