Pre-Branding: How to Become an Expert When You Don’t Know Anything

The steady growth in the number of marketing douchebags I stumble across makes me wonder how anyone comes to the conclusion that these kinds of faux-business practices are a legitimate way to make a living.

Then I read a LinkedIn message that made it all clear.

Meet Joshua Boxer.  He’s not your typical Ed Hardy-wearing millionaire.  He’s the owner of Internet Wealth Pros, a moneymaking system that… whatever.  If you’ve clicked that link, you’ve already seen his video that explains it all.

Joshua sent a message to the Social Media Marketing group on LinkedIn, entitled “The #1 Mistake Online Marketers Make and How to Fix It.” And his advice explicitly illustrates HOW and WHY people have come to their current understanding of the way the Internet works — namely, that you don’t actually have to work in order to be successful.

You just have to convince other people that you already are successful.

Got that?  Under this mindset, actually being an expert is irrelevant; convincing other people that you’re an expert is what matters.

This is why I refer to the practice as pre-branding: traditionally, branding is what the public thinks of you (or your company), based on their evaluation of what you do or produce.  But today, people are advised to pre-brand themselves because they haven’t actually done anything.

Again, the kind of Internet Marketing we’re discussing here isn’t the actual marketing of a product, service or other company — it’s the marketing of you, yourself.  Suddenly, marketing yourself is a full-time job.  (“What do you do for a living, Bob?”  “I tell people about me.”  “Ahh, I see…”)

This is where it gets interesting.  Once again, you could have an awesome business or be a great leader, but if you don’t tell people you’re a great leader, they won’t see you as a great leader.  Conversely, if people see you as a great leader, you must be one (regardless of whether or not you’ve ever actually led anyone).

Lesson: what you’ve done is no longer as important as what you tell people you’ve done.

Again: don’t try to brand yourself by actually having a business that people take seriously; brand yourself by going to places where people talk and start talking about yourself in glowing terms.

Your story is important.  Your story need not be true, but your story does need to be compelling.  And nothing is more compelling than telling people how much your life has changed for the better since [inciting business-related incident], because people don’t value results as much as they value the hero’s journey.  (And if you cast yourself as the hero, you win.)

Tell your story.  Tell it everywhere.  Make sure that when people search for you, what they find is the story you want to tell them, not any record of what you have (or haven’t) actually done.

Remember: how you view yourself is how others are going to view you.  So when you tell them you’re a hero, they have to listen.

It’s like the Protestant work ethic being carried out by the illusionist’s hands.  Boxer is right that success takes time.  But instead of spending time amassing knowledge and experience, pre-branding advocates spending time convincing people that you already have knowledge and experience.

Because that’s what pre-branding is all about: building your online empire.  And since the Internet is seen by some as a magical land where people are rewarded for their claims rather than for their work, it’s only natural that you should be able to parlay those fictional claims into a fictional empire.

And maybe, if you pray hard enough, you’ll wake up one day and discover that you’ve become a real boy.

Or at least a real expert.

Tags: branding, bullshit, Business, common sense, ethics, expert, marketing douchebags, perception, Social Media, Sociology