How to Find True Happiness and Be Successful in 2009

January 2, 2009 at 5:26 pm | In Interview, People, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, social media | 5 Comments

Today, I spoke with Gretchen Rubin, who just might be the happiest woman on earth.  She shares her happiness tips everyday on her world famous blog (over 17,000 subscribers), while blogging at the Huffington Post, being an author of several books and, soon, taking over the world.  In this interview, Gretchen reflects on 2008, gives you tips for 2009, shares some of her blogging strategies and then analyzes her own personal brand for all of us.

Gretchen, for 2008, can you sum up some of your advice on how to live a happy life?

If you want to live a happier life, I’d suggest you start by thinking about the elements of my “First Splendid Truth” – to be happy, you should think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

  • First, ask yourself – what makes me feel good? What brings me joy, energy, enthusiasm, engagement, satisfaction? Ok. What can I do to bring more of this into my life? E.g., you might start a film club with six other movie-crazy friends.
  • Second, ask yourself – what makes me feel bad? What brings me anger, resentment, boredom, frustration, guilt, remorse? Ok. What can I do to lessen this in my life? E.g., I have tried very hard to give up gossip.
  • Third, ask yourself – do I feel right about my life? Am I leading the life I feel that I’m “supposed” to live? Do my choices reflect my values? Am I heading in the right direction? I switched from law to writing, because although I had a great experience as a lawyer (for instance, I clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor), I felt that I wasn’t doing what I was “supposed” to be doing.
  • Fourth, ask yourself – does my life have an atmosphere of growth? What’s changing for the better? In what way am I learning, growing, helping, and making things better? (more on this topic in Question #2)

What are your top 3 suggestions that people can use for living a happier life in 2009?


  • First, although happiness seems like a transcendent, abstract principle, start with the physical reality of your own body: work on getting enough sleep, some exercise, and eating healthfully. These habits matter! If this seems overwhelming, start small: turn off the lights 15 minutes earlier each night, take a ten-minute walk outside each day, eat an apple at lunch. You will really see a boost in energy – and energy is a great foundation for happiness.
  • Second, ancient philosophers and modern scientists agree that the key to happiness is relationships with other people. Take time to see your friends and family, show up, reach out to new people, try to be helpful, make connections – anything you can do widen and deepen your relationships will boost your happiness.
  • Third, one aspect of happiness that I didn’t recognize when I started my research was the importance of a factor that I call “the atmosphere of growth.” We’re all happier when something in our life is changing for the better: we’re learning something new (taking a Photoshop class, working on our golf game); we’re helping something grow (a child, a business, a garden), we improving something flawed (cleaning a messy closet, volunteering to help an organization get its books in order), we see positive change in our life (getting a raise, getting out of debt, starting a new relationship, healing a rift). As that list suggests, there are many ways to foster “an atmosphere of growth.” Make sure your life includes this aspect somewhere. It helps bring you enthusiasm and energy – without it, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, trapped, cramped, stagnant.

Your happiness project consists of twelve commandments.  What are your three favorite and why?

Actually, I think all my commandments could be summed up in two: “Be Gretchen” and “There is only love.” In the end, I’ve found that although it sounds like a cliché, it really is true: as long as I remain faithful to myself (not who I wish I were) and as long as I try to act with love, I have the foundations of a happy life.

As an individual blogger, you’ve succeeded more than almost anyone.  How are you able to stay committed, original, vocal on your blog?  What are your secrets for growing a readership?

Thanks for those nice words about my blog! I’m very lucky, because the topic of happiness is inexhaustible. I never worry about running out of things to write about. I never lose interest in the subject, myself.

I do try to discipline myself to keep things interesting for readers. I ask myself a series of questions when I post: am I being funny? Am I giving good information? Am I tying into recent events? Am I telling stories? Am I providing links to interesting material and highlighting the valuable writing of others? Am I showing what it’s like to live in New York City? Am I being honest about my own nature and perspective? Am I being critical of anyone other than myself? Obviously, I don’t hit each note every time, but I keep those goals in mind.

I also post six days a week – I think that’s important to keep a blog lively.

I try to reach out to other bloggers who write about related subjects. This is good for my blog and also wonderful for me personally – I have lots of new blog friends, some of whom I’ve met, but most of whom I haven’t met – and that has enriched my life tremendously.

Once a week, I write a post in “tips” form, a format that’s very popular on the internet. I think that has helped me get picked up in places that exposed my blog to new readers. I also cross-post twice a week on the Huffington Post, post original content twice a week on RealSimple.com, and starting on January 12, I’ll cross-post on Slate. I love each of these sites, and I’m thrilled that I get a place there myself. And obviously that’s good exposure for my writing.

How have you built your personal brand over time and what’s next for the brand called Gretchen Rubin?

The goal of my book and my blog is to help people understand happiness better and to start their own happiness projects, so that they can help themselves become happier. As such, my brand is to be engaging, informative, accessible, light-hearted, and encouraging.

So, for example, I tell people that if they’d like to see my personal Resolutions Chart, of the resolutions I keep as part of my happiness project, they can email me for a copy (just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. — no need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line). By sharing my experience, I hope that I can inspire other people to do a happiness project of their own.

I also use Facebook, Twitter (follow me at gretchenrubin), and a monthly newsletter to connect with readers. I love these new tech tools, which weren’t available to me when my other books came out. I try to use my presence there to reinforce my availability, my ability to point people to interesting, useful information, and to connect other people.

Because my book, The Happiness Project, isn’t coming out until December 1, 2009, its publication is what’s next for me.

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Gretchen Rubin is a writer working on The Happiness Project—an account of the year she spent test-driving every conceivable principle about how to be happy, from the wisdom of the ages to current scientific studies, from Aristotle to Ben Franklin to Martin Seligman. On her Happiness Project blog, she reports her daily adventures on her way to becoming happier.  Rubin is a graduate of Yale Law School and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. She was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she had the epiphany that she really wanted to be a writer.  Her bestselling Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill and Forty Ways to Look at JFK are succinct, provocative biographies.

The Same Laws Apply For Personal Brands as Any Brand

January 1, 2009 at 11:00 pm | In Book Reviews, Interview, People, Personal Branding, eBrand, marketing | 5 Comments

Today, I spoke with John Gerzema, who is the Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam Group and an author.  We discuss the three main challenges marketers face in today’s marketplace, what the brand bubble is and how to measure it, as well as his five-stage model for brand creativity and change.  John, then gives us his perspective on personal branding.

What challenges do marketers have these days? How are they different than years ago?

Marketing is facing a convergence of forces:

  • First the Fragmentation of everything — of channels, choice, modes and mediums means it’s no longer possible to build a brand on the back of mass media, the way we did in previous decades.
  • Second, because of Social media (collaboration, communication and sharing… social networks, applications and consumer generated media), consumers rely on each other more than brands.
  • And Personalization (products, experiences, mass customization and micro-addressability) means there are no USP’s anymore. A brand has a myriad of potential appeals to be personally relevant.

All of these new phenomena accelerate the decay in brand equity. Consumers are quicker to punish uninteresting brands. Marketing must adapt because brands have nowhere to hide.

What is the Y&R’s Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) and what key research have you found on brands?

BrandAsset Valuator is the world’s largest continuously updated study of brands. We’ve invested over $ 115 million dollars and each year we interview over 500,000 consumers in 44 countries. We’ve tracked consumer perceptions of over 40,000 brands since1993. In fact, we’ve opened up the database for anyone to research hundreds of brands in our study.

What is the brand bubble and why do you think it will burst soon? What can we do today to prepare for it?

“We believe another crisis is brewing on Wall Street: The financial markets think brands are worth more than the consumers who buy them.”

Main Street offers a different view of brands than Wall Street: While brand value increased 80% in three decades, brand awareness declined 20% — brand quality eroded by 24% — trust in brands declined by a staggering 50%. And 85% of brands were either stagnant or declining in brand differentiation.

The first thing we must acknowledge: This is not a brand problem; it’s a business problem.  When consumers fall out of love with brands, shareholder value is at risk. CEO’s are leveraging their brands to make promises of future earnings to shareholders. Today, brands are 30% of the market cap of S&P 500, or almost $ 4 trillion dollars. The 250 most valuable brands are worth $ 2.197 trillion dollars, which exceeds the GDP of France. Even the world’s top 10 most valuable brands are larger than the market capitalization of 70% of U.S. public companies. So we’re advising clients to completely re-think marketing from a cost of doing business, to a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

The 21st century CEO must be the ‘Brand Manager in Chief’. The best CEO’s think like CMO’s. And the best CMO’s must think like CEO’s. Together, they must bring marketing to the forefront of business strategy in order to access and integrate other functions of the business.

“Marketing isn’t a department, but a way of thinking across the company. Marketing is now everyone’s concern and a business imperative, as important as any strategic function in the enterprise.”

What is your five-stage model for brand creativity and change?

In the book we walk the reader through a five-stage model to drive the brand through their organization and to collaborate from the standpoint of what the consumer wants and what the brand needs. This process involves the entire enterprise recognizing that the brand imperatives are one and the same as the organizational imperatives. Every department and division, including outside vendors, suppliers, partners – everyone in the brand’s value chain – plays a role in fueling the energy of the brand, by contributing creativity and ideas that lead the brand forward. The company has to become what we call an Energy-driven Enterprise, and this especially means that the entire company has to become marketing-led, not just a company with a marketing department.

Most importantly, in developing the process to ignite energy into their brands, we identified what we call the Five Laws of Energy. These five laws now govern the new ConsumerLand, where consumers have new demands and unparalleled power. These five laws help enterprises re-examine how they approach and implement their creativity, their messaging, their flexibility and ability to evolve their brand, their approach to marketing, and their use of strategies and tactics.

Do you have any tips for people wanting to create personal brands? You can use some of the research you’ve already discovered to answer this question.

The same laws apply for personal brands as any brand — Have a unique point of difference (your differentiation) and continuously innovate around it (energy).  Today’s social media and fragmentation described above offer any individual extraordinary opportunity to brand themselves and gain a following quickly. The key as with any brand is to also have integrity and ‘walk your talk’. So the brand promise —the person’s content, delivery and dialogue are all critical factors to providing a brand experience that consumers believe is unique and enduring.

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John Gerzema is Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam Group. He is the author of The Brand Bubble.  One of the early founders of account planning in American advertising, John has guided brand strategies to global business and creative acclaim. Previously, John ran Fallon’s international network and founded offices in Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sao Paulo. He holds a master’s degree in integrated marketing from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a B.S. in marketing from The Ohio State University.

Lessons on Personal Brand Building From Donald Trump and P Diddy

December 31, 2008 at 10:14 pm | In Book Reviews, Interview, People, Personal Branding, entrepreneurship | 1 Comment

Today, I spoke with John Eckberg, who has spoken with many successful entrepreneurs and celebrities, wrapping up his interviews in a book and sharing a few today for this blog. The two we will discuss are Donald Trump and P Diddy, who, in my opinion, truly represent the epitome of personal branding.   Donald Trump understood early in his career that personal branding would give him an edge, while P Diddy figured out that being around people who were smarter than him would help accelerate his business success.

What can Donald Trump teach us about building a powerful brand (personal/product/corporate)?

Donald Trump is one of the few Americans who has turned his success in the fairly stodgy field of real estate in world-renown brand and persona in the milieu of entertainment, retailing and recreation. And while I am no Trump-a-phile, that is, I have not studied his books nor have I pored over the minutia of his career, I do know this much about him: the guy returns phone calls. Maybe it’s because I work at a newspaper and hold a megaphone that reaches hundreds of thousands of people (though I suspect he’d return phone calls to folks who run newsletters) but this mogul is somebody who tends to his telephone messages.

Why is that important in building brand and what does that teach us about creating a brand? Trump (who, by the way, is Mr. Trump to me since he never played centerfield or was a jockey, according to that Ring Lardner newspaperman’s rule of who gets called by their first name in any conversation) understood early on in his career that people with personal brands have an edge when it comes to negotiations, co-ventures, real estate deals and just about everything else in our society. He must have learned this from his father, a man who cut mega-deals with other real estate moguls in the rarified and cut-throat world of Manhattan real estate.

Trump knows that when somebody with a brand walks into a room or picks up the phone, they carry with them subtle but strong personal packaging.

“Trump has embraced the element of human nature, the tendency to elevate others, into a clear advantage.”

He is never off stage, never out of the limelight, either, and knows that subordinates, peers and colleagues are always watching. In fact, they never stop watching.

And here’s something else. We usually think that somebody with baggage means that they have a hurdle to overcome. But that is not the case when you think of a brand as baggage. In that case baggage has a positive impact on a person’s patina – or brand.  Trump has Gucci baggage.

The first and only time I met Donald Trump face-to-face (although we have spoken several times since then) was in the early 1990s at a Super Bowl when the Bengals narrowly lost to the San Francisco 49ers. My job was to chase quotes from locals from the Cincinnati area, who were at the game, and after one interview, I looked to my left and there was Trump. His hair, I might add, was magnificent. As I slid over to chat with him, there on the 10 yard line (what’s he doing on the 10-yard line, I thought but didn’t ask) my heart was in my throat. I mean, this guy is Donald Trump. But within moments the nervousness went away and my natural interview assurance kicked in. Part of it, I realized later, was the Trump charm. This guy puts other people at ease. That’s the part of the Trump brand that does not resonate in Macy’s commercials for his suits, in his show The Apprentice nor in the magazine covers. He has a calm confidence, yes, but it’s also a confidence that is infectious. He makes others feel at ease.

How does he achieve this? Eye-to-eye and a benign and wry smile work wonders. Practice yours in a mirror. It’s the first step toward a personal brand. Exude confidence and that will instill the same in others. That may not make you a billionaire but it is, assuredly, the first step down that path and may be the most important quality you can develop as you move through your job, career and life. The ability to put others at ease will bring you much in return.

What can P Diddy teach us about constructing an empire from the start to the finish?

“Surround yourself with smart people, listen and weigh what they have to say and then take a risk.”

During my interview with Mr. Combs, I wanted to establish early on that I knew a little about his core competency, which at the time was not Making a Band or discovering singers or writing songs, although he was plenty good enough at all that. I was a business reporter who covered what was then Federated Departments Stores (now Macy’s), and what I needed to know was simply this: how much were the annual sales of Sean Jean apparel. So I threw out a number, something I had independently generated – $450 million annually. It was dead on, he confirmed.

And that meant, roughly, that this entertainment icon was netting probably $90 million annually (give or take 300 percent) from the notion that a generation of Americans wanted to dress like Diddy – have style like Diddy. I pushed it one step further and found out something that I still carry with me today.  Smart people keep lots of other smart people around at all times. I jokingly suggested to him that he didn’t need to give me any “points” for an idea I had, that he should brand a car, that is, create a co-venture with a major auto manufacturer and come out with a Sean Jean SUV. “We’re in negotiations with…..” Diddy calmly replied as he noted that his next step in life was to continue to build the empire.

One question I did not ask was this: why does a guy who has $450 million in annual sales from just one initiative – hundreds of millions more likely come in from his branded TV entertainment efforts – why would that guy, who has no formal theatrical training, risk the wrath of the most vicious scribes on the globe and walk out onto a Broadway stage to offer his portrayal of Raisin in the Sun. I mean, he’s already wealthy beyond imagination. Why take a chance on becoming a laughing stock of the Great White Way. I didn’t ask the question and now regret it but I’m pretty sure we all know the answer. Great things stem from great risk. Personalities who do not seek risk are not likely to build much of a brand and certainly will not build an empire. Mr. Combs was a risk-taker but one who was accustomed to success. Nothing will ever change about that, either. With great risk comes great success. But first you have to embrace risk.

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John Eckberg is the author of The Success Effect: Uncommon Conversations with America’s Business Trailblazers.  He is a career journalist with 25 years of experience in the challenging field of daily newspaper reporting. A graduate of Ohio University, he has been a business columnist and business reporter at The Cincinnati Enquirer for more than a decade, where he has covered numerous beats including federal courts, investigative reporter, feature writing, neighborhood columns and urban development. Widely published, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today and many other American print and Web publications. He is the co-author of Road Dog, a true-crime thriller about serial killer Glen Rogers of Hamilton, Ohio.

Innovation Requires Personal Brands That Are Rebels

December 31, 2008 at 12:14 am | In Book Reviews, Interview, People, Personal Branding | 2 Comments

Today, I spoke with Hayagreeva Rao, who is a professor at Stanford Business School and author. He talks about what a “market rebel” is, why they are important, some examples of rebels, the benefits and how personal branding relates. Hayagreeva makes a great case why you should become a market rebel to stand out amongst your peers and start innovating to change the world. Although, market rebels aren’t readily visible, they are able to innovate within company’s or as entrepreneurs. Innovation causes change and change is needed for progress!

What are market rebels? Why are they important?

“Market rebels are activists who challenge the status quo and defy conventional wisdom.”

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines a rebel as one who resists “authority, control or convention”. Market rebels are important because they spearhead collective action that takes the form of social movements. In turn, these social movements can either advance a radical innovation or block it. In either case, market rebels construct ‘hot causes’ to harness the attention of distracted audiences and rely on ‘cool’ techniques to mobilize collective action.

For example, the market rebels at the vanguard of the personal computing movement had a ‘hot cause’ – centralized computer and a computer that could only be touched by a priestly class, and a ‘cool’ technique of mobilization – ‘homebrewing’ clubs where people could assemble their own machine and personalize computing and gain autonomy.

They played a crucial role in in spawning new firms that led to the birth of the personal computer industry. Similarly, deaf rights activists challenged producers of cochlear ear implants and thwarted the spread of the technology. Their ‘hot cause’ was the loss of sign language and the demise of a deaf culture, and their cool techniques of mobilization included public marches and destruction of cochlear ear implants, and even litigation.

What are the benefits of market rebels?

Market rebels promote collective goods and play decisive role when normal market incentives do not work. For example, in the early automobile industry, the car was not culturally accepted and was seen as a devilish monstrosity. Advertising by car producers was widely distrusted. In these circumstances, auto enthusiasts banded together into automobile clubs, and lobbied state governments for speed limits and licensing and prevented a maze of local regulations.

They organized reliability races which paved the way for producers to win them and establish reputations. They also lobbied for good roads. All of this made mass production by Henry Ford possible. Market rebels played similar roles in the birth of the microbrewing industry, and the growth of new styles such as nouvelle cuisine. In all of these cases, they advanced radical innovations. But market rebels also play an important role in blocking thwarting radical innovations. For instance, they championed the cause of small stores and sought to stem the advance of chain stores and they organized an anti-biotechnology movement which prevented German pharmaceutical firms from commercializing bio-technology.

Can you name a few market rebels who have helped build our culture/businesses?

In contemporary times, a wide range of market rebels have played important roles in the evolution of industries. The important thing to keep in mind is that they are individuals who submerge their identity in a common cause and so rarely stand out in the public eye. Instead, it is the organizations they build and the collective action they spark that leaves a lasting imprint.

The free software movement, where “free” means “free” as in “free speech” and not “free beer”, played an important role in the spread of Linux – Linus Torvalds comes to mind. In microbrewing, Charles Papazian laid the foundations of the homebrewing movement, and entrepreneurs such as Fritz Maytag played were influential in the growth of small producers who made beer using authentic ingredients and artisanal techniques. On the other side, investor rights activists such as Evelyn Davis and the Gilbert Brothers and Nell Minnow were at the vanguard of the investor rights movement which improved corporate disclosure and monitoring of executive compensation.

What would the world look like without these market rebels?

We would not have the Automobile Association of America – it was started by auto enthusiasts who formed auto clubs all over the country. There would ne no brewpubs or microbrews in grocery store aisles. Organic food would not have taken root in American culture. All of these are cases, where market rebels were the harbingers of social movements that led to radical innovation. But for market rebels, we would have more Walmarts and Big Box stores all over the country. But for the environmental movement there would be no hybrid cars and consumer interest in the electric car.

If you brand yourself as a market rebel, how will it help your career?

Being a market rebel gives you a distinctive identity and visibility as an outsider. But they come at a price – you are more likely to be in small organizations rather than large bureaucracy and not have large financial resources. Which is why rebels exploit ‘hot causes’ and rely on ‘cool mobilization’ techniques to inspire action. In this sense, it is your cause and techniques that brand you.

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Hayagreeva Rao is the author of Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations. He is the Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at Stanford Business School. He has published widely in the fields of management and sociology and studies the social and cultural causes of organizational change. His research has been published in journals such as the Administrative Science Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal. He has been a Member of the Organizational Innovation and Change Panel of the National Science Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science and of the Sociological Research Association. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management.

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