Half of Me Blogs Here. Half of Me Blogs There. But Please Don't Go There.

David St. Lawrence usually has very good things to say. I am a bit peeved at this post, though. Maybe I should temper my initial reaction, though: I respectfully disagree with this advice.

However, I am very glad he has brought this up.

David says:

If your business persona is vastly different from your private blogging persona, you are going to create a negative impression by tightly linking the two. Even if you attempt to conceal your private blog by writing anonymously, it will eventually be discovered.

I think people need to wake up a bit here, on this subject. People are complex. They don't fit nicely into little boxes of expertise. People aren't brands. Deal with it. I stopped turning on and off my different personalities in 6th grade in favor of one personality.

And I am still productive and happy in all areas of my life:

I can sell when I need to sell. I can write code when I need to write code. When I satisfy my customer's needs, It is all despite or because of my personal life. I can talk politics when I want to talk politics. I can talk innovation when I want to talk innovatation. I can talk about my faith and religion when I want to. If I want to talk about sexuality, so be it. Or if I want to post to something humorous that is slightly inappropriate, find something else to bitch about. And if you disagree with my faith or my politics, what does that have to do with how I sell, or write code or satisfy my customer's needs, or enlighten your view on marketing events.

If people can't deal with the fact that people are whole human beings, that is their issue, not mine. And people should evaluate the appropriateness of my message through their own biases and sensitivities. And maybe question their appropriateness. Instead of asking me to question mine.

If people can't disagree on some subjects, and still carry on healthy mutually beneficial business or personal relationships, there is a problem, here.

If people want to only know about half of someone, then they don't know that person at all.

Comments

[David St Lawrence]

What you blog is a matter of choice.

What your customer does when he reads all of your blogs is his choice.

If you haven't run into one-dimensional customers who expect everyone else to be one-dimensional, you are indeed fortunate.

I met a young entrepreneur who was seeking VC funding for his fledgling dotcom operation. His website was highly professional, but it was littered with links to personal pages that were full of references to time spent in jail for protesting and other activities that reflected poorly on his stability and judgement. I suggested that he was mixing his messages. His reply was much like your own. "They'll have to take me the way I am."

He never got his funding and fell off the Silicon Valley radar.

We can learn from the experiences of others or we can do it all ourselves. Life is not long enough to reinvent everything.

[Peter Caputa]

Good Story and Good Point. Thanks David!

I am a young entrepreneur too. You're obviously more experienced than I. I appreciate the comment and your perspective.

My reaction was definitely more off the cuff than anything else. I usually don't publish or link to anything that racy. Although, I've said some stupid things online and offline, it'd take some digging to find it.

And I hope, similar to George Bush, atleast almost half of the people out there, would forgive me of my youthful indiscretions.