I’m fan of personal brands, so it did catch my eye, but I wasn’t really expecting a lot going into it, I think everyone likes personal brands. But I was just thrilled with the book, and it’s not often I’ll rate something that well. D’Alessandro is the former CEO of John Hancock Insurance. The book has some really great stories from his career, some that are just funny, some that talk about his mistakes and missteps. It’s not quite a formula, but there really are some good lessons in this book, some that I’ve learned the hard way and some that I still need to learn.

For example, he talks about knowing when it’s time to move on, dealing with a bad boss, and how to deal with enemies at work. I like his take on remembering that you never know when what seems like a simple and unimportant conversation or decision can turn out to have a big impact later on. He talks about how to do well, how to stand out from peers, how to compromise. Yet, he acknowledges that there are times when you have to go to war, clearly and aggressively. A man after my own heart all around!

I wish I had read this 20 years ago. Some of the lessons  are obvious, some are cynical, and they reflect how to live in an imperfect world in a pragmatic way.  Would I have been ready to hear them then? Maybe. But definitely now. That doesn’t mean I’m a shining example of his approach, just that I see the hard truth of experience in the lessons.

If you’re serious about branding you need to read this one.

Back when I started I invested just a little thought in the initial branding, settling on ‘It Depends’. A good name, if maybe a little too generic, and I wasn’t able to get the domain – which didn’t matter at the time as it was hosted under the SSC domain. So, it’s time to move and with that the risk of losing some traffic, should I compound that and redefine my brand as well?

Perhaps the ideal is to make your name your brand, in my case andywarren.com was taken so I needed an alternative. I also spent some time thinking about my other interests; networking, management, business – should I go with something that reflect those broader interests, or something that made reference to my continuing and deep involvement with SQL Server?

After a few weeks mulling that over it seemed right to continue the SQL focus and accept the risk of needing to rebrand again at a later date. With that decided (right or wrong!), I decided to use something I already had begun to use on Twitter; @sqlandy. What made it really seem doable was that I was able to secure the LinkedIn vanity url for sqlandy and buy the sqlandy.com domain here as well. So while it might not be perfect branding, it’s consistent across the places I plan to participate.

I’ll have a follow up post soon on deciding about blogging platform and hosting, and I’ve still got to tackle a lot of work here plus trying to pull over as much content as I can from the old blog.