Your Brand is Who You Are. Not What You Do.

Who you are and what you do are two different things.

Companies lose sight of this all the time in their branding. What they do becomes who they are and there’s no anchor, no identity beyond their services or products.

Your core values are an essential part of your brand, whether we’re talking about a person, employee, team, or company. It’s who you are in the good times — and bad.

This is so important because who you are ultimately fuels what you do and how well you do it.

So many of us had our lives turned upside down these past few weeks. Professionally, personally, all of it.

Now we find out who we are because what we do was taken from us — temporarily at least.

Some companies and people have made it clear who they really are by what they’ve done and said and how they treated people. That’s their brand now and for some it’s not good.

Some people have made it clear who they are by trying to help people — often complete strangers — find jobs or offer support in other ways such as references. They’re affirming their personal brand.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I am one of the tens of thousands who have lost their jobs in the DOGE layoffs. As I’m looking around for a place to land, I don’t want to lose site of who I am as I look to who I’ll work for and just settle without the company’s values aligning with mine.

So who am I? Just over 10 years ago I made a career switch from newspaper reporter. I started looking around for a consulting job and researched companies.

I found a company whose brand appealed to me. Not a big company, not one anyone would recognize. But three words I found on their website stood out to me as they described their purpose and values: “We over me.”

It appealed to one of my core values: teamwork. Values that helped shaped me a long time ago on cross country teams at Bend High School in Oregon. We worked hard. We cheered each other on. We picked each other up when one of us was having an off day.

We chose we over me and it helped us win a state title. I’ve never forgotten those lessons.

We over me is also a central tenet of my Christian faith. To serve. To help. To uplift.

I build. I affirm and elevate and hope to make things better when I leave them than when I found them. And I want people to join me.

We over me. That’s a brand and an identity.

The Marie Kondo Writing Life, or Declutter Your Writing

Exactly one work day before I was supposed to give a company-wide presentation to fellow project managers on plain language writing was my last day on the job. The DOGE effect hit me hard.

Bummer.

I really wanted to give this presentation on plain language, an area of my communications expertise. My PowerPoint presentation included three slides at the beginning with photos of:

—A cluttered desk with heaping headaches of folders, papers, and work paraphernalia versus an open, airy, clean, inviting workspace.

—A street in a city jammed with traffic at a standstill versus an open highway with gorgeous mountain vistas and not another car in sight.

—Two snippets of content side by side. One was a block of slop from a virtually unreadable report by McKinsey & Company that literally is at the 20th grade level of reading. It’s next to a few descriptive, incredibly inviting paragraphs from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “All the Light We Cannot See” that is at the 3rd grade level.

My point with these competing visuals is how we don’t like clutter in the office, on the roads, at home, or even in what we read. We like open and airy, light and space. Even in what we read.

So why don’t we write like that?

I remain baffled at the insistence in the consulting sector to hijack easy to read and understand in favor of unreadable verbosity. Our eyes don’t lie. We scan content and don’t like word clutter.

Prune for vigor.

Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs.

White space is your friend.

Keep Marie Kondo’s words in mind: “Keep only things that speak to your heart. Then discard all the rest.”

There's something bigger going on in your company

I worked with a company that was changing the way it operated. The strategy was interesting.

It was a huge company and their communications strategy was to send an email to all their employees telling them about this new way of doing things.

Here was the problem. The company told the employees to go read this very long, dense document that would explain everything. It literally read like an academic paper.

I read it many times. I’m still fuzzy on what it was all about.

That’s not a good approach.

It’s better to give employees an elevator speech.

Here’s why we’re doing this. This is where we’re going.

We’ll be great together. Now let’s get to work.

And hey, tell a story. People like stories.

The genius of renowned chef Jose Andres is this one thing. Do you have it?

When renowned chef Jose Andres arrived in Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, he was driven to feed three million Puerto Ricans.

He had one major problem: He was stuck. Nothing in the devastated country worked.

He could have been overwhelmed. He could have thrown up his hands, or succumbed to what was likely a contagious discouragement in the face of the enormous humanitarian disaster.

But that’s not how he’s wired

He’s wired to get to work. That hurdle in front of him? Jump over it. Again and again if he must.

After landing in Puerto Rico and surveying the situation, Chef Andres made some calls. He put the word out. Got persuasive. Probably cajoled.

Whatever he said was working. Because amazing friends joined him.

They were driven. Frantic. Compassionate.

And united in one goal to feed a hurting, starving nation one meal at a time through ingenuity, creativity, and the sheer force of their will.

“So we began doing what we do best,” Andres said. “We began feeding the people of Puerto Rico.”

The genius of Andres is his calling card: He gets to work. He works relentlessly and creatively, persevering through every challenge.

I take Andres’ genius to heart in the projects I lead and work on. Do you?

Do you get to work? Get creative? How are you at persuading others to join you?

When I approach a project, I like to take action. For example, I might start writing, jotting down ideas, listening, gauging feedback. Who’s the audience? What’s in it for them?

I’ll tweak the messaging with my colleagues, getting it right and figuring out the best ways to reach stakeholders and audiences.

A chef is similar to a content strategist and writer in many ways. Both our audiences are hungry.

So how will you feed them?

White space is your friend. Use it. Ok?

Your reaction is predictable when you come to a web page that’s all text.

It’s negative. You’re overwhelmed. I bet you pass it up.

Big blocks of text are barriers to the reader’s experience. That’s stating the obvious, I know. But making white space your friend when you write text isn’t used enough.

I see it over and over again that people write big blocks of text. Then they wonder why nobody reads what they wrote.

Here’s the simple solution. Break things up.

Think about little chunks. Bit-size morsels. A handful. It’s similar to how you eat, right?

However you want to think about it or put it, do us all a favor. Embrace the white space. Declutter.

I’m also hoping it will help you automatically start writing simpler, cleaner copy. Making it less dense and easier to read and understand.

I believe we call that a win-win.

5 quick tips on how to write a press release

I have 30 years of press release experience. Most of that was as a newspaper reporter reading them so I know good from bad.

The last eight years I’ve spent as a strategic communications pro writing press releases for clients. Here’s what I know to be true about writing a press release.

These are easy five easy tips to follow and will help you write a high-quality press release that your target audience will read.

1) Make news — Tell me quickly why I should care about your product. How does it help me? How does it help my company?

2) Make it short — Think short and to the point. It’s like getting your coffee in the drive-thru. You want it fast and hassle-free. Quickly give the who, what, why, where, when and how of something. The why is huge, as in why it’s important, why it matters, why you should care. Reporters don’t want to wade through a bunch of words to figure it out. It drove me nuts when I was a reporter. Five-word sentences are totally legit.

3) Make a catchy headline — People do a quick scan to see if they want to read it. Take what Microsoft says in its style guide to heart: “We’re to the point. We write for scanning first, reading second. We make it simple above all.” Make it short and catchy. Make a headline that will make me care.

4) Make a link — Write a blog post with more details about your product and put it on your website. Include a 15-second video and professional photos. Link to it in your press release so the journalist can get more information if that’s what they want.

5) Make a good quote — Don’t say blah, blah, blah that no one ever says in conversation. Tell me something amazing about your product and why it’s so valuable. Give me the WHY! In words I understand, please.

Need some help writing and editing your press release?

I’m at jmatthewsabo | at | gmail.com

Do the hard things at work. Because others won't.

I grew up in Bend, Oregon, where the stark high desert meets the piney mountains. It’s got a little bit of altitude at about 4,000 feet of elevation, so the air is a little thinner.

Less oxygen means running is just a little bit harder. We also had lots of hills in Bend.

I was a long-distance runner. So I ran up lots of hills. Then I ran down the hills. Then back up other hills and back down again and sometimes it felt like I was going either up or down.

A really big hill is Pilot Butte, just two blocks from the house I grew up in. It had a paved road that wound around the butte to the top, rising about 500 feet in a mile.

I ran Pilot Butte so much I can still picture it clearly. Especially that last little curve where it got really steep.

I raced cross country for my school, the Bend High Lava Bears. At Bend High, I figured out that those boys from the Willamette Valley, especially the track runners who ran cross country in the fall, didn’t like hills.

So the hills became my calling card in races because I didn’t have the speed to keep up with them on the flats.

Runners generally don’t like hills for obvious reasons. But I embraced them. Attacked them.

I figured I would do the thing that my competitors didn’t want to do.

It paid off. I built strength running those hills. I could take the other runners on the hills and because of all that strength from running on so many hills at altitude I could keep up with them on the flats.

And then I had an epiphany. The place to really separate from the pack wasn’t running up the hill.

It was at the top of the hill when everyone was gassed. Where they least expected someone to really push the pace. Things got even better for me in the races.

Then when I got to the University of Portland, one of my cross country teammates taught how to run down the hill. Yes, there’s an art to it. He was a master at it and taught me well.

So the place on the race course that everyone hated and even feared, became my favorite section. I loved those courses with hills.

Our conference cross country meet was in San Mateo, California. We raced in the steep hills at Crystal Springs and you either were going up or down. I loved it and had a lot of success there.

Running those hills is something I think about often when it comes to work. When things are tough, when I come to those hills, what do I do?

What do you do?

Do you embrace those challenges? Attack them?

Or watch someone else go by you?

Be a maker this year. Make things great.

Over the past couple of months I’m in a “making” frenzy. A creative frenzy.

I made two cutting boards. Helped a son and daughter-in-law do a board and batten wall in their nursery.

Made a desk for another son. Got an idea for a nightstand to make for another son.

I’m making sourdough cinnamon raisin bread this morning. Going to make spaghetti noodles and bread later today.

I have this theory about it.

At work I’ve been doing more editing than writing. I’ve been organizing, working with schedules and spreadsheets and in meetings — many meetings.

I’m about six weeks into a new job and learning about new timelines and processes. I’ve done an amazing amount of onboarding as part of three different organizations. I’ve also had time off over the holidays.

That drive to create isn’t being fed. That drive to write and market and brand and persuade. So it manifests itself in other ways.

I challenge myself to try new things and make new things outside of work. It makes me happy.

I also learn from them. I learn about processes, crafting, refining.

My next cutting board will be a little better. So will my next desk and nightstand.

The next batch of noodles I make will go better than the first.

It’s no different in writing and editing. I keep challenging myself in my writing.

I look back over what I’ve written this past year and two years and five years and see ways to improve. Cleaner. Clearer. Simpler. Better.

What about you? What are you doing better?

Here’s the real question: What WILL you do better in 2021?

Know what you’ll do better and how you’ll do it. Come up with a plan. Challenge yourself.

Seek a mentor. Seek an editor. Ask for help.

Write. A lot.

Make something. Then make it better. Make it greater.

Tell a good story. Write simply. Connect with audiences.

The goal of writing isn’t to sound smart. Don’t try and impress people with big words and fancy sentences.

Tell a story. Make it simple. Write like you talk.

The goal is connecting. You want people to read what you write.

Maybe you entertain them, or inform them and persuade them through humor or a tender story or tap into another emotion.

I learned about these things as a journalist when I developed my own brand of writing. Writing with style or flair. My editor called it “Matt Sabo style” and would ask me to write a “Sabo style” article.

I’ll give you an example. This is a story I wrote about a raid on a motorcycle repair shop in a rural Virginia community that got, well, interesting. I took an ordinary story and had fun with it.

A Virginia moonshine operation

Take the ordinary and give it your own style.

Why perseverance is one of those things that should define you

Everyone benefits from this one thing.

Have this one thing and it will be a difference maker for you. So what’s this one thing? 

Perseverance.

Perseverance sets you apart. It carries you through your professional and personal life.

I can’t stress enough how much perseverance pays off.

By definition, it’s “steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.” 

It’s believing in yourself despite seemingly endless setbacks. It’s enduring through exhaustion. It’s patience through frustration. It’s not giving up despite numerous rejections.

Don’t quit. Whatever you do, don’t quit.

Don’t be defined by rejections. Don’t let someone else determine your view of what you’ll bring to an organization. View those rejections as opportunities to learn.

After you as a job hunter, or your idea as an employee, or your pitch as an entrepreneur is turned down, take some time to self-reflect. What can you change or tweak? What can you improve?

Use those lessons to inform your next actions and help shape and guide your future applications, interviews and conversations. 

Be purposeful. Seek out expertise. Read. Study. Get to work!

So how does perseverance look for you? We’re on the cusp of a new year, a time for fresh starts, do overs, new commitments, and new goals.

If it’s not already, make “perseverance” a goal of yours. 

Try it. You have nothing to lose. And everything to gain.

Make your company better. Make the world better.

Several years ago, a boss I worked for decided to have an end-of-year company strategy session to do some brand identity.

Figure out who we were and what we’re about as a company.

It’s all good stuff. But it struck me that this person had launched the company and was running it for five or six years and couldn’t answer that for themself. This person truly needed someone else to do it for them.

That’s not good.

What’s your company about? What’s important to your company?

It should be a big-picture statement. Like, “My company makes the world a better place because we make (products) that help other companies be successful.”

Most importantly, how does what you do help your company do that thing or those things it’s all about?

Finish this sentence: I elevate my company’s brand by _____________________________.

And this one: I make my company better because _________________________________.

Now, try this one: I could make my company better by _____________________________.

Go do it.