I hate buzzwords.

I’ve made a decision. A rather bold one for my tastes, but regardless.

I’ve decided to drop all the various handles I have online, and just brand myself and my image for various things.

While I created my company awhile back, DLW Consultants, it’s sort of evolved. When I started, it was a joint-venture between myself and a few people I wanted to start the company with.

What I realized however, through feedback and whatnot, that at this point, I AM the company. (Talk about drinking the kool-aid, no?) And that what I’m selling is myself. I very rarely talk about my business (except in the beginning).

I want to make connections, and connect those people with other connections. I want to make money as well, there is no doubt about that part. But to me, it’s much more fun this way. Especially when I realized that you really don’t need a company name to be a ‘brand’. Which is awesome.

And so, I probably will end up de-linking my dlw site. Or turning it into a online business card, one of the two. The new company now is just myself. Me. I really don’t have any catchy one-liners or money-back guarantees.

This does a few things for me, if I decide to develop a company, I can hire someone else to maintain the brand. I don’t have to be in two places at once. The articles that I would have wrote for the DLW blog now are going to be on this site and this blog, in a separate category.  Not to mention, closing both my original Livejournal page and my MySpace page was an awesome feeling.

I do believe however that developing my personal brand is a dual edge sword. It requires diligence on my part to maintain my image. Not to mention, that if I make a mistake, I have that much more of an incentive to make things right and be honest.

I’m sure that other people will come along the way and help me to greater heights as far as my brand goes. But for now, it’s a huge sigh of relief, and a push into a new frontier.

To your success in 2009!