Earlier this week, Newsweek covered a story about a Canadian woman who needed a job desperately. Being a single mom with two children to feed and unable to find a job, she decided to start an internet company. Her first attempts were met with little success. According to her “I was having a hard time landing jobs. I was being turned down for gigs I should’ve gotten.” One day, she landed on a new idea. She changed her name to James Chartrand and designed a very manly looking website for her new compay “Men With Pens”, a copywriting and web design business.
Immediately, her business doubled. On James Chartrand's blog, she says:
“Taking a man's name opened up a new world. It helped me earn double and triple the income of my true name, with the same work and service. No hassles. Higher acceptance. And gratifying respect for my talents and round-the-clock work ethic. Business opportunities fell into my lap. People asked for my advice, and they thanked me for it, too. Did I quit promoting my own name? Hell yeah.”
Under the new name, she was able to earn enough money to move from her small apartment into a home she recently purchased. In spite of her success, she decided to come out publicly as a woman only because a business acquaintance of hers became angry at her and threatened to go public. In spite of the publicity surrounding her outing herself, her business doesn't seem to be suffering.
So it makes me wonder, was her sudden success because she was portraying herself as man? Looking at sites like BlogHer, Frisky, mommybloggers and other female oriented blogs and sites, it would be a hard sell to make a case that the internet culture is sexist. I would tend to think that the larger picture is that when she created the pen name, she was creating a product. Because it wasn't personal, she was able to take the pen name and make him into a brand. The website design, the copywriting and the blog all work to support the image and the brand she chose. When you create your own personal brand and use all of your resources to promote your message and vision, people are more responsive. Perhaps by using a different name, a different persona, she was able to step outside of herself and follow her vision without feeling like every failure is her failure. On her copywriting blog, James asked:
If you had the chance to be someone else, would you do it? Would you take on a role that makes opportunity possible, makes life easier, and makes your dreams become reality? More importantly… who would you be?
The question is deeper than it seems. We all can become who we want. It isn't necessary to change genders or even change names. By deciding ahead of time who we are and what our vision is, we can create our own personal brand and publish our message. Connecting to job opportunities with social networking and making sure that everything we post supports our message, we too can find our own success.
Read More:
http://jezebel.com/5426143/taking-a-mans-name-opened-up-a-new-world-why-a-blogger-hid-her-gender
http://www.copyblogger.com/james-chartrand-underpants/
http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-blogger-with-a-male-byline-outs-herself-as-a-female/%20/
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-human-condition/2009/12/15/does-gender-matter-on-the-web-james-chartrand-thinks-so.html
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a freelance writer and regular contributor to several websites and other publications, a volunteer, a full time mom and an active job seeker.
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