Identity Thrift

Rule number one in starting a business is Company name (so I've read), closely followed by brand identity. The key thing about any business survival agenda is your identity. In my opinion that goes across multiple distinctions - meaning the identity of your business, your professional image and managing your personal identity too. As a result of my perceptions I appear to have broken my personal identity into more than one. In previous workshops I've discussed how having a professional identity separate to your personal identity could help grow your business brand - in theory. I did that very thing when I was a recruitment consultant by having two facebook profiles. One for my personal life, one for my professional status. I decided it would be a good idea to build a business profile that coincided with my business development and knowledge expansion. I found that it helped people relate to me better in both professional networking capabilities and in my business agenda. It became more of a softer sell approach. Since then I started to develop my @ijeanes identity which, at the time, was to discuss openly the nature of recruitment and how I wished to change the 'face' of it. My method was to allow active engagement with forums and create a place where I could gather opinion on misconceptions and issues faced when dealing with recruitment consultants. My @ijeanes identity changed direction when I was made redundant and became the documented thoughts of a lad exploring opportunities in London to the now evolved blog about Life, Love and Living in London, with my experiences of London and the opinions formed discussed whilst I'm here. This means my identity has opened up entirely but is still a slightly more business and creative emphasis of my personal life - meaning what I blog, isn't necessarily what I discuss in my personal friends on facebook.

To top that off, so far I'm counting three key identities, I've started working on a project to build a business in Social Networking. This has lead me to use my thoughts on brand identity and apply it to my business idea. Thus creating another identity for that. My creative fictional blog concept is a first person narrative of a character I'm exploiting in Second Life, therefore creating fictional diary entries of his existence. FIVE IDENTITIES to manage. Personally there are probably slightly more as I have different personalities which I express and emphasise with different groups of friends. What we discuss with one group may be entirely different with another, so there again my personal identity is splintered.

So what am I to do about this exhausting life? Is it possible to manage this many different identities without collapsing of having a breakdown. Perhaps I'll develop an internal multple-personality disorder. Maybe I already have one. The best thing for me so far is this blog. Writing it down and sharing it. It might help me focus these identities and work out away to successfully execute one identity.