I accidentally stood somebody up on a date last Saturday.
I’m gonna tell you the story, but first I have to tell you this story. A couple weeks ago I went to an expat event here in Istanbul, and I met this super adventurous Colombian woman.
Her goal is to go to every country. She’s already been to over 100 countries, including North Korea and Afghanistan. She invited me salsa dancing, and then we hung out a few more times, and then she invited me salsa dancing again on Saturday.
But there’s a problem. Half of Istanbul is in Europe and half of Istanbul is in Asia. I live on the European side and she lives on the Asian side.
There are no trains that go from the European side to the Asian side. There are only a few buses. Going from one side to the other takes forever. It’s an enormous pain in the ass.
On Saturday we agreed to meet up on the Asian side. So I got on the bus to go to Asia, then got on a train to the meeting place. The whole thing took like an hour and a half.
Here’s where things start to go bad. At some point during that hour my phone died. So I couldn’t get in touch with the woman I was meeting.
I also didn’t know exactly where she wanted to meet up. I knew the general vicinity. But it was a pretty big area.
I started looking for her in one place. She was looking for me in another.
(Later I found out that she had only been about 200 meters away. But we didn’t see each other.)
Eventually I just threw in the towel and got back on the train, then back on the bus, and then took the hour-long bus ride back home.
When I got back I saw all her messages, which were saying stuff like “where are you Theo?” and “I’ve been waiting for you for a half hour” and “I don’t know where you are so I have to leave now.”
I felt super crappy. I felt like I had let her down. All I had to do to prevent this was clarify with her where we were meeting. Or make sure my phone was charged before I left. Somehow I didn’t do either of those things.
So, why am I telling you this story? For an unintuitive personal branding reason.
If I just brag all the time, then how’s that gonna make me look?
You might get suspicious that I’m not actually as perfect as I say I am. Or if you believe me that I actually am perfect, you’ll probably find me pretty hard to relate to. (Because I’m guessing you’re not perfect, either.)
If you’re building a personal brand, you have to talk about your mistakes. You have to talk about your failures and all the dumb stuff you’ve done.
We’ve all failed and we’ve all done dumb stuff, so talking about your failures and the dumb stuff you did makes you more relatable. People will empathize with you. And it’ll make you seem like a human instead of a picture-perfect robot.
It’s hard talking about your failures. It scares the crap out of most people to talk about anything that makes them look bad. (Hell, writing this scared the crap out of me.)
But I promise you — it’s worth it.
Best,
Theo
P.S. If you want to build your personal brand, you want to put out more content, and you don’t want to write that content yourself, check this out:
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