My new obsession is people who make a massive impact without building a large personal brand. They don't maintain constant social media profiles, they don't seem to want notoriety.
I have been mimicking and exploring this lifestyle, maybe experimenting is a better word. Not the part about avoiding posting on social media... As you know my content feed is hectic and constant. Lots of posts. Instead I'm focusing on the part of not seeking attention too hard.
I enjoy steem and other social media, but I don’t forget that it is for a goal: To develop a core audience of 1,000 true fans as the starting point of my professional career. If it were better to post once per month, I’d do that. Luckily, it turns out that the ethical “right” things to do (i.e. be friendly, accessible, and honest) are also generally the best things from a strategic perspective.
That’s what led me to a recent day of listening/reading through a bunch of podcast content from Kevin Rose, the famous entrepreneur who founded Digg back in the day and has gone on to invest in, and work with, many legendary tech start-ups. (and he's on steem: 
And from Kevin's newsletter, I got to Hodinkee, a magazine and broad community for watch enthusiasts. Watches are one of those things, everybody has an opinion on them. I was interested just by the existence of this culture.
And from there… I landed on Jony Ive’s interview.
Jony Ive is the Ultimate Influencer Without a Personal Brand
Name the number of times you’ve heard about Jony. Even if you aren’t obsessed with tech, you probably know that he works with Apple, that he’s important in some way.
That’s Ive with his arm around Bono at some fancy event (he’s on the right).
If you have the slightest inclination to research it, you’ll soon find out that Jony Ive is considered the second most influential person behind Apple after Steve Jobs himself… and with Steve out of the picture, it’s arguably Jony, not CEO Tim Cook, who carries Steve’s legacy forward via society-shaking tech innovation.
You will learn all of this without seeing any selfies or self-promotion from Ive, who seems to view privacy as one of life’s most important virtues. He has no social media presence and has given very few interviews - in the last five years, I believe this is only the second he’s done.
Previously in 2015 he was the subject of an enormously comprehensive profile from The New Yorker.
This man may be the single greatest example of an outsized influence-to-branding ratio in our time. He’s a Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos level character, yet hiding in the shadows.
It’s like if Thomas Pynchon or J.D. Salinger had the career of J.K. Rowling, but remained as reclusive as they are (or were, in Salinger’s case).
And the interview is fascinating. Rather than try to translate the words of a guru for you, I’ll leave you to read the thing yourself if you want. It’s a great read and takes about 30 minutes if you want to slowly go through the whole thing.
If you do read the interview, what do you think?
