I often find myself going back to the hoodie conversation. The idea that what you wear, and when you wear it, impact what people perceive.
I keep going back to the guys that designed Obama’s technical advantage during the 2012 election:
“Harper is an easy guy to underestimate because he looks funny. That might be part of his brand,” said Chris Sacca, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist and major Obama bundler who brought a team of more than a dozen technologists out for an Obama campaign hack day.
Reed, for his part, has the kind of self-awareness that faces outward. His self-announced flaws bristle like quills. “I always look like a fucking idiot,” Reed told me. “And if you look like an asshole, you have to be really good.”
It was a lesson he learned early out in Greeley, Colorado, where he grew up. “I had this experience where my dad hired someone to help him out because his network was messed up and he wanted me to watch. And this was at a very unfortunate time in my life where I was wearing very baggy pants and I had a Marilyn Manson shirt on and I looked like an asshole. And my father took me aside and was like, ‘Why do you look like an asshole?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t have an answer.’ But I realized I was just as good as the guys fixing it,” Reed recalled. “And they didn’t look like me and I didn’t look like them. And if I’m going to do this, and look like an idiot, I have to step up. Like if we’re all at zero, I have to be at 10 because I have this stupid mustache.”
This guy brings game. And he knows that he looks like an idiot.
I’m not as skilled in my field as Reed is in his, but I don’t dress like an ass. However, I do sport long hair in a corporate environment and know that I have to work a titch harder than the other guy to succeed.