This post was created from an interview with Eric Kim (@kabaim) — June 20, 2013
Eric Kim, aka @kabaim, is the real deal.
Ask me how I know.
Alrightie, then, I’ll tell you.
I spent two hours with him at Jane on Fillmore Street in San Francisco, talking about his startup, Twylah, raising kids and how to live authentically — online and off.
Eric is so cool he even got my pet joke about building a personal brand on the internet.
If you are a blogger, you’ve heard that success on the social web involves (among other things):
- Giving back
- Transparency and
- Authenticity
My authenticity joke? People will pay for that s***.
Kim gets it. You can tell because he smiles and rolls his eyes.
Reverse Engineering Authenticity
In fact, he told me that his passion is “reverse engineering authenticity.”
I liked the sound of it, but, unfortunately, I didn’t quite know what it meant.
Lucky me, I have access to a little tool called Google, so I looked it up.
In case you’re anything like me and need a refresher, here goes:
Reverse engineering is taking apart an object to see how it works in order to duplicate or enhance the object. The practice, taken from older industries, is now frequently used on computer hardware and software.
And now, apparently, people.
Eric’s goal, and the point of Twylah, is to help individuals and companies take apart their own brands and see what makes them work in order to enhance them, or, in Eric’s words, make them shine.
As he says, “If you live your values people will be attracted to you.” And that’s how you create the community support leading to successful, heart-centered entrepreneurship.
Who is Eric Kim?
Eric Kim lives and raises a family in San Francisco, CA. Half Korean and half German, he was raised in Paris, went to school in the US and then returned to Paris to work in marketing.
Today, he blogs, runs Twylah and keeps his focus squarely on heart-centered entrepreneurship. Helping other entrepreneurs shine is the inspiration that fuels Eric’s work.
In addition to being a cool dude he’s a smart dude. He has a Master’s from MIT and an MBA for engineers obtained in Paris — but, to tell you the truth, his formal credentials don’t shed light on what actually sets him apart.
The interesting thing about a techie like Eric is that his intelligence comes not just from the head but from the heart.
That’s right. Eric is able, not only to start up cool platforms in a single bound, but speak French, raise children, blog and — last but not least — bring an authentic (there’s that word again) spirituality to his entrepreneurship.
How does he do all that?
As the saying goes, nobody does it alone. Eric and his wife, Kelly, are the entrepreneurial team behind Twylah. Together, they launched Twylah in 2010 with a mission to support entrepreneurs everywhere.
The Features
In a nutshell, here’s what Twylah offers:
- Twitter brand assessment
- A convenient and time-saving method for understanding your brand
- Content curation
- Reminders to give your brand the attention it needs
- An attractive and functional brand dashboard and
- Built-in analytics
The Benefits
Twylah is more than your typical app — it’s a platform that allows you to gain clarity about your personal brand and tell your brand’s story.
- Who are you?
- How can you align this with your online actions?
- How do you express your story?
About self-expression, Eric has this to say:
Most people live an unexpressed life. They don’t communicate what is in their hearts and minds. People don’t have clarity and so they don’t express themselves, which is very sad because authentic self-expression is the starting point of creativity. Understanding who you are leads to fulfillment and allows you to shine. — Eric Kim, Co-Founder, Twylah
In terms of the bottom line, Eric points to the time and effort Twylah saves. As a Twylah user (no, I’m not an affiliate), I can vouch for this. What I can do in about 20 minutes per day with Twylah would take me weeks of effort on my own — if I could do it all.
I’m not alone, and either are you.
Most beginning bloggers, and even many of the established ones, don’t have the skill set necessary to build an analytics dashboard, automate curation or optimize when to send tweets.
We like to write!
Twylah puts content curation, auto-scheduling of tweets (using seamless Buffer integration) and the ability to understand and manage your brand all in one place.
Here’s how it works: You sign up for a free Twylah trial and receive a brand assessment with a strategy for improving your brand’s focus, consistency and resonance.
My First Twylah Brand Assessment
I can’t say this with pride, but my first Twylah brand assessment was a cool F+ (and no, the F wasn’t for fabulous).
After a week of using the Twylah platform I lifted my brand to a C and now I’m hovering around a B. Not bad for less than a month’s effort.
I’ve found that using Twylah has given me a lot of clarity, not just about building my brand on Twitter, but about my brand in general and also how to use Twitter to create a network of people who care about the things I care about.
This speaks to the wisdom Eric offers about the entrepreneur’s journey. He said that, as entrepreneurs (and what is a blogger, really, but an entrepreneur?), we have four vital needs:
- Resources
- Knowledge
- Passion and
- Community support
Twylah is a resource that helps people like you and me find our purpose online and a community (Eric uses the evocative word “tribe”) of people that is naturally aligned with the work we do — whatever it is — and, in a practical way, access qualified prospects.
Of course, we have to supply the passion ourselves.
Your Turn
What do you think? Is it inspiring to learn more about successful entrepreneurs like Eric Kim?
To find out more about your Twitter brand, go to www.twylah.com.
To learn more about Eric, check out his blog or follow @kabaim on Twitter.
Citation
SearchCIO-Midmarket. Reverse engineering definition.
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