In January of 2005 I created a new identity.
Joining a small company (at the time) like Make It Work is like joining a new family, except there aren’t usually gifts and you can’t avoid seeing each other whenever possible. So it was just my luck I was joining a family of around 20 employees and there was already another Kyle working there. Only 0.16% of American males are named Kyle, just under “Francis” and above “Bradly” (ugh….) I don’t remember enough math to find what the odds of 2 out of 20 people being Kyle is but suffice to say it’s LOW.
If you have a small family, and your son’s name is Brian, your brother hopefully wouldn’t be so inconsiderate to name his kid Brian. It wouldn’t work. Therefore, on some level I understand why I was asked to use my middle name.
Five years later, I’m still Ben. I’ve learned to accept it- it’s a pretty good joke amongst my personal friends. In a way, it helps me keep my personal and professional life separate- there are many people that work for MIW that probably don’t even know my real first name, and that’s fine with me. Like everyone else on facebook, I get tagged in… unfortunate pictures from time to time.
But now I’m faced with a dilemma. After five years of rejecting every MIW employee on facebook (even our CEO… eeep!), I made a profile for my alter-ego- and I remembered quickly why I put this off for so long. I don’t want to know what the people that work for me do at night any more than I want them to know what I do at night (watch 30 Rock, drink beer, drool, and pass out). Plus, it’s just another way for all the people I’ve “severed corporate ties” with over my years as Senior Assistant Coach to contact me and ask for their job back.
But it comes with the territory I guess. The world is changing- blogs aren’t just for emo ranting, facebook isn’t just for playing farmville, and twitter… well twitter is still just for nonsensical blathering. It’s time to take Ben to prime time. I just hope when I’m CEO of my own company I can be Kyle again 
