Buster Tales: ‘The Personal Brand Situation’ @Amersfoort
- Claudine
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Buster had read the invitation twice.
It said: Digital Nomads and Location-Independent Professionals, Amersfoort Chapter. Connect. Collaborate. Grow Your Brand.
He was fairly certain he had misread Professionals as Hedgehogs the first time. He came anyway.
The café was impeccably styled. Everyone had a laptop sticker that summarised their identity in three words or fewer. A woman across the room said JUST LAUNCH IT. A man by the window said DISRUPTING STILLNESS. Someone’s sticker simply said: DATA.
Buster looked at his briefcase.
His briefcase had no sticker. His briefcase was a very good briefcase. This, he was beginning to understand, was not the same as the personal brands sipping their coffees.
He poured himself a coffee and attempted to explain his work to a young woman with a ring light clipped to her coffee cup.
“I’m in intelligence,” he said.
“Oh!” she said. “Thought leadership?”
“Not exactly,” he said.
She nodded with the enthusiasm of someone who has learned to find all answers satisfying, then moved away to talk to DATA.
Buster stood quietly with his coffee and his briefcase and his sense of being categorically impossible to thumbnail.
Then a very old tortoise appeared at his elbow. He was wearing a plain brown jacket and had clearly been sitting in the corner for some time, possibly since the building was constructed.
“Menno,” the tortoise said, and pressed a business card into Buster’s paw.
Menno. Tortoise. Still here.
“Good card,” Buster said.
“I have been location-independent,” Menno said, “since before they had a word for it. My brand, as they say, is being where I am and knowing what I know.”
He sipped his tea.
“A briefcase,” he added, glancing at it, “is a perfectly acceptable identity.”
Buster felt something unknot in his chest.
He thanked Menno properly, in the way that requires looking someone in the eye and meaning it. Menno nodded and returned to his corner, where he had presumably been since the previous event, and possibly the one before that.
Buster tucked the card in his briefcase, next to his cheese cube.
He walked out into the medieval streets of Amersfoort, briefcase swinging, lighter by one discarded 'need' for a sticker and richer by one tortoise who had simply been getting on with 'it' since before 'it' was a indefinable brand many seek.
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