Personal Branding Simplified
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Great personal brands are simple, understandable, and straight forward in their brand promise. If you want to create a strong personal brand do yourself a favor and avoid the hype and rhetoric being espoused by the masses of overnight personal branding experts who have suddenly flooded the marketplace. Most so-called personal branding gurus are more akin to modern snake-oil salesmen than they are legitimate professional services providers. Personal Branding as a marketing discipline has regrettably been diluted by the hordes of attention seeking purveyors that seek to separate you from your money by confusing hype with branding. Hype and spin have little to do with creating a growing and sustainable personal brand. Personal brand equity is built over the long-term by doing the right thing, and adhering to the 5 personal branding attributes (see above) that I developed more than a decade ago.
Do CEO Surveys constitute a reliable bellwether, or are they little more than well packaged corporate propaganda pieces? The answer is yes on both accounts. Not only does N2growth conduct CEO Surveys, but so do most other consultancies. It has been my experience that the determining factor in whether or not CEO surveys are reliable can be found solely in whether or not the data is being published for external consumption. In today’s post I’ll share some thoughts about how to discern the value (or lack thereof) of CEO surveys.
Term Sheets are a foundational element in justifying your valuation logic. Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to view some absolutely brilliant term sheets, and regrettably, I’ve also reviewed more than my fair share of laughable terms sheets. Guy Kawasaki turned me on to this 
Once again, Dianne Feinstein has betrayed her constituents for her own personal gain. When does enough become enough? 
Are you a hypocrite? Most people will answer no to this question because they don’t see themselves in that way. However if you’re being honest, you’ll recognize that all of us can find ourselves being hypocritical at times. That being said, some people are particularly good at being hypocrites, and sometimes it’s easy to think that those who are deceiving others are enjoying it. Leon Festinger would beg to differ.
In today’s post I’ll give President Obama a break on his domestic policy, but I cannot give him a free pass on his foreign policy agenda (or lack thereof). I can’t recall a President in modern times who has exhibited more foreign policy naivete than Barack Obama. He has the uncanny ability to make the wrong move, at the wrong time, and in the wrong place. His apologetic statements at the G20, allowing North Korea to launch a long range missile, continuously falling prey to the lulling tactics of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, bowing to the Saudi King, and giving Hugo Chavez a propagandist photo opportunity are nothing compared to his decision to release 
Venturing beyond your area(s) of competency can be a very dangerous thing to do. While I’m not prone to stereotyping, it has been my experience that there are generally two types of people: those that don’t know what they don’t know, and those that do know what they don’t know. All other things being equal, the difference between the two groups boils down to experience and discernment. Those people who don’t know what they don’t know typically tend to be either younger professionals beginning their careers who have a lack of experience, or older professionals who have not gained wisdom and maturity as they have progressed along their career path.