I had the pleasure of attending a recent women’s entrepreneur lunch at the McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton. It included a Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank style pitch by 4 local women run businesses in competition for some services and prizes to help them with their development and growth. The panel was made up of local service and successful entrepreneurs, but they were certainly much nicer than many of the… Read More »What is your personal brand U.S.P. ?
Through my wife's business I have had the opportunity to be connected to Keith Kochner at Mentorfish.com for the last few months and have found his teaching exactly what we need in the 21st century. Lots of great content, he is prolific with new insights and learnings – even for someone like me who tends to explore and read a lot! Keith is coming to Toronto next week to hold… Read More »What is holding you back from your personal brand?
My montlhy e-zine went out at the weekend and I received a lot of very humbling and wonderful support and comments. Thank you to everyone who took the time. For those that missed it, here is my 'note'. I hope that you will indulge me a little and help and support me take a huge step (well actually two!). I am celebrating – and I would like you to join… Read More »What is your true purpose?
One Piece of Paper – The simple approach to powerful, personal leadership. © 2011 by Mike Figliuolo, 237 pages, Hardback 5R Score: 30/35 The Leadership Maxims Approach Leading Yourself Leading the Thinking Leading Your People Leading a Balanced Life Making it Real On a scale of 1-7 Relevance – is it right for personal branding? - 6 Resonance – does it make sense to the reader? - 6 Relation – is… Read More »Personal Brand Book Review – One Piece of Paper
Scary movies aside, the fear of Friday 13th is very real for many people. That does not even include all the residents of Port Dover, Ontario who are descended upon by up to 250,000 bikers each time the 13th falls on a Friday. I am sure with the good weather last week they had another big day. In other cultures various other days are considered unlucky. In Spanish speaking countries… Read More »Was last Friday a little friggatriskaidekaphobic for you?
This weekend see's the induction of Guns & Roses in to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland – minus Axl Rose. In fact his long running dispute with some of the original band members seems to be continuing to the point where he has asked not to be included in to the induction. With very lawyer type language and a very impersonal letter to "the hall, band… Read More »Why having an Axl to grind damages your personal brand
According to recent Ladders.com research, the average time spent by a recruiter reading your resume is now just 6 seconds! Hopefully if the recruiting person is internal or a hiring manager the time is longer, but realistically it still might only be a few more seconds. The article shows images of two different resumes and the heat spots where eyes were tending to focus on in the short time they… Read More »Why are you still sending your resume?
Okay, I admit it, he got me – April Fool. One of my favourite business people Sir Richard Branson announced that due to the uncertainty over currency fluctuations for vacationers he was launching his own currency within Virgin Holidays. Of course the launch was the morning of April 1st! What made it such a good April fool trick was that given his personal brand this actually could be the kind of… Read More »Who are you fooling with your personal brand?
This past week a story started circulating that managers were asking for employees or job candidates for their Facebook passwords. An employment lawyer would answer this better, but I am fairly sure this cannot be allowed (at least in Canada) – unless of course the employee is using their Facebook profile to post company information, offers etc. But why would they? Of course the US Senate has already looked at… Read More »You’ll Only Get My Facebook Password From My Cold Dead Hands!
This past week I attended a webinar by Chris Brogan, author of a great book with Julien Smith called 'Trust Agents' and Lewis Howes an expert on webinars. There were three good take aways for me as a small business owner, especially with regards to Google+ which had given up on. I summarised them in a short video that you can watch here. (Apologies the weather was so nice I… Read More »How to build your personal brand using social media