During a recent conversation, a friend started talking about a bad experience he had the other day with an overbearing and disingenuous salesperson. He felt like the salesperson’s persona — hair, smile, language, clothing, jewelry, etc. — was just an act only slightly less transparent than that of a circus clown. He described with great disgust how the salesperson was willing to “fudge the numbers” a little to close the deal.
Then my friend said something totally unexpected:
“It’s all this ‘personal branding’ stuff that just makes me sick.” [You can …

If you’ve ever driven I-90 through South Dakota, you’ve no doubt seen the signs for Wall Drug. We stopped at Wall Drug several years ago during a road trip, and I marveled at how they were able to turn a small town drug store into a major tourist destination.
Mike Gunderloy at Web Worker Daily has some excellent observations about how we can apply some principles learned from Wall Drug to our own personal branding and marketing:

Have a simple, consistent, actionable message
Find a memorable hook
Be ubiquitous
Widen your niche

I’d like to offer …

When I wrote about sociable introverts last spring, I never imagined it would become one of the most popular posts on this blog. Even to this day, that post sometimes gets more hits than my current posts. There is much more interest in how introverts guide their careers than I ever imagined.
One of the biggest challenges for introverts is self-promotion. While self-promotion seems natural and normal for most extroverts, many introverts dislike self-promotion because they is draws too much attention to themselves. Self-promotion, however, is a key component of …