HS048 Using Personal Product Branding To Be Better Paid Technology Engineer

We know that many business executives are incompetent scumbags. In this podcast we dive into how they managed to a get the job and even get paid serious money despite their obvious shortcomings. What can technology engineers learn from these fools so that they get the same results aka more money and less work.

• Senior executives are often hired on their brand value as much as their actual skills.
• Investors / owners want a good brand for their money → happy
• Are there questions that we can consider for normal people ?
• When CFO’s leave a company it often results in stock tanking. THe CFO is a ‘brand’ and doesn’t want to be around when the company fails which would damage her brand value.
  • Also, the CFO is usually best placed to know if a company isn’t performing well.
• A resume is a brand portfolio
  • Showing value props that you bring to the customers i.e employer
  • Different to selling Coke, not much different to selling a car
• Your value is not determined by the market, its determined by what the customer is willing to pay. How much is a CEO worth ? Pat Gelsinger gets 180M at intel or 1.5% of the net profit. How can he be worth this much ?
  • Chuck Robbins get 25M. Why ?
• Some CEO’s hire brand consultants and media companies to build and promote their brand. Keep in mind, they have lots of money to build brands and this can create the perception that branding matters. It might not ?
  • Some CEOs use their companies to build their brand
•  The Edmundson Group’s article identifies 5 persona types:
  • The Growth CEO: Chief executives who want to sustain forward momentum, increase in size and scope, and stay ahead of the competition fall into this category.
  • The Hired Gun CEO: Hired guns tend to move from company to company with the goal of making an immediate and substantial impact on each business. Most corporations looking for this type of CEO either need a turnaround to keep from dissolving or are preparing to merge with or be acquired by another company.
  • The Strategic CEO: These CEOs are executives who stay in one place for extended periods, sometimes as a company founder, and eventually want to prepare the company for either a sale or a transfer of leadership.
  • The Career CEO: Career CEOs reach the C-suite early in their careers and often strive to be CEOs over multiple companies, constantly learning and growing in their profession as they accumulate experiences.
  • The Auto-Pilot CEO: Successful companies may spend years reaching a point where they operate smoothly. Auto-pilot CEOs push their businesses even further to the point where they need little CEO involvement and business can be conducted with almost no input from the board of directors.

Transcript

Greg (00:00:00) – Welcome to the Heavy Strategy Podcast with me and Jonah Till Johnson. Today we’re focusing on unanswered questions instead of unquestioned answers. And Joel here is to think about what it is and to help you think about a topic in a particular direction. And today’s topic is branding of CFOs and CEOs. Why not you? How does the concept of being CEOs, being a brand or a cfo, being a brand, how is this important? Cause just recently, a network break podcast [email protected], I, uh, was talking about the recent results from Extreme Networks and the c they pulled up these amazing results, 20% growth, growth in revenue off the charts. Earnings per share was great, but the CFO resigned and left to go pursue some other opportunity, and the share price fell by 20%. And people don’t quite understand that. And the answer is because the CFO and the CEO in most companies are actually a brand or a figurehead, and particularly in this case, the CFO leaving the company.

Greg (00:00:56) – It’s generally seen by shareholders that the CFO knows what’s happening with money. And if the CFO’s quitting for some reason, then more often than not, there’s something wrong. It’s usually a sign that the ship is sinking and the rats are about to come out, and then all of a sudden they’re saying goes, uh, buy the rumor, sell on the news. So that’s what some people did. Locking and extremes had very good financial results, whatever. But it’s also important to consider that a CFO is a brand. Once you’ve become this figurehead for a company, the second, the CFO’s like the second in charge to the ceo, because money is so important to these operations, they actually need a reputation to get the next job. So if they come out of a company that goes down, their brand is damaged, they’re not worth as much for the next role.

Greg (00:01:37) – And that leads to the question of how does this branding of CEOs have packed us? How is it that people like Pat Geling is worth 180 million at Intel, but Chuck Robbins at Cisco accompanied twice as large, earning way more money and not in trouble only earning 25 million. The answer is branding. And so that’s the question that we want to talk about today. Are there lessons that we can learn as normal people? Because let’s face it, we’re not a CEO E o podcast or a CFO podcast. Are there lessons can we can learn? What do you think, Jonah?

Jonah (00:02:03) – I’d like to kick off by telling a quick story. We are not talking about making 25 million or 200 million or even, you know, 10 million in our roles. Most typically. I actually thought about branding and how it applies to, uh, rank and file technologist. When I read a story not too long ago by someone who was going first, first job in, in a technology area. And he said, well, what happens if you get your first offer at 65,000 a year? But you know that in general, this job pays 80,000 a year, should you take it? And the guy being a very, you know, a, a smart guy, had multiple different analyses for answering this question. I’m, I’m just gonna read one because I think it was actually quite interesting. He said, well, if you take the 65 K a year offer, that’s 130 K in two years, if you wanted to make 130 K in the same amount of time with an 85 K 80 K offer, you’d have to get that, that new offer within 4.5 months.

Jonah (00:02:58) – Mm-hmm. So unless you’re certain you can land, uh, a, an 80 K offer within the next four, four and a half months, you should take the 65 K mm. And then he had a bunch of other analyses that all led to that same argument. Take the job now. And then he said, what do you guys think? And a lot of us wrote in and I wrote, I wrote in and said, you should take the job and immediately start looking for your next job. And he wrote, no, someone else said that. And I agree. Hmm. And he wrote back and said, no, I wouldn’t wanna do that. I mean, when I take my job, I wanna be fully committed to the job for at least two years. And I wrote back and said, you know, that is, that is completely nuts. We’re not talking about spending hours every day uploading your resume to, you know, websites and whatnot and filling out job forms. But when you do that, what you wanna do is make sure you have a current resume and that it’s on file with executive recruiters and make sure Yeah. They know what the job that you want looks like. So

Greg (00:03:54) – He’s got a disease I call work.

Jonah (00:03:56) – Well, we’ll we’ll get to that, but, but you know, make sure your current resume is on file. Tell them what your next desired job is. Go to conferences and that’s where we start walking into the branding. Yeah. Go to conferences, go to online salons, get your name out there, start meeting people. And guess what? Not only will you learn from them and they’ll learn from you, but they figure out where you are so they can give you a job. Yeah. And actually build out this marketing plan and this branding plan for yourself as Greg is talking about. That was my recommendation. I also thought of Greg because yeah, it’s, what did you call that? Greg? Warism.

Greg (00:04:28) – Warism. It’s a disease, which is, I’ve gotta work, I’ve gotta work lots, I’ve gotta work all day, I’ve gotta work weekends. I’ve, we used to call it being a workaholic, which is Right. A play on the concept of alcoholism, which is a disease. Right. It’s a mental disease. You know, the work’s the most important thing and I’ll sacrifice to, to have a bad job. You’ve actually got a mental disorder. The, from my point of view, the reason that you go to work, the only reason, primary reason that you go to work is for money. You work to live, you would much rather be at home drinking. You know, margaritas at 10 in the morning, having an afternoon nap, and then getting ready for a night out partying seven days a week than you would be going to work and struggling your way through some sort of it job.

Jonah (00:05:11) – Actually, Greg, I think if you’re drinking margaritas at 10 in the morning each and every day, you do have alcoholism

Greg (00:05:16) – Carry

Jonah (00:05:17) – On <laugh>,

Greg (00:05:18) – In which case you’ve replaced one with another, but, okay. Right. <laugh>, you know, my point would be is that whenever you get an opportunity to take, make more money, you should take it. There are mitigating circumstances. You can then say to me, oh, this job’s close to home and there’s a value attached to commuting further. Or, this job has got people that I enjoy being around and I’m scared to make a change. Okay, fine. Whatever. All things being equal, your resume should always be ready. You should always be ready to go for the next job. I’ve talked a lot about branding and stuff like that as a personal level, but what I wanted to do is like point you towards this idea of what CFOs and CIOs are doing and their personal brands. And maybe we can talk about after we talk about how they do it, what can we do?

Greg (00:06:01) – Cuz you alluded to a few things that, you know, going out and networking and fina finding people and talking to people maybe leveraging social media. Right. What I, what I wanted to say is that there’s a quite a lot, if you go out and do a search on the Googles for CEOs and branding and stuff like that, you’ll come up with lots of waffle blog posts that, you know, really should have been a tweet. And certainly there’s any number of podcasts that could have been a blog post, you know, could have been an email. There’s a lot of waffle around this

Jonah (00:06:25) – That’s just so cutting. Like that blog post should have been a tweet.

Greg (00:06:28) – Yeah. There’s a lot of, trust me, what we were I was thinking about looking at was what CEOs do is a lot of CEOs actually have a brand. If you look at someone like Warren Buffett, he’s an extreme case, or Elon Musk. Those people are bigger than life, bigger almost than the companies that they head up. Partly it’s to do with their wealth paths to do with prestige that they’ve built up over a long period of time. Those people are a brand, and if they say, I’m going to join this company, or if I support that product, people jump on it. They’re influencers in the same way that YouTube and TikTok influencers are, you know, whatever. And when you see companies, particularly technology companies appointing a ceo, they’re usually going out and looking for somebody who’s got a brand, somebody who’s gonna come in. And for public companies, it’s very much about which one will shareholders put up with <laugh>? Like, yeah, shareholders, don’t worry. The

Jonah (00:07:17) – Shareholders worship

Greg (00:07:18) – The, the shareholders of a company don’t want to see a c cfo, O or a CEO usually don’t want someone promoted one within, unless they’ve got a good story, good brand. Most often they’ll go and look outside and say, oh, this person was CEO of this company and CEO of this company. And so they’d be good in this particular, that they’re, they’re the right sort of history for this type of job. I think that’s important for us to understand as employees is because two ways, one, when you look at your ceo, keep in mind that it’s not so much a person. They’re often a figurehead. They’re not only working for the company, they’re actually working for themselves. And part of that is their brand. And that’s why CEOs often leave. It’s because their brand’s being damaged because the company’s failing or because the company’s not going in a direction that they want. Does that make sense? It

Jonah (00:08:01) – Does. And listening to this, and you’re, you know, uh, calling out Elon Musk makes me think about what, uh, before we even get to the, the practical tactical things, although I’ve thrown out a few, I think part of the whole branding is a conscious creation of your image first, which has to start first in your own mind. Who do you, it’s almost like when I was a kid and played play, pretend, you know, you pretend to be Superman or whatever, except it’s your own version of whatever Superman is. Think Steve Jobs did that very well. You come up with an image of who you are, who you wanna be, and you buy into that image enough that you can project it, but ideally not so much that you’re fooling yourself. And a lot of times what happens is these guys will create the image, live up to it Yeah. And then start believing it. And you can see ex you can pinpoint the exact moment when they’re believing their own hype Yeah. <laugh>, because that’s when they go from being impressive to being ridiculous. Yeah.

Greg (00:08:57) – That’s always a mistake. It’s a switch. Yeah. Yeah. When they start Yeah. Believing their own hype sort of thing.

Jonah (00:09:02) – You know, I’m not saying that every engineer should walk around wearing, you know, black turtlenecks or have particular funny colored hair or whatever, but those ideas are actually good in helping you stand out. Yes. I mean, just, just in a, in a moderate way for many, many years I had a bleach blonde crew cut, and it was actually flattering on me. But the real reason that I wore it was, well, it was one of the many reasons, but honestly, nobody ever forgot me in a group of people because I was the only one there with a only woman with a bleach, blonde crew cut, crew cut <laugh>. And those kinds of things can help, you know, if you’re just another guy with the same haircut that everybody else has, they’re gonna not remember which one of you was the one with a great idea at the Yeah. At the team meeting. So

Greg (00:09:42) – Sometimes what you’ll see at conferences is analysts or press walking around wearing a ridiculous hat. They’ll wear like a Tri B or something, you know, something odd. And that’s so that people know that Oh yeah. Even though they don’t remember your face, or they don’t, it’s the guy with the hat. It’s the guy with the hat. And I know him. He’s, he’s, you know, I’ve met him before.

Jonah (00:10:01) – Or, you know, the person in the black turtleneck or the girl with the, you know, bleach, blonde crew, cut, whatever it is.

Greg (00:10:06) – It is that, right? It’s all that sort of thing. And the question is, can we bring that down to people? Now, keep in mind that CEOs have different brands. It’s not just one brand. I’m a competent ceo. Let me just give you some examples. Uh, you might often find a growth ceo, which is a CEO who’s known as a person that comes in and drives growth and beats everybody with a stick and tells ’em to work 20 hours a day. You’ve got any brains in your body, you just ignore it because it’s his job to improve things, not yours. Another one is the hired gun who comes in with a goal of turning the company over in six months, maybe firing a lot of people, pulling on a, piling on a b a hele pile of debt and then walking out the door. So probably a turnaround type of person, or maybe pushing for a merger or an acquisition by another company, strategic CEOs who come in place for an extended period and then prepare the company for, uh, re-strategize it, change its direction, set up a long term, have a leadership succession.

Greg (00:10:57) – Another one is, uh, career ceo, which is someone who becomes a CEO early and then spends the rest of their life spending over on a CEO instead of spending their money. Like you should, you know, if you’ve been successful, there’s no reason to keep making more money or waste your life at doing work. And then the last one is an autopilot ceo, which is someone who’s reaching the end of their career maybe, or they just wanna have a goal to just work smoothly and keep the company operating. And those are sort of five different bands, if you like, five different flavors of a, of a soda or a soft drink. That’s the sort of brand that these people are putting out. And quite often, and this is, this is something that I’m becoming more and more visible of because they’re hiring PR companies, hiring brand consultants to go out there and promote these particular images. If there’s a CEO out there who’s currently the strategic CEO and he wants to become a growth ceo, they’ll go and hire companies. He’ll go and try and get you on podcasts. So you can build that image, create that image, and then, you know, the minor press picks it up, then the mainstream press picks it up that this person’s talking about growth and energy and, you know, changing the world. And that can be done.

Jonah (00:11:57) – Right. And I would say if you’re listening to this and going, that’s interesting. I think two things to highlight. One is, it’s a lot like theater. You have to have this idea of the character you’re playing before you can play it effectively, <laugh>. Um, and the second one is for ordinary humans who are not actors by nature, you wanna pick a character that’s reasonably close to who you actually are to start with at least. Mm-hmm. Um, so let’s say you wanna be known in your organization as the guy that will absolutely translate a brilliant idea into something that works. Many, many years ago I read a great article about, or a great book about writing fiction. And one of the things the, the, the writer said was, when you’re creating a character in fiction, you have to exaggerate their natural features. So it’s not just red lips.

Jonah (00:12:44) – You have to sort of create this slash of red lips. Hmm. And it’s not just black hair. It’s gotta be, you know, jet black hair that covers the page mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And these are visual images, but the point is, there’s kind of a gauzy veil between what you as the writer are imagining and what the reader is seeing. So you have to be really exaggerated to get across that veil. Mm-hmm. And the other point is that you’re exaggerating features that are already there. So if you’re saying, oh, I’m gonna be the guy that executes the vision, you want to think about how you can showcase and get across these notions. And it’s everything from what you say at meetings to how you decide to tell your story. Yeah. To podcast, you know, posting. There’s nothing

Greg (00:13:23) – Like presenting to the board of directors or to the, you know, the C-suite.

Jonah (00:13:28) – Yeah. Remember who you are pretending to be. Yes. And you could say, well, that’s who I am, but you are emphasizing it a little more. You’re exaggerating. Right. Some of those components. That’s right. So we talked

Greg (00:13:36) – About that and the, the growth ceo, you can turn up in front of the board and be the person pushing for change, which is fine if the board wants change. But if you’re sitting there in front of the C-suite and they’re all autopilot, they just wanna run the business and make steady profits, and you are up there demanding change, you’re gonna be out of touch with your audience and say Exactly, you’ve gotta be careful with your brand and make sure it fits the customer that you’re trying to reach. Now, I know that sounds cheesy, but that’s what it is. If you turn up and the company’s in growth mode and it’s just hired a brand new ceo, E o who wants to shake

Jonah (00:14:05) – Everything. Greg, let’s, let’s circle back to actual rank and file technologists. Yes. Because you keep talking about the c e O, but let’s, let’s make this real. Mm. I mean, one of the other pieces to this is you can say, okay, I’m gonna brand myself as the architect cuz architects are really cool and strategists are really cool. That’s what I wanna be. Well, you have to be damn sure that you’re actually good at it. You have to be at least at the 50th percentile for that job. And generally you wanna pick something you’re at the 75th percentile at. You don’t have to be the best person, the most brilliant person ever to come across as being that strategist. But it has to be something that you’re reasonably good at. You’re not going to be successful as you if you try to brand yourself at something that you’re terrible at. Even if you can fool people for a while. Because what that does is that sets you up for, for knowing that you’re a fraud and eventually everything comes tumbling down. Yeah. So pick something that you’re automatically, that you’re reasonably good at. Recognize candidly whether you are 55, 50 fifth percentile, 65th percentile, 95th percentile, and think about how you’re gonna use that strength to, as part of your, your brand.

Greg (00:15:10) – You get to pick your brand. That’s your point. Is it? You need, you get to pick your brand. Well

Jonah (00:15:13) – It’s, but you pick your brand and align it with your natural strengths. Yeah. And they have to be actual strengths. They can’t be something you wish was a strength.

Greg (00:15:20) – You can’t sell Coca-Cola as an energy drink. It’s a sugary, right. Well,

Jonah (00:15:23) – Yeah. But again, you’re getting kind of off the, how does this supply to an, you know, someone who is, you know, a technology. So

Greg (00:15:30) – Let’s realign. So if you are a, you are working for a company and do you want to present a certain image? And let’s face it, we all do, we all have a work persona because we need to fit in with the people around us. We need to present an image to the people because that’s what they want to see. You can come to work with blue hair if that’s the persona you wanna wear, but you are going to be that brand that you present. You know, you present by having some sort of extreme clothing, or if you have extreme views, that’s part of your brand. Right. And people will, yes. If

Jonah (00:15:58) – You walk into my office and you have blue hair and interesting piercings and tattoos, I’m going to listen to you. If you, you’re pitching me change agent. Yes. If you’re pitching me visionary, I’m not gonna listen to you. If you’re pitching me, keep the, you know, keep the wheels on the truck and keep, you know, keep the trains moving. Need to

Greg (00:16:16) – Stabilize. Don’t,

Jonah (00:16:16) – Don’t believe you are that person. Probably somebody’s listening to this, probably they’re, you know, gen Z or, or you know, later millennial going, yes, but I am expressing myself. Listen to what Greg said. It’s a work persona. Think about it as theater. Mm-hmm. You’re getting dressed up in your theatrical outfit. You want to convey an image, you wanna convey an idea that is, that is who you are, but more so pick that idea and let your expression be of that idea, not of some non-existent true self. Because That’s right. And that’s why we, nobody was born with blue hair and tattoo. And that’s why we tattoos that

Greg (00:16:49) – Business shirts and business trousers and women have business. Right.

Jonah (00:16:52) – Business outfits. But it doesn’t have to be business again. You can, you can show up. I remember meeting, uh, meeting via Zoom, the c CTO of an extremely large, extremely conservative organization. And the guy had, uh, was wearing a black, uh, band T-shirt. Hmm. And I’m like, okay, his brand is, I’m the cto, I am the change agent. I’m taking us into digital transformation. And my contact at that company is the CISO who shows up always in buttoned down shirts. His hair is is military crisp. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, he is the guy that will keep you safe. Yes. And there’s keep you safe and lead you into new horizons. Yes. And they’re both perfectly matched to their brand.

Greg (00:17:31) – And I have very, a lot of trouble explaining this to people, certain people who say, but you should accept me for who I am. I’m saying it’s got nothing to do with accepting no

Jonah (00:17:39) – To do with who you are,

Greg (00:17:39) – With who you are or how you dress. That’s the brand that you are presenting and

Jonah (00:17:44) – Yeah. It’s theater. It’s theater. Think it as theater it, it’ll make it less painful because no actor ever walks out on stage and says, this is who I am. No. They say I bring parts of myself to this character.

Greg (00:17:55) – And that’s why when I went on site, I would always wear a white shirt, usually without a tie these days cuz it’s no longer required, but a pair of dress pants and leather shoes because then people could put on me anything. Like, you don’t form a judgment.

Jonah (00:18:07) – You were the sta you were the stable. So, and even before you had that gray in your hair, you have this very comforting demeanor. Yeah. Until you open your mouth, <laugh>.

Greg (00:18:16) – Well, I could make a choice. I’m not a threat, I’m not exactly. I

Jonah (00:18:20) – Look at you, you and I think

Greg (00:18:20) – Weird. I’m not. Yeah. You know,

Jonah (00:18:23) – I think nice guy, smart guy. I think, you know what Greg, when I look at you, I think highly competent. That’s it. That just may be the brand that you, you used for all these years mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but it’s certainly, and by the way, it’s not a bad brand. Highly competent is what you want in your tech folks. <laugh>.

Greg (00:18:37) – Yeah. If people want you, you could be anything. You get choices at that point. Whereas if I had it turned up with broad shorts and a white shirt and thongs on saying, we’re gonna get ready to rock this team, this, you know, we’re gonna change everything. That might not have been what I was hired for. And I was a consultant. I used to get brought in for short term engagement.

Jonah (00:18:53) – But I mean, if that’s what they wanted you for, and by the way, just for the record, he is Australian, so he’s allowed to do that. <laugh>, the rest of us are posers. <laugh>. Unless you’re from Southern California. I do know a guy from Southern California who actually, that was his persona, very successful in tech. Yeah. But yes. Yeah. I guess what this comes down to, to kind of sum up is you want to think about who you really are in the privacy of your own room. You don’t have to admit your failings to anyone. What do you really good at? What do you not so good at? What do you love? What do you just tolerate? Build a brand around that. Hold that image in your mind. Yeah. Dress for it, act for it, and then start. And then only then do you start looking at all the external stuff. Like do you start writing blog posts, you know, which, which groups do you join, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you wanna really create that brand, recognize that it can change over time. That’s right. You know, you may be the, the, the fire brand when you’re 30 and you wanna be the calm voice of reason when you’re 60. Those are all fine. There is

Greg (00:19:49) – Nothing wrong with changing a brand around when you move. If you are only maintaining a private brand within your own organization and you move to another one, you can change, you can have a whole new persona. You can go from being the weirdy, you know, to being the state boring, wearing white shirts and convent.

Jonah (00:20:03) – Exactly.

Greg (00:20:04) – Exactly. If

Jonah (00:20:05) – Just make sure it aligns with mm-hmm. <affirmative> some degree of who you are, some degree of your real strengths, not what you flatter yourself, your strengths are, but they don’t have to be the, the strongest of the strengths. Again, you don’t have to actually be, you know, in the 99th percentile of genius to come across as the genius architect. Yeah. 75th percentile is just fine if you’re genius because you know, realistically

Greg (00:20:26) – Not, you’re not doing enterprise it on the inside. You’re somewhere else in here.

Jonah (00:20:29) – I know quite a lot of people are, you know what

Greg (00:20:30) – I’m saying? Right.

Jonah (00:20:31) – Yeah.

Greg (00:20:31) – But there’s a vanishingly small number. The really, the real en energetic and really bright people are baking other choices perhaps, or maybe,

Jonah (00:20:39) – Maybe, maybe not. You’d be surprised, Greg, but I, I think a lot of us, especially engineering types tend to be way too honest about our own flaws. You know, I definitely remember what percentile I got. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, in the, the graduate, um, exams, the graduate sa SATs. I remember exactly my percentiles and I remember being disappointed by some and happy about others. And, uh, you know, most of us are, are scrupulously honest and wouldn’t dream of exaggerating. Oh, I’m at the 65th percentile, maybe presenting myself. Yes. At the 75th percentile is a lie. Nat, relax. Yes. Just use it to build your brand. Take classes that strengthen you. Hang out with people that encourage that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But yeah, start with that image of who you want to be.

Greg (00:21:19) – And then if you do decide to expand that to a public sphere, like online, then again, choose the persona that you wanna present. Coming online and being a grumpy, you know, complainer about everything that’s broken is probably not the best way to present yourself. If you want to use the tool to get the next job, it might be very clear. Can you do that? Uh, I did. Yeah. For a long time.

Jonah (00:21:38) – You No, you do that. That yeah,

Greg (00:21:40) – I do.

Jonah (00:21:40) – That is your brand. Your brand is curmudgeon.

Greg (00:21:43) – You know, you’ve gotta let your excellence shine through that. It does become a burden after a while. And I’ll admit that it did, uh, cause a lot of problems for me at a certain point in time until eventually people realized it was just a humor. It was actually an amusing, an amm bush as they say. But if you’re gonna do that, just remember that it’s probably people will judge you on that. If you want to be taken as somebody who’s forever just writing technical posts and you are writing deep posts about Python, you’re not gonna get a job building pls backbones for a carrier. They, all of those things matter in weird ways. Right.

Jonah (00:22:12) – And there are some things you’re sort of stuck with. There are double-edged swords. Like being a woman in technology. Your brand is always less smart or less geeky when you walk in the door. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And you have to actually recognize that. And as a woman, if there are women listening to this, I would suggest that you not play dumb up as part of your brand brand. Mm. So like long fluffy blonde hair, lots of makeup, uh, cleavage. Look, you’ve got natural assets, God bless you, but they’re terrible grand to play up because you’re, you’re going to be saying something to people that you don’t mean to say. And I’m not talking about being sexy. I’m talking about being dumb because in the United States, at least intelligence and sexiness are, are negatively correlated for women. Yes. So just recognize that. Pull out the horn rim glasses, wear your hair back in a bun, button the shirt up, and come across as being the super smart one for a while, because you’re already going to be treated as though you’re stupider.

Jonah (00:23:07) – Yes. Same thing if you’re black. Now if you’re Asian, they’re gonna assume you’re smart. So don’t make your, don’t make your brand stupid. But on the other hand, <laugh>, you know, you may have more of a challenge making your brand one of those disruptors because there’s this assumption that right or wrong, that that Asians play by the rules. They don’t make the rules. Yeah. So, you know, just recognize the challenges. Don’t get mad about them. Don’t get upset because the world is gonna see you away that you, that doesn’t affect, doesn’t reflect who you are. Recognize that, also recognize that when you’re young, you have a great strength, which is if you can de demonstrate competence, core competence, yeah. Then people will believe you as a change agent. Because there’s an in, there’s an inherent belief that younger people are better at change agents than older people. Yeah. It’s not true again. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, just like, it’s not true that beautiful women can’t also be smart, but for some reason it’s a stereotype. Recognize it, work with it,

Greg (00:24:01) – And but also take some time to respect people who don’t have brands. They just want to go to work and go home. And that’s why a lot of people dressed in conventional clothes and do conventional things because that is the brand that they choose or never chose. They just never thought about it. Perhaps if, if you think people are judging you, no. They’re just deciding whether or not to buy your brand. That’s, and that’s, some people call that judging. But the reality is, is that when it comes to a work setting, there’s a completely different process to what happens outside in the other world. In the personal world, yes. In, in the personal world, if you’ve got a personal brand that’s whatever, people should accept you for who you are. But in the workplace, if you wanna bring a personal brand to work, you probably shouldn’t be at work. People do accept you for who you are. I think in general. In general. But, you know, blue hair and a face full of metal is, uh, is is making a brand statement in the, in the work environment. And that’s it. And that’s what CEOs

Jonah (00:24:51) – And it is at home too. Just, just just know that. Yeah. And that’s fine. You have every right to, to choose to be who you wanna be. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> just recognize that people are going to see you. I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest message here. I think the biggest message is think about a brand you can consciously choose not to have one as Greg said, but, uh, you probably should have a brand and think about marketing yourself, be according to that brand. Could be, could

Greg (00:25:13) – Be a really interesting way to handle that judgment discussion with some people. You’re judging me because I’m such and such and I’m going like, no, you are presenting to me as a brand with these value.

Jonah (00:25:22) – The brand that you’re presenting is inconsistent in inconsistent, consistent with the value you claim to provide. That’s right.

Greg (00:25:27) – That’s

Jonah (00:25:28) – Exactly. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that, that, you know, you can, you can be the most stayed conventional person on the planet wearing blue hair and a face full of meadow. But you’re telling your, everything is focused on telling me that you’re not conventional. Yes. So, you know, perhaps if you’re

Greg (00:25:42) – Part of a team for a long period of time, people will just accept you for who you are and that’s fine and reconcile the fact together. But it depends on where you’re going. Well, on that note, I think we’ve done this, uh, topic for a while to death. Yes. I don’t think we came up with too many answers, but I think we didn’t leave any questions. Uh, <laugh>, I don’t think we unquestioned any answers for sure. Uh, let’s, uh, make sure we come back in a couple of weeks. Thanks very much to you for listening. You can go over to Packer Pushes Not Net to find more podcasts and listen to Heavy Strategy two 15, which raised this topic. And Jonah welcome and people find more from you. Please

Jonah (00:26:12) – Go hit us at.com, click the link that says Join our community. And if you, uh, sign up, you’ll be immediately accepted if you mention, um, packet pushers or Heavy Strategy. And Greg and I hang out there and would be happy to hear from you there. Thanks

Greg (00:26:27) – So much. See you in a couple of weeks.