My Recent Speech On “Personal Branding” For AMA @ ING Cafe

I gave a speech on Personal Branding to the American Marketing Association (San Francisco) (thanks, Brian Kerr!) on Nov. 20th at the ING Direct Cafe.

Some of you asked for the slides of the show.

Here’s the Powerpoint slide show via Slideshare and then below that are some notes from the speech:

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A Long List Of Words In Our Brains That Brands Own

The average American knows about 12,000 words (though Shakespeare was said to have had known 66,000) — the best brands are ones that own the most market share of a couple of those words.

CNN owns “news” in my brain. When I think of “reggae,” it’s Bob Marley — he owns it. There’s an awesome analysis of this in Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind (they discuss the concept of ladders (product categories) in your brain with room for just a handful of rungs (brands) — it’s the primary reason I voted it one of the Top 20 Best Business Books Of All Time!).

Who cares? Well, if your business wants market share of something, you have to decide which words you are going to try to “own” in my brain.  …

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The 20 Best Business Books Of All Time

My brother-in-law Rich recently asked me for my favorite business book. I had a tough time answering because a slew of book titles raced through my mind.

Well, make room on your bookshelf because I dove in and came up with 20 top business books below:

The Best Business Books Of All Time

1) Poor Charlie’s Almanack

If I had to pick just one business book for folks to read, it would be this illustrated tome by Charlie Munger — Warren Buffett’s long-time right-hand man — with its folksy and entertaining tales of business and life (see Charlie Munger Quotes for a taste).

There’s plenty of Buffett tips in here too so you get two-for-one! …

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