The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

Always give 100%

It's happened to all of us: you wake up in the morning feeling tired or somehow below par. Maybe you couldn't get to sleep, maybe you were up late, maybe you're starting to go down with something. You go in to work and you think "I'm not feeling great; I'll put in 60% effort today, but it's OK, I'll make up for it tomorrow."

It's not just candidates who interview badly...

There's a temptation to think that how an interview goes is always down to the candidate, but I received a request today for funny interview stories that reminded me of one interview that went badly in a VERY unexpected way.

Niche personal brands

As I sat the other day lecturing some undergraduates on corporate strategy, I started to think about Michael Porter, the guru whose business model I was explaining.

Probably 80% of the people reading this have just gone "Michael who?" And that's fine, because the chances are that if you've never heard to Michael Porter it's because you didn't need to. For the other 20%, though, he is likely to be a major figure in many professional conversations, or at least in their daily thinking at work.

Now, does that make him any less powerful a personal brand than, say, Oprah, Bill Gates or Richard Branson?

Star of the small screen!

In September 2008, Dexter Moscow of the Entrepreneurs' Forum interviewed me on why organizations need to develop and leverage the power of the individuals in the company to survive the economic downturn. We discuss the idea that HR has become as much the custodian of the corporate brand as the Marketing Department, and HR managers now need to see themselves as brand champions.

I was also interviewed with fellow personal branding expert Tessa Hood on the subject of our forthcoming seminar in London for HR professionals.

The videos are all on www.robcuesta.com/video

The name's Bond, James Bond...

I remember the first time I heard that line. I was four years old, sitting in a darkened cinema watching a rerun of Goldfinger (my parents were pretty liberal when it came to things like that, and we knew the manager of the cinema).

For two hours I sat, transfixed as 007 battled the bad guys, got the girl and saved the world. Without knowing it, though, it set the tone for many aspects of my life over the years since then.

Personal Branding and NLP

Inevitably, over the last few weeks I've been pondering on the links between Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Personal Branding. I've met people who believed the two were incompatible. If you think that NLP is about 'fixing' people then I suppose it would seem odd to compare it to Personal Branding, which is all about "authenticity" and "the real you".

If, on the other hand, you see NLP as a set of tools for developing greater understanding of yourself and of others, then it's application to Personal Branding becomes a lot more apparent.

NLP - blowing my own horn

OK, I finally got there. After almost 10 years of using NLP both professionally and personally I have been certified by the Tad James Company as a Trainer of NLP, so watch out here on the blog and on my website for announcements of upcoming training courses (or read the main post for a sneak preview of what's coming up).

Are today's executives more like the free agents we associate with sports teams than the 'company man' of days (and years) gone by?

Some time ago, I saw a question on LinkedIn about  how the  behaviour of executives is changing. The questioner (Bradley Foster) asked:

"Are today's executives more like the free agents we associate with sports teams than the 'company man' of days (and years) gone by?

A lot of the executives I coach are more like lone wolves than what we have come to think of executives as team players who are loyal to the company they serve. Are executives more like the free agents we associate with sports teams than the 'company man' of days (and years) gone by? "

What would you do...

... if you only had 6 months left in your job? That is the question facing one of my clients right now. But as I was working with him the other day it struck me that it is something that everyone should be asking themselves, even if they've only just started a new job or business.

10 things you should do if you make a big mistake

We all make mistakes. On one occasion early in my online career I became an accidental spammer when someone offered me a marketing list of 10,000 names in a specific industry. In my enthusiasm at receiving such a windfall, and with a high profile joint venture to promote, I emailed all 10,000 contacts directly (horror of horrors), promoted my upcoming big-name teleclass (even though they had never heard of me), and invited them to unsubscribe from my list (which they had never signed up to) if they didn't want any more contact from me (which they hadn't wanted in the first place).

An uncomfortable 24 hours followed, as email after email of some of the nastiest, most vitriolic personal attacks I've ever seen poured into my inbox. However, as soon as I realised my mistake I put into action a recovery plan which earned me a lot more emails of thanks and understanding.