Jeffrey Pfeffer: commitment

Transcript context

…It sounds very benign put that way. When people hear, I need to build a personal brand, it sounds like I need to post on LinkedIn, I need to post on Twitter, start a newsletter, start a podcast, which I know is kind of a part of it. But what are some examples you've seen of ways to build a personal brand that are effective? So I have a friend who I bring to the class, a lovely tall Asian woman named Laura Chau, who made partner at a venture capital firm after four years, which is fast. Laura works for Canaan Partners, C-A-N-A-A-N. Laura said, I do not work for Andreessen Horowitz, I do not work for Sequoia, I don't work for Greylock, I don't work for any of these very visible large VC firms. So if I am going to get deals in the consumer space, that's her domain of expertise is consumer and consumer tech, somebody is going to have to know who Laura Chau is. Because again, you're not going to get the deal if nobody knows who you are. And so she basically did everything you talked about. She did writing. She started a podcast in which she invited influential people on. She contributed to a book. She helped people out. She did networking dinners. She did everything she could so that people would recognize and know Laura Chau. And one of the things she did was she's tall. In general, Asian women are not tall. She decided to play up the fact that she was, in the words of some people, the tallest Asian woman they'd ever seen. She wears heels. In her heels she's six feet one inches tall. She also, when she comes to my class, many people come to my class with hoodies, God knows what. She has style and it's a unique style. So she thinks about very strategically, how am I going to dress? How am I going to look? How am I going to show up? How am I going to do what I need to do so that people know who I am? Obviously there's substance. If you have visibility without substance, people will know you're useless. But if you have substance without visibility, no one will know the substance that you got. You also talk about how you can reframe this idea of not being self-promotional, but it's amplifying the impact of the team that I work with, or it's me scaling myself by sharing things I know and pointing people to it.…

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