Review: Informative, but caveat emptor.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 20, 2014
What this book does is to show what has to be done to build a “brand” in the public domain, and the authors clearly know what they are talking about. It argues that with the right promotion, anyone can reach celebrity status, and it shows how to go about it, at least in generalities. When we see people like the Kardashians, it becomes obvious that the authors are correct, but there is a reservation. As the authors point out, it requires very serious effort. What the authors do not properly note, very few can actually achieve it, because there is a second problem. The authors make the case that public status comes in three forms: the good, the bad and the ugly. Ugly is when there is no discernible public image. They then say being invisible is effectively being on page two of a Google search. Page one only has about ten to twelve results, and sometimes the start includes a few ads. Since the most famous will receive multiple entries, even being twentieth is bad news.The book summarizes what has to be done, but it also points out that it requires a major effort that will be expensive. (Likely costs are not mentioned.) In one chapter, what has to be done is allocated to three departments, and a number of examples are from major companies that trade in billions of dollars. In short, while there is a chapter for the one-person business, that person has to hire an awful lot of assistance, and the danger is, you spend a lot of money and still find you have not done enough. The book never gets sufficiently specific, possibly because each individual has its own specific problems. What it does do is leave several links to their website. Strictly speaking, this book could be a template for promoting your own services. The generalities do give some hints on what the individual should do to improve their public standing, such as building attractive and informative websites, but much of what is discussed is, in my opinion, outside the scope of the small business. The one warning they do give is, you still have to concentrate on making your own business work, which means you have to hire assistance. To summarize, it is clearly written, it is easy to read, but the individual will probably find that it is not very helpful at their level of cash flow.