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You may be more talented than the person standing on that stage, but talent alone won't get you there. Sometimes, the difference is the willingness to put yourself out there, ask for the opportunity, and find out what you're truly capable of.

Going live on TikTok every day might work for some founders, but more content isn't always better. The real question is whether your visibility builds trust, starts meaningful conversations, and creates business opportunities. Build a brand people recognize, not just a presence the algorithm rewards.

A powerful personal brand is built around more than a name or a list of services. It grows when expertise becomes a distinctive point of view, visibility builds influence, and that influence creates valuable business opportunities. The key is expanding across industries while staying true to a coherent brand identity.

LinkedIn Is Changing, and Maybe That Is the Point At least that seems to be the diagnosis from the growing number of people announcing their departure, taking breaks, staging some version of a LinkedIn strike, or writing wistful little obituaries for whatever this place used to be before more people began showing up with stories or opinions, even humor and vulnerability, either way, considerably less interest in behaving like digital résumés with profile pictures attached. Wh

One of the most expensive sentences a founder can say before launching a product is: “We’ll figure out the positioning once we start generating revenue.” I spent a couple of hours recently with the CEO of a company preparing to launch a new app. At the end of it, he told me he didn’t think it made sense to invest in pre-launch positioning, audience, messaging and go-to-market strategy until the product was generating revenue. I disagree pretty fundamentally with that logic on

A business problem is not always where the symptoms appear. Like a spider reading vibrations through its web, effective SEO and business strategy look beyond the visible signal to find the deeper cause. Understanding those connections creates very clear answers, stronger positioning, and content that both people and search engines can understand.

This is not a typical episode of The Branding Laboratory, and it is worth saying that plainly before you read any further. It started as an interview with Danielle Mercurio, an astrologer, intuitive advisor, spiritual guide, and former Gabby Bernstein insider based in Austin, Texas. For most of the conversation, that is exactly what it was. Here is what came out of it. The Zodiac Scroll and Being Called Too Much Danielle’s story starts at four years old, in the checkout aisle

I recently hired an outside team to help me with lead generation and positioning, which is mildly ironic considering I spend most of my days helping other people figure out what is getting in the way of their growth. Thank you, Michaelle. It reminded me of something I see constantly with established founders and CEOs… The longer you have been inside a business, the easier it becomes to confuse familiarity with clarity. You know why things are the way they are. You remembe

Maybe the point of understanding is not to finally gain control over life, but to see more clearly what is actually ours to author. We cannot control every outcome, explain every mystery, or negotiate with reality until it agrees to our terms. But awareness can create space between what shaped us and what we choose next, and inside that space, something that feels like freedom begins. That counts.

How Your Personal Brand Shapes Perception, Trust, and Credibility Reading time: 4 minutes Today’s Discussion... People begin deciding what you are worth long before they fully understand what you do. There is a strange little negotiation happening every time someone encounters you online. They land on your LinkedIn profile while drinking coffee between meetings. They read something you wrote. A few days later, somebody mentions your name. Maybe they hear you on a podcast, wa

Christina Kimbrough got her sober date on February 6th, 2020…six weeks later, the world shut down, she calls it the best possible timing for the worst possible circumstances, and it is hard to argue with her. What could have been a devastating coincidence turned into the exact isolation she needed to rebuild herself from the ground up, without the option of numbing any of it. Christina is the founder and CEO of Free Life, a social enterprise based in Hampton Roads, Virginia,

AI needs adult supervision because the real risk is not only what intelligent machines may do, but what happens when humans stop doing the difficult work of thinking, judging, creating, and being present. As AI reshapes search, language, and decision-making, responsibility remains human.

Your values are not defined by what appears on a wall, in a handbook, or during a leadership retreat. They are revealed through the behaviors leaders repeat, the decisions they make under pressure, and the resources they choose to invest. Culture is not built by intention alone. It is built when values consistently become actions that people can see, trust, and follow every day.

On beauty, inheritance, and the quiet ways we learn to cultivate what life never gave us. This is a story about sunflower seedlings, a small porch sanctuary, and the strange realization that healing sometimes looks like creating the conditions for something beautiful to keep returning. This morning I was sitting on my front porch watching the squirrels and birds move through the yard like they owned the place, which, technically speaking, they kinda do, at least the front yar

Nine minutes into this conversation, Blaz Marolt delivered his pitch “I help coaches and consultants be and stay in their zone of genius while I do the rest” but it sounded rehearsed, polished, and completely hollow so I knew we had to stop. What followed was a live coaching session inside the middle of a podcast, and it turned out to be one of the more useful things we have ever captured on this show, because it forced Blaz to say out loud, specifically, what problem he actu

The most valuable outcome of your work is often not the revenue it earns but the people it brings into your life. Real success grows through trust, humility, and meaningful relationships that quietly open doors long before they ever appear on a spreadsheet.

Choice Not Chance is the courage to define yourself before others define you. Charlene Wheeless's journey from corporate success through cancer survival reveals that authentic leadership begins when you stop performing for approval and start living in alignment with who you truly are, creating impact through purpose rather than conformity.

Time and Priorities rarely move in perfect alignment. Your calendar may show free hours, but your life reveals what you truly protect. Real progress begins when your lived priorities match the future you want to build, and when busyness stops disguising the decisions that matter most.

Prepared for Deevo (The Brand Lab) · April 2026 Latif Hamilton changed his own name ten years ago, he looked at the name he had been given as a child and decided it was not actually who he was, so he chose a different one. He mentions this almost in passing, the way you mention something that used to feel enormous and no longer does. That detail matters more than it seems, because it is the same instinct that runs through everything else Latif has built. He is the founder o

A mildly inappropriate but surprisingly useful diagnostic for founders, offers, pricing, clients, content, sales, and the business decision pacing around the room in a bathrobe. Let’s clear the room before the internet gets twitchy. Brand Therapy is a 90-minute working session for the place in your business that keeps creating drag. Maybe that drag is showing up in your message, your offer, your pricing, your clients, your content, your sales process, your visibility, or the