Book Review: Known, The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

All of the personal branding gurus out there are leaving out an important piece of the puzzle.

Yes, you should try to discover your life’s passion. But what’s next?

According to Mark W. Schaefer, consultant, speaker, and author of Known, the missing piece is applying your passion in service of a long-term goal.

For example, talking about my obsession with cupcakes is not going to help my personal brand unless I’m opening a bakery.

Mark is a masterful teacher, and he uses extensive interviews with successful people to give the reader actionable advice. He pulls back the curtain on regular people who found the right niche, built an engaged audience, and then patiently activated that audience to achieve a goal.

He’s the right person to talk about this subject, since he left the corporate world and started over as a consultant, using blogging as his calling card to become known in a new professional niche. His blog, grow, is now one of the top marketing blogs in the world.

My favorite thing about this book is that it’s written in Mark’s inimitable voice, as if you’re old friends. It’s not a stuffy, by-the-numbers business book.

Each person interviewed brings a new insight to the story, whether it’s the “grandpa who shoots things on YouTube,” or the blogging pediatrician. You’ll just have to read the book to meet these interesting characters.

There is also a separate workbook that takes the lessons from the book and provides a step-by-step walkthrough of the process to become “known.” Each question or prompt will provoke deeper thought and encourage you to put some meat on the bones of your professional plan.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who is struggling to be heard and recognized above the din. You’ll find inspiration and solid ideas in one entertaining package.

 

 

Disclosure: I consider Mark a friend, but he did not request this review or send me a free book (what’s up with that?). I forked out my own hard-earned dollars to purchase it, and these are my unvarnished opinions.

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

The post Book Review: Known, The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age appeared first on Successful Blog.

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Book Review: Known, The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

Seven Myths About China Employer Rules and Regulations (aka Employee Handbook)

Every China employer should have a set of rules and regulations setting out employee and its employer duties and obligations. This document should cover all types of employees, including part-time employees. It also should at minimum, cover the following:

• employee evaluations, especially end-of-probation reviews
• protection measures on company’s confidential information (trade secrets) and property
• employee benefits program(s)
• special leave such as maternity leave
• vacation days
• rest and working time
• overtime
• disciplinary actions for employee’s breaches
• termination

Many foreign employers wrongly assume that whatever they use in their home country is good enough for their China employee manual. This is virtually never true as the reason for having employee manuals is so different as between China and Western countries. Western companies often learn too late about these differences when one of their employees leaves or is terminated.

The following are seven common myths our China lawyers often hear about China employer rules and regulations:

Myth 1: It need not be in Chinese. Though having your rules and regulations entirely in English will not necessarily invalidate the entire document (this depends on where you are), it needs to be in Chinese so your employees can understand it. If you do not have a Chinese language version of your rules and regulations, you run the risk of a Chinese court finding it not binding on your employees because they could not understand it and you didn’t bother explaining it to them. Also, the local labor authorities may require a Chinese translation for audit purposes and you don’t want to be caught flat-footed when that happens. And whatever you do, do not just take your English language version and pay a translator to put it into Chinese. Your Chinese language rules and regulations are what the courts will be looking at to determine whether you acted properly or not, so you want that document to be written clearly (and in Chinese) for this purpose.

Myth 2: It need not be in English. You really should have an English translation done and make sure that too is good. You as the employer will need to refer to this document in making employee decisions (especially termination decisions). Unless all of your people who will be making these decisions are fluent in written Chinese, you need a well-written English version to serve as your roadmap on how to handle all sorts of decisions regarding your employees.

Myth 3: It need not be updated because it has a provision that says the outdated sections will automatically be replaced and superseded by then-current laws. Wrong. Both nationally and at the local level, China’s employment laws are constantly changing. It

Seven Myths About China Employer Rules and Regulations (aka Employee Handbook)