The best builders are often the least known. A personal brand makes the work you shipped visible to the people who hire, fund, and follow product leaders.
Technology rewards the people whose thinking is public. Writing about what you built, why, and what you learned turns private competence into credibility that recruiters, founders, and investors can find.
The Manifesto also looks ahead to how people will find you. It expects Artificial Engine Optimization to matter as more questions are answered by AI. A technology leader should be the first to check whether they show up in those answers.
Artificial Intelligence is worth including as Artificial Engine Optimization (AEO) will, in my opinion, become prevalent in the years to come.
Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, Second Edition, 6.11
Many technologists are known only inside their team. The State Representative, known across an industry or a technical community, is reachable through writing and speaking about the work.
Where most stand: Tier 2, Friends and FamilyBuild toward: Tier 4, The State Representative
The tier measures how large a position is. How good it is, is measured by The Five Personal Brand Pillars. Read more about the six tiers.
The moves MCG starts with for technology and product leaders, grouped by pillar, in order. Each one cites the subchapter of Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence it comes from.
Advice Isaac Mashman has given on his own shows and in interviews that applies to technology and product leaders, from the same library MCG consultants work from. Each one keeps the words he said it in, and links to the transcript where there is one.
Write the story of the problem you faced that led you to build what you sell: when it happened, what you tried, and the easier way you found. Use it in every introduction.
“you're telling the reason why you're doing it”
Unrivaled Results with Mashman Ventures, “UNRIVALED: Personal Branding Training”, April 13, 2022
Publish a plain statement of how you use artificial intelligence in your work. Never present generated work as your own craft or use it to build a perception you have not earned.
Read it ↗ (opens in a new tab)“concealing it is”
Medium, “I Created the World’s First Personal Branding Directory for Professionals: Here’s Why”
Before adding a full time hire for a specialized function, total the salary, benefits, payroll, and tax obligations, and compare that to a professional firm or contractor.
Read the transcript ↗ (opens in a new tab)“now you're introducing this complexity”
Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, “Should You Hire A Full-Time Employee or Outsource to an Agency?”, March 7, 2022
Share your knowledge openly without tying every piece to a sale. Plan on a twenty year horizon in which relationships built today pay off in ways you cannot predict.
Read the transcript ↗ (opens in a new tab)“i'm going into this with more of a 20 year plan”
Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, “The Future of My Brand and Chase the Vision Podcast”, August 18, 2020
All consumed media educates, entertains, inspires, or connects. The Skyline Strategy asks for two pieces about your work for every one about your life. Here is one of each, for each purpose.
| Purpose | Brand Post | Personal Post |
|---|---|---|
| EducateTeach something useful. | A complex idea explained for non-technical people. | Your workspace and tools. |
| EntertainMake it enjoyable to follow you. | The bug that took a week and was one character. | Your worst tech purchase. |
| InspireShow what is possible. | A product you shipped and what it changed. | How you got into tech. |
| ConnectGive people a reason to reply. | Credit a collaborator on a project. | Ask what technology people wish worked better. |
Draw a Week
Two posts about your work, one about your life, drawn from the ideas above.
Plan the ratio with the free Skyline Planner (opens in a new tab).
If what you built lives only inside the company, your name is not attached to it. Ask up front what you can reference publicly.
Technical content with no human detail gives no one a reason to follow you. Use the Skyline Strategy's two to one ratio.
Check what search engines and AI models say about you, and fix what is missing or wrong.
Twenty-five questions, about seven minutes, free. Choose Technology / Product Leader on the intake and the audit scores all five pillars, places you on The Hierarchy of Personal Branding, and returns the three moves that would raise your score most, each traced to the subchapter it comes from.
Every engineer and product leader already has a personal brand, even if it is only known inside their team. If you want your work to open doors, build it. Public writing and speaking turn private competence into credibility others can find.
What you built and why, decisions and trade-offs, lessons from failures, and the human side, within what your company allows you to share.
The Manifesto's term for making sure AI models answer accurately about you, the way SEO did for search engines.
More executives are becoming the public face of their companies. The ones who do it well build a presence before a crisis or a stock price asks them to.
Your company has a brand. So do you, and the two should grow together. A founder's personal brand opens doors the company cannot open alone.
A large audience is fame. Whether it buys, believes, or follows you to a new platform is influence, and that is the part a creator has to build on purpose.
The last thing you want is to pour your effort into work no one sees. Distribution decides whether it reaches anyone.
A 2:1 ratio from Identity Positioning: A Macroscopic View on Personal Branding. For every two steps that grow the brand side, take one that grows the personal side.
By compiling wins, future successes become easier to obtain. A record that speaks for you does the convincing you once had to do yourself.
Engagements are accepted by application and seats are limited each quarter. Tell us who you are, what you are building, and the position you intend to hold.
