In my book How People Become Famous, I analyze the recipes for success of twelve personalities – the “Geniuses of Self-Marketing” – from Albert Einstein, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Karl Lagerfeld, Andy Warhol, and Oprah Winfrey to Kim Kardashian. As different as these personalities are, they all instinctively understood the secrets of self-marketing.

Don’t forget to cluck if you lay an egg

Do what chickens do! Yes, you read that right. Because chickens cluck when they lay an egg – and without ever knowing it, follow a basic principle of self-marketing. If you want to transform yourself into a brand, you first have to abandon the sets of beliefs that prevent you from doing so. ‘Quality will always prevail on its own’ is one of these false beliefs. If the phrase were true, companies such as Daimler or Apple would have stopped advertising and doing PR long ago. “Modesty is a virtue,” “Don’t be a show-off,” and “Don’t blow your own trumpet” – we all heard phrases like these throughout our childhoods, but if we live by them, we will spend our lives looking on as others pass us by because they have understood better how to make themselves into a brand. This point is the most important – and the most frequently underestimated: as long as you do not overcome these barriers, these harmful beliefs that you have internalized in your subconscious, you can never become famous.  Read more...