We know that many business executives are incompetent scumbags. In this podcast we dive into how they managed to a get the job and even get paid serious money despite their obvious shortcomings. What can technology engineers learn from these fools so that they get the same results aka more money and less work. * Senior executives are often hired on their brand value as much as their actual skills. * Investors / owners want a good brand for their money → happy * Are there questions that we can consider for normal people ? * When CFO’s leave a company it often results in stock tanking. THe CFO is a ‘brand’ and doesn’t want to be around when the company fails which would damage her brand value. * Also, the CFO is usually best placed to know if a company isn’t performing well. * A resume is a brand portfolio * Showing value props that you bring to the customers i.e employer * Different to selling Coke, not much different to selling a car * Your value is not determined by the market, its determined by what the customer is willing to pay. How much is a CEO worth ? Pat Gelsinger gets 180M at intel or 1.5% of the net profit. How can he be worth this much ? * Chuck Robbins get 25M. Why ? * Some CEO’s hire brand consultants and media companies to build and promote their brand. Keep in mind, they have lots of money to build brands and this can create the perception that branding matters. It might not ? * Some CEOs use their companies to build their brand *  The Edmundson Group’s article identifies 5 persona types: * The Growth CEO: Chief executives who want to sustain forward momentum, increase in size and scope, and stay ahead of the competition fall into this category. * The Hired Gun CEO: Hired guns tend to move from company to company with the goal of making an immediate and substantial impact on each business. Most corporations looking for this type of CEO either need a turnaround to keep from dissolving or are preparing to merge with or be acquired by another company. * The Strategic CEO: These CEOs are executives who stay in one place for extended periods, sometimes as a company founder, and eventually want to prepare the company for either a sale or a transfer of leadership. * The Career CEO: Career CEOs reach the C-suite early in their careers and often strive to be CEOs over multiple companies, constantly learning and growing in their profession as they accumulate experiences. * The Auto-Pilot CEO: Successful companies may spend years reaching a point where they operate smoothly. Auto-pilot CEOs push their businesses even further to the point where they need little CEO involvement and business can be conducted with almost no input from the board of directors. Transcript Greg (00:00:00) – Welcome to the Heavy Strategy Podcast with me and Jonah Till Johnson. Today we’re focusing on unanswered questions instead of unquestioned answers. And Joel here is to think about what it is and to help you think about a topic in a particular direction. And today’s topic is branding of CFOs and CEOs. Why not you? How does the concept of being CEOs, being a brand or a cfo, being a brand, how is this important? Cause just recently, a network break podcast [email protected], I, uh, was talking about the recent results from Extreme Networks and the c they pulled up these amazing results, 20% growth, growth in revenue off the charts. Earnings per share was great, but the CFO resigned and left to go pursue some other opportunity, and the share price fell by 20%. And people don’t quite understand that. And the answer is because the CFO and the CEO in most companies are actually a brand or a figurehead, and particularly in this case,