Brag Better

Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion

By: Meredith Fineman

Narrated by: Meredith Fineman

This effortless and unapologetic approach to self-promotion will manage your anxiety and allow you to champion yourself.

Does talking about your accomplishments feel scary or icky because you're worried people will think you're "obnoxious"?

Does it feel more natural to "put your head down and do the work"?

Are you tired of watching the loudest people in your industry get disproportionate praise and rewards?

If you answered "Yes" to any of the above, you might be self-sabotaging. You need to learn to brag better. Meredith Fineman has built a career working with "The Qualified Quiet": smart people who struggle to talk about themselves and thus go underestimated or unrecognized. Now, she shares the surefire and anxiety-proof strategies that have helped her clients effectively communicate their achievements and skill sets to others.

Bragging better doesn't require false bravado, talking over people, or pretending to be more qualified than you are. Instead, Fineman advocates finding quiet confidence in your opinions, abilities, and background and then turning up the volume.

In this audiobook, you will learn the career-changing tools she's developed over the past decade that make bragging feel easy, including:

• Get remembered by focusing your personal brand and voice on key adjectives (like "effective, subtle, and edgy").
• Practice explaining what you do in simple, sticky terms to earn respect and recognition from the public and people at work.
• Eliminate words that undermine your work and find better ones - like your bio saying you're "trying" or "attempting" to do something instead that you are doing it.

If you're ready to begin bragging better - to start telling the truth about your accomplishments with grace and confidence - this audiobook is for you.

©2020 Meredith Fineman (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Eye opener

Great for not only women but men too, I like nice actionable recommendations too. A must read.

Even if you don’t, we all start somewhere…

Self promotion is the key to rise past the hurdles that we so often hold ourselves back with.

Good read to encourage engagement to the masses.

Excellent Read

Fantastic book! I will definitely read again and again! You're right my dreams can become my reality!

Too much woman victim mindset

Good book but too much assumptions that women are the only ones having challenges. 75% content is talking about how women have it hard. Funnily enough I face the exact challenges, had the exact same experiences and parenting. Maybe the audience is just women.

The author wants you to be a victim

I found the audiobook enjoyable overall, though I was surprised by its specific target audience. I initially expected more general advice on how to communicate your achievements, but at times the content seemed to shift focus, relying heavily on DEI themes to fill material. While this may resonate with some listeners, I would have preferred a broader approach to self-promotion strategies.

A very motivating and helpful book

I learned a lot from this book. It really changed the way I think about the importance of speaking up. The author provides really helpful insights from her experience as a publicist. The fact that she is vulnerable and shares so many stories about when she messed up helped me feel better about my mistakes and feel less afraid about trying, failing, and trying again. I'm an academic and, when it comes to public writing, I often think there is someone more established who can say it with more impact than I can. This book helped me unlearn that! I finished the book on Sunday and I wrote my first op ed this week! As a Black woman, I appreciated the fact that the author talks about race and gender in the book. I was also very happy to see so much discussion of disability, which is really rare.

There were some things about the book that bothered me, but they didn't overshadow everything it offered:
1) I wish the author made clear that the book is for professionals and people who want to have a significant public voice. It's fine to have a book that is directed at a specific audience but if you don't say it, it seems like you're suggesting that the book is for everyone, which it is not. Everyone is not upper middle class. The effect is that a person who does not have a professional career or public ambitions will try to listen to it and be understandably annoyed by all of the references to being on TV and "moving from 6 figures to 7 figures. " That said, there are a lot of skills here that are useful to everyone, but they would have to be packaged differently.
2) While I appreciate the discussion of race, it was limited to a diversity and inclusion framework. Diversity and Inclusion are not racial justice. Similarly, she writes that women and POC have a long way to go to catch up. An underlying assumption in the writing is that whites and men will always dominate. The problem isn't that we need to catch up. The problem is that we need systemic social change. Of course, this is not a book about making systemic social change. But, it is irritating when the author suggests that by bragging better, we can get our voices heard, and then all would be well. That is simply not the case.

Good for men too

I almost stopped listening because this was geared more toward women and others that are not as aggressive in showing their worth. But glad I continued because I learned a few thing and also was reminded of my responsibility to help those without my standing.

Great practical read!

loved it. Was able to relate on many fronts and it's quite practical. Can't wait to share with my circle.

Lovely concept

I've listened twice and learned something new each time. We will be discussing this book in an upcoming book club.

The last chapter really inspired me!

Each chapter has great examples and builds on the last. The last chapter summarizes the whole books with excellent reasons to uplift yourself and others. I would highly recommend this books to everyone young and old.