I spent years being thanked for work I could do in my sleep.

Nobody forces you into that. They just keep asking, and you keep being good at it, and one day you notice that the thing you are known for is the only thing anyone will give you. I had been rewarded into a corner and I could not see it, because every signal I was getting said I was doing well.

Then the role ended, and I found out what I actually had when the institution was no longer standing behind me. I was in my fifties. No network left to speak of. I had to work out what I was selling from a standing start.

What I wanted was one person who had done the work telling me the truth about what I was sitting on. Friends want to help. They are too kind, or too close. I could not find it, so I learned to do it.

Before that: MD of a 200-person business, CMO and board director through a private equity deal, twenty-five years reading what companies and people actually offer versus what they say they offer. Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Ogilvy, Saatchi, Diageo.

I started my career by threatening to turn up to the interview in a Batman costume. I got the interview, and the job. I have spent the years since learning when that instinct is an asset and when it is a liability.

I do not do personal branding. Better words for the same claim will not move your price. A different claim will.