Rooster sat hunched over the computer screen deep in thought. Just then Brown Hen strutted in from the sunny barnyard, a cloud of dust settling behind her. "Whatcha doing?" she asked.
Rooster sighed. "Trying to freshen up my LinkedIn profile. It's not easy."
Hen clucked. "Not easy?!" She fluttered. Not easy?? Why, you can be anyone you want on LinkedIn!" Then she laughed. "Remember Red Hen?"
Rooster grimaced. Red Hen was a pullet who had upset the whole barnyard with her antics. She had been a menace to the workplace.
Brown Hen beamed. "She's a Life Coach now!"
Rooster sat up, clearly disturbed. "A Life Coach? What's that?"
"Oh, they're big," Hen gushed. "Thousands of them." Rooster had a sudden flashback to his old nightmare of being stuck in a Tony Robbins seminar over a long Memorial Day weekend.
"Check out her LinkedIn profile," Brown Hen added. "And her blog. Red Hen is guiding other hens to fulfillment and happiness. She's helping them find their true passion. She's even written two books!"
"What?!" Rooster looked lost. "She had trouble pecking out a vacation request in English when I knew her."
"That's the beauty of the Web," Hen clucked. "Think it and Be it! Everyone can become their Own Brand!" Then she lowered her voice, like she was letting Rooster in on a gigantic secret. "It's just like FaceBook. You know how everyone is happy on FaceBook? Well, everyone is successful on LinkedIn!"
Rooster began to feel very tired. He had a hard enough time keeping order in the coop. How was he ever going to be his Own Brand?
Then Hen's words registered. "Wait," Rooster said. "She wrote two books?"
"Even better," said Hen. "E-books. Free! I own them both." She paused, looking up at the roof of the coop. "Information wants to be free," she repeated solemnly. "I read that on LinkedIn yesterday."
Rooster's teeth hurt, a remarkable thing for a rooster. "What are the books about?"
"Well, one is called Find Your Inner Flock." Hen beamed. "And the other is Who Moved My Fermented Chicken Feed Crumbles?. I wrote glowing blurbs for both of them!"
"Glowing blurbs? They were that good?" Rooster was astonished.
"Well, I haven't really read them," Brown Hen admitted. "But, don't you see, that's the magic of the Web?! "And," she added, "Red Hen wrote a great LinkedIn recommendation for me in return."
Rooster could see that Brown Hen was warming to the topic. He closed his browser and clicked his laptop shut. His old LinkedIn profile was going to have to wait another day.
Hen saw his exasperation. Poor Rooster. "Why don't you download Find Your Inner Flock?" she suggested. "Maybe you just need to discover your true passion?" Then she scratched the dirt, brightening. "Why just this morning I learned on LinkedIn that 'Some chickens see only problems while others see opportunities!'"
But Rooster had disappeared, a cloud of dust swirling in his tracks outside the coop.
"No matter," Brown Hen thought. "Maybe I'll just tell him the truth later." She laughed. "Only silly pullets confuse a LinkedIn profile with reality."
Then she clucked and headed back out into the sunshine, all but certain--thanks to Rooster--that nobody had dare move her fermented chicken feed crumbles.
