Two cousins carry buckets of water from a river to the village for a penny a bucket, and one of them starts digging a pipe in the evenings while the other celebrates his good fortune. Michael Burns retells that parable at length, and it is the whole argument of the blog compressed into a story.
The self branding post makes the same point differently. He notes that people buy a cola without ever knowing the name of the company that makes it, because the brand does the work, and asks why you would not build the same thing around yourself.
The lead generation piece is drier and more useful, defining a lead honestly as a database of people who have shown interest, and running through where they usually come from, referrals included.
Four posts. Read the parable first even if you already know it. He tells it well, and the two posts after it only make sense once you have.