You Can’t Obtain Success By Defining it Yourself!

December 12, 2008 at 11:11 pm | In Book Reviews, Career Development, Interview, People, Personal Branding, Success Strategies, entrepreneurship | 4 Comments

Today, I spoke with Romanus Wolter, who has successfully branded himself as “The Kickstart guy.” He has a lot of knowledge when it comes to entrepreneurship and business coaching. We talked about how people should define success, how to start a business from a simple idea, why some people don’t make the leap (quitting instead) and if you need an MBA to succeed in life. Some of this information may be repetition, but I believe you’ll learn a lot and rethink your career a bit after reading it.

Romanus, what is your definition of success? What should people strive for and it is possible for everyone to become successful?

“A person is successful when they realize that they can actually never attain success as defined by themselves.”

Other people can be amazed by their achievements – but since we are human, once we reach a specific goal we always seek out our next success.

A client of mine dreams of getting their book published. They work hard, they tell their friends and family about their goals and they know that it will change their lives. After their book is published, they’re happy but soon begin to ask themselves “I wonder what my next book will be?” “Perhaps I can turn the book into a movie, now that would be really a great success.” “If I could get on Oprah, I could reach even more people.”

The realization that we can never be ‘the definition of success’ is comforting. It enables people to freely explore new opportunities and discover the possibilities present rather than focusing on outcomes that may or may not make them feel successful.

“This is what true success is all about – creating moments in your life to explore, learn, celebrate and improve the world around you.”

How does one go from an idea to a business? What steps are needed to put your ideas into action?

The best way to go from an idea into a business is to follow what I like to call “The Three Rules to Live By”:

  • Speak from your passion – it inspires others to help you.
  • Listen to others – you do not have to start your business alone. There are others with the expertise and knowledge you need to succeed – ask for their help and listen to their ideas.
  • Write it down – The first four letters of listen are “LIST.” Write down every idea, contact and strategy people share with you. Circumstances change and an idea that seems silly today will become brilliant tomorrow.

To speak from your passion you focus in on your intents. There are two types of intent–internal and external. Your internal intent is why you want to start the business – what do you hope to get out of it. Your external intent explains how will your business benefits other people. People can’t argue with benefit and it gives them a reason to help you. Together, these intents provide the motivation you need to keep you going if times get tough.

If you want to really ‘kick-start’ your idea into a business – discover a way to start it today. That may sound crazy but its possible if you free your imagination and engage other people. For instance I had a client that wanted to start a new bar where people could gather, talk, play games – recreating a “family room”. They believed their business was years away because they needed to overcome huge obstacles such as raising money, securing a location and obtaining a liquor license.

I simply asked the question, “How can you start this business today?” They felt it was impossible. So I asked them to follow the three steps above – and they were amazed at the results. A friend of theirs knew the owners of a restaurant who had a bar area he wasn’t using to its full extent. What if they partnered with the owner (who already had the permits, licenses, glasses, furniture) and tested their concept out? Their bar could actually attract more people to his restaurant.

If you want to start a restaurant, cook at friends’ houses for a small fee or offer to ‘take over’ a local restaurant on a slow night. There is always a way to start and test our your idea today or at least tomorrow!

A lot of people quit their blogs and businesses after a few short months. What is your advice to stick with it and carry it out?

Starting a business is hard work. Most people don’t stick it out because the amount of effort required to build their businesses is not worth the “immediate payback.” Reward for your effort motivates you to keep going – and the best way to accomplish this is to get out of your own way. Many entrepreneurs develop a product or service and believe that they don’t have to alter it in order to win big. They work hard to “push down walls” to get it to the marketplace and then are flabbergasted when no one buys it.

You won’t make any money selling to yourself. In the beginning, you can build a solid business foundation by simply listening to the marketplace and delivering what it needs. Your customers are more than happy to tell you how to modify a product or service so it meet their needs and you make money. Ask them!

And once you establish a solid foundation and a great reputation – people will start listening to you. That’s when you will have the time and resources to try out your crazy ideas and develop that new product that everyone needs but never realized it.

Would you recommend an MBA for everyone? Will it benefit some over others and is it required to build a strong business?

I recommend that anyone going for an MBA write down what they want to achieve in school rather than just going to school because it’s the next best thing to do. Do you want to gain contacts to help you start your business? Do you want to test out an idea in the safety of a school setting? Define your real reason for getting an MBA and how will it help further your goals.

When I went for my MBA my goals where two fold – I wanted to work in London and I wanted to test out my ideas on a new method for starting businesses. I chose my school based on their business contacts in London and whether or not their curriculum would allow me to test out my own theories. My work in school and at Business in the Community in London was the foundation for my first book “Kick Start Your Dream Business.”

“To build a strong business you need two things – passion and the willpower to take action. You can learn what you need to do whether you are in school, at home or in a corporate environment.”

What steps have you taken to build your personal brand over time?

It all comes down to my ‘three rules to live by’ – speak from your passion, listen to others and write it down. These rules keep you aware of opportunities and inspire other to help you achieve even greater success.

My one ‘secret to building a personal brand’ is to engage naysayers. Most people ignore anyone who says something negative about their ideas. I tell myself that they have experience to share and I had better listen to it – so I engage them. The result is that I always learn new strategies and the people who others ignored become my biggest fans.

———-
Romanus Wolter is “The Kick Start Guy.” He reaches over 2.4 million entrepreneurs monthly. As the author of the best-selling Kick Start Your Dream Business and Entrepreneur Magazine’s Success Coach Columnist, he provides practical, proven action steps that close the gap between goals and success. His latest book is called Kick Start Your Success.

As a radio host and speaker, Romanus opens with a bang and leaves audiences energized and with enough creative ideas to last two lifetimes. His programs are tied together with passion and action! As more than one person has said, “Romanus does not view the cup as half-full or half-empty—it’s overflowing!”

2009 Personal Branding Predictions

December 12, 2008 at 12:18 pm | In Career Development, Futures, Me 2.0, Personal Branding, eBrand, social media | 10 Comments

I’m very surprised that no one has posted about their predictions for 2009 yet. I’ve seen a lot of “best of 2008 posts,” but no predictions! One can only assume that you will see a flurry of posts in the next couple of weeks, as thought leaders are trying to make predictions for next year. 2008 was a great year and we started to see some of my predictions from 2007 come true.

The economy forces people into personal branding

In 2009, personal branding will be a commonly used vocabulary word. It will also become the cure for the economic poison that is plaguing our world. As of right now, there are three times more job seekers than available jobs! By mid next year, there will be over 3 million layoffs and growing. The fewer jobs there are, the more competition there is for those jobs. This forces people to work much harder to claim these few openings.

When thousands of resumes are tossed in a recruiters face, they may all end up in the trash. How do you end up in a pile that they read? How do you differentiate yourself? The answer, as I’ve stated in this blog many times, is personal branding. Turning to proven tools and methodologies is a great way to get yourself on the right career track and turn your passion into money, even in a poor economy.

Personal brand management becomes easier

One of the biggest challenges with building a personal brand, in bits and bytes, is managing it over your lifetime. First impressions are near random on the web, so it’s hard to know how someone if first “meeting you.” This means your brand must be consistent and accurately portray you throughout the web. This month, we have seen some major players come out with applications that enable this consistency, such as MySpace Data Availability, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect.

Any website in the world can leverage these applications and users are able to connect their existence on these networks to the site easily. In essence, instead of joining smaller networks, you are able to use your information from the big boys to comment on blogs, etc. Facebook’s application is the most compelling because you share your activities with your Facebook network, which is extremely good for building traffic and word-of-mouth.

Personal branding in the classroom

Over the past few months, I’ve heard from a lot of college teachers and career advisers that they are starting to enhance their business course offerings with social media classes. Within their curriculum, there are segment on personal branding using social media tools. We’ve certainly come a long way academically, and it’s only the beginning. I see more schools adopting these methodologies because they are cheap (colleges don’t have big budgets). Aside from helping students with their careers, they are building community within their classrooms, which is especially good for students who express themselves through online means.

Growth and elimination of social networks

There is going to be 28% less social network ad spending next year, which means that many social networks will be closing up shop. Venture capitalists and angel investors will become extremely selective, leaving the majority of the dinero with the largest networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. On the upside, it’s apparent that each of these networks is experiencing growth still. Facebook now has 130 million users, 230,000 users sign-up each day at MySpace (I think they have over 200 million users now), and LinkedIn has over 30 million users.

The economy has drove a few million people to sign-up for LinkedIn because employers are searching there. These networks will continue to grow and evolve, while smaller ones will be eliminated due to funding, entrepreneurs who’ve given up and by not having a business model.

Brand name craze

I can see a lot more people hopping on the brandwagon by purchasing their domain name. I think the majority will just purchase theirname.com and forget about .net and .org. Other people that share your name may pickup the pieces. I think lawyers might be getting involved at some point because of identity theft and shared name confusion.

For instance, if you’re a company and your competitor takes your Twitter name, what do you do? Just like there are domain name collectors out there, that buy low and sell high, there will be ones with social networks. The difference is that it costs you nothing to purchase social network names, while their is a barrier with the $7 domain name price if you scale up.

Journalism: brands matter, paper doesn’t

PC Magazine was one of the first major magazines to cut their print edition, sticking with just an online version. Due to the economy and the fact that media has been dispersed by the growth of citizen journalism, more magazines will drop out of print next year. Advertisers will be cutting back substantially and journalists will continue getting laid off. I think theres a major opportunity for journalists to start their own blog now, before it’s too late. The big brands will keep afloat for now because of their reputation for good quality news reporting.

My big plans for next year

My efforts in the personal branding arena in the past were a preview of what’s to come next year, when I step on the gas. I have my first book coming out called Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, which is a complete game changer. It will help people of all ages, especially college students, discover their own brand and use it to create the job of their dreams, without even applying for it. I want to create a legion of “career commanders,” who wake up everyday confidently and with pride, as they journey into bettering the world.

Aside from the book, issue 7 of Personal Branding Magazine will be out on February 1st. A free sample version of issue 6 is available right now. I’ll also be launching a new blog in January, which will have the same brand name “Personal Branding Blog,” but it will be hosted on PersonalBrandingBlog.com instead of this wordpress.com address. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m doing it to open the blog up to more contributors and to make money to fund everything else I’m doing. Theres a lot more to come next year, so stay tuned!

How to Have a Joyful Brand Despite Economic Uncertainty

December 12, 2008 at 12:14 am | In Book Reviews, Career Development, Interview, People, Personal Branding, Success Strategies | 1 Comment

Today, I spoke with Lisa Earle McLeod, who is a writer, speaker, and author specializing in humor business coaching and spirituality attainment. A lot of people are feeling depressed, anxious and under pressure right now, so I figured I would interview Lisa, who will cheer you right up. We discuss how humor can help you in the workplace, how to write for magazines (this is huge for personal branding/getting your name out there), and what you can do to fight the economy with a smile on your face.

Lisa, when trying to get a message across, how does humor either help or hurt your cause? In what situations can it make you relate to someone and when do you look not as serious/lose your audience?

Humor helps open people’s minds.

“Scientific studies show that when you’re laughing, your brain is literally more open, the little receptors in your brain are all lit up, and it’s easier to receive new information.”

Humor allows you to address touchy topics in front of a group, like change and performance problems. When you use yourself as the funny example is breaks down people’s resistance, they relate and they see that they share some of the counterproductive behaviors you;re laughing about. Humor allows you to be with your audience, rather than preaching at them or lecturing. Good humor is always based in the truth; it’s when you comment on the disconnect between what we pretend to be and what we really are.

Where humor poses a challenge is in the marketing. When people people see your funny side, they often think that’s all you are, a comedian. So it’s a challenge to marry subject matter expertise with humor on the front end, it’s not hard to do in a 45 minute keynote, but it’s harder to capture on your home page or one sheet. In my case, our marketing materials refer to me as an Inspirational Humorist. Humor is the delivery vehicle, however, the actual subject matter is sales, leadership, productivity, and all the self-created angst that holds people and organizations back (a subject I consistently find both fascinating and hilarious)

The other challenge with humor, to be quite frank, is that some people are just so uptight they refuse to laugh. Of course, these are usually the very people who cause the most problems in organizations, because they are hell-bent in making everyone else as miserable as they are.

They occupy what I call “The Cubicle of Darkness.” I’ve gotten to the point where I can spot them pretty early. I try to give them special attention, to bring them along, because I find that behind all their negativity they often have a good grasp of the facts. My job is to help them realize that understanding the facts doesn’t mean that you have to spend your days painting the doom and gloom picture for everyone else.

A lot of my readers are interested in how to get opportunities, such as writing articles for magazines. How does one go about discovering and pitching to get something like that?

The first thing you have to do is pretty simple, write the damn articles. You can’t pitch unless you have some example of your work. Sure, Suze Orman or John Grisham could call up some magazine editor and say I’d like write and article for you, here’s my idea, and bingo, bango, they’ve got a deal. But unless you’re a well-known expert or writer, you need some samples.

My best advice is write five articles, and get them posted everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Put them on every web site you can find, sites are always looking for content, and yes, you do have to give it away in the beginning.

Then once you have yourself on the web, try pitching some magazine editors. But you have to do your homework first, READ THE MAGAZINE! I have several editor friends and they are always amazed at how many people pitch them without even understanding the voice of the magazine. There’s a big difference between newspapers, which are a collection of voices, and magazines, which usually have one an overarching voice or theme.

Any tips for people who are lost in life and are desperately looking to find themselves?

Welcome to the club. In today’s environment people are questioning everything. People who once thought they were secure and had a life plan are now finding themselves broke. Relationships that seemed stable are crumbling in the face of stress.

Personally, I think the problem is much bigger than a financial crisis. I think we’re in a spiritual crisis that has caused a financial crisis, meaning that we are having a crisis of spirit.

The secret of happiness is really simple, it’s two things : You need to be connected to the people around you, and to know that you’re part of something bigger than yourself.

That’s the only one way out of the angst, you’ve got to get present in the moment you’re in and you have find a higher purpose in your life, it doesn’t have to be huge, it can be a simple as being a good parent, but part of our soul knows that it can never be all about you.

When we feel lost it’s because we are experiencing between our souls and our actions.

Our souls are yearning for a larger purpose, but we continue to focus on things that don’t matter, or we fail to see the meaning of the daily things that do matter, and so the heartache in our souls continues to gnaw away at us, and it spills out to everyone else around us.

Is there such thing as a perfect life?

If you’re waiting for the day when you have no stress and problems, then no. We’re all waiting for that magic moment when we have no stress, no problems and no responsibilities, but the only time you’re going to have that is when you’re drooling in a nursing home, and your kids are feeding your pureed prunes.

You weren’t sent to earth to have the perfect house, or the prefect car, or the perfect body.

You were sent to earth to learn to love and to be loved, it’s quite simple, and your life circumstances are set up to help you do just that. Every challenge that you face is an opportunity to grow, as trite as this sounds, your whole purpose on this plan is to master the art of love. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the lesson.

Life can be perfect, in the sense that you can enjoy and be grateful for every moment. But only if you accept life or what it is, a series of ups and downs, some of which will be pleasurable, some of which will be painful. But your life will never look like a TV commercial, or a Hallmark card and the more you judge it by those externally set standards. the unhappier you will be.

What can someone do to have a cheerful holiday season, despite massive layoffs and economic uncertainties?

That’s a tough one, if you’re struggling for food and shelter, it’s probably hard to feel grateful. However, having said that, gratitude and being present in the moment is the only way to have a happy holiday. Yes, the economy is tanking, you may even be out of a job and facing foreclosure or bankruptcy, and yes, your circumstances may get worse before they get better. (Trust me, my husband and I own our own business, a sign business that is closely tied to the economy, so our future is just as uncertain as everyone else’s.) But you have this day; this is the only day of the year when your kids will be the age they are right now, this is the only time in your marriage when you and your spouse will have been married this long, and this is the only time when your parents and friends will ever be this young again.

So now matter how many problems you’re plagued with right now, there’s probably part of your life that is still very special, so that’s the part you need to hold onto, because you will never get this time back. So yes, look for work, try to get your business back on track, and do whatever you can during your waking hours to improve your situation, but don’t let your problems define you.

Because you’re not going to get a do-over on this stage of your life, EVER, and it would be a huge mistake to allow money worries to ruin it for you.

Happy Holidays 2008. May whatever version of faith fulfills you and whatever version of family sustains you be with this holiday season, and may you find grace, peace and joy in the year to come.

——–
Lisa Earle McLeod is a syndicated columnist, speaker, the author of Finding Grace When You Can’t Even Find Clean Underwear and business coach who specializes in helping individuals and organizations turn angst and dysfunction into happiness and success (no group hugs or Prozac required).

A frequent keynote speaker Lisa has rocked the house everywhere from Apple Computer to the United Way. Lisa has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. She is frequent media guest appearing on Good Morning America, Oprah & Friends and hundreds of other radio and TV shows.

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