Do you want to distinguish yourself personally and professionally but are unsure how to go about making it happen? Let Mike Williams show you how to use the powerful techniques he has developed during a remarkable marketing and management consulting career spanning over 25 years. Discover how many of the same principles that work for renowned athletes, actors, musicians, fashion designers and celebrity chefs can make a difference for others pursuing those careers, as well as budding carpenters, truck drivers, photographers, cosmetologists, and virtually any other professional. Mike's process takes you through personal and professional preparation, and into a process of moving forward that includes organizational and promotional techniques. To assist you as you map out the route that suits you best, he provides strategically placed Answers and Actions Needed sections. And he clues you into dozens of great resources--books, magazines and Web sites--to keep you headed in the right direction for years to come.
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TO reach some major goal or milestone of achievement and sustain it, you will need a solid sense of who you are: your own history, your ideas and aspirations, your strengths and weaknesses, the values and standards you hold, and other things which make you you. Who you have been is a key to who you might become or what you might need to overcome, to establish your special place on the planet.
1. Examine who you are, what you want in your life, and why.
Actively explore and get to know yourself in the most practical ways, below the surface and beyond the obvious.
Step back and take a long, hard look at yourself. If you take the time, it can be revealing. Consider your strengths, weaknesses, loves and hates, ideas and experiences--the collection of things that define you. This self-examination process is very important for determining what is likely to be satisfying for you, personally and professionally beyond your immediate time and place. Before even considering where or how you want things to go in your future, take some time and effort to get a fresh sense of who you are uniquely and fundamentally, and who you have been in your past. Get help from those you trust to get a solid assessment.
Where have you been? Part of what distinguishes you from others is your personal history. When you examine the events, the people, the lessons, the joys, the hardships, the aspirations, the breakthroughs you have experienced, you see something that is uniquely yours, uniquely you. Just knowing what matters and how it serves to structure your real priorities helps you know how you might organize and live your life more meaningfully.
In addition to the role your personal history plays in helping to distinguish or define you, your aspirations say a lot about who you are. In fact, your aspirations help to shape your decisions, which help to account for your history to date. You are shaped by what has happened to you, by what you allowed to happen, and by decisions and priorities you chose that made things happen. You owe it to yourself to pay attention to all of these things. Those who jump into careers without a solid sense of who they are, and what fits for them, can end up on a path that makes no sense for them, in a career that does not feed them internally.
When you think about what you want, consider the things you would value as keys to your legacy or your purpose, things that would make all your efforts worthwhile. And depending upon where you are in your life, the question raised, and how seriously it is likely to be taken, is at issue. Teenagers pursuing careers in the performing arts, sports, broadcasting, modeling or architecture might have little interest in asking the why question. They are more likely to care more about how. As one who pursued engineering based on identified skills and the reported salary scale in the late â50s and early â60s, I made a decision to ignore the profiles that suggested that writing and other creative areas would probably be more fitting and fulfilling. It did not take long for my career to crash, beginning a long journey to meaningful work.
Before you start to put together the resources to move your career or business dramatically forward, be clear about where the appeal lies, what part of your stuff is being addressed or expressed. The why sets the stage for how. Entrepreneurs who know why they want to be in business, and not just to make money and be independent, save themselves loads of stress by digging a little deeper and exploring the questions surrounding the kind of business that suits their expertise, their goals, their values, their needs, and their passions. When you make the investment in time, energy and money, you need to have a sense of the payoff in non-monetary, as well as monetary terms. So, the things you get to know up-front can shape the approach you take in pursuing your path, to best express your unique stuff.
Money can be a strong motivator in the earlier stages, but going to higher and higher levels usually requires more than a financial incentive, unless the goal itself is money. Money is usually only part of the goal, a measure of success or a means to other successes. And if money is the only substantive goal, it complicates ways for others to stay involved and to ride out the challenges that you, and everyone else, are likely to face.
The current American preoccupation with celebrity ups and downs in popular media, when put into a less gawky and more practical framework, provides a useful way to look at ups and downs in our own lives and careers. If there is something useful in knowing about the fall of pop music idols or Hollywood stars, it is most likely the fact that the details of their lives might provide some insights into our own, seemingly more ordinary lives.
As I see it, there are no ordinary lives, or perhaps there are no extraordinary ones. Each one is unique. Each one matters to those involved. A failed marriage, a return to drug rehab, or a battle with eating disorders is a private and ugly detail of someoneâs life, whether experienced by actors, singers, plumbers, fashion designers or truck drivers. If the details of celebritiesâ lives can be understood in ways that give insights into the lives of non-celebrities going through similar stresses, then the collective gawking might have some value beyond our collective curiosity.
The recent explosion of cable and satellite television channels and programs has provided some surprising new avenues for looking at our lives and career aspirations. A cable TV show outlining over a period of several episodes the challenges of opening a new, upscale restaurant and another show following an entrepreneurâs expanding hair salon business detail the hurdles each entrepreneur faces in situations involving the perils of explosive business growth. Both shows give clear indications of how personal issues play out, when critical situations and important decisions are being made. Tempers flare. Things go wrong. Poor decisions are made. Along with taking much of the mystery out of the entrepreneurial process, the shows illustrate much of the unglamorous detail, along with some of the excitement, that accompanies a thirst for owning a business and making it successful.
I am still waiting for the movie or television series that takes a look at barber college. It could be at least as interesting as the movie, âBarbershop.â I would imagine the same could be said for beauty school. I know the former situation firsthand as a customer during college days, and there was plenty of colorful chatter and drama among the students and some sparks between students and dissatisfied customers, who might not like the traineeâs practice cut. The show I envision might not get as much action as âThe Apprentice,â but it could be as raw and dynamic as cable TVâs âFilm Schoolâ or âFlight Attendant Schoolâ and more authentic than those shows put together via the manipulated producing that has driven âReal World,â and other reality shows. And considering the number of people who plan to make a living taking care of other peoplesâ hair, there might just be an audience for it. It would have potential for great drama. We would see people struggling with themselves and each other as they project future livelihoods. Who they are would be examined in a way that might do someone some good. However, in the hands of a zealous producing crew it would probably end up with fistfights, bleeped-out words and would-be barbers or stylists being separated by the latest Jerry Springer wannabe. Maybe the challenge of getting real value from reality TV will require some active thinking, looking below the surface and discovering things that were incidental to a producers plot but with useful insights, intended or not.
You might not get it from watching television, but you canât get very far toward the next level in your business or your career, and sustain it, without a good assessment of yourself, who you are in the midst of things. Often dismissed or devalued in the interest of getting things rolling, a solid self-inquiry can lead to places you might not otherwise explore, providing answers to questions you might not ordinarily ask. And you would be better off by being better informed.
In garages and driveways all across the country are weekend mechanics who tinker with their cars and those of their friends. For most of them fixing engines is a way to make or save some money and pass the time doing something they enjoy. For most of them it is a hobby, even a hobby that pays a little. For some it is the beginning stage of a larger enterprise they have always dreamed of having. They have the capacity and the desire to find out whatâs wrong and fix it, like the âcar guysâ on National Public Radio. Many businesses are examples of part-time interests that became full-time ventures, because they became lucrative enough to provide such an option.
Most weekend mechanics are not on their way to full-time careers in auto repair. It is either not deemed that important or that feasible. However, if it is what you want, what keeps you up at night, you canât afford to take it lightly. Auto repair--like woodcarving, scrap booking or interior designâeither hits you or it doesnât. If dabbling or tinkering is good enough for you, then clearly your part-time interest has no full-time draw. It is probably not something you are yearning to dig into and take to a higher level. Knowing what is not important can be just as important as knowing what is.
On the other hand, a cause that occupies a special place in your life could be more important than any traditional career pursuit. Putting your efforts into a political campaign or movement, plunging into a charitable or human rights organization could become the primary way in which you focus your thinking and your energies. Your cause could become your career. If so, it is important to examine yourself and the role it might play in your own life and in the larger world. If it really has meaning, are you willing to give yourself credit for trying, or do you really want to make something powerful happen? Consider the idea that if you give it your best, and you continually make your best better, you might be pursuing a course that will change the world, if only in a small way. Impact might trump income from your perspective.
2. Know your baggage, what you need to overcome.
You need to know yourself in many ways if you want your stuff to shine. So if you ask yourself the question, âAm I ready for major success?â it is important to be honest and accurate. If the question creates discomfort, it probably means youâll face obstacles in moving ahead. If the answer is given without any real thought, it probably means that the whole issue of getting to know yourself seems unnecessary. Big mistake. Many people go through life never asking themselves such questions. Others offer glib, top-of-the-head replies when asked, providing a false reading, a false positive on readiness for the bumps in the road ahead. The reality is that we all have baggage of one sort or another, some set of negative experienc...
