Brian Tracy is a well-known life and career success expert.  I’m proud to say that I share the cover with him and Stephen Covey of a book called Speaking of Success: World class Experts Share Their Secrets.  The other day I received an email on competence from Brian.  In part, it said…

“You can increase your efficiency and your effectiveness by becoming better and better at your key tasks. One of the most powerful of all time management techniques is for you to get better at the most important things you do. Your core competencies, your key skill areas, the places where you are absolutely excellent at what you do, are the key determinants of your productivity, your standard of living, and the level of achievement you reach in your field.”

This reminded me of the career advice in Tweets 81 and 82 in my career success book Success Tweets.  “Become a lifelong learner.  The half-life of knowledge is rapidly diminishing.  Staying in the same place is the same as going backwards.” (81)  “Learn faster than the world changes.  In a world that never stops changing, you can never stop learning and growing.” (82)

If you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you need to become a lifelong learner.  Louis L’Amour, the great American writer of stories about the old west really captured the essence of lifelong learning when he said…

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.  That will be the beginning.”

I know a lot about life and career success.  I’ve written several books on it.  I give lots of talks about it.  I’ve coached hundreds of people – helping them build the life and career success they want and deserve.  I write this blog.  At one point, I thought I knew it all.

And you know what?  Every time I write about life and career success, every time I speak about it, every time I coach someone offering my career advice, I gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to create life and career success.

I begin anew every day, doing whatever I can to learn about life and career success so I can pass on this knowledge and wisdom to others.  I choose to keep learning.  That’s the main reason I subscribe to Brian Tracy’s blog.  So should you.  Pay attention here – this is solid career advice.  I’ve learned that if you don’t keep learning, you don’t stand still – you fall behind in the game of life.  I’ve also learned that what I learned after I knew it all was some of the best and most important of my career success learnings.

Lifelong learning is an important key to your career success.  In today’s fast-paced world, if you don’t keep learning, you’re not standing still, you’re falling behind.  One of my favorite quotes from Gandhi nails it when it comes to lifelong learning…

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you were to live forever.”

He’s right.  None of us should ever quit learning.  I have a thirst for knowledge and do my best to quench it through learning.  I try to learn something new every day.  Sometimes my learning is trivial, sometimes it is profound.  Regardless, I keep on learning.

On days when I feel as if I haven’t learned anything, I turn to a little book that I have called, Live and Learn and Pass It On.  The subtitle is, “People ages 5 to 95 share what they’ve discovered about life, love, and other good stuff.”  I usually find something in there that satisfies my thirst for learning

Here are a few of the learnings in the book that have helped me in my career success journey…

I’ve learned that if you wait until all conditions are perfect before you act, you’ll never act.

I’ve learned that if you want to get promoted, you must do things that get you noticed.

I’ve learned that 90% of what happens in my life is positive and only about 10% is negative.  If I want to be happy I just need to focus on the 90%.

All of the people I know who are committed to creating their life and career success through lifelong learning have several traits in common.  They all…

…Are humble.  They admit what they don’t know.  This is the first step in learning what they need to know.

…Question the status quo.  They realize that because something is right today, it may not be right tomorrow.  They know that doing things “the way we’ve always done them” is not good reasoning.

…Are intellectually curious.  They truly want to learn and find learning fun, interesting and stimulating.  They see life as a journey in which they are constantly learning.

…Are willing to try new stuff.  They experiment and see what works.  When things work, they use them.

…Are not afraid to fail.  They see failure as an opportunity to learn.  Just as they incorporate what works into their repertoire, they use failures as stepping stones to other experiments.

…Are tolerant of ambiguity.  Learning creates ambiguity.  These people are willing to let go of past ways of doing things in order to come up with new ways of doing things in the future.  The gap between the past and future can make for an uncomfortable present.

…Focus on staying ahead of the pack.  They are early adopters – of new technology and new ways of thinking.  They realize that knowledge has a short half-life today.  They keep learning to stay ahead.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Successful people are competent They remain competent by becoming lifelong learners.  They continually expand their knowledge in order to get out in front of the pack and stay there.  If you want to improve your competence, follow the career advice in Tweets 81 and 82 in Success Tweets.  “Become a lifelong learner.  The half-life of knowledge is rapidly diminishing.  Staying in the same place is the same as going backwards.”(81)   “Learn faster than the world changes.  In a world that never stops changing, you can never stop learning and growing.” (82)  Begin your lifelong learning journey by focusing on your strengths and working to improve them every day.  Building on your strengths is easier than overcoming your weaknesses.  When you build on your strengths you can make incremental improvements.  However, if you have a glaring gap in your skills, address it now.  Don’t wait to take necessary quantum leaps.  What do you need to learn to create the life and career success you want and deserve?  How do you plan on learning it?  Remember what Ben Franklin had to say, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

That’s the career advice I took from Brian Tracy’s thoughts on competence.  What do you think?  Please share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career success book Success Tweets Explained.  It’s a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

Coming to you from London Englad today, where it’s cool and cloudy.

In my search for interesting, relevant material for this career advice blog, I subscribe to a lot of blogs, ezines and article sites.  I don’t often read all of the information that comes my way.  This is not the case with Bob Bly.  Bob is, in my opinion, the world’s greatest copywriter.  His direct response ezine always has great information on writing and marketing. 

The other day I received an email from Bob.  I thought that the ideas in it were so powerful that I asked him if I could share them on this career advice blog.  He graciously agreed.  Check out what Bob has to say about relationship building, a key component of life and career success…

Dear Direct Response Letter Subscriber,

When I tell you this story, you may think it makes me look like a jerk. But it conveys an important lesson for every entrepreneur and marketing professional.

And the lesson is this: to communicate effectively, it’s incumbent upon

YOU to really understand the other person – what they think, what they want, what’s important to them – and NOT the other way around.

Okay. So here’s what happened….

A person I don’t know called me at work out of the blue the other day – while I was frantically writing to meet a deadline.

“I am reading your book,” he said, naming one of my books. “There is a typo on page 383,” he said triumphantly, as if dropping the biggest bombshell since Hiroshima.

“Thanks, but you don’t need to tell me about it,” I said politely.

He stammered, absolutely stunned.

I knew it was not the response he was looking for.

From past calls like this, he expected me to write down the information he was about to give me, and possibly engage me in dialogue … which a lot of book readers want to do with authors.

Instead, I simply thanked him for calling, and ended the call.

I didn’t lecture him on the realities of life, but if I had, here’s what I would have said:

“Sir, I don’t know you, and I am not sure why you feel compelled to take time out of your day, call me up, and report that there is a typo in one of my books – or what kind of satisfaction it gives you.

“But I’ve written almost 80 books, totaling more than 16,000 pages. I am sure there are a number of typos within those 16,000 pages.

“The book you are referring to I wrote more than 20 years ago.  It’s already printed, and is not going to be reprinted again. So there’s nothing I can do about the typo you’ve found.

“Also, I have a dozen projects on my desk this week, all with deadlines. To finish this work and run my business, I have about a hundred tasks on my priority list.

“So taking a look at my printed books — and fixing typos in them — wouldn’t even make the list. In fact, it’s not even on my radar as far as ‘important things to do’ is concerned. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the reality of life.”

As I said at the beginning of this article: you may find my response to my anonymous proofreader offensive. After all, wasn’t he just trying to do me a kindness?

In my experience, that’s possible.

But from two and a half decades of getting such calls as an author, I have found that kindness is often not the primary motivation behind such calls.

Often the caller revels in showing the published writer that he made a mistake.  Or he hopes that the author will become a friend or (unpaid) advisor – and that pointing out the typo will open up a relationship in some way.

But the point is this: if you want to communicate with someone effectively … and establish a relationship, whether personal or business … you have to, as the cliché points out, “put yourself in the customer’s shoes” … whether you’re selling a product, service, or idea.

As a marketer, it’s imperative that you understand the CUSTOMER … what he thinks, wants, needs, fears, and desires … what’s important to him – NOT what’s important to you.

In the example of my anonymous proofreader, for example, a better way to establish the contact with me might have been as follows:

“Bob, this is Joe. I’m reading your book and I have one item in it I’d like to briefly discuss with you. It will take less than a minute. Do you have time now?”

This approach, by the way, works beautifully in selling – either when cold calling or following up on inquiries. People are busy today, and they cannot abide it when others don’t respect their time or understand just how pressured they are.

I ALWAYS ask when calling someone I don’t know: “Is this a bad time for you?” If they say yes, I ask when would be a better time to talk.

He could have continued: “I found a typo in the book. Do you want to know about it?”

This is also a good strategy in selling: before launching into your “pitch,” ask the prospect for permission to proceed.

If you want to communicate or establish a relationship with other people, it’s YOUR job to understand them and where they’re coming from … and asking questions is one way to do this.

Bob really nailed it with this piece of career advice.  He’s providing not only some good advice for salespeople and marketers but for anyone in search of life and career success. 

Tweet 125 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Get to know yourself.  Use your self knowledge to better understand others and build mutually beneficial relationships with them.” That’s what Bob is talking about when he says “it’s YOUR job to understand them and where they’re coming from.” 

Here’s a real life story…one that happened to me.  One of my clients is a big detail guy.  I’m a big picture guy.  He likes things to be very organized and predictable.  I am more comfortable going with the flow. 

One day, I arrived at his office in the late afternoon.  I was going to facilitate a team building session for his leadership team the next day.  He asked me what I planned on doing in our meeting.  I explained it to him verbally. 

He said, “Do you have an agenda?”  I responded that I just told him what I was planning on doing.  He said, “I heard you, but I’d like to see the agenda.”  I told him I had no written agenda.  Being a detail guy, he wasn’t too happy about this.  So before we left his office to go to dinner, we spent 15 minutes putting what I told him I planned to do in the meeting on a PowerPoint slide.
  
There is an important career success lesson here.  My client has high needs for structure, and an agenda is a way to structure a meeting.  I am very comfortable having a rough idea of what I’m hoping to do and accomplish in a meeting and then going with the energy in the room as the meeting unfolds.  This works for me – but not my client. 

The career advice here is simple.  He’s the client, I have to adapt my preferred style of facilitating a meeting to his needs, or I am unlikely to be successful in building a long term, mutually beneficial relationship with him.  It was up to me to recognize our differences and to adapt my behavior to something that will make him comfortable – not the other way around.

The common sense career success coach point here is straightforward.  Successful people understand themselves, and use this knowledge to better understand others.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 125 in Success Tweets.  “Get to know yourself.  Use your self knowledge to better understand others and build mutually beneficial relationships with them.”  Use your understanding of yourself to compare and contrast your needs and wants with the people around you.  Adapt your behavior toother people.  This makes it easier to build strong relationships.  The next time you run into someone who looks at the world differently from you, see what you can do to adapt your communication style and behavior to his or her style.  If you do this, I guarantee you’ll be on your way to building a better, stronger relationship with that person — and your life and career success.

That’s my career advice  – and Bob Bly’s for that matter – on building strong relationships by understanding  yourself and other people and how you are similar or different from them.  What are your thoughts on this?  Please share them with us by leaving a comment on this post.  And as always, thanks for taking the time to read my musings on life and career success.  I really value you and your input.

Bud

Coming to you from London Englad today, where it’s cool and cloudy.

In my search for interesting, relevant material for this career advice blog, I subscribe to a lot of blogs, ezines and article sites.  I don’t often read all of the information that comes my way.  This is not the case with Bob Bly.  Bob is, in my opinion, the world’s greatest copywriter.  His direct response ezine always has great information on writing and marketing. 

The other day I received an email from Bob.  I thought that the ideas in it were so powerful that I asked him if I could share them on this career advice blog.  He graciously agreed.  Check out what Bob has to say about relationship building, a key component of life and career success…

Dear Direct Response Letter Subscriber,

When I tell you this story, you may think it makes me look like a jerk. But it conveys an important lesson for every entrepreneur and marketing professional.

And the lesson is this: to communicate effectively, it’s incumbent upon

YOU to really understand the other person – what they think, what they want, what’s important to them – and NOT the other way around.

Okay. So here’s what happened….

A person I don’t know called me at work out of the blue the other day – while I was frantically writing to meet a deadline.

“I am reading your book,” he said, naming one of my books. “There is a typo on page 383,” he said triumphantly, as if dropping the biggest bombshell since Hiroshima.

“Thanks, but you don’t need to tell me about it,” I said politely.

He stammered, absolutely stunned.

I knew it was not the response he was looking for.

From past calls like this, he expected me to write down the information he was about to give me, and possibly engage me in dialogue … which a lot of book readers want to do with authors.

Instead, I simply thanked him for calling, and ended the call.

I didn’t lecture him on the realities of life, but if I had, here’s what I would have said:

“Sir, I don’t know you, and I am not sure why you feel compelled to take time out of your day, call me up, and report that there is a typo in one of my books – or what kind of satisfaction it gives you.

“But I’ve written almost 80 books, totaling more than 16,000 pages. I am sure there are a number of typos within those 16,000 pages.

“The book you are referring to I wrote more than 20 years ago.  It’s already printed, and is not going to be reprinted again. So there’s nothing I can do about the typo you’ve found.

“Also, I have a dozen projects on my desk this week, all with deadlines. To finish this work and run my business, I have about a hundred tasks on my priority list.

“So taking a look at my printed books — and fixing typos in them — wouldn’t even make the list. In fact, it’s not even on my radar as far as ‘important things to do’ is concerned. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the reality of life.”

As I said at the beginning of this article: you may find my response to my anonymous proofreader offensive. After all, wasn’t he just trying to do me a kindness?

In my experience, that’s possible.

But from two and a half decades of getting such calls as an author, I have found that kindness is often not the primary motivation behind such calls.

Often the caller revels in showing the published writer that he made a mistake.  Or he hopes that the author will become a friend or (unpaid) advisor – and that pointing out the typo will open up a relationship in some way.

But the point is this: if you want to communicate with someone effectively … and establish a relationship, whether personal or business … you have to, as the cliché points out, “put yourself in the customer’s shoes” … whether you’re selling a product, service, or idea.

As a marketer, it’s imperative that you understand the CUSTOMER … what he thinks, wants, needs, fears, and desires … what’s important to him – NOT what’s important to you.

In the example of my anonymous proofreader, for example, a better way to establish the contact with me might have been as follows:

“Bob, this is Joe. I’m reading your book and I have one item in it I’d like to briefly discuss with you. It will take less than a minute. Do you have time now?”

This approach, by the way, works beautifully in selling – either when cold calling or following up on inquiries. People are busy today, and they cannot abide it when others don’t respect their time or understand just how pressured they are.

I ALWAYS ask when calling someone I don’t know: “Is this a bad time for you?” If they say yes, I ask when would be a better time to talk.

He could have continued: “I found a typo in the book. Do you want to know about it?”

This is also a good strategy in selling: before launching into your “pitch,” ask the prospect for permission to proceed.

If you want to communicate or establish a relationship with other people, it’s YOUR job to understand them and where they’re coming from … and asking questions is one way to do this.

Bob really nailed it with this piece of career advice.  He’s providing not only some good advice for salespeople and marketers but for anyone in search of life and career success. 

Tweet 125 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Get to know yourself.  Use your self knowledge to better understand others and build mutually beneficial relationships with them.” That’s what Bob is talking about when he says “it’s YOUR job to understand them and where they’re coming from.” 

Here’s a real life story…one that happened to me.  One of my clients is a big detail guy.  I’m a big picture guy.  He likes things to be very organized and predictable.  I am more comfortable going with the flow. 

One day, I arrived at his office in the late afternoon.  I was going to facilitate a team building session for his leadership team the next day.  He asked me what I planned on doing in our meeting.  I explained it to him verbally. 

He said, “Do you have an agenda?”  I responded that I just told him what I was planning on doing.  He said, “I heard you, but I’d like to see the agenda.”  I told him I had no written agenda.  Being a detail guy, he wasn’t too happy about this.  So before we left his office to go to dinner, we spent 15 minutes putting what I told him I planned to do in the meeting on a PowerPoint slide.
  
There is an important career success lesson here.  My client has high needs for structure, and an agenda is a way to structure a meeting.  I am very comfortable having a rough idea of what I’m hoping to do and accomplish in a meeting and then going with the energy in the room as the meeting unfolds.  This works for me – but not my client. 

The career advice here is simple.  He’s the client, I have to adapt my preferred style of facilitating a meeting to his needs, or I am unlikely to be successful in building a long term, mutually beneficial relationship with him.  It was up to me to recognize our differences and to adapt my behavior to something that will make him comfortable – not the other way around.

The common sense career success coach point here is straightforward.  Successful people understand themselves, and use this knowledge to better understand others.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 125 in Success Tweets.  “Get to know yourself.  Use your self knowledge to better understand others and build mutually beneficial relationships with them.”  Use your understanding of yourself to compare and contrast your needs and wants with the people around you.  Adapt your behavior toother people.  This makes it easier to build strong relationships.  The next time you run into someone who looks at the world differently from you, see what you can do to adapt your communication style and behavior to his or her style.  If you do this, I guarantee you’ll be on your way to building a better, stronger relationship with that person — and your life and career success.

That’s my career advice  – and Bob Bly’s for that matter – on building strong relationships by understanding  yourself and other people and how you are similar or different from them.  What are your thoughts on this?  Please share them with us by leaving a comment on this post.  And as always, thanks for taking the time to read my musings on life and career success.  I really value you and your input.

Bud

I’m still in Ireland.  Heading to England tonight, but the common sense in this career advice blog keeps coing.

Last week I received an email from a young woman who is a student at the University of Texas.  She wanted to do provide some career advice in a guest post for this blog. Here is what she said…

Dear Bud,

I hope this email finds you well. I only recently started reading your career advice blog, Denver Career Success Coach, Bud Bilanich, The Common Sense Guy!

I am a Junior English Major at the University of Texas, and I also freelance part-time as a writer for Online Universities.com. I mostly write about higher education, but I am looking to expand my writing portfolio and blog audience, so I was wondering if you would be interested in publishing a guest post on your career success blog.

Sincerely,
Katheryn Rivas

I responded, telling Katheryn that I would be happy to have her do a guest post – and that since she is an English major, a post filled with common sense ideas on how to communicate effectively in writing would be great. 

The next day, I found this article in my in box.

How to Communicate Effectively in Writing

When it comes to our writing, teachers instruct us to be wordy from a young age. As soon as students learn to read fluently, they are exposed to textbooks of varying subject matter. These textbooks are full of lengthy sentences and analogies that stray from the point. For example, instead of saying “Bob likes hamburgers,” a textbook author would write: Hamburgers, a delicacy not foreign to most Americans, are enjoyed regularly by Bob.

Come again? Does the textbook writer sound smarter because his/her sentence is longer?  I hope you don’t think so. In fact, you may have to read the sentence twice to decipher the simple fact: Bob likes hamburgers.

When it comes to effectively and persuasively communicating your ideas through writing, more does not always mean merrier. As the sentence above shows, we sometimes lose the main objective in lengthy, obscure sentences. Sticking to the main point is CRUCIAL to convince the reader that you are a credible source. Here are some general rules to follow in your writing.

Avoid Using Passive Voice

You should always make sure your subject is the performing the action! It should not receive the action. In other words, don’t let the hamburgers control Bob. Bob CONTROLS the hamburger. Here are two examples of active versus passive voice sentence constructions.

Example One:

Passive: The hamburgers are eaten by Bob every day.
Active: Bob eats hamburgers every day.

Example Two:

Passive: After work, the gym is visited by Bob.
Active: Bob visits the gym after work.

The Shorter the Better

Try to keep your sentences short and to the point. Writing in a concise manner is actually harder than writing long imprecise sentences. This is because you have to focus on being clear and stylistically adequate. By keeping this is mind, you will be less likely to lose your reader.

Outline Before You Write

If the tips above sound difficult, it is a good idea to make an outline before you start writing. In your outline jot down the main ideas you would like to cover in your essay or writing piece. When you begin to write, make sure you are getting these main ideas across. At any given time, if you are off track, delete the sentences that don’t address your point. Also, perhaps you can write reminders on your outline. For example, write in red, “DO NOT USE PASSIVE VOICE.” You can write other notes to yourself as well. After some practice, you probably won’t have to make an outline anymore. You’ll do these things naturally!

I like the common sense writing and career advice Katheryn provides here.  Tweet 111 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Become a clear, concise writer.  Make your writing easy to read and understand.  Use simple, straightforward language.  Tweet 113 says, “Write clearly and simply: short words and sentences, active voice.  Be precise in your choice of words.”  Katheryn reinforces the career advice  in both of these tweets in her guest post. 

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Follow the career advice in Tweets 111 and 113 in Success Tweets.  “Become a clear, concise writer.  Make your writing easy to read and understand.  Use simple, straightforward language…Write clearly and simply: short words and sentences, first person, active voice.  Be precise in your choice of words.”  Writing is not difficult if you write in a manner that communicates well.  In general, this means being clear, concise and easily readable.  Use short sentences and the smallest word that communicates exactly what you want to say.  Write with your reader in mind.  Read your writing aloud before sending it.  This will help you get a feel for what your reader will experience.  Reading what you write is the key to following this career advice.  When you read your writing, look for words that you can eliminate and for ways to use the active, rather than passive voice.  If you put these common sense pieces of career advice to work, your writing will improve greatly.

That’s my career advice on good business writing.  Thanks to Katheryn Rivas for her thoughts.  What are your thoughts on this?  Please take a minute to share them with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success.  I really appreciate you.

Bud

This guest post was contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who writes about online universities.  She can be reached via email at: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

Here’s a news flash for readers of this career advice blog… 

March 8 is National Be Nasty Day.  Hard to believe, but true.  In my book, being nasty is never good, nor the way to life and career success.  The other day, I got a press release email promoting a book called The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition.  Here is an excerpt from the email…

This year, on National Be Nasty Day, celebrate by refreshing yourself on some of the greatest insults ever uttered in film, television, politics, and literature!  The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition provides a comprehensive list of the perfect insults for every situation, spoken by everyone from Oscar Wilde to David Letterman!
 
Snark expert and bestselling author Larry Dorfman, who is also the author of the original Snark Handbook, comes up with witty phrases on a daily – even hourly – basis! Here are some of his latest snarks:

“Christine Aguilera has had a tough few weeks after her Super Bowl snafu. She had been offered an opportunity for a “do over” by the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Mets farm team, but refused. Word is that she’s also recently been rejected for the lead singer slot in two Christine Aguilera cover bands.”

“A former mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who served four terms and was one of the city’s most popular leaders, won’t get a new government center named for him because of his name. Harry Baals (pronounced like you think it is) is the current favorite in online voting but two members of the city council, Anita Head and Holden McGroin, have refused to allow it.

“NYC’s mayor Mike Bloomberg is in trouble again for making an insensitive stereotypical Irish joke at a dinner for the American Irish Historical Society. Something about drinking. He’s allowed…after all, a man of his stature automatically becomes and honorary leprechaun.”

The press release writer seems to have an exclamation point addiction! 

But I digress.  I shared this press release not because I think that being nasty is a good thing to do, but to reinforce a point I make in my latest career advice book, Success Tweets.  Tweet 50 says, “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry; but only if you let them.”

Insults and snarking are the mark of cynical people.  Cynics like Larry Dorfman are negative people.  They are also dangerous, because they are seductive.  Even I admit that the three snarks above are funny, albeit in a cruel way. 

That’s the problem with cynics.  They always have something witty to say about others – usually others’ shortcomings.  At first, they seem to be funny and amusing.  But spend time with cynics, and you’ll find that they have little joy in life except in pointing out and reveling in others’ problems and failures.

Ambrose Bierce may well be the world’s biggest cynic.  I often see quotes attributed to him on line.  In the early 20th century, he published a book called The Devil’s Dictionary.  Even I admit that some of his definitions are pretty funny.  However, I get tired and frustrated after reading more than one or two.  Here are a couple of quotes from The Devil’s Dictionary…

“Optimism:  The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong… It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.”

“Calamities: Two kinds — misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”

No wonder ole’ Ambrose was called “Bitter Bierce” by his contemporaries.  First he bashes optimism, then he suggests that human beings see the good fortune of others as a personal calamity.

Here are a couple of other entries in The Devil’s Dictionary…

“Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.” 

“Perseverance: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.”

Do you know any people like Ambrose Bierce and Larry Dorfman?  If you do, my best career advice is to hold them at arm’s length.  While you may find them to be witty and entertaining at first, they will drag you down in the long run.  They will not help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

Point 6 of The Optimist Creed says…

“Promise yourself to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are of your own.”

This is 180 degrees from what Ambrose has to say.  Successful, self confident people aren’t jealous or upset by the success of others.  They are genuinely pleased when they see others succeed.  They see the success of others as an inspiration.  They use it to motivate themselves to achieve bigger and better successes. 

Cynical, negative people choose to see others’ successes as a personal affront.  Take it from a career success coach, these kinds of people will not help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

The common sense career success coach point here is clear.  Successful, self confident people don’t let negative people into their lives.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 50 in Success Tweets.  “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry, but only if you let them.”  Avoid cynics.  They are jealous and petty; unhappy when others succeed.  Make a conscious choice to spend time with positive, optimistic people.  Avoid negative, pessimistic ones.  And you’ll be on the road to the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s the career advice I take from National Be Nasty Day.  What do you think?  What do you do to distance yourself from the negative people in your life?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment.  As always, thanks for taking the time to read my musings on life and career success.  I value you and your feedback.

Bud

Here’s a news flash for readers of this career advice blog… 

March 8 is National Be Nasty Day.  Hard to believe, but true.  In my book, being nasty is never good, nor the way to life and career success.  The other day, I got a press release email promoting a book called The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition.  Here is an excerpt from the email…

This year, on National Be Nasty Day, celebrate by refreshing yourself on some of the greatest insults ever uttered in film, television, politics, and literature!  The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition provides a comprehensive list of the perfect insults for every situation, spoken by everyone from Oscar Wilde to David Letterman!
 
Snark expert and bestselling author Larry Dorfman, who is also the author of the original Snark Handbook, comes up with witty phrases on a daily – even hourly – basis! Here are some of his latest snarks:

“Christine Aguilera has had a tough few weeks after her Super Bowl snafu. She had been offered an opportunity for a “do over” by the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Mets farm team, but refused. Word is that she’s also recently been rejected for the lead singer slot in two Christine Aguilera cover bands.”

“A former mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who served four terms and was one of the city’s most popular leaders, won’t get a new government center named for him because of his name. Harry Baals (pronounced like you think it is) is the current favorite in online voting but two members of the city council, Anita Head and Holden McGroin, have refused to allow it.

“NYC’s mayor Mike Bloomberg is in trouble again for making an insensitive stereotypical Irish joke at a dinner for the American Irish Historical Society. Something about drinking. He’s allowed…after all, a man of his stature automatically becomes and honorary leprechaun.”

The press release writer seems to have an exclamation point addiction! 

But I digress.  I shared this press release not because I think that being nasty is a good thing to do, but to reinforce a point I make in my latest career advice book, Success Tweets.  Tweet 50 says, “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry; but only if you let them.”

Insults and snarking are the mark of cynical people.  Cynics like Larry Dorfman are negative people.  They are also dangerous, because they are seductive.  Even I admit that the three snarks above are funny, albeit in a cruel way. 

That’s the problem with cynics.  They always have something witty to say about others – usually others’ shortcomings.  At first, they seem to be funny and amusing.  But spend time with cynics, and you’ll find that they have little joy in life except in pointing out and reveling in others’ problems and failures.

Ambrose Bierce may well be the world’s biggest cynic.  I often see quotes attributed to him on line.  In the early 20th century, he published a book called The Devil’s Dictionary.  Even I admit that some of his definitions are pretty funny.  However, I get tired and frustrated after reading more than one or two.  Here are a couple of quotes from The Devil’s Dictionary…

“Optimism:  The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong… It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.”

“Calamities: Two kinds — misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”

No wonder ole’ Ambrose was called “Bitter Bierce” by his contemporaries.  First he bashes optimism, then he suggests that human beings see the good fortune of others as a personal calamity.

Here are a couple of other entries in The Devil’s Dictionary…

“Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.” 

“Perseverance: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.”

Do you know any people like Ambrose Bierce and Larry Dorfman?  If you do, my best career advice is to hold them at arm’s length.  While you may find them to be witty and entertaining at first, they will drag you down in the long run.  They will not help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

Point 6 of The Optimist Creed says…

“Promise yourself to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are of your own.”

This is 180 degrees from what Ambrose has to say.  Successful, self confident people aren’t jealous or upset by the success of others.  They are genuinely pleased when they see others succeed.  They see the success of others as an inspiration.  They use it to motivate themselves to achieve bigger and better successes. 

Cynical, negative people choose to see others’ successes as a personal affront.  Take it from a career success coach, these kinds of people will not help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

The common sense career success coach point here is clear.  Successful, self confident people don’t let negative people into their lives.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 50 in Success Tweets.  “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry, but only if you let them.”  Avoid cynics.  They are jealous and petty; unhappy when others succeed.  Make a conscious choice to spend time with positive, optimistic people.  Avoid negative, pessimistic ones.  And you’ll be on the road to the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s the career advice I take from National Be Nasty Day.  What do you think?  What do you do to distance yourself from the negative people in your life?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment.  As always, thanks for taking the time to read my musings on life and career success.  I value you and your feedback.

Bud

Today is President’s Day in the USA.  If you are lucky enough to have a day off, enjoy it. 

They played the NBA All Star game yesterday.  That reminded me of one of my favorite career success stories.  Read on to check it out…

Communication is a key life and career success skill.  The ability to engage in meaningful conversation is a key communication success skill.  Tweet 104 in my latest career advice book Success Tweets says “Learn how to handle yourself in conversation.  A brief conversation with the right person can greatly help – or hinder – your career success.”

As I always tell my career success coach clients, assumptions can kill a conversation.  As I write this, I’m reminded of one of my favorite George Bernard Shaw plays, You Never Can Tell.

Mr. Bohun is a character in the play.  He is a know-it-all.  He repeats the line, “You think you do, but you don’t” several times in the play.

What does this have to do with assumptions?  Everything, in my book.  As we engage people in conversation, we often think we know everything about them – their backgrounds, motivations, likes and dislikes.  Unfortunately, we think we do, but usually we don’t.

Now to the basketball part of the story.  Ioften tell this story when I am speaking to my career success coach clients… 

Rob Likoff is a friend of mine.  He is a partner in a very successful internet marketing services business.  Rob lives in New York City and is a huge New York Knicks fan.  If you’re not a basketball fan, the Knicks are the professional basketball team in New York.

Rob is such a fan that he has Knicks’ vanity license plates on both of his cars.  These plates have the Knicks logo in the middle.  One has the letters FST BRK (fast break – a basketball term) on either side of the logo.  The other has the letters SLM DNK (slam dunk – another basketball term) on either side of the logo.

One day, Rob was with a woman client.  They were going to lunch, and were taking his car with the SLM DNK plates.  As they approached the car, she said, “Have you met many women with your license plate?”

Rob thought this was kind of strange, and said, “No, why do you ask?”

She replied, “Because of what it says.”

Rob said, “What do you think it says?”

She said, “Simple, Single Ladies Man, Divorced No Kids.”

Pretty bizarre, right?  Wrong. 

Both Rob and his client thought they knew what the license plate says, but they didn’t.  Rob is a basketball fan.  He assumed that anyone seeing a license plate with the Knicks logo in the middle and the letters SLM DNK would automatically know that it meant “slam dunk.”

His client was a 30 something, single woman.  She had mentioned to him on another occasion that she feels her biological clock ticking.  She would like to get married and start a family.  If you look at it from her point of view, you can see where “slam dunk” would mean “single ladies man, divorced no kids.”

Back to George Bernard Shaw and Mr. Bohun  — they both thought they knew, but they didn’t.

And that’s the common sense career success coach point for today.  As the career advice in Tweet 104 in Success Tweets points out, a brief conversation with the right person can greatly help or hinder your career success.  Good conversationalists don’t make assumptions.  Assumptions can really derail a conversation.  Never make assumptions about the other person or his or her thoughts and motivations when you are in a conversation.  When you find you are making assumptions, test them out.  Ask, “Why do you thing that is so?”  Remember, in many cases you really don’t know what the other person is thinking or feeling.  To quote Bernard Shaw, “You think you do; but you don’t.”

That’s my best career advice about how assumptions can be conversation killers.  What’s yours?  Do you have any funny stories about how assumptions have hampered some of your conversations?  If so, please take a minute to share them with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success.

Bud

Today is President’s Day in the USA.  If you are lucky enough to have a day off, enjoy it. 

They played the NBA All Star game yesterday.  That reminded me of one of my favorite career success stories.  Read on to check it out…

Communication is a key life and career success skill.  The ability to engage in meaningful conversation is a key communication success skill.  Tweet 104 in my latest career advice book Success Tweets says “Learn how to handle yourself in conversation.  A brief conversation with the right person can greatly help – or hinder – your career success.”

As I always tell my career success coach clients, assumptions can kill a conversation.  As I write this, I’m reminded of one of my favorite George Bernard Shaw plays, You Never Can Tell.

Mr. Bohun is a character in the play.  He is a know-it-all.  He repeats the line, “You think you do, but you don’t” several times in the play.

What does this have to do with assumptions?  Everything, in my book.  As we engage people in conversation, we often think we know everything about them – their backgrounds, motivations, likes and dislikes.  Unfortunately, we think we do, but usually we don’t.

Now to the basketball part of the story.  Ioften tell this story when I am speaking to my career success coach clients… 

Rob Likoff is a friend of mine.  He is a partner in a very successful internet marketing services business.  Rob lives in New York City and is a huge New York Knicks fan.  If you’re not a basketball fan, the Knicks are the professional basketball team in New York.

Rob is such a fan that he has Knicks’ vanity license plates on both of his cars.  These plates have the Knicks logo in the middle.  One has the letters FST BRK (fast break – a basketball term) on either side of the logo.  The other has the letters SLM DNK (slam dunk – another basketball term) on either side of the logo.

One day, Rob was with a woman client.  They were going to lunch, and were taking his car with the SLM DNK plates.  As they approached the car, she said, “Have you met many women with your license plate?”

Rob thought this was kind of strange, and said, “No, why do you ask?”

She replied, “Because of what it says.”

Rob said, “What do you think it says?”

She said, “Simple, Single Ladies Man, Divorced No Kids.”

Pretty bizarre, right?  Wrong. 

Both Rob and his client thought they knew what the license plate says, but they didn’t.  Rob is a basketball fan.  He assumed that anyone seeing a license plate with the Knicks logo in the middle and the letters SLM DNK would automatically know that it meant “slam dunk.”

His client was a 30 something, single woman.  She had mentioned to him on another occasion that she feels her biological clock ticking.  She would like to get married and start a family.  If you look at it from her point of view, you can see where “slam dunk” would mean “single ladies man, divorced no kids.”

Back to George Bernard Shaw and Mr. Bohun  — they both thought they knew, but they didn’t.

And that’s the common sense career success coach point for today.  As the career advice in Tweet 104 in Success Tweets points out, a brief conversation with the right person can greatly help or hinder your career success.  Good conversationalists don’t make assumptions.  Assumptions can really derail a conversation.  Never make assumptions about the other person or his or her thoughts and motivations when you are in a conversation.  When you find you are making assumptions, test them out.  Ask, “Why do you thing that is so?”  Remember, in many cases you really don’t know what the other person is thinking or feeling.  To quote Bernard Shaw, “You think you do; but you don’t.”

That’s my best career advice about how assumptions can be conversation killers.  What’s yours?  Do you have any funny stories about how assumptions have hampered some of your conversations?  If so, please take a minute to share them with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success.

Bud

I often tell my career success coach clients that it is important to be impeccable in your presentation of self – in person and on line.  Tweet 72 in my latest career advice book Success Tweets says “21st century technology has created new etiquette rules.  Learn and use them to appear polished when you’re on line.”

The other day I received an offer to do a guest post for this career success blog from Greg Coyle.  He is the co-founder and Director of Product Development at My Web Career. For the past year, Greg and his co-founders at My Web Career have been working on developing online career success tools that enable you to discover, evaluate, and monitor your professional online brand.

Greg is providing a great career development resource here.  Check out what he has to say…

Why Your Online Presence is Important and How Your Career Score Can Help

This is the new age of career development. Social media platforms are the new resumes, and you need to be able to sell yourself. Establishing credibility and visibility in your field—whether or not you’re looking for a job—is essential to building beneficial relationships and elevating your online presence.

According to CareerBuilder.com, “One in five employers use social networking sites to research job candidates, and close to 59% of them are influenced by your online presence.”

You already have a personal brand, whether you know it or not. How, you say? Well, if you’re on Facebook or have a Twitter account or blog, you have an online presence. Your posts, tweets, comments, pictures, etc. are the building blocks of your online persona.  They can help or hinder your career success.

In today’s extremely tough job market, being considered for a position has gotten more and more competitive.  You’re special and unique—let employers know it.  Not only does your on line presence create leverage for you with potential employers, but effectively marketing yourself can actually bring opportunities straight to you.

With changes in technology and communication nearly every day, your personal brand is essential to your career success. You have the resources at your fingertips.

That’s where My Web Career can help. We’ve created an online service that enables you to uncover and evaluate your digital footprint and help you see the areas of your online presence you many need to polish up.

The objective is to provide consumers with insight into their professional online brand and to offer tools to make these data accessible, manageable, and actionable.

We use sophisticated link analysis, visualization, and semantics technologies to enable you to quickly evaluate and explore data that relate to you. You get a score showing the strength of your professional online persona. Think of it like a credit score (FICO), but for your online presence. The Career Score allows you to easily assess your professional online brand and stay on top of any changes to it.

My Web Career sees how you are connected both with companies and other professionals, and what information you’re showing at all times. Keeping a checkered score will be anything but hard.  Just remember, the higher the score, the more positive your online presence.

If you like what Greg has to say about your online presence and career success, you can visit the My Web Career beta site at www.mywebcareer.com and get your free, personalized Career Score.

I think this is a very valuable service.  I visited and found that my Career Score is 757 out of a possible 850.  According to My Web Career, “A Career Score above 750 indicates that you have an excellent Professional Online Brand.”  That’s pretty cool.  But then again, I’ve been blogging for five years and am active on Twitter and Facebook.  I suggest you check out your Career Score on My Web Career.  They’ll not only give you a Career Score, they’ll tell you how to improve it for your career success.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  In today’s world if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you need to be aware of, and pay attention to, your online presence.  The folks at My Web Career have created a simple career development tool to allow you to do just that.  As Greg Coyle, one of the founders of My Web Career says, “You already have a personal brand, whether you know it or not.”  I say, why not make the most of it?

That’s my take on the career advice provided by Greg Coyle of My Web Career.  I suggest you give their beta site a try and see what you can do to improve your on line persona.  Once you do, please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success.

Bud

Tweet 61 in my latest career advice book Success Tweets says, “Create and nurture you unique personal brand.  Stand and be known for something.  Make sure that everything you do is on brand.”  A strong personal brand will get you noticed in a positive way and enhance your career success journey.

The other day I saw a WikiHow that listed 12 pieces of career advice on how to stand out from the crowd.  While creating and nurturing your unique personal brand is my best career advice for standing out from the crowd, I thought that the WikiHow made some interesting points.  Check them out…

1. Decide what standing out from the crowd means for you.
2. Think for yourself.
3. Don’t be swayed by the crowd.
4. Take chances or risks and work hard.
5. Do things differently.
6. Have good manners.
7. Do what you say you’ll do.
8. Show initiative.
9. Dress stylishly and wear what suits you.
10. Check your posture.
11. Be attentive.
12. Remind people how great they are.

Success Tweets has a tweet or two that addresses each of these 12 pieces of career advice.  In this post I’d like to focus on the career success advice in point 11 – be attentive.  Being attentive to others is a great brand aspect and good career advice. 

Tweet 106 in Success Tweets says, “Demonstrate your understanding of others’ point of view.  Listen well and ask questions if you don’t understand.”  That’s as good a definition of being attentive as I know. 

I have developed six pieces of common sense career advice on how to be attentive to others…

First, acknowledge other people as equals.  You cannot have a good conversation if you don’t recognize one another as equals.  Regardless of your hierarchical relation to the other person – if he or she is your boss, peer or subordinate – remember that we are all human beings.  As such, we are entitled to respect and dignity. Talk with people, not to them and you’ll be surprised at the quality of your discussions.

Second, be curious about other people.  People are fascinating.  I have had some of the most interesting conversations with limo and cab drivers.  Often they are immigrants.  It’s interesting to hear their take on life in the USA.  Be curious about the people you know too.  People are always growing and changing.  When you express your curiosity you’ll be bound to find out new and interesting things about old friends and acquaintances.

Third, help others listen to what you have to say.  Think before you speak.  Speak clearly.  Ask them questions; answer the questions they ask you.  Remember, communication in general and conversation in particular, is a process fraught with potential misconnects.  So listen hard to others and make it easy for them to listen to you.

Fourth, slow down.  Think and reflect.  When you slow down, you;ll find that you have time to think. Don’t be afraid to pause and reflect on a question.  This shows the other person that you are carefully considering your response – not just saying the first thing that comes to mind.  Other people will appreciate you for your thoughtfulness, not knock you for not being quick or clever enough.

Fifth, remember that conversation is the natural way for humans to think together.  The idea of thinking together is great career advice.  George Bernard Shaw, my favorite playwright once said, “If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples we still each have one apple.  If I have an idea and you have an idea and we excahnge them, we both have two ideas.”  That’s thinking together.   The world would be a better place if we all thought together instead of thinking separately and trying to convince others that our thoughts are better than theirs.  I would love to see political debates where the candidates worked together to develop an approach to handling a problem or issue – instead of watching them advance their ideas while taking swipes at the other person’s ideas.

Sixth, conversation and attending to others can be messy.  That’s OK.  In fact, I think it’s great.  Some of the best ideas come out of messy conversations.  The willingness to get into the mess and slop around is what frees your creativity.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are attentive to others.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 106 in Success Tweets.  “Demonstrate your understanding of others’ points of view.  Listen well and ask questions if you don’t understand.”  Listening and being attentive to others takes some work, but it is worth it in the long run.  It will help you become a dynamic communicator and build solid relationships that will fuel your life and career success.  Remember my six pieces of career advice for being attentive to others:  1) Acknowledge other people as equals.  2) Stay curious about other people.  3) Recognize that you need other people’s help to become a better listener.  4) Slow down to have the time to think and reflect.  5) Remember that conversation is the natural way for humans to think together.  6) Expect it to be messy at times.

That’s my career advice on building your brand by being attentive to the needs of others.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success.

Bud