Competence is one of the four keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I also discuss it in some detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) dynamic communication skills; and 4) becoming interpersonally competent. 

There are four key competencies that will help you become a career and life success:

• You have to be able to create positive personal impact.
• You have to be become an outstanding performer.
• You have to be a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presentations.
• You have to build strong, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the important people in your life.

Creating, building and nurturing your unique personal brand is the first step in creating positive personal impact.  Personal brands are not just for celebrities and entrepreneurs.  Personal brands are for everyone interested in building a successful life and career.  In today’s economy, you need to stand out as a unique individual within your field.  The days of joining a company right out of school and staying with it your entire career are long gone.  In this transient economy, you need to promote yourself as a professional in your chosen field.

I am the Common Sense Guy.  This brand has served me well.  People know that they will get down to earth common sense advice from me, presented in an easy to apply manner, because after all, I’m just a guy. 

Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book Crush It! is all about the importance of personal branding.  Gary is writing to an entrepreneurial audience, but anyone interested in becoming a personal and professional success can benefit from his advice.  He says that your personal brand is…

“The authentic you, the one thing that is guaranteed to differentiate you from everybody else.”

That’s why I like my Common Sense Guy brand.  There may be a few people out there dispensing common sense, but I know of no one else doing it in as informal “guy” way as me.  I am the Common Sense Guy.  The Common Sense Guy is my authentic self.  You get the idea.

Gary has a site called Wine Library TV.  It’s a video blog.  He discusses wine.  He has a huge following.  I had never heard of it until I read Crush It!  There was no reason for me to.  I had my last glass of wine over 20 years ago.  However, after reading the book, I checked it out.  And as Gary says…

“Watch me for two seconds and you know exactly who I am and what I stand for.  Authenticity is key.  Now, that can definitely be a double-edged sword.  I know there are people out there who think I’m a jerk with my Jet spit bucket, my table littered with toys and my colorful language.  I’m loud.  I’m over the top.  I’m hyper.  But I am who I am.  I’m for real, and overall people like that.”

Gary get’s it about branding.  You want to be a Cherry Carcia brand, not a plain vanilla one.  A good brand will attract a lot of people – it will also repel many others.  Wine snobs probably don’t like Gary.  And that’s OK with him, because they aren’t his target market.

My Common Sense Guy brand isn’t for everyone.  A lot of prospective clients know I have a Harvard PhD.  At first meeting, many of them are expecting me to be a bit of an egg head, very theoretical.  I understand success theory alright, I just choose to not express myself theoretically, I choose to turn theory into common sense and present it in a matter of fact guy to guy, or guy to gal way.  I remember meeting a prospective client who said, “You don’t act like a Harvard guy.”  I said, “Thank you.”  That resonated with him.  I don’t know what he expected a Harvard guy to be like, but by not meeting his expectations, I got the business.

Several years ago, I met a talent agent in LA.  He loved my Common Sense Guy brand.  He had visions of turning me into another Jim Creamer – the wild and crazy stock picking guy.  He envisioned me doing a show that highlighted business blunders, and then pointing out what idiots the people were who made these blunders.  It might have been fun, and it might have been lucrative given the economic meltdown, but it wasn’t me.  I’m not the kind of guy who likes to point out other people’s mistakes and then laugh at them.  A show like this would not have showcased my authentic self.  I choose to look at mistakes as learning opportunities. 

It comes back to Gary Vaynerchuk’s ideas about authenticity.  While you need to develop your unique personal brand, your brand needs to be authentically you.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people are competent in four areas.  They create positive personal impact.  They are outstanding performers.  They are dynamic communicators.  And they are relationship builders.  A strong personal brand is the first step in creating positive personal impact.  Everyone, not just celebrities and entrepreneurs, needs to build a personal brand.  In Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuk shows us how he built his personal brand and turned it into a lucrative business.  While the book is written to entrepreneurs, he presents good advice for anyone interested in creating a successful life and career.  Take it from me, The Common Sense Guy, Crush It! is filled with great common sense success advice.

That’s my take on personal branding and success.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  If you’ve read Crush It! please let us know what you think.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Clarity of purpose and direction is one of the keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I discuss it in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Your Success GPS and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  To develop your personal clarity or purpose you need to do three things.  First, define what success means to you.  Second, create a vivid mental image of you as a success.  Once you define what success means to you personally, I suggest that you develop a clear mental picture of you as a success.  This image should be as vivid as you can you make it.  Third, clarify your personal values.

In a blog post a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It!  At the time, I was about half way through it.  I’ve finished it now and all can say is “WOW!!!”  Crush It! Is a great book for entrepreneurs – and for everyone else.  On the surface, it’s a book about internet marketing.  However, it’s also about stuff that’s important for anyone who wants to create a successful life and career.  It’s about finding and living your passion.  It’s about defining and living your personal brand.  It’s about building relationships and creating community.  It’s about caring.

Gary doesn’t mess around.  In Chapter 1 he lays out his three rules for success:

• Love your family.
• Work superhard.
• Live your passion.

These three pieces of advice are the Alpha and Omega for Gary.  He mentions them on page 2 in Chapter 1 and on page 134 in the Conclusion of Crush It!  In between, he gives tips on what to do to build a business, but these three tips are where he starts and ends – and so should you. 

Your passion should guide your clarity of purpose and direction.  If you can’t get really excited about something, you don’t want to be doing it for the rest of your life.  Gary is passionate about marketing, especially internet marketing.  I’m passionate about helping others succeed.  What are you passionate about?

A few years ago, I was featured on the cover of a book called Speaking of Success.  I was right there – in between Stephen Covey, of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame, and Brian Tracy one of the most well known motivational speakers in the US.  I was proud to share the cover of this book with these two well know thought leaders on success.  But I don’t bring up this book to pat myself on the back, I bring it up because both Stephen Covey and Brian Tracy share my thoughts on the importance of clarity to success.

Brian Tracy says that the three keys to high achievement are clarity, clarity and more clarity.  While I don’t say that clarity is the only key to high achievement, I do agree that it’s vitally important.  Brian also says that clarity accounts for 80% of your success.  That’s a really high number.  Don’t quibble with it, if you think it’s too high.  Instead, take the message to heart.  You have to be clear on what you want if you are going to succeed.  And, you can’t argue with his other points: lack of clarity leads to frustration and underachievement; and your success in life will be determined largely by how clear you are about what you really, really want.

Way too many people set out on their life’s journey without taking the time to figure out what they want out of life.  This is a recipe for mediocrity at best, and disaster at worst.  Not to sound like a cliché, but if you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know when you get there.  I have found that most people who don’t have a clear idea of what they want out of life, go through life with a vague sense of dissatisfaction.  Don’t let this happen to you.

“Begin with the end in mind” is Habit 2 in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.   That’s just another way of saying that you need to build your success on the foundation of clarity of purpose and direction.  Stephen Covey suggests that you have a vision of your future – for your life, for today and for his minute.

Once you have a clear idea of where you’re going in this life and the results you want to achieve, you should ask yourself one question at the end of every day…

Did today’s activities and accomplishments move me closer to my vision of success?

If this answer is no, rethink what you’ll be doing the next day.  Also, I think that it is a good idea to stop two or three times a day and ask yourself this question…

Is what I’m doing right now moving me closer to my vision of success?

If the answer is yes – right on!  Keep on keeping on.  If the answer is no, stop what you’re doing and start doing something that will move you closer to your vision of success.

Gary Vaynerchuk suggests that you have to passionate about your purpose and direction in life – or else why bother.  I agree.  You have to really, really care about what you do.  Gary says…

“Live your passion.  What does that mean anyway?  It means when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world…You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, it’s not really work.  You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.”

I’m lucky.  I feel this way.  Do you?

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people clarify their purpose and direction in life and for their career.  Really successful people are passionate about their purpose and direction in life and career.  So, figure out what you really, really care about.  Then turn this passion into your life’s work.  In Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuk shows you exactly how to do this.  I’m fortunate, I’ve been able to turn my passion for helping others succeed into a profitable business.  However, I learned a lot from reading Crush It!  You can too.  Pick up a copy, get your highlighter and get to work.

That’s my take on living your passion by clarifying your purpose and direction in life.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Competence is one of the four keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I also discuss it in some detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) dynamic communication skills; and 4) becoming interpersonally competent. 

There are four key competencies that will help you become a career and life success:

• You have to be able to create positive personal impact.
• You have to be become an outstanding performer.
• You have to be a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presentations.
• You have to build strong, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the important people in your life.

Positive habits are an important key to outstanding performance.  Positive time management is an important habit to develop.  Habits are like muscles.  The more you use them, the stronger they get.

Here in Colorado, we are required to get our cars checked to ensure that they meet clean air emissions standards before we can renew our license plates.  It’s a good law, one that helps with the air quality in our beautiful state.  It’s also a pain in the butt.  It requires a trip to an emissions monitoring station and waiting in line for the test.  My plates renew in October, so yesterday I spent a couple hours getting my car tested.  It passed.

Cathy laughed at me as I was leaving the house with my briefcase, which had my cell phone, a couple of books and a bottle of water.  She said I would probably be the only one at the emissions testing facility reading a book.  That was OK.  I had just received a review copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book Crush It.  I wanted to read it so I could review it on this blog – and to learn a few things.  By the way, Crush It is a great book – not just for entrepreneurs.  I’ll do a post on it next week.

Carrying a book with me is one of my time management positive habits.  Sometimes it’s a novel.  Most times it’s a business or inspirational book.  I am in the habit of using spare moments to read and learn.  Yesterday, I was able to read the first four chapters of Crush It while I was waiting for my emissions test.  I also took some notes — ideas that I plan on incorporating into my business.  Not a bad use of my time.

I read while waiting for appointment with clients.  I read while waiting for my dentist, or doctor – and you know how long those waits can be.  I read when I go to get my car washed.  I read before a movie if I’m by myself.  This is a small habit, but one that allows me to read at least two more books a month than I normally would.  That’s 24 books a year – and a lot of good ideas to help me grow my business.

Reading spurs ideas.  These ideas give me inspiration for this blog.  They help me make decisions about my business.  They help me clarify my thinking on my passion – helping others create the career and life success they want and deserve.  Reading in spare moments is one of my most positive habits.  What is your most positive habit?  If you are thinking that you don’t have many positive habits, I suggest you check out Dan Robey’s site www.thepowerofpositivehabits.com.  There’s a lot to be learned there. 

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people are competent.  They set high goals and achieve them.  Positive habits will help you reach your goals – but only if you take the time to develop them.  Reading in “found moments” – the time I spend waiting is one of my positive habits.  I’m amazed at how much I can learn just by always having a book with me.  Today I learned a lot about personal branding by reading the first four chapters of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It.  Take the time to develop some positive habits of your own.  You’ll be surprised at how much they help your productivity.

That’s my take on reading as a time management positive habit.  What’s yours?  What are some of the positive habits that have served you well over the years?  How did you develop them?  Please take a minute and leave comment sharing your thoughts and ideas with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud