Was the concept of personal branding started way back in 1997, when Tom Peters’ wrote “The Brand Called You” in Fast Company magazine? Or was it before that? I think years before. Think of actress Mae West, her brand was definately sex. Not just sex, but SEX.  She ran with it and was a success. So, it does not matter when or how it started, it is a smart and legitimate career practice not just practiced by actors, but used by entrepreneurs, CEOs, and regular workers who want to distinguish themselves from the crowd.

How to do this? First take charge of your career and your life by constructing your very own personal brand and hit bullseye everytime. Or at least most times.

First and foremost know who you are. Your brand should be as near to who you really are. Then run with it.

Identify your passion. Your brand won’t stand the test of time unless it’s based on something you feel strongly about and want to do for the rest of your life.

Specialize. Plant your banner in a niche that’s narrow enough for you to stand out in. Look at what you already do better than anyone else, and concentrate on keeping your skills sharp in that area.

Market yourself. Position yourself as a service provider. Let your manager and co-workers know what you’re capable of and what you want to do. Think of yourself as a CEO, even though you have an employer. Your career is ultimately your responsibility, after all.

Keep a record or scorecard. You know that setting goals is important to your career progress, right? Decide what you want your brand to accomplish, and establish some milestones—your next promotion, a new client, a completed project, etc. Track your brand’s success over time.

Source: Fast Company: Tom Peters “The Brand Called You

I offer quotes for the heart, mind, and soul to end one year and start another. I am hopeful that some will make you go ‘mmmmm.’

• You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them. —Desmond Tutu
• There are people who have money and people who are rich. —Coco Chanel

• Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. —Stephen Hawking
• Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. —Dee Hock
• Statistics are no substitute for judgment. —Henry Clay
• Science is simply common sense at its best. —Thomas Huxley
• There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns. —Edward de Bono
• Succeeding is not really a life experience that does that much good. Failing is a much more sobering and enlightening experience. —Michael Eisner
• Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. —Paul Hawken

• Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go—purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything, whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out. —Tina Turner
• And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anais Nin
• The arithmetic of life does not always have a logical answer. —Inshirah Abdur-Rauf

Happy New Year to all.

Vannie Ryanes

Sometime earlier in the year in one of the many forums I belong to, a question like , “Do you share business tips or do feel they take from your own business.” I do not remember the actual wording, but I kept my response because I thought it was a good one. Hey no shyness here

 ”…I too am a sharer, I always have been. I think that is my slight edge in business and in personal life. That may not make sense but it works for me. I am always ready to share an idea, etc., I often say “Have you thought of this or that?” I have known people who say, I never tell everything I know. The truth is no one is asking for that, but a sharing a tip is often so appreciated it comes back two-fold.

This question seems to be two-part. How do you feel about sharing and do you share when it may have a negative impact on your business? I say sharing is no big deal, it is always good to share. It is my firm belief that your circle grows wider when you do. Also, I do not think sharing success ideas have a negative impact on any particular business.”

I believe that you empower yourself by sharing. That being said, I had to learn early on to memorialize my contributions in meetings

Success depends on a certain amount of luck, but smart people know not to leave success entirely up to chance. In the book Work Your Strengths, the authors identify discuss the 12 strengths that are essential to success. Do you have these skills?

Response inhibition–do you act first, think second? Do you have the ability to think *before* you act?

Working memory–are you good at emembering information? can you remember information while you are performing complex or detailed tasks?

Emotional control–do you or can you control counterproductive feelings such as anger, impatience?

Sustained attention–do you have the ability to focus on the immediate job? Oh look, a shiny thing (LOL)

Task initiation–do you sit and plan rather than just get started. When I was in my 20’s, I worked with a young woman who always said to our boss when asked if she had done a task, “Nooo, but, I’m just fixin to now.” In the words of Nike, Just Do It!

Planning and prioritizing–do you know what is important and what to do first?

Organization–do you have tools and resources available when you need them?

Time management–do you use time as efficiently as possible?

Goal-directed persistence—do you set goals and move steadily toward them?

Flexibility– do you have the ability to adapt to changing circumstances? Always have a back up plan.

Perspective—can you see the big picture and your role in that picture?

Stress tolerance—what is your stress tolerance? do you have the ability to deal with stress?

If you don’t have the about traits, I believe that some things can be learned. I had to learn emotion (Impatience) control. I was fortunate, I had a best friend to complain and b**ch to. However, instead of saying you poor thing, she told me, “Everyone is not like you.”

Check out the book Work Your Strengths: A Scientific Process to Identify Your Skills and Match Them to the Best Career for You.

The holidays will be here before you know it, here are a few simple ways to earn cash for little pleasures and goodies for yourself and your family. 

You won’t get rich with these money-generating ideas, but you can take the results to the bank (even if it’s only your piggy bank):
    • Sell photos to stock photo websites. Stock photography sites offer generic photos of landscapes, animals, and other nonspecific subjects to designers and publishers. Go through your travel photos or your pictures of Fluffy, Fido and great scenery, then check out sites like istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com.

• Sell your books. Go through your bookshelves. Are you hanging on to your old college textbooks? Be realistic when setting prices, are you really going to read A Tale of Two Cities ever again? You can sell books online or try a local second-hand bookshop. If you have enough books you can have a garage sale–get your bookaholic friends involved and set up your own book space in the yard.  

• Sign up for consumer focus groups. Corporations and nonprofits doing market research need opinions from regular people. Make yourself available for focus groups, and you could earn $50 to $100 or so for an hour or two of sharing your thoughts and reactions to ideas. And don’t forget those online survey’s,  MyPoints.com is one of the best, your points add up quickly and you are never added to odd lists.

Why fight over shadows?

There is a fable about a wealthy man who hired a peasant and his camel for a long trip across the desert. The rich man rode the camel while the peasant led it across the dry sands.

In the hot noonday sun, they stopped for a rest. Since there was no shade but the camel, they began arguing about who had more of a right to sit in the camel’s shadow: the peasant who owned the camel, or the rich man who had rented the camel to ride.

Their voices grew louder and louder as the argument and shouting went on. The camel began to get jittery and anxious because of the loud voices of the men. Finally, the camel became so frightened, he ran away –leaving both men stranded in the middle of the burning desert without any shade at all.

Moral of story: Don’t let yourself get so determined to be right that you lose what you’re fighting for.

We all think we know what success is and how to achieve it. But sometimes we don’t know what success is until it bites us in the face and nips at our nose. Usually (because nothing is 100%) success is based on our personal goals and achievements that are uniquely our own and are shaped by our individual personalities.

   Where is your success? Examine your own ideas about success, then;

Learn to recognize your success. What will your success look like or feel like? Will you be able to recognize it when you reach it? (Trying to keep up with this one or that one is not the way to success.) When you do the best to your ability isn’t that success too? The truth is you can’t do more than you can do.

Define success in your own terms. Forget about other people and their vision of success. Think about what you value, not what others value or say you must or should do.

What do you need to do?  Identify specific things that must be achieved before you reach your own goal. Select one thing that you have already done, and two or three things you can do right now, that will bring you closer to your ultimate success. Then start working on them–today.

Are you close to success now? Take a look at what you’ve already accomplished, and compare your current situation with your position when you started working toward your goals. If you are not closer, maybe you are allowing excuses to get in the way of accomplishment.

After looking at your accomplishments are you closer to your success than you thought?

Kudos.

Which direction will you take? You have big goals, but do you have the passion to bring them to life?

     Success usually requires a road map, a strategy, but it also calls for serious drive and commitment toward your goals. Rosabeth Moss Kanter a professor at Harvard Business School suggests testing yourself with these questions:

• Do you feel strongly about the importance of your goal—why it’s necessary to achieve?

• Will you be able to reject criticism and negativity?

• Does your idea match your values and beliefs?

• Is this something you’ve dreamed about for a long time?

• Is your goal vital to the future of people you care about?

• Does your goal get you excited when you think about it and share it with others?

• Is it realistic? Are you sincerely convinced that your goal can be achieved?

• Are you willing to put your credibility on the line for it?

• Can you make your goal the primary focus of your activities?

• Are you willing to devote your personal time—evenings, weekends, vacations—to bring your goal to reality?

• Are you committed to the long term as you work toward your goal?　

Follow Prof. Kanter on Twitter Twitter.com/RosabethKanter

You can damage your career by saying the wrong thing to your boss. It is not the obvious, don‘t say what you are thinking things, like “You’re an idiot,” or, “Do I look like I care?”

The wrong things are often in the context of a sentence that can get you kicked out of the door.

Career adviser Karen Burns warns employees to avoid these statements:

That is not my job: Don’t limit yourself to what’s in your job description. Be willing to take on any role the boss asks you to (assuming it’s legal and ethical, of course). You can ask your boss why he or she is assigning the task to you, but you’ll improve your career prospects by accepting whatever assignment is thrown your way.

That is not my problem: Don’t let the boss think you don’t care what happens to the company you work for. Take responsibility for fixing things so your manager can rely on you no matter what.

It is not my fault: Ducking responsibility only makes you look and sound untrustworthy. Don’t waste your time, and your boss’s on placing blame for whatever the office or company problems are.  [If you watch television's The Closer, you will know this is similar to the classic SODDI (pronounced sah-dee) defense/excuse; Some other dude did it.] Focus on finding answers and solutions.

I can’t do that–It’s impossible Telling your boss that he or she is asking for the impossible will not endear you to the powers.  You want your boss to believe you can do whatever is required or at least give is a good try. Analyze the task and identify the real problem or goal; then concentrate on overcoming the obstacles.

Visit Karen’s useful and easy to read Working Girl  site and buy a copy of her book The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use You will be glad you did.

Success and happiness depend as much on your attitude as on your resources and advantages. Develop the right mindset,  and keep these thoughts in mind:

1. Control. Ultimately the only control you have in life is over yourself: your thoughts, actions, responses, and behaviors. Don’t obsess over what you can’t control; concentrate on what you can. 
2. Results. It’s easy to fall into routines and patterns that emphasize the process instead of the outcome. Learn the rules, but apply them with an eye on what you want to achieve. 
3. Gratitude. You’ll stay positive if you remind yourself of what you already possess. Spend some time every day thinking about your health, your family and friends, and the advantages you have, instead of focusing single-mindedly on what you lack.

Find your own “right” attitude (and perhaps a favorite quote) and live by it. I believe that my cat Peggy (or Ms. Peg when I way trying to cajole her) had her own quote, I am guessing but suspect it was, “She’s not the boss of me, I am my own cat!” and she had attitude to back it up. I had to respect that. Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them. –Jim Davis (Garfield creator)