Build Your Exceptional Personal Brand Online

With the explosion in social media and online marketing, it's critical that you manage your personal brand, to ensure your career and professional success.

First off, it is important to understand what branding is: A Definition of Branding Wikipedia offers this definition of branding: "People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique."

I have developed this Top 11 list of strategies you can employ, to build and maintain an exceptional online brand. ENJOY!!! 1. Have a plan for your online brand: Before you begin creating social media accounts, it is absolutely critical that you first plan out what your personal online branding/marketing strategies are. Who do you plan on communicating with? What is your ideal target? Are you trying to learn about a new industry, change careers, find a job in the same field, or do research in advance of starting your own business? The goals you have should define what your strategies are. Is it important that you build your brand awareness as a subject matter expert in a specific field?

2. Have a GREAT profile picture: In today's 24x7x365 online world, we are all identified by and judged by how we present ourselves on social networking sites. Sites like Facebook and Twitter. Our profile picture allows us to present ourselves to others including potential employers, business partners, clients...even future spouses. As part of your online branding, you HAVE to use a profile picture carefully since it's the very FIRST thing people look at. 3. Search your "personal brand" results: Every month conduct searches on Bing, Yahoo, Google, and YouTube on your name "First Name Last Name" to see where you are showing up. 4. Monitor your name: search for it on such social media tracking sites like Reputation.com and SocialMention.com. 5. Monitor your online brand strength regularly: To see what your aggregate online social media STRENGTH is there are really good websites like Klout. Take a test to monitor your online brand performance. Here's a cool list of 10 free tools you can use to manage your brand online. 6. For ideas about the types of organizations that have already built "cult-like" followers as exceptional brands check out this article on GREAT brands. 7. Create separate social media accounts for your personal life and professional career on Facebook, plus have a professional account for LinkedIn, Twitter MeetUp, and YouTube. Constantly ensure that people are not tagging you or mentioning your names for inappropriate things such as that wild weekend at the Jersey shore, that 1am bar brawl in the Hamptons, or anything that would make Lindsay Lohan blush. Provide people who like/follow you on your professional accounts with links to interesting and information articles. Keep providing valuable information on a regular basis. Ask people to follow you or suggest that others follow you. Here is a great article on top tips for building a stellar personal brand on LinkedIn. 8. Become a thought leader/subject matter expert in the industry you currently work in or other sectors that you want to transition to from your current career. You do this by signing up to join any relevant LinkedIn Groups you can find, and once they approve you, follow the discussions to learn the latest trends and developments. 9. Tweet to build a VERY specific and targeted set of followers and follow all of the key industry reporters, analysts, bloggers in the fields you work in or are interested in. 10. Blog! Nothing will build your online brand faster than publishing content that others find to be interesting, informative, and helpful. It's easy and FREE. The two best platforms are Google Blogger and WordPress. 11. BE DIFFERENT: for inspiration on how all the great thinkers were ahead of their time check out this video on Apple called: "Think Different." Top 10 tools to manage your brand's reputation. To obtain my FREE Powerpoint presentation on using social media to build your brand online, email me. Check out this article: "5 Easy Ways to Market Yourself Online."

Foot Surgey Forces BizCoach to Stand Down

Next Wednesday, I'm having foot surgery bunion surgery, to be specific. Now I know, this isn't exactly a "sexy" procedure but for a guy who considers taking a Saturday afternoon nap to be excitement it's a big deal. I am excited that I will have the opportunity to share my experiences with you after being forced to literally SIT STILL for a few weeks. Coming on the the heels (cheesy foot pun) of having spent the last four years running non-stop to grow my business consultancy like a chicken with its head cut off. the forced down time is going to feel alien. Just because I will be forced to sit, that doesn't mean I will be lying down on the job. For starters, I'm putting the finishing touches on my new website which I I'll let you know about as soon as it "goes live." To my clients who like to meet in person, we can still continue to do just that...except it will be over the phone. In the meantime, I have prepared a Top 10 list of things that one could do with all of the FREE time: 10. Revisit your strategy: recovering will finally enable me to revisit my own business plan (something EVERY biz owner should do periodically;) 9. Get a CRM: Whether you work for a multinational corporation or you're an entrepreneur, you need to store all your client and prospect information in one single place. You can get them for free (Zoho), buy a mid-range solution like Highrise or go to the high-end with a solution like Salesforce.com 8. Watch your dog "cat nap" 20 hours a day: in-between bouts of licking herself. It REALLY is a "Dog's Life;"

7. Enjoy life's simple pleasures: Thousands of hours of reality TV viewing await. Why not get caught up on Snookie + Jwow?:

6. Respond to emails: Remember all those emails sitting in your in-box? Now is the perfect time to write back, and empty the clutter. 5. Get addicted to Words with Friends:

4. Write Thank You cards to your clients:

3. Get familiar with workflow management systems like Google docs or Dropbox:

2. NFL team training camps finally begin! Go Cowboys!

...and the #1 thing you can do with all the down time is:

1. Plan on making the rest of 2012 GREAT for yourself, your family, AND your business. Stay tuned as I report in on the entrepreneur's dilemma of being FORCED to slow down, even as we prepare to spring forward this fall.

DON'T Take The Summer Off

A lot of my clients, entrepreneurs, people thinking of launching their own business, job seekers, and owners of established businesses have been telling me that they begun to or are planning on cutting back their efforts as we head into the July 4th weekend and will cut back their efforts over the summer in a "wait until Fall" mindset.

Their thinking is, since we are still trapped in a global recession, our kids are out of school and heading away to camp, they are going to take the summer to regroup by slowing down and wait until Fall to re-engage. THAT is the worst possible approach and a recipe for disaster. Now more than ever we should be aggressively looking at our planning and strategies to make sure we're on the right path. Here are just a few critical issues we should be diving into right now to ensure the long-term health of our businesses: * Do I have the right people in the right positions? * What am I doing to find, recruit, hire, retain, motivate and reward TOP talent? HINT: If you answered "pay them more" you missed the boat completely. * Is my strategy still appropriate for the current economic climate?

* Do I REALLY understand my market? Am I adequately positioned to serve the right customers? * Do I have a deep enough understanding of my ideal prospect? * How well have I analyzed my customer base? * Am I focused on serving the right customers? Do I have that Pareto principle down where I'm focusing on the clients that are most valuable to me...today and tomorrow?

* Is my sales in perfect alignment with my marketing...and product development? Speaking of marketing...while my competitors have been cutting back for several years now, now may be the ideal time to ramp up my marketing spend. * Is my marketing well aligned with my ideal customer profile, most profitable prospects and situated to convert highly qualified leads into customers. * Do I have a client appreciation/loyalty/retention AND referral program? * What new services/products can I offer? Which products need to be discontinued? * Am I embracing social media the right way? How do I track my social media performance from an ROI perspective (HINT - the tools now exist to measure ALL your online branding/relationship-building activities.) The list goes on and on, but the point remains the same for EVERYONE. For entrepreneurs, start-ups, small to mid-sized businesses and global corporations alike...now is the IDEAL time to make significant changes so you are positioned to eat your competitor's lunch. After all, we're not the Post Office, right? For us solopreneurs and small biz owners, one of our greatest strengths is in our smaller size, so we should be able to adapt quickly to change in order to seize on opportunities. NOW is NOT the time to bury our heads in the (BEACH) sand.

We need to be aggressively figuring out what has worked for us, what hasn't worked, what is and isn't working, and what we need to change in order to be successful in the future. In today's globally connected, wired, Internet-based world, we are truly competing 24x7x365. So get going! I for one am scheduled to have foot surgery in a month. Right now I'm in t he process of completely re-designing my website to reflect the fact that I now will coach/consult entrepreneurs and small business owners, I'm cutting back my teaching engagements, aggressively promoting my speaker services and training/professional development programs. I'd LOVE to slow down and take time off, but time favors the bold. Opportunities don't come knocking. Seize the opportunity your competitors are giving you by them slowing down. Fix what's broken and find what's working. Hire a coach...take a course...revamp your networking strategy. Test an entirely new marketing tool. Launch a client appreciation luncheon...conduct an employee town hall.

Now is the PERFECT time to race ahead, while your competitors are standing still.

Cold Calling Made Easy

How come cold-calling scares so many people? Whether you're facing thee prospect of calling on on someone to inquire about a job opening or you're looking to sell them your products/services to, the prospect of calling a complete stranger could be very daunting. Fear of rejection? Nervous what you're going to say? Easily irritated by the people who try to prevent you from getting through from your intended target? It doesn't have to be a terrifying experience! Start by researching the person you are going to call. Learn as much about them as you can. Know where they graduated from school, what jobs they held in the past, what professional trade associations they belong to, etc. Then, understand how their role fits into the overall strategic plan of the organization. What products and services do they manage. What brands, products, services does her/his team oversee? Ask the really big question: "What challenges keep them up at night?" Then find people that worked for them, worked in their organization, worked for them in the past, or know them through professional networking circles. The ideal goal would be to ask for a personal introduction if someone that you know knows them. The next step in the process entails figuring out how you can provide solutions to the key business challenges that they face. Once you have completed your research, you are ready to write a call script which you will rehearse before you call, so you feel comfortable calling them. Your script will follow this structure: INTRO: Hello Ms. [Last Name] My name is [xxx]. I see that your organization is facing the following challenges: CHALLENGE ONE CHALLENGE TWO CHALLENGE THREE I'm in a unique position to help you because of my background in: SKILL ONE SKILL TWO SKILL THREE I would like to schedule some time to meet with you in the next week or two, to discuss your current challenges and how I can provide you with a set of solutions. This may sound overly simplistic, but it works! The single most important aspect of this approach is to create a compelling message based on providing a set of unique solutions to their biggest challenges. Check out these great Cold-Calling resources: Cold-calling tips Your first cold-call article Cold-calling "How-to's" Cold call cheat sheet of great practices.

Network Like Your Business Survival Depends On It!

This week's blog comes from a suggestion made by Harold Wilkerson, a student of mine in my Entrepreneurship class at Fordham University. For some reason that I don't understand, small business owners don't take a strategic approach to networking as a source for new client acquisition.

Networking is THE single best source for the most immediate access to qualified leads, assuming of course you take a strategic approach to your networking. Following are excellent strategies that you can implement IMMEDIATELY to maximize your networking results. In the first few seconds that you meet someone, you have to tell them what you do in such a passionate and compelling manner that they say: "Wow! Tell me more!" For example, my opening is: "I help entrepreneurs and business owners achieve their life ambition of planning, launching and growing a successful business." After the introductions, you only have a few minutes to explain what you and your business does in such a convincing way that they want to schedule a time to meet with you afterwards. You've got to make every minute count! The best advice I can give is to develop a strategic networking plan! Describe your ideal target segment in detail, and identify where they network. Find the top industry associations/groups of professionals that represent your target segment. Create a 90-day calendar of events that they attend. Make sure that you register to attend as many of their events as you possibly can. Meanwhile, you can and should join as many of their peer groups on LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. When you sign up to attend networking events (especially using MeetUp) you will receive invites from those groups. Their invitations include notifications of other members that register to attend. Research the group members that respond they are attending on LinkedIn to see if they are a potential customer for you. Next, send the folks that seem like a match for you a note through LinkedIn saying you look forward to meeting with them at the event. You should also invite them to join you on LinkedIn. This will help you facilitate a more personal introduction when you meet them at the event, while also building your professional network online (as well as your online brand.) If they are receptive to you (meaning they accept your invitation and/or send you a note saying they look forward to meeting with you) then follow them on Twitter. Always tweet about the events you're going to attend, and be sure to post status updates both before and after you attend events in LinkedIn and on your FaceBook pages. Be sure to thank the meeting facilitators/hosts.

Have a scripted sales pitch all ready to go for each event. Send people that you speak with at events an immediate follow up with reminders of your conversation. Spend NO MORE THAN 10 minutes with every person you meet. Anything longer than that is wasted time. You should be scheduling a time to meet with them afterwards so you can make a maximum number of contacts while you're at the event. When you are speaking to people you should be spending most of the time LISTENING. Ask them probing and thoughtful questions like: "Why are you here this evening?" or "What are you looking to get out of this event?" It's always a good idea to ask questions like: "What are your top challenges that your firm is facing right now?" that will help you to identify their top business challenges and reveal ways that you can provide a solutions to the challenges they face. This is the single fastest way to make an emotional connection with a potential client. And we all know that people ALWAYS make purchase decisions on emotional levels and use data/facts to rationalize/support their (emotional) decisions. People buy from people they like being around. Check out what Ivan Misner, Founder of BNI has to say about networking in this video: "Ten Commandments for successful Networking." Get their contact details into your contact management system immediately. Call the highest priority pre-qualified leads back within 24 hours. Add them to your Google Circles.

If they shared with you any special needs or challenges they face, it will make a very positive impression with them if you share relevant information, resources that provides answers to any questions they had. It's also a nice touch to introduce them to people in your professional network who might be able to assist them based on anything they revealed to you when you spoke with them at the networking event. The bottom line is, networking works best consistently getting exposure for yourself, your firm and your products and services to the right target audience is a VERY powerful strategic way to fill your sales pipeline. Need more help with prospecting? Get my e-book on "Prospecting for Customer Gold" at www.thechazingroup.com/shopping. Happy Memorial Day!

A Mother's Day Thought For You.

My wife is leaving tomorrow morning at a ridiculously early hour to spend a long weekend with her High School friends. Therefore, I wanted to send her off with some touching mother's Day well wishes. Problem is, my creativity seems a bit "sapped." So, rather than offer up something contrived, I had a brilliant idea. I would like to share the following wonderful thoughts on what makes Mothers everywhere SPECIAL. To my wife as well as mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, daughters everywhere. I couldn't have said it better myself. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! Famous Mother's Day Thoughts "All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother."

~ Abraham Lincoln "I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." ~ Abraham Lincoln "There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness... The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way." ~ Andrew Jackson

"Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws." ~ Barbara Kingsolver

"In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother." ~ Booker T. Washington

"It seems to me that my mother was the most splendid woman I ever knew... I have met a lot of people knocking around the world since, but I have never met a more thoroughly refined woman than my mother. If I have amounted to anything, it will be due to her." ~ Charles Chaplin

"I cannot tell you how much I owe to the solemn word of my good mother." ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"The noblest calling in the world is that of mother. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece or who can write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will be exerting an influence throughout the ages long after painting shall have faded, and books and statues shall have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give." ~ David O. McKay

"My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back." ~ Denzel Washington "The mother, more than any other, affects the moral and spiritual part of the children's character. She is their constant companion and teacher in formative years. The child is ever imitating and assimilating the mother's nature. It is only in after life that men gaze backward and behold how a mother's hand and heart of love molded their young lives and shaped their destiny." ~ E.W. Caswell "My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her." ~ George Washington "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom." ~ Henry Ward Beecher "Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of little children tends towards the formation of character." ~ Hosea Ballou When Robert Ingersoll, the notorious skeptic, was in his heyday, two college students went to hear him lecture. As they walked down the street after the lecture, one said to the other, "Well, I guess he knocked the props out from under Christianity, didn't he?" The other said, "No, I don't think he did. Ingersoll did not explain my mother's life, and until he can explain my mother's life I will stand by my mother's God." ~ James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, Tyndale. "Mothers have as powerful an influence over the welfare of future generations as all other earthly causes combined." ~ John S.C. Abbott "To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power." ~ Maya Angelou "The future destiny of a child is always the work of the mother." ~ Napoleon Bonaparte "My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you'll be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." ~ Pablo Picasso "An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest." ~ Spanish proverb "Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love." ~ Stevie Wonder

Quotes attributed from source.

WHAT IS A CAREER COACH? A career coach is MANY things. In order to achieve exceptional results for the people you help, you HAVE to be different things to different people. I am at times a therapist, trainer, confidant, problem-solver, Ghost writer, drill sergeant, motivator, enabler, sounding board...successful career coaches wear many hats. You match "customize" what you do and what you can offer to each client, to serve their specific needs. To do this, I take into consideration each client's personality, in order to help them achieve IMMEDIATE specific, measurable goals. A career coach provides the guidance, strategies, resources, and actionable tasks a client needs, in order to help them find a job, change careers, or re-enter the workforce. We're ALL about exploring paths and finding the right direction for our clients to go in...or, we SHOULD be.

You have to REALLY know what's going on in today's GLOBAL CONTRACT workplace. Having started my career in recruiting, then being down-sized EIGHT times over 23 years in a career spent as a MARKETER, and now balancing time between coaching and consulting organizations how to unleash their people's full potential...well, I'm fortunate to be able to help people. But what I offer has to be MUCH more in these demanding times. I help people to develop a strategic networking plan, their (40-year) career plan, and research the industries they want to enter.

I may prep them for an important interview, or teach them how to conduct an "informational" interview. In short, there's so much more to coaching than just re-writing resumes and cover letters! I help others to brand, market, and sell the PRODUCT of you. I work with my clients to promote themselves to their current employer for career advancement. If someone is struggling to understand what they have to offer, we have to start by gaining an understanding of what they represent, in terms of their interests, values, passions, hobbies, personality, etc. So, a career coach helps people in their journey to self-exploration. We match their work preferences with the ideal organizations they would thrive in, whose informal culture matches their own belief system. What a career coach Is NOT. Career coaches are NOT recruiters, staffing agencies, or placement firms. This is critical in being able to work effectively with a coach. Those other organizations match job seeking candidates with the clients they are paid by, to find employees. Coaches don't have contractual relationships with the hiring organizations. If they did, they could NOT have YOUR best interests at heart when they are working to get paid by the hiring organization.

In fact, they really don't care about the job seeker. They certainly do NOT work hard to ensure that there is a GREAT "fit" between the candidate's values, personality and needs and the culture of the organization. Some of you that have followed me for a long time know how LITTLE regard I have for those folks. How to find a career coach? The best way is to get a personal referral from someone that knows you very well and the career coach. Absent of that, you can go to a career coach credentialing organization or one of the many coaching associations in your area. I hope this helps. As always...dedicated to your career success!

Check out all my career coaching and business consulting expertise at: TheChazinGroup.com

HELP! I've Embraced Technology & Can't Get Up

This is a story about how I came to love the cloud...and you can, too!

Recently I had an epiphany. Technology is the 21st Century's equivalent of root canal. You need it. It's good for you in the long run, but it sure does hurt! Case in point. I recently decided to embrace the cloud. My motivation was, I got tired of constantly updating my files and re-saving changes to EVERY document on my PC, storage devices, laptop, then carry them around with me everywhere I went on flash drives so I could work on them when I needed to. It was a logistical nightmare to keep track of the latest versions. Know the feeling? I needed a more simple way of operating. Enter the cloud. In the cloud, you just log on and access your files. you update them when you need to, and email them to anyone no matter where you are. Sounds pretty good, right? I uploaded all of my critical documents to Google Docs and activated a Gmail email account. Why Google? They HAVE to be great. You name it, Google does it. Don't believe me? Check out: "Google is all about the cloud. Going Google." That is, unless you're an Apple iCloud or Microsoft SkyDrive fan. Wouldn't it be great if you could manage all your information in a SINGLE place, to get it from anywhere at any time? Sounds good to me! I just signed up for a paid client relationship management software service through the cloud called Highrise.

Now I can supposedly manage all of my prospects and clients from ONE place. I say supposedly because I just signed up for the service. so theoretically I don't need to store all those contact email addresses on Excel spreadsheets, in Outlook, in my email, on my cellphone, and those scraps of paper lying all around the computer. I also exported all my emails from Yahoo into an Excel file. Did that! but I still wasn't done. I have @ 1,500 email addresses in my Constant Contact email account, so I had to also export those so I could upload them to my CRM. I had an ulterior motive for making all these vendor changes. I want to leave Yahoo, my current email and web hosting service provider. I signed up with Yahoo eight years ago, to host my website (www.TheChazinGroup.com). It's a basic template design, and it doesn't afford me with the ability to interact with the people who visit my website. I also can't customize the information they receive, based on their preferences. Another strike against Yahoo is that in order for you to run Google Analytics (Google again!) to see how your website performs, you need to place Javascript coding on your website. The Yahoo service that I have been paying for (it's called Site Solution) won't let me do that. As you know (since you're reading this blog) I have a blog that is created in Google Blogger. Since WordPress is the new sexy blog platform AND the hottest new web site development platform, I took a Word Press class to figure out how to blog with it. I wanted to use WordPress instead of Blogger and connect my blog to my website. No can do! At the time, WordPress couldn't run on Yahoo's platform. How's this for irony...I log into my Blogger account with a Yahoo email. When I tried to change my account settings in (GOOGLE) Blogger recently to use my (Google) Gmail account, Blogger wouldn't let me. HUH???

Just when you think you have this technology thing figured out, they move your cheese. The rate of technological change is happening at such a fast pace it seems virtually impossible to keep up with things. Social media is a perfect example. You create a Twitter account, and start banging out those 140-character brain farts. Follow people, get them to follow you, use hash tags (###) to build connections between you, your organization and specific terms...voila! Instant online branding nirvana, right? But that's not good enough. You need your LinkedIn page, your personal business Facebook Fan pages to be in harmony with each other. Then you have to get invited to relevant MeetUp groups. But now there's Tumblr, Flickr, Pinterest. Then, experts used to say you should be active in online user forums. Now we're told online forums aren't relevant anymore. It's getting virtually impossible to keep on top of all the changing technologies, tools and best practices. One person I can always rely on for the best updates and keen insights is Ramon Ray, Chief Technology Evangelist at SmallBizTechnology.

Whenever there's online content that you want to subscribe to, you can get a feed of that blog, news, author, etc. sent directly to you. It's called really simple syndication (RSS.) But once you start signing up to receive feeds from a few sources, it seems like the data starts flowing in constantly. While you're doing all this online marketing activity, it's also crucial that you measure your brand online. It helps to see how your efforts are leading to increased clout (brand equity) you've built. To measure your relevance in the online world, there are a ton of resources you can select from such as HubSpot, Klout, Google+, etc. But wait, there's MUCH more. Now Quick Response (QR) codes are hot. QR codes let you zap contact information, and capture special promotions almost anywhere.

Don't forget cell phones. 3G is out. Long live 4G (for now) Which model? iPhone? Android? Droid? Galaxy? Razr? Lumia? Phones have cameras...and Playstation. Sprint, AT&T, Verizon? Tablets now show 3-D video. Is that TV or Internet you're watching? Don't get me started on that! And there's an APP for almost anything. It never, EVER ends! Even technerds are scrambling to keep pace. So much to learn, so much technology changing at warp speed. I have a headache. I think I'm going to lie down and take a nap, or play with my dog. Wait! Maybe I can download an app for that...from the cloud.

Follow Your Nose, Your Gut, and Your Heart

Another way of saying you trust your sniffer is "follow your gut/instinct." That queasy, tingly feeling you get in the pit of your stomach exists to warn you when something isn't right (danger, danger!) It's known as the "fight or flight syndrome." Trust your instincts, the saying goes.

Others tell you to follow your heart. When you pursue your passions, you will never work a day in your life. How do you know when the decisions you choose are the RIGHT decisions? What do all 3 body-sensing warning systems (sniff-gut-heart) have in common? In these times of significant change and chaos, following your instincts will lead you to make all of the RIGHT decisions, when you are confronted with the dizzying array of choices you're confronted with. Instinctive decision-making is NOT impulsive decision-making. Instinctive decision-making is based on extrapolating a set of most likely options based on similar past experiences and a comparable decision-making approach. You may not have had an identical past experience to draw from, but you most likely WERE confronted with similar characteristics. Making decisions based on your instincts is like drawing on a deep reservoir of unique perspectives. It's called having a hunch, or a vibe. According to Andrew Campbell and Jo Whitehead, “Our gut intuition accesses our accumulated experiences in a synthesized way, so that we can form judgments and take action without any logical, conscious consideration.” This can be helpful because it speeds up our ability to act. The challenge is to actually listen to that nagging voice in your head that says: "I smell a rat because..." "I feel like this is the right decision to make in my gut because..." "My heart tells me to do this because..."

Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink proves that making quick decisions often lead to better results than if you conducted significant research and analytical approaches. This begs the question: "Can we be taught how to make decisions in our life more effectively?" Jim Suhr, the President of the Institute for Decision Innovations emphasizes that all decisions be based on the importance of advantages" or as he puts it:"choosing by making advantages." When you make decisions impulsively, you do so based on your mood in the moment on a whim without any past experiences to guide you. We often have certain mental blind spots called "scotomoas" that prevent us from seeing the entire "BIG" picture. What do these look like? They are the biases and the prejudices that we carry with us through life that came from our past experience and upbringing but are actually irrelevant to the decision we a faced with.

Think about some of the major decisions you made in your life: * How did you choose your spouse? * How did you decide where to go to school? * How did you decide where to live? * How did you select the school for your child/children? * Think about the major investments you made. Overcoming impulsive decision-making Ask your family and friends how they might approach a decision you have to make or get their reaction on a proposed decision you are thinking of making. It's called crowd sourcing, or seeking the intelligence of the crowd. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein debated the power and perils of using one's intuition to make decisions for senior executives in a September 2009 American Psychology article titled “Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree.” Understanding HOW you reached conclusions to make decisions will help you apply stronger reasoning and logic. And that will help you to withstand the smell-gut-heart test.

If You Knew Then What You Know Now

"THEY" say...HINDSIGHT IS 20/20 VISION. But is it really?

If you had the ability to see into the future, would that cause you to change your behavior? Would you pursue the unknown with the same passion, if you knew in advance that you would be successful...or fall short of your goals? Well...we can't! This is the type of thinking that leads people to spend their lives regretting the decisions made and things you chose NOT to pursue. It reminds me of the poem by Shel Silverstein that I used to read to my daughter: “All The Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas Layin' In The Sun, Talkin' 'Bout The Things They Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda Done... But All Those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas All Ran Away And Hid From One Little Did.” Why do so many people find themselves saying: "I wish I could've done things differently?" It's NEVER too late to pursue your dreams!

For example, have you always wanted to find your dream job, so you can pursue your life's passions? There are so many resources available to you to make that dream a reality, from career coaches to self-assessment tools, the alumni network of the schools you attended, your social and professional networks. Was it your dream to start your own business? Now is the absolute PERFECT time to do that! From business consultants to city and state agencies, business incubators, micro-lenders, there is a HUGE support network for those who wish to start their own business. The cold hard truth is, the only REAL barrier preventing you from realizing the dreams you cast aside long ago in favor of more practical pursuits lie between your ears. It's that little damaging voice in your head that repeats..." I CAN'T because..." Set aside all the practical reasons (EXCUSES) we tell ourselves for a moment: * I'm too old/too young * I don't have enough money * I don't have the right support network If you could overcome all those challenges, what's really is preventing you from achieving your goals. Come on...SAY IT...

Could it be a FEAR OF FAILURE? Now we're getting somewhere. So what if you reach for the stars and fall short. You still will reach the moon. All of those excuses we make empower us with a built-in rationale for NOT daring to fail. We live in TRANSFORMATIONAL times. Entire industries are being drastically reformed. Corporations with tens if not hundreds of thousands of employees deemed too big to fail ARE failing. Global competition, constantly changing technology, the commercialization of the Internet have been changing the global balance of power between nations. ONLY THOSE PEOPLE WITH THE WILLINGNESS/ABILITY TO CHANGE BY REINVENTING THEMSELVES WILL SURVIVE in these changing times. Toss aside all of the excuses that mire us in inertia. Do NOT accept that you cannot change. You deserve to give yourself the opportunity to achieve all of the goals that you wanted to achieve, but you let that voice of fear and self-doubt pull you away from your ambitions. You don't need to have a crystal ball to imagine a life for yourself filled with hope and realizing all your dreams. Here is a list of things you can and should be doing right now to begin this transformation: * Distance yourself from all those people who tell you you can't: * Set tangible 1 week, 1, 2 and 3-month, 6 month and 9-month tangible goals. Write them down! Revisit those goals WEEKLY to monitor progress. * Create a TASK LIST of things you need to accomplish in order to achieve your goals. The list should include: - All required task items - Descriptions of what each task entails - Start and end dates for each - Who OWNS the task (it will be YOU most of the time) - Task contributors - those people that will help you achieve the task - Status: Open, in-progress, completed, planned, etc. - Contingencies: Anything that will prevent you from achieving the task * 168 - you only have 168 hours in a week. dust off those time management skills to prioritize your work-life balance so you can accomplish those tasks * Coach 'em up, coach: Get a coach! Ideally it would be ...me. Seriously, go out and find yourself someone that comes personally recommended to you who can help you. they must have a personality and values that match your own,. they should "GET" you. They should know when to push/challenge you, and when you need them to support/nurture you. At all times, you should be making significant progress towards achieving tangible goals by knocking off those tasks. As we look back on our lives, the most PAINFUL thing we can ever say/think about our time on this earth is... "IF ONLY I HAD DONE..."

Popeye, Quick Fixes and Stomach Stapling

The past few weeks I've been blogging about pork products. So, in an effort to move to the healthier side of things I bring you...

Spinach! Well, spinach as a metaphor for quick fixes thanks to the dwarfish sailor with huge forearms, Popeye. You remember..."I'm Popeye the sailor man...toot toot!!!"

When there were problems or he had to beat up Brutus Blutarski, to save Olive Oil, he'd chug a can of the leafy energy vegetable and WHAM! POW! He'd make things right.

I've been thinking a lot about how we humans love to take the easy way out like Popeye. Overweight? No problem...get your stomach stapled. Need 6-pack abs? Strap a vibrator across your chest. You can eat all the pork products you want. In no time at all, that vibrating belt will transform your mid-section from a spare tire to a ripped grill.

Do you have business problems that keep you up at night? No worries. Use the "EASY" button as your get-out-of-jail-free card. You get an automatic do-over, at least that's what the commercials would have you believe.


Have a failing business? No problem. Fire some of your workers.

It won't hurt at all. Right? You'll achieve immediate short-term results. Who cares? After all, you might think most of your people are lazy, complain too much, watch the clock, waste precious time and productivity by searching the Internet, right?

Jack Welch said it was critical to get rid of the bottom third ("C" people) in your organization. Heck, you may be thinking it's time to churn your staff, like pro football teams churn the bottoms of their rosters.

Don't worry. You have your own personal can of business owner "spinach." Its the employees you choose to keep. You can dump the terminated employees' work on your remaining workers. They'll be happy to kick in, work those extra hours, see their families less, even take a pay cut...right? They're "thrilled" to help, just to still have a paycheck these days.



We are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that these myopic, narrow-minded management decisions have had on America's workforce. Four years of layoffs, down-sizing, right-sizing, re-engineering, and reductions in workforce have effectively beaten down the OVERWORKED, OVERSTRESSED, EMOTIONALLY DISENGAGED American workforce.

Those easy to implement short-term policies that were instilled in most American organizations have taken a huge negative toll on our workforce. I see it countless times in my work with job seekers. Many people who are still working are highly resentful of their employers. they are burned out, beaten up, and looking to leave. There isn't an ocean of spinach large enough to fix the damage done, especially to the people who were out of work and have given up looking for jobs.

Workers are now even MORE motivated to leave and many are planning to do just that...quit your organization EVEN THOUGH the job market is so weak.



Now is the time for business owners, managers, and executives to start considering a path to implement really tough decisions to save their organizations.

NOW is the time to unleash their people's full potential. The quick decisions that achieve drastic positive results are NOT going to be easy to make. For consideration, I present some strategies that I have been implementing with my clients:

* Treat your best clients like your employees: Ask them what you do that's working for them. Ask them how you can improve. Take them to breakfast. Why not implement a "best customer" quarterly appreciation breakfast.

* Treat your employees like your best customers: It's time to do what President Reagan said in his speech at Brandenburg gate in 1987: "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down these walls." Remove the barriers that CONTROL your people. Let your employees determine your policies, procedures, systems and products.

* Ask your people to engage like never before: Ask your employees what you're doing right and wrong! Let them design their workflows, schedules. Offer job-sharing, telecommuting. create a committee to develop an ongoing idea generation program to solicit the ideas from all of your people. Make their voices heard, and implement their suggestions.

* Fund a new business incubator program: Your best people are planning right now to leave you. Put aside money in your budget to fund their ideas, so they stay in your company and work on new products and services you can integrate into your offerings. Otherwise, they're going to leave you to start their own business and do it themselves.

* Act like Mayor Ed Koch of New York City: He was famous for always asking: "How am I doing New York?" It's time to have that conversation with your people. What do they like about you? What do they hate? What benefits do they want? Are you coaching, mentoring, rewarding, training, recognizing, and providing the resources they need?

* Make every goal a STRETCH goal: Every single employee goal should be a challenge. They should have to strive mightily towards achieving every goal. Meet with your people weekly to ensure they have what they need from you , in order to be a success. Celebrate failures where people take calculated risks to achieve tremendous results.

* Fail GREATLY: It's not too late to change your business model, organizational structure, products and services, and your culture. There are no easy quick steps, or short-cuts in today's global competitive climate. The quickest road to long-term success is to embrace failure as a learning endeavor.

NOW EAT YOUR SPINACH!