Get Your Career In Gear

Your Career Is Your Business

Dave Lorenzo from the Career Intensity blog recently posted a great piece called "Your Career IS Your Business".  What I loved about it is that it reminded me so much of Dan Pink's "Free Agent Thinking", and Tom Peters' "Brand You".

When you work "as an employee" for a long time, it's really easy to forget that you are in control.  What I mean by that is...you are there by choice, and you are free to leave if the gig stops working for you.  This is especially true for people who have worked for the same company for several years.  You forget about your choices, and sometimes you even feel like the company "owns" you. 

Dave gives you 3 pointers for managing your career like you would manage a business.  Briefly, they are:

• It makes sense to diversify income streams
• We should always prospect for new opportunities
• Keep growing and improving

Go visit his post and see what you think of the rest of his wisdom.

Let me ask you this...  If your job was eliminated tomorrow, how prepared would you be to move on?

Achieve Breakthrough Goals

If you haven't discovered Phil Gerbyshak's blog yet, you need to take a minute right now and pay him a visit!  His posts are high quality and his resources are fabulous!

One of his posts recently focused on how to achieve breakthrough goals.  If you have a list of really great ideas and/or a stack of incomplete projects, you can relate.  Phil refers to this as the "failure to finish syndrome"...and boy can I relate to that!

He calls his new idea the "Accountability Circle".  This is what he means in his own words.

"I mean I tell a few people that I trust that will hold me accountable one of my goals, give them my time frame, and ask them to help me be accountable to achieving this goal.  And they share one with me, in fact they share 1 each. This gives us 3 people in our accountability circle, and it works because of it's simplicity. By telling 2 people my goal, I am asking both of them to help me be accountable and achieve my goal, and if I'm not on track, I ask them to challenge me and ask me why I'm not on track. I'm hoping that 1 of them will have the courage to step out and tell me, and would LOVE IT if both of them would.  And I hope that at least 50% of the time, I am willing and able to challenge them if they are not achieving their goals. It's almost like a primary, and secondary, though if all parties are in 100% of the time, it does work best. "

Another idea that really works well is a "Fast Focus Day".  Here's how it works...

You need at least one other person, but it can work just as well with 10 people.  Everyone selects a project and agrees on one day to focus on it.  Pick a start and end time for the day.  The secret is to pre-schedule periodic progress reports through the day.  Here's an example:

Let's say you've got 5 other people who want to be part of your Fast Focus Day.  Before you begin do these things:

1. Agree on a date
2. Agree on start and finish times
3. Agree on progress report times (every hour or two works best)
4. Schedule a conference line (use a free one like freeconference.com)
5. Go to it!

Keep the progress report calls as brief as possible so that everybody can get back at their project just as quickly as possible.

You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish!

Would you like to give it a try?  Let me know and I'll organize one!

Video Coaching By Business Gurus

Have you ever thought how cool it would be to get a coaching session with Tom Peters?  How about Tony Robbins?  Well now you can...courtesy of AOL.

I'm not an AOL fan, but I have to admit they've set up a pretty cool site for video coaching.  The topics cover just about anything you can think of, but of course I zeroed in on the Business/Career section.

I've been a huge fan of Tom Peters for years, but one of my favorites is his theory of "Brand YOU".  You know how you have your favorite brand of shampoo?  Well Brand YOU is the same concept, only it's about branding your reputation in the world of business.  Tom's quick videos are a must see.  You can find them here:  Brand YOU

Here are a few more videos that are worth checking out too!

Stephen Covey

Lois Frankel

Jeffery Gitomer

Brian Tracy

Let me ask you this....Who do you turn to when you need career advice?

Cheers!