Everyone is an Entrepreneur. How high is your stock?

Why some people are so successful and other aren’t? Even when the last has more to offer than the first? Why super talented people don’t achieve their goals and totally morons get all the promotions?

The way I see it, the same rules in the enterprise space apply in the individual space, some companies have good products, some individuals have amazing skills and talents, some companies promote their products, some individuals actively promote themselves. Sometimes there is too much marketing and we know nothing is behind (for both, companies and individuals) sometimes we find a hidden gem. There is a strong relationship between strategies for building a great company and personal success.

Of course there are differences, companies usually have more individuals under one common goal, they don’t have feelings and remorse but most importantly, they know that in order to be successful you need to do certain things. Individuals on the other hand don’t do all this things, they tend to relay on luck, divinity, mother nature or random events to be successful and only dedicate time to a very few significant strategies, like choosing a school, a degree or a job, but for the rest is “go with the flow” mode.

Many successful people know this, they have a personal vision and mission, they have a set of values, they know what their strengths and weaknesses are and what to do with them, they know what their personal brand is, how to sell themselves and most importantly they do it. They do it all the time, they don’t really need to dedicate too much time now, after years of practice, it’s now part of their DNA. That is what differentiates them with the average guy, that is one of the main reasons of their success (sometimes luck also plays its part ).

To get there, they needed a bunch of trainings, books, self awareness, thinking, planning and other activities that during a lifetime built a successful individual (like a company).  It was hard work, but it paid off. But the hardest part, without questions, was to start that path.

Socrates said “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” and that is an amazing accomplishment, most of the people, don’t even know, that they don’t know. In my first years heading my software company, I had no idea of all the things that I didn’t know and therefore I never did anything to learn them, I perpetuated my ignorance in a spiral of self comfort. The moment I started realizing exactly the gap between the ideal executive and me, the moment I started closing the gap. A simple but powerful idea, and maybe the first and one of my most powerful AHA moments.

After reading this, if I was successful you are flirting with the idea that it would be great to know the gap between yourself and the ideal benchmark in your field (of course, in your case is almost cero J).

Let’s channel that thought to take the next step

What is the ideal state of yourself? When would you say you succeeded? What is it that you want from life? In other words, how would you know you succeeded if you don’t look how success looks like?

Common first answers are, I will succeed when I win the lottery (ok, maybe not that common), when I have money, when I get a better job, when I am like X person or when I am retired. But many of them only address a partial criteria (money, job, time) and may leave other important criteria outside (family, spirituality, etc.) and most of the time, the first round of answers are symptoms of the deeper real needs.

When talking about success we need to understand all the important things in our life, meaning professional success, personal success, success as a mother, as a important leader in the community. Words like legacy, mark on the world and others also fit in here. So first of all clarify what is success for you.

A useful exercise is to write your obituary (creepy but useful), write half a page of what you imagine the people said about you. What were the words used to describe you. This will give you an idea on what is it that you want (what do you want your brand to be, what is your legacy, what success looks like, etc.)

Another exercise is to list what is important to you, family, money, career, traveling, etc. and after doing this list as a column, write down, why (I sometimes say I need money, but I what I really want is to have freedom, so I can do whatever I want therefore I really mean freedom, not money). And if it’s possible, make another Colum with a why of the why (why do I want freedom?), keep going until you distilled a few ruling principles.

The third exercise is to review this list of values, and select half of them, the ones that resonate more in your head when you read them, then take this sub list and cut it in half, then again, half, until you get around 10.

These three exercises (obituary, list of important things, and selection from the values list) should have a lot in common; they reflect your essence, your core, your values.

Distilling from there should be very easy, you just take the top 5 words (not be too literal, some values need 2 or 3 words, but most don’t). That list is the magic list of your top 5 values; you have just build the first piece of your company marketing strategy. You have identified your values.

As an example, let me share my values: Happiness, Freedom, Power, Intelligence and Love. You understand a lot about me by reading these 5 words.

Let me elaborate on why they are important:

Happiness: I think that happiness is the ultimate goal in life, not only my personal happiness, but the happiness of my loved ones, like my wife. So every time I need to choose, I consider this.

Freedom: This connects to many things, intellectual freedom, economical freedom (money), freedom to choose, to think and others. I respect diversity and if you take away my freedom, you will see the worst of me. (pretty useful to know what are the values of someone right? You know what their triggers are …)

Power: I want to have the power to achieve happiness and freedom, this also connect with money but also with personal influence, skills, networks, etc. I like to do, to respond, to change the world.

Intelligence: I give an unfair deal of importance to intelligence, (before you apply psychology 101 on me let me disclose it myself, I know its connected to the fact I feel I have it and I want to think I am special for that), but I use it, and I approach people who uses it too.

Love: I love and I want to be loved, I also submit many decisions to the loving muscle in my brain. I love my wife, my family, my friends but I also love other things, I connect this to being happy.

After distilling from the 3 previous exercises you should have your list of 5 top values, and your reasons and connections (who am I kidding, most people won’t have the list, I didn’t provoked the aha moment in them, but at least, when they reach it, they may connect what I just described and use it, not everyone is ready at the same time…).

The more advanced ones, even build a list of roles they have (wife, father, teacher, professional, etc.), then a vision and a mission statement and revise it every year. Well, there are good book for that levels, and you should know them if you are there. So if not, you are basic like me.

Second step (after building the values): Personal brand.

It looks silly, my personal brand, jaja, like If I was a product. Well in a loose definition you are. There is a perception of you, there is a description of you, what are the 2 things your friends say when a new guy asks, who is he? Do they say, “Felipe a very smart guy that just won that competition”, or they say, “he is an arrogant guy that thinks he is the smartest guy around”? If I do a survey around your colleges, friends, family and all those who know you what will be the list of strengths and weakness they say about you? Do you even know? Well, that is the perception about you, I may not be the true, but in their eyes, perception is reality and it’s an uphill battle to change perception (just ask a company with a bad reputation). Is that perception a collection of random events? Or is a result of a dedicated effort on your part? For most, you just act and perception is formed afterwards, sometimes good (you made a great sell) sometimes bad (you were angry that day with your wife).

Here another mini aha moment should be happening, if not please let me know so I can take writing lessons J (if you are mentally reviewing what you did last days that influenced a good or bad perception you are on the money and I did my job)

The beauty is that you can control what others perceive of you, that is when you define your brand and then you communicate it. Your brand strongly connects with your values (as everything in your life, you SHOULD connect it to your values, otherwise you will do poorly, including your job and your personal life). Unless you are a branding expert you will have a hard time doing this, it’s ok, dedicate some time every now and then. Get a rough picture, you want to be perceived as the go getter, will kill you to finish the job type of guy? Will you want to be perceived as the funny, I will make you laugh when you are mad?. Here the word is consistency, to change perception (from bad to good, or from cero to something) you need to repeat and repeat (that’s why they repeat commercial in many places, so it gets engraved in your head), if you think in facial tissues, you are most likely thinking in Kleenex, that is a powerful brand, you think in soda and you go for Coke (or maybe Pepsi), etc.

In short, identify the brand you want to be known for, and then do a lot of marketing around it. I am not saying tasteless, shameless, moronic marketing, either I am not saying go and explain others your brand literally, I am saying try to connect everything you can to build value to the brand.

So you have a product (you), you have a brand, you have a set of values, now you have your company. You want to sell more (or at a better price), you know understand marketing and sales importance, you are an entrepreneur, you are the CEO of yourself. The question now is: is your stock going up or going down?

5 really useful things you get from College that will help you get a job

We all have studied things we didn’t cared during our life, and then when we went to college we expected it was all going to be relevant to our future professional life, chances are, it was not. But that doesn’t mean higher education has no value, actually it has a lot of value, but unless you know how to capitalize it, it may just be money down the drain.

There are a few professions were this doesn’t apply, were all what you learn in college will really matter for a long time, like physicians or lawyers. But for most, it’s a different story.

If you read my Survival guide for the first years in your professional life (coming soon) you will know that there is a big disappointment moving to hit you in the face, and college for the most part didn’t prepared you for that.

So let’s see, what it is, that you will actually use from college in terms of your future career:

There are 5 key things you will need in the future: a personal brand, a personal network, ability to learn, experience and enough knowledge for your field of work to have meaningful discussions and contributions and college (or an equivalent) will help you with all of them. By the way, all the garbage that your teacher made you memorize, it’s useless, just as you expected…

A Personal Brand means how you are perceived by others (remember perception is reality in many cases), how does a group of people that knows you refers to you? Maybe they don’t even know how you are and therefore you have a very week brand, maybe they think you are the go getter, the guy that can do it and solve every problem (chances are you are not this guy, so don’t get cocky) but either way, this “brand” is a key piece in your future. So the question is how can I increase my “brand” value leveraging my college education? Well pretty easy, your schools pedigree (Harvard as an example), your grades, your knowledge and culture, your education and key activities that you did like president of a newspaper and the reputation you build during school all contribute to build your brand. Remember also that unless communicated properly these factors are useless, so some smart marketing can also help in here, read my Elegant Bragging. And you thought that being humble was going to work post (coming soon) to learn more.

A Personal Network is maybe the biggest asset you should build over time, who do you know is more important than anything else (it’s a cliché, but its true). Your friends from college will be your bosses, the employees you recruit to build a team, your network to find a job, the guys that will present you someone you need, etc. Foster and build a good network and you will harvest it for many years to come. Another way to put it is what Bill Gates said in one university years ago, be kind to the nerd next to you, he will be your boss one day.

Ability to learn is a key skill, so all the stupid things that you have learned have value, not because you will use that information, but because you exercised a muscle that you will use your entire life: how to learn new things. Using shortcuts in college like short term memorization, cheating, etc. help you in the short term, but are lost opportunities to train your capacity to learn.

Experience is in the working world what grades are in your academic studies. It’s the best proof that you know how to do something. No boss cares what your grades were in college, maybe if it was an amazing honorary degree or something very nice it can help in the Personal Branding part, but besides that, no one cares. But you can show off experiences, everyone cares if you worked as an assistant to the accountant for two years (and not if you scored 10 in accounting), especially if you can mention one or two important things you did during that time (like doing the taxes for all the 15 employees and saving them $200 USD each). Experience in college is possible but not easy, look for opportunities. You can read more on experience on Get experience without experience, break the chicken egg (coming soon).  , and on Nutshellize yourself. Telling your story to maximize your personal impact situation (coming soon)

Enough knowledge for your intended profession is indispensable, in particular you need to have the vocabulary, the communication protocols, and know how to do what you should do. For example if you have a job as a computer technician, you need to know how to use computers, know the computer related terms, how to do email and chat and finally whatever you should be doing as a technician of computers. You can get a job in something other than your field, that is pretty common, but you need to have enough knowledge to avoid looking stupid (damaging your Personal Brand) and buying enough time to learn what you need while doing something of value.

Having a Personal Network, or a good Personal Brand or any of the others does not guarantee success, but the lack of them can almost guarantee failure. Invest time to build this basic infrastructure during your years as student, but continue building them over time with each consecutive work and opportunity. If you don’t do it on time, you will end up using additional years building it and therefore delaying your professional promotions a few years until you become successful in the basics.

For the rest of the time in college, have fun, it’s going to be the last great period of your life.

Best of luck

Felipe