Tag Archives: personal branding

Crashing, Healing and Rejuvenating Your Career Like Never Before

V2-121219757

Steve Fretzin
President
Sales Results, Inc.

You’ve heard the story before. A young gun 20-something in Sales living the bachelor’s life at a fast pace. He’s making it happen with all the material possessions that point to success – a nice paycheck, condo, a Porsche in the garage and late nights at all the hot spots in town.

Then Steve Fretzin climbed into a small plane and his outlook on life as an entrepreneur changed forever.

“I was taking a little mini-vacation with some friends and flew up to Eagle River, Wisconsin for the day to play around. One of my friends was the pilot. On our return flight, we lost our engine thousands of feet up.”

The plane crashed into a house in Crystal Lake. While feeling lucky to have survived the experience, Fretzin was badly hurt and his recovery over the next several months was anything but pleasant.

“Basically, it was the most excruciating pain I had ever felt in my life,” Fretzin recalls. “I had torn the meniscus in my knee, broken right arm and dislocated my left shoulder and hip from my body. Meanwhile, I was having nightmares about falling out of the sky.”

Upon healing after the long road back, Fretzin had the wake-up call about having a greater perspective on life and “living every day as if it were your last,” that you might expect when one has a life-altering experience. But it wasn’t confined to his personal relationships. He had a wake-up call for his career too.

“Though I seemingly had a lot of nice material things, I was lost in my priorities and overall desire to make the most of each day,” he says. “Once I peeled back the layers of the onion, I realized that I wasn’t really happy in my job. I was going through the motions and needed to get serious about the meaning behind what I did for a living. What could I do every day where I could look myself in the mirror and feel good about my role in this world?”

Today, as the President of Sales Results, Inc., Fretzin has become one of the top sales trainers in the Chicagoland area and has appeared on several media outlets as an authority on sales, networking and how to create deeper connections in business through developing strategic partnerships.

Hopefully you’ll never have a traumatic experience as Fretzin did in order to find the focus of your life’s work, but here are the top 5 suggestions he makes to entrepreneurs struggling with how to channel their professional purpose:

#1 No matter how smart you are, everyone needs help.

Find someone who knows more than you and has a skill set you don’t have. Bring people into your life who help you. “Thomas Edison didn’t do everything on his own,” Fretzin explains. “He actually surrounded himself with people who had complementary skill sets. Just as the President does with his Cabinet. So ask yourself who you can bring in as a friend, partner and mentor to help you. Top executives have coaches. I continue to do that with my business every day.”

#2 Genuinely help people and build relationships so that when you need help, you can call on them.

You can’t just be a “Taker” – you need to get to know people, help people and stay in contact for the relationship to blossom. You shouldn’t just sit on your rear end and expect strong relationships to happen.

 

#3 Time is your most precious asset

“My whole day revolves around business development – but it’s not just about sending out e-mails,” Fretzin says. As he sees it, entrepreneurs often have a difficult time shoving off the “busywork” that might be done during off hours, which interferes with what absolutely needs to happen during the day. “You’ve got to get out there doing productive things for your business. Who are your strategic partners? When was the last time you were in touch with them and what referrals have you brought one another lately? What networking events are you attending? Can working on that proposal wait until later tonight so you aren’t eating up precious face time with people today?”

Even here, Fretzin says that people can confuse activity with progress. Which is why he is a big proponent of setting an agenda for each meeting and by the end of that meeting, both parties agreeing to specific and actionable steps to see if there’s a fit from a networking or sales perspective.

 

#4 Never stop learning.

It is critical to continue your education and never stop learning.  Whether it’s learning sales, how to interpret web analytics or social media, it’s imperative to commit yourself to learning new things.  People who stop learning and believe they’ve learned all they’re going to learn will get stale. If you do read something you know, it’s will simply reinforce that you are on the right track.

#5 Don’t “sell” people, but rather walk them through a buying decision.

That’s right. A sales coach which is telling you not to sell in order to drive the business forward. In his new book entitled “Sales-Free Selling: The Death of Sales and the Rise of a New Methodology,” Fretzin explains that in today’s competitive marketplace, there’s no reason to carry the traditional sales approach into a meeting.

“People don’t want to be sold. What you really need to do is walk the buyer through a decision. When you stop selling and start listening more, you’re in a much better position to understand a buyers needs and help them make a better business decision.”

In a time where we hustle through life trying to make sense of it all, it is critical to reflect on what you have, what you want and how you are going to make the most of each day. In the words of Mr. Fretzin, “live each day as if it were your last. You’ll be surprised how much you accomplish.”

Read more: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20121219/BLOGS06/121219757/entrepreneur-crashes-and-finds-career-purpose-from-the-wreckage#ixzz2FWaGsQea
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Personal branding friends and I chat on Blog Talk Radio’s “Metropolis”

Deborah Shane, host of "Metropolis"

Yesterday, it was my distinct honor to join my colleagues at the Personal Branding Blog for Deborah Shane’s Blog Talk Radio program, “Metropolis.” In addition to myself and Deb Shane, the panel included Wendy Brache, Devin Hughes and Elinor Stutz. 

If you have about 30 minutes to spare, I think you’ll find it a worthwhile listen as we covered some great ground on personal branding in the digital age. Click on the show’s link above and let me know what you think.

You Are Not Your Business Card.

There’s a question we all seem to get in networking situations – “What do you do?” Invariably, we answer with“I’m a (occupation) and I work for (company).”

I started thinking about how this defines so very little about why people find our personal brands memorable. We lead with what’s on our business card. But when people talk about you to others, what will they say?

Having just finished the excellent Guy Kawasaki book, “Enchantment,” I’ve realized that likability and trust make for a more compelling position than simply relying on where you work and what you do to bowl people over. Primarily because it shares so little of you as a person.

“He’s a great accountant.”
Not bad, I suppose. But I’ve heard the beginning and end of the whole story.

“The guy oozes talent and niceness from every pore. He made the process of working with him a complete and utter joy.”
Wow. I want to know more. Why was that process so enjoyable? Can I meet him? And by the way, wouldn’t we all want to be described in this way instead?

How does one get to a description like the second option?

A good place to start is to de-business card yourself. I don’t mean actually trashing them all but mentally learning to strip away the contents. All of it. The company. The title. The e-mail address. The phone number. Even the occupation itself.

Imagine all that going out the window. What’s left?

If you find yourself grasping for an answer, don’t feel bad. The first time I thought about this, I called myself a “content marketer” or “brand strategist.” But I knew I was so much more than that. So I became excited by the challenge of conveying myself as a brand and who I envisioned myself to be. This led me to consider the best places to express this personal brand:

Some good places to start:

Your LinkedIn Profile
So many people consider just the summary and work history of LinkedIn. But think about the applications you can add that convey other factors, like what you’re reading (Amazon Reading List), what your interests are (don’t just list the professional ones) and Groups (boards, country clubs, etc.). Assuming you’ve had positive connections, those Recommendations will inevitably help people see the side of you that’s a relationship builder – so don’t be afraid to ask colleagues and clients for them!

Blog
I can’t say enough about how a blog will help you develop an original voice that’s helpful, humble and eager to share content. Building credibility is important, but the reward isn’t in trying to be an all-knowing authority that never gets a response. The reward is in inspiring conversation that grows beyond a post and takes on a life of its own (all the while, the positive attributes of bringing a “community” together are credited back to you).

Twitter
People are feeling you out to see if you’re someone worth following. Here lies an opportunity to prove your thought leadership and show your passions on a topic unique to your industry that extends far outside just “what you do” and “who you work for.” One tool I like to use to add depth and context to my tweets is PeerIndex. The broader my PeerIndex “topic fingerprint,” the more it overlaps nearby related topics and the more I tend to garner interest. For example, if you tweet about a new piece of technology, you may expand your authority by conveying how that technology has implications for media or science rather than commenting purely on whether or not you like it.

YouTube
It takes some practice to get comfortable in front of the camera, but if you do, it can go a long way toward someone visualizing taking a meeting with you. As you do engage in YouTube videos, however, I encourage you not to picture yourself merely as “VP of…” Again, think above and beyond your current status and instead picture yourself as a leader, resource, a helpful ally in a peer’s search to find answers. Think of how transparent you can be on a topic that stirs your passions. Then keep a schedule of when you can consistently record and upload videos.

We’d all like to think we’ll be at an employer that makes us happy for quite some time – and perhaps we will be. But even so, developing your personal brand beyond what your business card says you are enables you to define yourself as something so much more than a title and occupation – a likable, trustworthy personal brand that people can’t get enough of.

(This post originally ran in PersonalBrandingBlog.com)

6 ways your personal brand can inject a Darren Clarke-ness to it

I can recall viewing Darren Clarke on the cover of a now-defunct golf magazine a few years back, with a stogie in his mouth, smiling and speaking inside the interior of the mag of his love of Guinness. And when Clarke won the British Open today, it got me thinking about why this man is so beloved, certainly in Europe and really much further than those boundaries. We can learn a lot about personal branding in his triumph and journey to this point.

#1: He is relatable to the people who are his Fans, who see bits of themselves in him.
More than once, commentators over the last few days asked that very question to Clarke himself and his reply was essentially that he was the “Everyman.” Clarke drinks. He smokes. He drives fast cars. He loves his family and is intensely loyal to them.

So many of us who smack sticks at a tiny little white ball on the weekend aren’t going to join the Tour anytime soon. We’re doing the best we can but we’re not always in the perfect shape. We like to partake of a beer or two on the course or at least in the clubhouse. Some of us curse at the stupid ball. Some of us puff away at a cigar. We’re Darren Clarke but our scores are much worse.

Why are we afraid to show this side of our personal brands? Because it wouldn’t be “professional?” Give me a break. That’s fear talking. Fear of what other people will think of us. Fear that we can’t command respect.

One professional just went out into the world today with his personal brand on full display, against the best players in the world…and won. Don’t tell me you can’t do the same. I’m not telling you to wear t-shirts into a meeting – that’s silly. I’m telling you that authenticity and success are same page material, not polar opposites.

#2: He is not afraid to show emotion. 
When Clarke’s first wife passed away from breast cancer, he did what any human with a pulse would do. He grieved, he stepped away from the game for a little while, he allowed himself to mentally regroup and in time, he got back into playing with the support of others around him. But when he triumphed on the course upon his return, he broke down and let us in to show us he was not a robot but a human being with feelings.

When he was in the thick of competition on the last day of the most important tournament of his life, he allowed himself to smile a little more than everyone else around him. How many times do we say that branding is an “emotional connection?”

#3: You are not defined by what you “do.”
You are not your title.
You are not your department.
You are not your function or area of expertise.
You are not who you work for.

If you think this is your personal brand, you aren’t digging hard enough.

Because someday, someone else will have your title, your job and your function. That’s all replaceable stuff. What else have you got? Plenty, I assure you. What pieces of you come together to form an identifiable, admirable, talked-about personal brand?

It’s about beliefs and choices that stir emotions deep within you that you will proudly wear and go to battle for.
Do not mistake the “personal” aspects for being “private” aspects that aren’t worth expressing.

Richard Branson’s appeal is not that he is the CEO of Virgin. That’s boring. You know it and I know it. Richard Branson’s appeal is that he’s a risk-taker and adventurer who does certain things in business that cause people to watch with anticipation on what he’s doing now and what he will do next. He could fall on his face doing it, but so what? He can do it because that’s HIM. It comes naturally to him.

Among other things, you are defined by what you believe, how you treat others, how others view you and the relationships that matter in your life, both personally and professionally. We’re talking the things in life you don’t apologize for because, for better or worse, that’s YOU.

#4: Define your personal brand more by what you are and enjoy –  rather than what you aren’t and hate.
I just don’t think there’s a lot of appeal in being the “anti-” person because you’re only saying what you aren’t. Not what you stand for. It may clarify a bit but it doesn’t cause people to gravitate to you in itself. When you begin thinking about your personal brand development, it’s OK if you have thoughts of people, companies and ideas that don’t mesh with your belief system. But don’t stop there. Think about why that is. Why you think and feel that way.

#5: Embrace the “work in progress” of your personal brand.
Having it all figured out is dull. Life is about adding aspects of your development, figuring out the context of how they fit into your personal brand, deciding to accept them or not, then understanding how to express them. Your personal brand will evolve over time and that’s quite natural. In fact, it’s fun. Just make sure to keep it evolving.

#6: Never apologize.
If it feels like something that you’re going to be so passionate about that you’re going to wear it on your sleeve, consequences be damned, you’re on the right track. Winners never have to. Sharing what you love can be to the benefit of you personally if not professionally. It is not about the quantity of people who follow you on Twitter. It is about the quality of relationships and commanded respect as a result of that personal brand. Someone who is a “social media expert” who blathers on 100% about social media is boring. When that person injects a little personality in his or her communication, even if it’s 10% or less of his content, the spectrum of who you connect with expands. This can come from mixing it up with pictures shared on Flickr, funny videos on YouTube, sports opinions, you get the idea.

Again, it’s not merely about your job. It’s about putting your passions on display – some of that may involve what you do for a living, but it won’t be ALL of it.

Gary Vaynerchuck is a guy who, if he only talked about wine reviews, would be a boring guy. His personal brand would blend in. But this guy is someone who is an unabashed Jets fan who curses liberally as he gives reviews on Cabernet through online videos. He’s not your typical sommelier at a fancy restaurant or a food critic with your typical newspaper column. He swishes the liquid around and spits into a football helmet for all the world to see. And that’s what is great about him. He is qualified and credible to be sure, but he also injects personality into the message without apology. A guy you’d like to hang out with and listen to who also happens to know a lot about wine.

Just like Darren Clarke is a guy you’d like to hang out with who also happened to win one of the toughest tournaments in the world.