Quotable Notable: Robert Baden-Powell
Brownie Point: No Matter How Good You Think You Are, You Can Always Be Better
Preparation—The Concept, Rationale, and Importance
6.5 Fresh Steps toward Preparing Yourself
Take Your Pulse: Self-assessment questions measuring your efforts to prepare yourself
Fresh Technologies: Personal Organizers, GPS systems
The Doggie Bag: The Preparing Yourself Takeaways
“Be Prepared … the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.”
—ROBERT BADEN-POWELL (1857–1941)
A British military officer and baron, Robert Baden-Powell founded the World Scouting Movement, known in the United States as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Inspired by the bravery and dedication of young cadets he served with during the turn-of-the-century Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell hoped that Scouting would promote honesty, service, courage, citizenship, character, leadership, and health among young people. He successfully built a brand that today spans the globe and is universally recognized as helping to develop future leaders.
After spending a couple of years at that first post-college job, I realized my situation had become stagnant and I was looking for a new job where I could grow personally and professionally. I wanted to stay within retail, because I enjoyed managing and leading people. I also knew I wanted to work for a larger company, one that could offer more opportunity for growth.
I got a call from a college buddy one afternoon, telling me that he had seen an ad in the paper for a retail manager opening at a Fortune 5 company, and that they would be interviewing the following week. I immediately located the ad and called the company’s recruiter, who had me fax over my resume.
Two days later, the recruiter called back to schedule my first phone interview. During this initial conversation, the recruiter stressed that they were not looking to simply fill a role that day, but were looking for future senior leaders, people who could get results and lead other people as they grew into senior leadership. She went on to state that the chosen fast-track candidate would have to start out working in one of their stores to get a grasp of the business and to be more closely evaluated. I completed the 2.5-hour phone interview and quickly moved on to a second 2.5-hour phone interview with the recruiting manager, who essentially stressed the same things. They wanted to find someone with strong leadership skills who could get results through people.
Two weeks later, I had my third interview, a face-to-face sit-down at the company’s offices in West Palm Beach, Florida (did I mention the job would “force” me to relocate to West Palm Beach?). I went through a panel interview with four executives from the company. I was told that they had narrowed the field down to seven candidates (of course I was one of them). I told them about my successes in my existing job as well as the successful leadership I had demonstrated in college, and explained how I would take what I had learned and apply it to my role as field retail manager to take the business to the next level.
The company extended an offer to me a couple of weeks later, so I moved to West Palm Beach and started out as the retail manager of a 24-hour convenience business, the type of business with the highest turnover in the high-turnover retail industry. I viewed it as a giant foot in the door of a Fortune 5 company, and learned during my first 90 days that I didn’t want to stay in that particular position for too long. It was too much of a taste of reality.
I asked myself, “How do I get where I want to be?” I started eyeing a regional operational manager position (a senior leadership role in the company), which they had sold me on during the initial interview. They had promised if I performed exceptionally well here that the fast-track program I was a part of would allow me to accelerate my growth and move into a leadership role quickly. “If I want to get to that level, then this is my introduction to them and their introduction to me,” I told myself.
So I obtained the description of the regional operational manager position and saw that its key attributes were the ability to lead different levels of people, influence others, drive deeper results, and generally maintain a competitive edge. I didn’t want to waste any time on launching my journey to this senior leadership role. I decided it was time to begin networking with people who would help me more fully develop those skills so I could make sure my results stood out above my peers.
As a first step, I asked my boss, “What defines success for you? How do you rank the members of your team?”
He replied, “I most highly rank people who get results through people without being abrasive, who are concerned with development of others, who focus on delivering to the internal and external customer. Good team players.”
This helped me identify my gaps that would possibly prevent me from running up the corporate ladder. My results were good, and I received high praise for customer service and motivating people, but I was number three out of the company’s retail managers—two people were better. They were good team players that had reached out to others in the company. I, on the other hand, had been more selfish in my approach and focused on delivering results in my own little bubble.
I realized I needed passionate experts to work for me, but how would I motivate people to deliver above and beyond, and invest in their development so that they would invest in mine? I networked with peers and with executives above me; I called and emailed them asking to spend time and find out what they did. In return, I showed them how I performed exemplary customer service and motivated front liners to do the same—areas where I was superior to most managers in the company.
Furthermore, I noticed that the two retail managers ranked above me were outgoing people who were leading extra projects and generally going beyond the job and outside of their comfort zone. I signed up for a mentorship program for new managers and developed a new manager’s survival guide (the company started using this as part of the field training for new managers). I also led a project on diversity and inclusion and how it impacted marketing and sales in the twenty-first century. Anything I could volunteer for, I did. Within 18 months, I was considered the number-one retail manager in the company.
Preparation helps you get a large part of the substance for your brand building. Earlier in your career, this can be used to help you conduct stellar interviews with the best companies and have your pick of the job that best suits your personal and professional goals. Later in your career, you can use preparation to make you a top performer and to obtain the promotions and accolades that will propel your career forward at a breakneck speed, while helping you attain a high level of personal and professional success.
Being prepared means continuing your education through classes, professional development, building and contributing to formal and informal networks, and simply maintaining an active intellectual interest and knowledge capital in your career and your life, staying current on the latest business trends and demands in your field, taking on project assignments, asking your boss what you can do to become a better performer, and seizing every opportunity to stay front and center by volunteering for committees and gladly accepting additional work.
Let’s get this clear: YOU are solely and ultimately responsible for your personal and professional success, which is achieved by becoming a fresh and competitive brand and avoiding “generic” like the plague. You should ask your bosses, friends, Branding Board of Advisers (more on that shortly), and colleagues to do one or more of the following:
You want to build a brand that competes internally and externally in the open marketplace. The more universal appeal it has, the more competitive it is. You always want to increase the equity of your brand by staying fresh, thus increasing your competitive edge. This gives you an enormous amount of personal and professional freedom, which leads to greater personal and professional success. Remember this simple formula:
Brand Equity + Brand Freedom = Greater Success
When you become a competitive brand, you become a magnet for attractive opportunities internally and externally; you move to a phase where you are not sitting on edge if the company or organization announces some type of reorganization, right sizing, left sizing, middle sizing, downsizing, or going-out-of-business sizing. Nor will you get lost in a sea of generic resumes, and, for you entrepreneurs, you will spend less money and time trying to convince customers that you and/or your products and services are the “best.” Instead, you will spend that time adding more value for the customer and offering an experience that they will knock your doors down to get to.
All this time and effort you are putting into preparation really comes down to laying the groundwork so you can achieve one direct goal: Create brand demand so people pay you exponentially. When you see the end result put so plainly, doesn’t all the exertion suddenly seem much more worthwhile?
While it may seem a little ironic to take 6.5 steps of preparation to become prepared, the reality is that everything in life, even preparation, takes preparation to achieve. Now say that three times fast! In all seriousness, true preparation is an orderly, logical process that I have broken down into 6.5 concise steps:
Follow these steps and you will be surprised by not only how prepared you find yourself for any eventuality, but how much developing this kind of thorough preparedness will add value to your brand.
This step may seem deceptively easy to follow. For most people, what you really want to do is “succeed.” If pressed further, people will usually define success along the lines of “make lots of money” or “marry the girl/guy of my dreams” or even the catchall “be happy.”
Money, love, and happiness are all worthwhile life achievements, but in and of themselves they represent abstract goals. How will you make lots of money? How will you land a professional career that equals success to you? What will you do to improve yourself personally so that you can attract your ideal mate? What will bring you true, lasting happiness? You’ve got to be more specific in defining what you want to do, because there is no way to truly prepare yourself to meet vague, general goals.
Let’s take a more specific example from my own experience. An executive leader colleague once asked me the question and my response went something like, “I want a career that will allow me to lead a diverse team while progressively learning how to influence through deeper layers of a Fortune 100 organization. I also want to simultaneously build a personal brand that can compete internally and externally and help me achieve both personal and professional success.”
Now, the end result of my achieving these specific goals may well wind up fulfilling more general goals of money, love, and happiness. If I become a leader at a Fortune 100 corporation, I will probably earn a big salary; success in the business world often makes people more confident and assertive, which are traits that a romantic partner will likely find appealing; and doing exactly what I want with my life should create feelings of self-worth and satisfaction that are key to any lasting personal happiness. If I hadn’t taken the time to do some reflecting and determined what it is I really want to do, those general goals that almost everyone has would probably stay beyond my reach.
This is another question whose answer is a lot less obvious than it appears at first glance. I hope you answered with a resounding “YES!” I know I sure did. But as with Step 1, really wanting concrete success is a different proposition than desiring success in the more general sense.
Really wanting concrete success means dedicating your entire life to doing what you really want to do and building your personal brand. It means making large personal sacrifices—you may have to move far from family and friends to take a key promotion, or volunteer to work extra time on the weekend, or take professional development courses on top of your already busy work schedule.
If you really want success, you’ll make these types of sacrifices, and you may have to make them over and over. I’m not advocating becoming a workaholic to the point where you leave a spouse or child neglected, abandon other important family obligations, or become a complete recluse. I am, however, letting you know that really wanting success means making some hard choices and choosing long-term results over short-term pleasures.
If you’re not willing to make these kinds of sacrifices, you may not really want the type of success this book is priming you to achieve. This book is preparing you to catapult yourself into exponential and sustainable success, not the common generic pseudo-success that only happens for a day or, at best, a season. You will by no means be doomed to a life in the gutter, but you will also likely find yourself stuck somewhere in the middle, looking up at the people who have built truly successful brands, quite possibly wondering why they got all the “luck” and you were left behind.
This is one of those questions with no right answer. As mentioned earlier in the book, no two people will have the same notion of personal and professional success, nor should they. A salesperson seeking to climb to the top of his field has a very different end goal than a doctor seeking to climb to the top of her field. Likewise, someone who has always dreamed of a traditional home and family life has different personal priorities than someone who seeks the “single” lifestyle.
For me, success looks like having the financial ability to support a “beyond comfortable” lifestyle while giving financially, spiritually, and professionally out of my abundance of skills, talents, abilities, and assets. I want the recipients of my giving to be my friends, family, colleagues, and even strangers. Everything I do is geared toward helping to paint this picture of success.
For example, through this book I intend to share my skills, abilities, and assets with the reading public—which includes friends, family, colleagues, and strangers. Don’t feel constrained by the boundaries of my picture of personal and professional success—paint your own. As long as it is an honest picture, it will never steer you wrong!
I alluded to this step in Step 2. A big part of really wanting success is going the extra mile to push yourself. Notice I did not say “being willing” to go the extra mile, but actually “going” the extra mile. Our society heavily focuses on having the will to accomplish things, and it’s true that without a strong will, no great achievements are possible. But just having the will without taking the action is like being a wallflower at the high school dance—you spend the evening gazing longingly at all the pretty girls you want to dance with and never ask any of them to dance!
So go the extra mile. Start now. Ask your company’s HR department for a list of all open positions that are available above yours. If you see one that is a good fit with your personal vision of success, start doing whatever is necessary to make yourself a leading candidate. Extend your network and bring people in who can bring value to your personal and professional life. Do something that adds value for your customers that your competitors wouldn’t think of doing. Spend 40 percent of your monthly time developing skills that will translate to the professional marketplace—these are just a few things you can do now.
Going the extra mile should never involve doing anything a person of reasonable conscience would consider immoral, unethical, or illegal. There are many dark and nasty shortcuts that may aid your rise in the professional world, but cheaters are invariably discovered, and the old adage that you see the same people on the way down as you did on the way up has stuck around so long because it is absolutely true!
Humans have an intrinsic need to celebrate successes. That is why we use rituals to mark victorious occasions. College graduations are noted with commencement ceremonies, weddings may be honored with both religious and secular festivities, and athletic achievements are rewarded with the public dispersal of medals and trophies.
Therefore, part of your preparation for building a brand that will deliver personal and professional success should be planning ways to celebrate your success. Keep in mind that the ritual does not have to mark the end of your celebration. Perhaps once you obtain a senior executive position in your field, you will want to have a party with family and friends. But what about the morning after? Successful college graduates, married couples, and athletes do not simply shut down after they celebrate their achievements. They move forward through their lives, continuing to find positive ways to make something out of the success they have achieved and seeking to maintain it at a high level.
In my case, I celebrate the success I have achieved by traveling the country and inspiring, motivating, and showing others how to achieve personal and professional success. I also plan to start a foundation where I can sow seeds into the lives of young people, especially in the area of personal branding and communication, and to spend six weeks a year visiting the world.
You may have very different notions about how to celebrate your success, and that is fine. Just remember that success is meant to be shared, not hoarded, and to those whom much is given, much is expected!
Overnight success is virtually impossible, and even in “self-made” success stories, individuals rarely do it entirely by themselves. A crucial part of the time and effort you need to put into building your successful brand is identifying and recruiting the people who will help you make it happen. I like to refer to this group of people as your “Branding Board of Advisers.” I have my own board that I call the “Fresh Brown Board.” This board is critical to my success.
Here are a few helpful hints on how to choose your own Branding Board of Advisers:
Still a little unclear on what exactly constitutes a Branding Board of Advisers? Here are my actual positions on the Fresh Brown Board:
Chief Results Officer—That’s me, Michael D. Brown. I am very clear that I own my success; although others might be facilitators, cheerleaders, and enablers—the buck stops here. If I fail or achieve less than my desired goal, it is ultimately my responsibility.
Finance Minister—He’s my financial adviser who makes sure that I am on track with my success plan. I often think about voting him off, usually in April when he advises (he preaches, actually) me that I need to have a little more discipline with spending.
Keep It Real and Balanced Coach—She has been around the longest and has a candid way of reeling me in.
Director of Praise and Public Relations (four positions)—One person focuses on my work as a speaker, one focuses on my work as a coach, one focuses on my work as an author, and one focuses on my work as a trainer. They believe strongly in both my personal and professional brand, and they proactively spread the word. These folks also provide me with fresh feedback about what I can do to better meet the needs of new and future clients or employers.
Director of Brand and Creative Director—He makes sure that the brand is represented in everything that has my name attached to it: my resume, my business cards, my postage stamps, my voice-mail, my signature on my email, my Facebook page, my Twitter page, my networking profile, my website, my book layout, my everything. He makes sure that it all ties back to my brand of Fresh Results.
Director of Interpretation—Thank God for this position, otherwise you would be reading a series of dreams, just as they came out. Whether I am on a plane, at dinner, driving down the road, or sleeping—a plethora of ideas just seem to flourish. So I grab whatever I can find and just start writing. My Director of Interpretation (also known as my editor) helps me make sense of it all.
Resting on your laurel wreath is easy, but it also signifies the death of your personal brand. The professional world is full of former success stories that burned out or gave up: people who stopped trying and started coasting on past accomplishments. Some people are able to make a decent living doing just that, but this mindset goes against everything Fresh PASSION is about.
Fresh PASSION is about maximizing your talents and abilities every day of your life, to achieve continuing success at levels you may never have imagined were possible. It is not about establishing a definite finish line and then hanging back and laying low once you reach it! So stay hungry—actually, stay starving—and never let yourself get totally satisfied—especially with mediocrity.
As with achieving and maintaining freshness, the acronym MISS (mindset, image, skills, and substance) is highly relevant to achieving and maintaining preparation (see the previous chapter for a refresher on MISS if you need to). MISS is one of the best ways to take that extra half step of taking your preparation out into the real world and constantly building it to newer and greater heights.
How prepared are you? Have you taken the necessary preparations in your personal and professional life to establish a brand that will guarantee your success? It’s time for a heart check on your preparedness level. Answer each question using the following scale of one to five hearts. Then add up the total and see how “heart-healthy” your preparation really is!
6.5 I gain a new competitive skill on at least a quarterly basis.
Now that you’ve taken the test, let’s analyze your score:
So you have followed the 6.5 steps to achieving true preparation for building a successful personal brand. If you have truly followed them, you know that preparation is an ongoing, lifelong commitment, and you should never reach a point where you think you are totally prepared and it’s time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Enjoyment and relaxation are certainly allowed (and encouraged), but not to the point that you lose your fresh edge!
Use the form on the following pages to track your continuing efforts at achieving maximum preparation for the kind of personal and professional success you know you deserve. In the spirit of never being prepared enough, we have included a blank “Overachiever” column in this chart where you can jot down ideas that will help you get and stay prepared even beyond your success-minded colleagues who have read this book and are following its advice!
Test your preparedness by writing a text message in the space here that explains how you have prepared yourself to build a successful personal brand. If you are truly prepared, you should be able to quickly describe the major points of your strategy in text message format, meaning it can be read in 10 seconds or less. Take inspiration from the brevity of the Scout motto—“Be Prepared”!
One of the biggest hallmarks of a successful person is punctuality. Successful people are rarely late, always on time, and usually early. Most smartphones and portable computers have personal organizer/automatic reminder capabilities. Also a GPS system is a worthwhile investment for your automobile. Arriving to places on time by car is tough enough with the realities of modern traffic; there is no need to throw getting lost into the mix of travel delays!
Visit www.MyFreshBrand.com for a wide variety of downloadable features that will help you achieve Fresh PASSION in your life and career. You can also access a helpful MISS chart at www.MyFreshBrand.com that will ease your efforts to maintain the highest levels of mindset, image, skills, and substance preparation possible.
6.5 Fresh PASSION is about maximizing your talents and abilities every day of your life in order to achieve continuing success at levels you may never have imagined were possible. Therefore, you will never be fully prepared. No matter how much groundwork you lay or how high you soar, there are always more advance steps to take and greater heights to reach. Keep a little hunger burning in your stomach and never assume you’ve “got it made!”
