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Tag Archive: perceptions

3 Questions for a Brighter Future

Written on December 30, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Goals

questions You and you alone create your future. You are the only person, place or thing with that power. With that being the case, it's up to you to create the future of your dreams.

One way to do that is to look back so you can look forward. Reflecting upon the past and pulling lessons away so your future is bigger and brighter. With the New Year upon us, now is a great time to review last year so next year lives up to its promise for you.

There's a simple three-stage framework for performing this exercise. It involves asking yourself three questions:

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What?

Start with the actual events of this year. What happened? Describe major events in your life. As you record your answers, test your perceptions to make sure they reflect the reality of the situation. If it helps, pretend that you are a reporter objectively recording the facts of the event.

So what?

At this stage, you move from reporting to understanding, from logic to emotion. That's why it was so important to get the facts right in the first step. What did this experience mean to you? How did it make you feel? Why did you feel that way? What have you learned?

Now what?

The previous two questions lead to this one. How will you apply the lessons you learned? What specific actions will you take as a result of the events you've outlined?

These three simple questions serve as a great outline to review major events in your life and develop forward-thinking plans to be a bigg success.

Let’s look at a couple of examples, using events from 2008.

Example: Volatile stocks

What?
The stock market can be very volatile.

So what?
I can lose money if I don’t understand the risk and how to manage it.

Now what?
I will learn more about investing and asset allocation. I won’t invest money in stocks that I will need in the next ten years. I will pay closer attention to my quarterly reports to make sure I maintain the proper asset allocation given my age and goals.

Example: Layoffs

What?
Times are tough at work; layoffs are possible.

So what?
It makes me nervous. I think I could lose my job.

Now what?
I will look for ways to help my company save money. I will make sure my boss is aware of the projects I complete successfully. I will look for opportunities to add additional skills so I’m more competitive.

Solid goals

In our examples, the “Now what’s” are a little bit fuzzy. You really want to refine them to turn them into solid goals. For instance, looking at the second example, instead of saying “I will look for ways to help my company save money,” turn that into “I will find one way to save my company $X (you pick a relevant amount) in the next 30 days.”

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We really appreciate you taking the time to read our post today. Join us next time when we look at the most important people of 2008. We think you’ll be surprised at our choices! Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Get People to Buy into Your Personal Brand with This

Written on April 7, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Business, Entrepreneurship, Personal Branding

Think about a brand you regularly use. Why do you use it?

Chances are it boils down to this – you’ve come to trust that brand because you know what to expect.

Here’s a little understood point:

It’s better to be consistently average (that means mediocre), than to have occasional spurts of greatness followed by spells of disappointing performance.

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Consistency is critical because people like to know what to expect. That’s the reason brands have thrived.

Some of you may remember traveling in the days before chain restaurants and hotels. You never knew what you were going to get. Sometimes it would be great; at other times, it was a disaster.

So the chains grew because people knew what they could expect, no matter where they were. Travelers didn’t want to roll the dice so they settled for the consistency that the chains provided.

So how does all this apply to you and your personal brand?

It comes down to two things – performance and personality.

Performance
Performance means delivering on promises. Quality, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness all play into the value you create. Day-to-day, people form perceptions of what you can do. You have to consistently meet those expectations in order to continue building trust in your brand.

Personality
How pleasant you are to deal with? How do you handle tough situations? How do you treat people? All these, and more, form expectations of how easy is it to work with you.

One of the biggest destroyers of your personal brand is moodiness. When we’re moody, people don’t know what to expect. They start to avoid us. It’s hard to work with moody people.

You may not be able to prevent moodiness, but you can keep it check. You don’t need to share it with the world!

More on personal branding

For What Will You Be Famous?

3 Tips To Thrive In Your Career

The Best Way to Build Your Personal Brand

Our bigg quote today comes from George Ross, the man who used to sit at Donald Trump’s right hand on The Apprentice:

“To be successful, you have to be able to relate to people; they
have to be satisfied with your personality to be able to do
business with you and to build a relationship with mutual trust.”

And mutual trust is something you can bank on!

In fact, we used to bank there, but then a bigger bank bought them out!

Next time, we’ll look to man’s best friend for some lessons about friendship. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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