The recent Today Show segment, After years of staying at home – moms return to work, reminds me of what I do every day which is help people build their confidence to find work. Here is the solution. Remember your success story. We all have had moments when we feel like we are on top of the world. Write down what that time was for you. Where were you? What were you doing? What attributes made you successful? Instead of saying you have a great attitude and that you are a team player show your hiring manager these skills by telling them your success story. If you want a simple guide then check out my book “Be You, five steps to living your personal brand”
Wrap up your gifts
Our unique skills and talents are our gifts that we offer to others. Sometimes people don’t want our gifts and that is OK. Your personal brand is the one thing that is completely within your control and when you take the time to uncover it and own it you realize that your confidence soars and you will attract those who value your gifts. Get clear on what you want and if you need a little help then join us for our next personal brand workshop.
Show your value
Your value is directly proportional to other people’s perception of the value you are providing to them. This takes some pressure off of you if you feel like you have to sell yourself. It’s not about selling yourself. It’s about listening and understanding other people’s pain points and helping them solve their problems. When you help others get what they want then your value increases which leads to your success.
From my perspective, the point of Simplicity is to clear away any obstacles on the path to self-actualization.
Self-actualization is the ability to have a vision for growth and to actualize that vision -- to bring my vision to reality.
Examples include:
-The desire to find a new purpose in life.
-The desire to reach a new goal on my career path.
-The vision to create a new committed relationship and have a family.
-The vision to feel empowered in my body, to loose weight or become healthier or stronger or leaner.
-The desire to experience the home as a peaceful sanctuary.
-The desire to learn any new craft, language, instrument or skill.
I believe that the process to become fully empowered, to have Personal Freedom from the bondage of ego, will require that we get *really, really organized*-- both internally and externally.
Simplicity Consulting is about two things. It is about Yin and Yang.
YIN
Manifesting the Unseen, or the Texture of our Experience
It is about organizing our internal resources so that we can handle the tremendous responsibility of personal freedom and empowerment. Anyone who owns their own business and employs others feels this imminent responsibility.
The path of organizing our internal resources involves removing negative mental, emotional and physical habits; and replacing them with healthy self-esteem and habits of well being.
It is about learning how to Anchor From Within, so that we can handle the external obstacles that are inevitable on the path to expansion.
It is about creating a Vision Map of how we want our experience to FEEL, so that we don't end up with all the stuff we want while plagued with a feeling of emptiness. This is a map of things you cannot see (YIN).
YANG
Manifesting that which can be Seen, Touched, Felt
Simplicity Consulting is also about organizing external resources (wellbeing practices or home office systems) so that we remove any obstacles to creating the life we want and so that we have the space and physical capacity to achieve our goals.
Clutter creates drag on your life. Period. Just like extra weight creates drag on your ability to walk.
If you need to organize your space, we will roll up our sleeves and physically dig in to create space for you to grow your life.
It is also about creating a Goals Map to achieve the external things in life: the physical things, the job, the business, the new talent, the family, etc. This is map of how you want your life to look (YANG).
THE PROCESS
Overcoming Resistance
We can work in as little as 1 session, or for as long as you wish. I have had some of my clients for 6 years now. Why? Because they keep growing, they keep setting new goals. Or they keep fine-tuning their felt experience.
Every time we set a new goal or vision for growth, Resistance Arises. Every single time. We are called upon to test our Internal Resources again. And our Habits for Wellbeing become more essential.
Simplicity Consulting can be about coaching clients through Resistance. As Steven Pressfield points out in book The War of Art, resistance is protean, meaning it will morph into new more creative ways of self-sabotage if we aren't paying attention.
But we do not do the heavy lifting for you. Sorry friends. Not happening. :) We will gently nudge you when you seem to be dropping off the path you wanted. We will support you in setting boundaries, clearing clutter, creating new habits, and help point out your blind spots. Again, we will not do it for you.
FREEDOM
Ultimately, the process of becoming the person we want to be, in the context of the life we want, is one of Freedom.
Rather than submitting to the life you are given, you are choosing to exert your power to create your life.
It is a personal choice - not just one, but ongoing choices. Minute by minute, hour by hour, the choices arise to stay in integrity with who we want to become.
True Freedom to create the life we want will require tremendous organiziation of our Internal Resources and our External Resources.
In other words, it will take all we've got to make it happen.
Life will throw curve balls of it's own -- and the capacity to respond will be directly proportional to the amount of drag/clutter/bad habits we have removed from our lives as well as the strength and resilience to respond with wisdom or compassion.
WHAT CAN I EXPECT?
The Outcome
The outcome depends on your personal experience.
One of my clients has not changed very much about how her life looks (same business, same home, same family), but the entire way she experiences her life is different. Her self-esteem, self-awareness, personal responsibility, feeling of wellbeing, all of these things have changed.
A different client started out being about only two things: a Vision Map and organizing closets. A year and a half later, she had transformed her space, left her job and moved to Bali.
All of those choices evolved out of her increased personal responsibililty for her happiness and wellbeing. I did not coach her to take those risks, they were borne out of her process of personal freedom.
So the results depend on you.
To be redundant, Simplicity Consulting is about organizing your internal and external resources to set you up to attain the life you desire.
The recent Today Show segment, "After years of staying at home – moms return to work," reminds me of what I do every day which is help people build their confidence to find work. Here is the solution. Remember your success story. We all have had moments when we feel like we are on top of the world. Write down what that time was for you. Where were you? What were you doing? What attributes made you successful? Instead of saying you have a great attitude and that you are a team player show your hiring manager these skills by telling them your success story. If you want a simple guide then check out my book “Be You, five steps to living your personal brand”
Wrap up your gifts
Our unique skills and talents are our gifts that we offer to others. Sometimes people don’t want our gifts and that is OK. Your personal brand is the one thing that is completely within your control and when you take the time to uncover it and own it you realize that your confidence soars and you will attract those who value your gifts. Get clear on what you want and if you need a little help then join us for our next personal brand workshop.
Show your value
Your value is directly proportional to other people’s perception of the value you are providing to them. This takes some pressure off of you if you feel like you have to sell yourself. It’s not about selling yourself. It’s about listening and understanding other people’s pain points and helping them solve their problems. When you help others get what they want then your value increases which leads to your success.
Gary Vaynerchuk, author of “Crush It”, has completely changed the way I perceive social media. He talks about the future of marketing as one to one relationship marketing with a variety of social media tools to support it. He claims there is really only one reason why businesses should invest and care about social media because it sells stuff. We are social beings and the most powerful form of marketing is word of mouth. Social media takes word of mouth to the next level and the companies who succeed in social media marketing understand that it’s not about content, but context will win. The web has made it easy for anyone and everyone to create content and now every 48 hours there is as much content being created as from the dawn of time to 2003. How does your content relate to the audience you are speaking to? What is the right context? The winners will deliver on the unique needs of what their clients are saying about themselves using social media.
My entire career has been in sales and business development and I’ve often thought that we are always “selling” ourselves whether we realize it or not. Barbara Corcoran says that “perceptions create reality”. Remember to always look the part even if you don’t believe it yet. Your inner confidence is directly proportional to how clear you are about your personal brand. Tap into your past successes to build your confidence and remember that everyone is selling themselves every day in every interaction, on every phone call and in every meeting. So what are you selling?
I had the good fortune of hearing Patrick Lencioni, author of “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” speak at the INC 500 conference last week. He said:
“...never hire someone who doesn’t have the capacity for vulnerability.”
In our hard driving corporate culture it seems like the last thing people would want to show is their vulnerability. No one wants to be perceived as weak. Most of us are more focused on talking about our strengths, successes, and ROI. But what if he is right? How powerful to think that those who are courageous enough to show vulnerability are those who may be the best employees and leaders, and that it is within our control to demonstrate our own vulnerability.
Here are a few questions he shared for uncovering vulnerability:
Do you forgive easily?
How do you recover from an argument?
Do you hold grudges?
Tell me about mistakes you’ve made?
Try these questions in your next interview and let me know if you think being vulnerable is a strength.
Seth Godin recently said “everything is a project” and I couldn’t agree more.
In a world that is moving more and more towards project work, whether as a consultant or an employee, we all have unique expertise that is valuable to contribute to project work. It is our own responsibility to understand what our unique expertise is and how we can add value to project work. I call this your personal brand which I define as your strengths and passion. I have spoken to hundreds of people over the years that have great experience and all the right words on their resumes but they don’t know their personal brand. This is why I created my seminar “BE YOU - 5 Steps to Building Your Personal Brand” to help people uncover their authentic personal brand, gain confidence and live it. I believe each of us knows truly what we want but in our busy lives we don’t take time to step back and reflect on it and create a plan to get there. What is your personal brand in this project based world?
I am always inspired by companies who have “changed the game”. Howard Schultz is a good example of a visionary taking the idea of people wanting a third place (work and home being the first and second places) to meet which is Starbucks. Today we can’t imagine a world without Starbucks. Howard encountered many naysayers who didn’t see the coffee industry the way he did and he persisted on his path with passion.
For a few years now I’ve noticed that there is a very inefficient system in the marketplace for marketing clients who need to find quality marketing professionals and for marketing consultants who are seeking projects that leverage their expertise. My big idea has been to create an easier way for these two communities to connect ensuring the right quality consultant for the specific project every time. Because we are experts in understanding what clients want and helping consultants showcase their expertise I thought we were best suited to build it. After a lot of hard work we have launched simplicitymatch which is an online resource that helps clients find the right marketing expert and enables marketing professionals to showcase their expertise. Check it out and give us your feedback.
