On Friday the 13th I will be giving a presentation to the Professional Consultant's Association of Central New York on the topic
of "Using Your Website As A Marketing
Tool", based on an ebook I wrote last April.
Now, I know some of you are saying "What; I thought this guy did leadership, management, diversity, etc. He also does internet
marketing?" Actually, yes, there are quite a few things I do. I hope some of you were able to listen to the
interview I did last
Sunday with Beverly
Mahone of BAM Enterprises on the topic of "reinvention", because it was a lot of fun. It
went for an hour, and though there were many things we didn't get to, we did get to talk about this particular concept.
Can I ask you a question? What are you? It seems like a simple question, but in reality it's not. I have found that most people
define themselves by the job they do and not by the things they may be good at. Or they define themselves by their relationship to
someone else. To whit:
"I am a manager for Such And Such Bank."
"I am a married woman with three kids."
"I am a baker in a grocery store."
Are you really that easily defined? In today's economy, there are many people losing their jobs, and many of them see themselves as
only one particular thing. Trust me, I've been there. When I lost my job back in 1991 I saw myself as a business office manager in
a hospital. Every job I applied for had to do with that particular job and nothing else. The problem was there aren't tons of jobs
like that out there, so I saw the job market as extremely limited. I was also only trying to hit a particular dollar amount, and
couldn't see anything else that I could do at the time.
Truth be told, if I was thinking as I'm thinking nowadays, there were plenty of talents I had, even back then. I used to sing at
weddings, and I wasn't a bad musician. Therefore, I could have been a professional musician of some sort.
I've always been a writer, even now. Most of you know about this newsletter, but I write another newsletter geared towards health
care. I also write three newsletters for other organizations; not getting paid for any of them, so that's a bad business model, but
I do it. I've written a book and an ebook, and I write in three blogs. However, back in 1991 I was also a songwriter and lyricist,
and I had actually started three books back then that I never finished. So, maybe I should have looked for some kind of writing gigs.
I was one of few people I knew back then who had a personal computer, and not a cheap one either. I had learned some programming in
BASIC (man, does that make me feel old), but I was pretty quick on
learning new software. I also typed 75 words a minute back then, so I could have gotten some work that way.
In Loral Langemeyer's book The Millionaire Maker,
she says that she works with people to help them get out of debt, but one of those
ways is that she makes people look deep inside themselves to see what skills they have that can help them make extra money. Some
people who figure it out start doing those jobs, and suddenly end up in new careers because they find themselves making way more money
than they did at their regular jobs. Not only that, but they end up falling in love with something they'd been passionate about, but
never had the courage to do because they'd gotten used to the 9-5, 2080 hours a week job with two weeks vacation and sick time. What
they did instead was reinvent themselves, maybe because they were forced to do so, but still, they took a chance and broke out of their
mold and did something that not only made them happy, but made them money.
This isn't my way of telling you to find something else to do and quit your job; far from it. This is my way of saying that when you
allow your own mindset to lock you into just one thing, it will stifle your creativity and, well, possibly turn you into an internet
geek or a couch potato. After all, if you only see yourself as "this", then what's the point of ever trying to be more than that?
For companies and managers, often that's how they want their employees to feel. Many paid leaders see employees as workers who are there
to do their bidding, and don't ever want them thinking about doing something better than that later on in life. Why not? Because they
don't want to have to always worry about training someone else; because they don't want anyone thinking they're smarter than the managers;
because it might make their jobs harder. In other words, for selfish reasons that have no place in the business world.
I always encouraged any employee who said they needed to change their schedule around so they could pursue classes in something else.
If I could, I'd help them fill out paperwork to get some funding for them to take classes; I wonder if those days are gone with all the
restructuring of companies in today's world. If someone said they wished they could do something to exploit a skill they had but weren't
sure about it, I'd say why not at least explore it or give it a try. After all, what does anyone have to lose by trying something out,
right?
In essence, though I'm calling it reinventing oneself, the truth of the matter is that the essence of what one is resides in themselves
already; they just have to be willing to pull it out and give a voice to it. No one has to be locked into being one thing; expand your
horizons, and try to define everything you want to be, or that you see yourself as being able to do.
So I ask you again: What Are You? And if you want to know what I am,... click on any of those links on the left and learn more about me.
And trust me, there's even more to me than that.