When I was in college, a friend and I taught a ten week course about presentation skills to underclassmen.  One of the lessons was about the properties of influence… SPARCLS is acronym we used.  Right now I’m going through a training called “Building Credibility and Influence.”  Naturally, these same six principles popped up again… Social [...]

Picture someone you know that is successful.  There are three things that person knows how to do.  In fact, there are three traits that all successful people share… They know how to manage money, manage time, and manage relationships. Here’s how that works:  When you become financially free, you are no longer trading your time [...]

“Don’t compare yourself to others” I read that somewhere… and I completely disagree. You HAVE to compare yourself to others… Especially when you’re young. That’s how you know where you rank.  Think of it like sports… if you’re the best at your school, how do you compare against others in your conference?  If you’re the [...]

I spent last January and February backpacking across Europe… For five of the eight weeks I was alone. And as you can guess… I had a lot of time to get to know me. Ironically, I’ve never really had that chance made time for that… And it sounds weird, but I didn’t really know myself [...]

I started blogging a year a half ago.  It is, by far, one of the best things I could have done to jump start my career. Here is why you should start blogging right now: Writing skills – Writing is the basis of all wealth. No doubt about it. If you are a good writer, [...]

Here is the dilemma: Every day at work I have the opportunity to promote myself to a lot of people. The question is… Should I be using the company I work for to promote my personal online brand? More specifically, should I include links to my blog in the signature of all my emails? What [...]

It’s a must for any business.  It’s how they get customers in the door.  It’s their marketing plan. Since every business has should have one…  And since we are living in a Brand You world… It only makes sense that we should develop a personal marketing plan. I started working on mine last weekend.  First, [...]

Face it. There ARE dumb questions. And you shouldn’t ask them. Questions can do two things: They can build your credibility or they can take away from your credibility. Ever been at a meeting where someone asked a question about something that was supposed to be reviewed ahead of time? That automatically ruins the pace [...]