We're all in sales
Someday, I am going to own a business.
I've know this for many years, and although I don't know what kind of business it is going to be, I know that I will have it, and have therefore been gathering data about businesses, both large and small, and just generally expanding my resource pool.
In that vein, I've been reading many blogs about business and personal development. An blog post by Pamela Slim, in her blog Escape from Cubicle Nation, linked me to an article in Fast Company titled The Brand Called You. Reading through it, it makes me realize, not for the first time, that each and every one of us is a sales person. Whether we're college students, middle managers, entrepreneurs, high powered CEOs, or just working to pay the bills, we're all selling something: us.
If you go in for a job interview, you are selling yourself, your "brand", as Tom Peters, the author of "The Brand Called You", puts it. Every day of your job, or in your life, you are promoting and selling yourself, and how well you do depends on how good a salesperson you are.
I find it interesting to have discovered this article now, at this moment in my life, because I am currently working as a server in a fast-paced restaurant (Red Robin), where my livelihood depends not only on my ability to sell food and drink to our "guests" but also on my ability to market myself as a good employee and a capable person so that I will be given more shifts, and allowed to work longer hours.
If I can sell the food well, and the guests enjoy it, their bill is bigger, and my potential tip is bigger.
If I can sell myself to my employer, then my potential for tables is greater.
All of this is pretty common-sensical, and I'd thought about it before, but I'd never had it solidify for me the way it did when I finished reading "The Brand Called You."
One section that I found particularly compelling was this:
I like it so much because that's the way I feel about my "career" (if you will) thus far. Since graduating from college , I have held seven jobs, often two at a time. Sure, I could argue that it was just what I had to do to pay the bills, but I were making that argument, I could easily have stayed with job #4, the Fabric store, where I was doing relatively well, working 30 or so hours a week. But there was no strategy to that. There was nothing more to be learned at that job, nothing more to be gained from continuing to work there. They had already told me that they weren't interested in promoting me to assistant manager (as I was planning to move out of state in just over a year), so I chose to make a lateral move, from "customer service representative" at the fabric store to "administrative assistant" at a tailor shop.
I was with the fabric store for a little over a year. I was with the tailor shop for almost six months. Many of my jobs have that sort of time frame. Some people might think that moving around that much is a little flighty, but to me it's only logical. If there is no room to gain greater responsibility or to learn new aspects of the company, then it's time to move on. Sometimes I move laterally, or even backwards, but every move gives me that much more knowledge about business, that much more information about myself, what kind of employee I am, and what kind of employer I want to be.
It's a bright, beautiful world out there, and I'm hop-skipping my way across the checkerboard of life.
For those curious, a few of the other blogs I'm following are: Steve Pavlina: Personal Developement for Smart People, I Will Teach You To Be Rich from Ramit Sehti, and How to Change the World from Guy Kawasaki.
I've know this for many years, and although I don't know what kind of business it is going to be, I know that I will have it, and have therefore been gathering data about businesses, both large and small, and just generally expanding my resource pool.
In that vein, I've been reading many blogs about business and personal development. An blog post by Pamela Slim, in her blog Escape from Cubicle Nation, linked me to an article in Fast Company titled The Brand Called You. Reading through it, it makes me realize, not for the first time, that each and every one of us is a sales person. Whether we're college students, middle managers, entrepreneurs, high powered CEOs, or just working to pay the bills, we're all selling something: us.
If you go in for a job interview, you are selling yourself, your "brand", as Tom Peters, the author of "The Brand Called You", puts it. Every day of your job, or in your life, you are promoting and selling yourself, and how well you do depends on how good a salesperson you are.
I find it interesting to have discovered this article now, at this moment in my life, because I am currently working as a server in a fast-paced restaurant (Red Robin), where my livelihood depends not only on my ability to sell food and drink to our "guests" but also on my ability to market myself as a good employee and a capable person so that I will be given more shifts, and allowed to work longer hours.
If I can sell the food well, and the guests enjoy it, their bill is bigger, and my potential tip is bigger.
If I can sell myself to my employer, then my potential for tables is greater.
All of this is pretty common-sensical, and I'd thought about it before, but I'd never had it solidify for me the way it did when I finished reading "The Brand Called You."
One section that I found particularly compelling was this:
- [The traditional career is] over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That's not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It's full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.
I like it so much because that's the way I feel about my "career" (if you will) thus far. Since graduating from college , I have held seven jobs, often two at a time. Sure, I could argue that it was just what I had to do to pay the bills, but I were making that argument, I could easily have stayed with job #4, the Fabric store, where I was doing relatively well, working 30 or so hours a week. But there was no strategy to that. There was nothing more to be learned at that job, nothing more to be gained from continuing to work there. They had already told me that they weren't interested in promoting me to assistant manager (as I was planning to move out of state in just over a year), so I chose to make a lateral move, from "customer service representative" at the fabric store to "administrative assistant" at a tailor shop.
I was with the fabric store for a little over a year. I was with the tailor shop for almost six months. Many of my jobs have that sort of time frame. Some people might think that moving around that much is a little flighty, but to me it's only logical. If there is no room to gain greater responsibility or to learn new aspects of the company, then it's time to move on. Sometimes I move laterally, or even backwards, but every move gives me that much more knowledge about business, that much more information about myself, what kind of employee I am, and what kind of employer I want to be.
It's a bright, beautiful world out there, and I'm hop-skipping my way across the checkerboard of life.
For those curious, a few of the other blogs I'm following are: Steve Pavlina: Personal Developement for Smart People, I Will Teach You To Be Rich from Ramit Sehti, and How to Change the World from Guy Kawasaki.