The Single Most Important Aspect Of Your Career

Do you want to get a promotion and make a lot more money? Do you want to be recognized for your hard work? Do you want to keep your job and not be downsized? In fact, do you want to know the secret to be Upsized? The most important skill you will ever learn is how to study and understand Office Politics.

Office politics plays a very important role in whether you get a promotion, an award, the job that you want, or the compensation that you receive. Virtually every aspect of your professional career is influenced by social politics. The proper understanding of the social ?food chain? in your work space is essential for your professional success and financial well-being.

To understand why the organization works and how to use that information to your advantage, you must first understand how the ?Big Fish? act and think. Who are the ?Big Fish?? They are the decision makers, the people who are up-and-coming in the company and the people who hold ultimate power in the company. These are the CEO?s, Presidents, VPs, managers, and supervisors who are what I consider to be ?in favor?.

When it comes to these ?Big Fish? they typically care only about two things. The first is how they can take credit for increasing the effectiveness of the company and the second is who around them can get the results they need to be successful. To summarize, for these people it is all about self-preservation and self-promotion.

Are the ?Big Fish? unethical or self-absorbed? No, the successful people just want excellent employees working for them and they expect results. If you were in a dog-sled race would you want a team of Siberian Huskies or Chihuahuas? The answer is obvious; you would want to win the race so you would want the best team available.

Can this information be helpful to you? Let me ask you:

1. Do you think you stand a better chance of getting a promotion working for a ?little fish? or a ?Big Fish??

2. Is your chance of getting a good raise better or worse if the VP knows your name and the projects you have worked on?

3. Are you more or less likely to move up in the company if you are working on a ?Big Fish?s? pet project?

The bottom line is this?If you align yourself with a ?Big Fish? you will be considered for more opportunities than you would ever have working for a ?little fish?. Why? The reason is because people trust people who can get the job done. If the ?Big Fish? trusts you then he/she will be comfortable giving you more and more responsibility. And with more responsibility comes promotions and A LOT more money.

Study your office politics and align yourself with a ?Big Fish? and will progress your career farther and faster than you ever could have imagined.

The Most Important Marketing Principle

Several times people have asked me what the most important marketing principle was. What is the one thing you absolutely have to know in order to attract more clients?

Is it your marketing message or powerful marketing materials? Is it the ability to persuasively speak about your services? Perhaps it’s a killer marketing tactic that I keep under wraps. Or is it more a matter of persistence and commitment?

Well, all of those are very important. But there is one marketing idea that is the most important of all.

It might be exemplified best in this story I heard years ago.

Two friends were talking about another friend who was a great fisherman. They related stories about how he always caught more fish than everyone else, yet he didn’t really do anything different than other fishermen did.

He used a similar boat, the same fishing rods and lures. He fished in the same places and at the same times of day. So why in the heck did he always catch more fish? What was his secret?

Well, his secret was pretty simple: He loved fishing.

If you love what you do, you’ll always be better at it. You’ll find subtle ways to do things that others wouldn’t even think of. You’ll read more about it. You’ll put your heart and soul into it.

So when it comes to marketing your services, I promise that you’ll get better results if you love marketing yourself. But how do you do that? What if you don’t like marketing at all?

Let me tell you another story.

I once worked with a writer who needed to market herself. But the first time we met, she told me she hated networking and wouldn’t call people she didn’t know.

So I asked her what she did love.

She told me that she loved her Siberian Husky, Mutombo. She was nuts about that dog and talked my ear off for about half an hour. Then she said, rather sheepishly, “I’ve been thinking of sending out mailings to prospects with pictures of Mutombo on them. What do you think?”

Well, on the surface, it didn’t seem like a great idea. But what was clear was the love she had for that dog and the enthusiasm she had for the idea. So I said, “Why not?”

She worked with her husband, who was a photographer, to create a series of very innovative mailing pieces that featured Mutombo. She then tied the pictures into themes about corporate writing.

Yes, it sounds like a stretch, but the mailings were an amazing success. They were fun, attention-getting and different. People started calling her. And she generated some very big clients with this wacky idea of putting her dog on her mailings.

She was doing what she loved. She found a marketing approach that she could really get into. And it was a huge success.

So what do you love? What would you enjoy doing? What could you put your heart and soul into?

In my Fast Track Marketing Model, I point out that there are essentially three effective marketing strategies or vehicles for Independent Professionals: Networking, Publishing and Speaking. But there are infinite variations on these three. My client used a form of publishing through direct mail.

When I started my business, I started with networking. But my style is to be an initiator, not just a participant. So I started my own networking groups. I met a lot of people and I loved bringing people together. So this was very successful.

Only a month or two after buying my first Macintosh, I created a monthly newsletter. I also happened to love design and project-oriented things. So I had a lot of fun with this, and also had very good results. The newsletter also pulled people into the networking events.

Finally, at these events, I had the opportunity to make presentations and discovered that I loved to be in the front of a group. (I think I’m a frustrated stand-up comedian at heart.) It turned out that speaking was the most effective marketing tactic of all for me.

I was lucky. I found three areas of marketing that I loved. But the key was that I found my particular way of doing these marketing activities that fit with my style and personality. Over the years I’ve adapted these tactics to the online world through this eZine and introductory teleclasses.

And you can do this as well.

Don’t worry about three strategies to start. Find one. And don’t fall for some hyped-up marketing strategy that you read about on the Internet that promises to make you kazillions of dollars. Trust me. It won’t. (Unless you love it.)

Find some aspect of networking, publishing or speaking that you can make your own, where you can express your authentic self, that you can have fun at, and you’ll get better results than you could possibly imagine.