Finishing Strong

On The Home Stretch

It is not how you start, it is how you finish – Anon

You feel battered, blistered, bruised, downcast spirit, feeble knees, drooping hands or wobbly legs? I have a got a word for you today. Hold on, don’t give up! At the beginning of the year like at the start of a race, on the blocks you were energetic, fired up and full of high hopes. It is a year of favour, open doors, breakthroughs, supernatural accomplishments, great exploits, change et c to different people. A year in which you really wanted to get your life to another level. The course might have taken a toll on you – your finances might be in the negative, the marriage might be on the verge, that bad habit is now even stronger, you lost your job, the economy is now dead, you have backsliden, the business is broke, the church still has the same number of members or less. What do you do? Give up? No way, you have come a long way, too far to give up that way! In competitive sports, the last lap, mile, round or 18^th hole (in golf) is the home stretch. This requires the greatest concentration and unyielding effort. If you have to faint, you would rather faint after crossing the line. The year is not over yet, and always remember, it is not over until YOU win.

May the last few weeks of the year, be your home stretch. Give it your best concentration and effort. I personally believe this is my year of favour, and boy I will not give up believing, until the clock reads 11:59:59 on 31 December. Let me counsel you to also hold on to your dream, desire, word, vision for this year because the year is not over yet. Yes, a miracle can still happen in the last few weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds of the year. I am standing with you!

Learn Your Lessons

The year has 12 months for a reason, and there is a reason for every season you have gone through with your life this year. Your success hinges upon your ability to learn lessons from the seasons you have gone through. The omniscient Creator, in His wisdom has allowed the seasons in your life to get you closer to your destiny – I mean both the good and the bad! ‘Even the job that I lost’, you might ask? Yes. Just consider the trees of the forest. They certainly need all the seasons of the year for their perfection; the spring, summer, and autumn, for the development of their leaves and consequent formation of their juice, and of wood from this; and the winter for the hardening and solidifying the substance thus formed. The processes of the rising of the sap, of the formation of proper juices, of the unfolding of leaves, the opening of flowers, the fecundation of the fruit, the ripening of the seed, its proper deposition in order for the reproduction of a new plant; all these operations require a certain portion of time in the year. So it is with your life – the winter, autumn, summer and spring episodes you have experienced this year all have an ultimate purpose – that is to make you the best. Like in a marathon there are ups and downs, detours even, obstructions, but you press on because you know the goal is to cross the finishing line.

Crown The Year With Goodness

“Thy crownest the year with thy goodness, and thy paths drop fatness” – Psalm 65:11

There is one reason why your year will still be a good year if it hasn’t been already. Let me share with you some spiritual truths. In this ‘dying moments’ of the year , there is something that the Creator always does – He crowns the year with His goodness. A full and plentiful harvest is the crown of the year; and this springs from the unmerited goodness of your Creator. Your Creator has surrounded 2007 with His goodness, “compassed and enclosed it” on every side. The harvest is the plainest display of the divine bounty, and the crown of the year. The Creator Himself conducts the coronation, and sets the golden coronal upon the brow of the year. Let me use a metaphor to illustrate this point – your Creator’s love encircles the year as with a crown; each month has its gems, each day its pearl. Time will fail me if I share about how the best gems and most precious pearls are made – there is some heat and pressure involved. The providence of your Creator in its visitations makes a complete circuit, and surrounds the year. My desire is that your year may be crowned with goodness, a bountiful harvest, great calm within your borders, uncommon favour, inexplicable joy and undying hope. Don’t give up on that country, vision, marriage, business, job, relationship. It is in the 11^th hour when miracles and breakthroughs happen. Never give up or give in. Hold fast. There is goodness in the air. Be encouraged to finish and to finish strong.

Mind Over Matter – Part 2

Embracing New Paradigms

 “…be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” – Romans 12:2

To be steeped in tradition is death. To live in the past is mortal. To hold on to old paradigms is fatal. A religion that does not change people’s minds is a cult, creates robots and leads to doom.  Progressive societies and individuals embrace change. The renewing of the mind means the continual refining of thought patterns and processes. It means being born again, a renaissance. One symbol of dynamism in the contemporary world is the IT industry. I am a gizmo and gadgets freak so I marvel at the fast pace of technology.  In 1980 mainframe computers where as big as a cold room – one had to literally get into the computer to fix it. Today, computers are as small as a cellphone complete with Windows Mobile software!

I have worked in the Information Communication and Technology (ICT) industry all my life, and I know that investment in IT systems (hardware and software) is both a strategic and competitive imperative. For example the old telecom model of fixed lines is faced with extinction, with convergence even cellular companies have to change their mindset and move into broadband. The ICT industry is the caricature of the ever changing dynamics which as human beings we find ourselves in everyday. If your mind is stagnated in yesterday’s paradigm you become obsolete. Your mind, like a computer needs to have continuous “software” updates. Your knowledge repository needs to be constantly updated so you have a complete and functional database.  Once in a while, it is even better to change the whole operating system. This means embracing new paradigms, new thinking and exploring new possibilities.

The Phronesis of Success

The embracing of new paradigms is about thinking differently. You are transformed into a new being. Whereas you used to think defeated, weak, beggarly, sickly, poor, downcast, you need to come to a place where you draw a line. Enough is enough!  Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers of all time distinguishes between two intellectual virtues: sophia and phronesis.  Sophia (Greek for “wisdom”) is the ability to think well about the nature of the world, and is used in our attempts to discover why the world is the way it is.  Phronesis is the ability to think about how and why you should act in order to change things, and especially to change your lives for the best. To come to that place, you need to control the six elements of your brain which are:

1. Your Ego

This is the source of willpower. It acts as the ultimate judge, with the power to modify, reverse, change or remove the work of all the other elements of the brain. This critical part of your brain needs to be controlled. Your ego can stand for anything you value from sickness and poverty to your greatest desires. Your ego can be weak and timid or over inflated. Your ego and self esteem go hand in hand. It is about the value you place on yourself. There are certain places which you should declare you can’t live in, clothes that you can’t wear, car you can’t drive et.c. I know some of you might be thinking to ‘have an ego’ is pride. No. It is a God given faculty that is meant to drive your success. When David slew Goliath, his ego was saying “I can’t be defeated by this uncircumcised Philistine!” It was the Jewish/Israeli ego at stake. Every successful man and woman has an ego. Their success is protected by their ego. Likewise protect your ego from negative ideas. Do not let anyone or anything pollute it with thoughts of fear and worry through negative comments.

2. Your Emotions

The second element you need to control is emotions. I sleep peacefully everyday because I do not worry or fret over problems I cannot solve. No money in the bank, or no food in the fridge, work or car problems, I still sleep easy! In life there are two problems: one you can solve and one you cannot solve. The ones you can solve get on to solve them immediately. The ones you cannot solve shunt them to a sea of forgetfulness. Our upbringing has conditioned us to think that worrying over problems is responsibility. It’s not. When you worry you attract negative energy. It destroys your creative force, undermines your initiative, disturbs your faculty of reasoning and confuses your whole brain. To be successful, you need the self discipline of closing the door on fear and worry and open the doors of faith and hope. It is this character that makes you look cool like a cucumber even when challenges heat up in your life. Create an atmosphere of success in your life.

3. Your Reason

If the ego is the supreme judge, your reason is the judge of appeal, who deals with routine judgments. It is the master of opinions and judgments.  This part of your mind is the one that teaches you to be circumspect, to be rational and make decisions which are sound. Your emotions can tell you to go and invest in a particular business, but your reason will tell you to consider all the substantive facts and fundamentals. This part of the brain is trained by observation, study and analysis of the truth. Like a judge you need to act having looked at all the facts presented before you. However only learned judges make rational and sound decisions. Therefore you need to train your mind to reason out things.

4. Your Imagination

This is the wellspring of ideas. All creative effort is birthed in this part of the brain. Your imagination should be aligned to your purpose, and not fantasies like winning the lotto. The wildest of ideas that have ever happened in the world originate from imagination. Think about Walt Disney. He imagined a theme park, where children would be playing while parents are laughing. This led to the birth of Disneyland. Or Ray Kroc, the milkshake machine salesman who imagined a MacDonald Restaurant at every suburban corner. Or the mother of all imaginations, Thomas Edison and the light bulb. You cultivate this faculty by challenging things, questioning things, possibility thinking and seeking out things. In a war zone, social or political quandary, financial quagmire – imagine your way out!

5. Your Consience

This is the moral voice of all your actions and thoughts. If you listen to this voice and take its counsel, you will forever be esteemed and have a sense of self honour too. When you sear your conscience you with a hot iron, it becomes dead. Success without a conscience is like a whitewashed tomb – glorious on the outside, but empty inside. This week I read that global warming has become a real threat to the world. Years of decadent and irresponsible success especially in the West is now causing serious unintended consequences. Don’t kill, steal, lie, bribe or buy your way to success. What is the point of winning a battle if you gonna lose the war?

6. Your Memory

One of the reasons why many people fail to move forward is because they are living in the past. You find a grown up man still grieving over a father they lost when they were still a young boy. Or you are still brooding over that lost opportunity, failed relationship, and divorce, lost business or job. Delete it from your memory – you are wasting space for good memories. Yes you can learn lessons from those past experiences, but going back to them takes you nowhere. However positive memories are anchors for success, so cherish them.

 

Mind Over Matter – Part 1

The Poverty Paradigm

This month 10 years ago in 1997, the government of Zimbabwe gave veterans of the liberation war, once off sums of ZW$50 000 each (to give you some perspective a recent graduate earned $3500 per month in 1998). Therefore $50 000 was a tidy sum, back then in any currency. My nephews Boaz and John also got this amount. We all celebrated it, because we felt it was recognition long over due. But alas, if only we knew we would lose both of them within a few years after that, we would have turned away this money. They went wild, changing women, deserted their families and went on a drinking binge. In short they completely lost it. Their story is one of the many. Some went and bought cabbages for their cattle while others bought wrist watches for their dogs. A few hired metered cabs (taxis) on journeys that could best be served by buses.  Why? Why? Why? They had not developed the mind to handle $50 000. It was better to give them $10, because this was familiar territory for them! This explains why some people whenever they get a lump sum, they spent it until they get to their normal threshold, and then they come back to their senses. If they get $1 million today, and their normal threshold is $200 000, they will blow the $800 000 until the ‘demon’ goes away, then their heart starts beating normally again. It is a mindset. $50 000 could have started a business, or invested in stocks, or even build a house. It was literally thrown away. Poverty is therefore not the absence of resources, but the absence of a resourceful mind.  Resources can never be a substitute of what we do not have mentally. You become poor twice, first in your mind, then in reality.

The Wealthy Paradigm

I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big – Donald Trump

Donald Trump is an American billionaire. During 1990 Trump was forced into bankruptcy over USD$2 billion worth of loans that he could no longer afford to pay. He basically lost everything that he had. He was in the negative to an extent the war veteran with $50 000 was richer. However within 2 years Trump had made a rebound. He was a billionaire again. How did he do it? He had a wealth mindset. He was thinking from a different paradigm. Trump never stopped believing that he was rich. He would tell himself and everybody who cared to listen that “I’m the biggest developer in the hottest city in the world.” Noone today will doubt that Trump is big in property in New York City. He had it in his mind, before it was manifested in reality.

You become a billionaire twice – first in your mind then, secondly in the bank. To be wealthy is not reflected in the state of your material resources. It is a state of mind.  The presence of lots of material resources does not indicate wealth. How many people got free farms in Zimbabwe? How many have been successful farmers? Why has Zimbabwe gone so hungry, yet land is in the hands of many? The poor are not made rich, by pampering them with resources; they are made rich by changing their minds. Thomas Edison (electric bulb inventor) had only 3 months of formal schooling, yet he is the greatest inventor who ever lived. He was operating from a different paradigm – a position of abundance than deficiency! Think wealthy and become wealthy. Think poor and you remain poor. It sounds simple, but it is indeed that simple. I have always said that it is better to see yourself as a rich man discovering your wealth than a poor man trying to be rich. It makes a big difference.

Mind Matters

In the foregoing we have settled the fact that poverty and wealth are all the result of the mind. Why am I sharing this with you? It is because I want you all to be a people of means and substance who can make a difference to their generation. One of the things which the West and the advocates of Afropessimism have done to Africa is to engage Africa at a physical level – resources. Africa has been reduced to a subject about poverty, war, disease, bad governance et.c. They even have a Poverty Conference for Africa. O mon Dieu! Every conference is about the bad. Is it not time that we also have a conference about the good that can come out of Africa? There is need for a new agenda for Africa – changing the mindset of Africa. That is the import of this article. Our minds need to change. Big offices, cars, houses, do not necessarily makes us big people. Making a difference in life can be more serious than that. The reason why time and place cannot affect our success is because the success triggers all come from the mind than our environment. The mind is made up of six elements – EGO, EMOTIONS, IMAGINATION, REASON, CONSCIENCE and MEMORY. In the next article I would like to teach you about how you can control these elements for your success. The mind matters.

 

 

 

 

Building Your Personal Brand

The Sower Comment: Last year I wrote about “You Are A Brand”. In this article Seasoned Campaigner takes it to the next level. Please enjoy, learn and share!

Just as building a powerful corporate brand is the key to differentiating a product in the market­place, and thus building a successful business, so creating a strong personal brand is the key to differentiating yourself from your competitors, thereby ensuring your own success as well as that of your business. Your personal brand deter­mines how people respond to you, whether they listen to you, whether they buy from you, how much they buy, what they are willing to pay, and so on.

You are your most important product! As such, you already have your own per­sonal brand. You might think of it as your image or your reputation. It is how people perceive you; the values, virtues, qualities, and attributes they ascribe to you. It is not a ques­tion of whether you should have a personal brand image, because you already have one. Rather, it is a question of whether you choose to consciously create your personal brand or merely leave it to chance.

If you are running a small entrepreneurial business, your personal brand will have as much influence over the success of your business as will your corporate brand. You should very carefully think through how you would like people to think about you, and then make sure everything you say and do is consistent with this image.

There are two elements of personal branding: the promises you make (i.e., the image you project) and the promises you keep (i.e., your reputation).

Promises You Make

Your personal brand makes a promise: “If you buy from me, you will receive a specific value in return.” This promised value will be born from the values, virtues, qualities, and at­tributes by which you become known. For example, you may want to create a personal image – a brand – of a person who always operates at a high level of integrity, consistently walks the talk, is an exemplary leader, and goes the extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction.

Your decision as to precisely how to brand yourself will have two bases:

1. It must be an accurate picture of the person you are, or the person you are committed to becoming.

2. It must reflect the kind of person who will elicit in a prospective customer a strong response: “I want to do business with this woman or man.” In other words, your per­sonal brand should reduce or eliminate any sense of risk in dealing with you in the mind of the buyer.

Who is your ideal customer? What values, virtues, quali­ties, and attributes will he be looking for in a supplier of your product? Do you match this profile? If not, do you have a burning desire to be this kind of person? Are you committed to transforming yourself into this kind of person? These are the key questions you must ask yourself when beginning to build your personal brand.

Be brutally honest with yourself. In any relationship, to try to fake who you are is a recipe for failure. To be authentic is to create trust in all of your relationships, both personal and professional.

Promises You Keep

Unmet ex­pectations are the arch enemy of any relationship. This is no less true in the relationship between you and your customers. Your brand as a person is determined in large part by whether you consistently deliver on your promises. Do you keep your word? Do you follow up? Do your words and ac­tions match with the image you want to create – that is, with the values, virtues, qualities, and attributes you claim as your own?

Constantly examine your behavior. When you slip, re­solve to get back on track. To build and sustain a powerful personal brand, your message must be an accurate reflection of you, the messenger.

The Whole Package

Pay close attention to your entire image. Of course, your character is of paramount importance. But you make an im­pact on people in other ways as well. Your appearance – the clothes you wear, your personal grooming, your posture – has an enormous emotional impact on how other people see you, think about you, and relate to you. Your attitude is vital. If you are genuinely pleasant and cheerful in your interaction with others, they will enjoy being with you. They will be more inclined to trust you and do business with you.

Your overall behavior strongly influences the impression others have of you. Be punctual for meetings and appoint­ments. Be absolutely reliable, always keeping your word and your commitments. Should you fail in this area, communi­cate with the other person as quickly as possible, offering your apology, explanation, and assurance that it will not happen again. Be responsive to the needs of your customers. Get back to them promptly. Develop a sense of urgency. Be­come a “Do it now” kind of person. Develop the reputation of being the “Go to” person when a customer has a problem or needs something done quickly and well.

Pay close attention to the quality of your work. In the long run, there is nothing that will so determine your success in building and sustaining a powerful personal brand as turn­ing out high-quality work, over and over again and over a long period of time.

There are seven laws of personal branding you must mas­ter, if you are to drive your business to new levels of excel­lence and profitability.

The Seven Laws of Personal Branding

1. The Law of Specialisation. Focus your brand on one specific area of achievement in your work. Avoid diversification. Do not try to be all things to all people. Select a specific industry, product, service, or skill in which you can excel.

2. The Law of Leadership. Become one of the most knowledgeable, skilled, and respected people in your field. Be the very best at what you do. Consistently strive to become better and better.

3. The Law of Personality. Your personal brand must be built around your personality, in all its aspects. The most important part of personal branding is that you be perceived as a nice and trustworthy person. Be pleasant, positive, and cheerful. Treat everyone well, no matter what the circumstances, and always do what you say you will do. Be sure your customers enjoy their interaction with you and know they can depend on you.

4. The Law of Distinctiveness. Once you have created your own personal brand, you must express it in a unique way. Everything you do must be part of the “package.” Sometimes a small factor, like sending cookies to a customer, can brand you in a distinct way. Why? Because no one else does it. Your goal is to be perceived as unique, thus differentiating you from everyone else vying for the attention of your prospec­tive customer.

5. The Law of Visibility. To be effective, your personal brand must be seen repeatedly and consistently. You must be busy and active. Join business associations in your industry and attend meetings. Introduce yourself and hand out business cards. When you call on a cus­tomer, introduce yourself to other people in the office. The more you are seen in a positive way, the more powerful your personal brand will be.

6. The Law of Congruence. Your behavior must be con­sistent, both publicly and privately. Everything you do behind closed doors should be consistent with what you do in public. People should feel that there is com­plete alignment or congruence between the public person and the private person. Both must be au­thentic, not merely a false persona adopted for the purpose of impressing or manipulating others.

7. The Law of Persistence. Once you have built your per­sonal brand, you must now sustain it. Never deviate from it. Give it time to grow. Stick with your personal brand through thick and thin until it sets like hardened cement in the minds of other people.

The time and energy you invest in building a powerful, positive, personal brand will pay huge dividends. People will trust you and willingly accept your suggestions and recom­mendations. They will buy from you more readily, again and again, and even pay more for your products and services than for those of your competitors. They will gladly provide you with referrals, open doors for you, and create opportuni­ties not available to others. A positive personal brand will enable you to more readily secure credit and borrow money.

Remember, “Everything counts!” Everything you do ei­ther enhances or detracts from your brand. Every word you utter either adds to or takes away from the quality of your personal brand. Your responsibility is to ensure that every­thing you do and say is consistent with the perception you want others to have of you. This is the key to building a powerful, positive, personal brand.