Fred Smith said, “People with 20 years’ experience really have a one year’s experience which they have repeated twenty times”. I think about the years I’ve spent trying to gain experience, hoping time would go by quickly, so that I could add years to my resume. But, having experience could mean I’ve done the wrong thing for 20 years.

A lot of people set out to accomplish very little with their lofty goals:

1). Learn everything I can about my industry

2). Set a goal 10% higher than last year

3). Obtain goal

Rinse and repeat, year after year.

However, if you observe successful people, you’ll notice that they, like Fred Smith tells us, stretch themselves and take paths that are many times uncomfortable. Have you set a goal or started something new that has stretched you? What have you done to separate yourself from the competition? Hitting a 10% increase is nice, but are you doing anything memorable? Have you considered starting a blog?

If you aren’t a writer, you can still build your personal online brand through creating something unique. Maybe a video blog or podcast is a better route for you. Consider this:

1). What skill do you possess that would be valuable to others?

2). You don’t have to be an expert to give good advice. Most bloggers aren’t saving lives, just improving them.

3). Continually make small improvements.

Keep growing and keep stretching yourself and never give up.

If you want help setting up your online platform, drop us a line.

What skill do you have that could improve someone else’s life?

The post Are You Stretching Yourself? appeared first on Platform Creator.

When you are establishing your online platform and beginning to engage the marketplace with a blog and using various social media tools, what are the first steps you should take?

Remember that you do not need to be an expert to give useful advice.

When you think back to the big breakthoughs you had in your life, did you learn more from your successes or your failures? Could that failure help someone else? That’s a blog post!

And, who invented the light bulb? You might suggest, ‘Thomas Edison’. Edison, while holding over 1,000 patents and learning hundreds of ways to use failure successfully, did not invent the incandescent light. He learned how to make it commercially viable.

Social Media, blogging, and SEO are still relatively new tools used to reach the marketplace and engage potential customers.

Have a willingness to take chances and take action. Your brand will withstand the minor mistakes along the way as long as you have three principles in place:

Learn from the Experts

• Success leaves clues – use the tools and suggestions from the experts
• Even the experts make mistakes and many of them will freely admit them
• Even if you become one of the experts, there is always someone from whom you can learn

Serve Others with Compassion (give more than you take)

• Re-tweet, post, and share others’ messages
• Promote others’ ideas
• Give without asking in return

Use Your Failure and Failure of Others as a Guide

• I made a mistake with an e-commerce client recently by trying to spread their ad budget too thin. I can use the lesson learned to take a more firm approach to ad budget planning.
• Many years ago I had a manager who said, ‘if it’s not broken, it’s time to break some glass’. While I respect his enthusiasm for trying to improve an already good product, I learned more from seeing the destruction that followed…I will avoid that.

Like Edison, take Others’ Successes and Improve Them

1). Listen to what the marketplace is wanting.

2). Engage your target market by interacting with them in meaningful conversation.

3). Then brand your message with a targeted approach. Where is your target market hanging out? Serve them and keep learning how to do that better.

4). Who does what you are doing? How can you improve upon their approach?

5). Be persistent and NEVER GIVE UP!

The post My Friend “Failure” appeared first on Platform Creator.