Performing at your peak at all times is challenging, but regularly reaffirming your goals is a good place to start.
Performing at your peak at all times is challenging, but regularly reaffirming your goals is a good place to start.
Last year I posted four words on my bathroom mirror – ‘finish’, ‘write’, ‘shape’, and ‘yes’.
By posting the words on my bathroom mirror, I consciously see them each day, and subconsciously think about them and act on them regularly. Because they’re right in front of me every morning and every evening, they are inescapable mental confrontations.
This year’s four words are about improvement. Improvement means getting better at what you’re already doing, and my four words are: ‘Instagram’, ‘blog’, ‘shape’, and ‘best’.
Instagram: It’s the new Facebook. Thousands of teenagers are abandoning Facebook every hour and refocusing their social efforts on Instagram. Interestingly, Microsoft Word, the word processing program I use to write with, thinks Instagram is a misspelled word. That’s a pretty good indicator of where Microsoft is in the social media world – nowhere. You have to figure there’s got to be a good reason Facebook paid a reported $1 billion for Instagram. For you as a salesperson and/or a business person, there’s got to be a pretty good reason as well.
Here’s what I intend to improve this year. I already have a business and personal account. My personal account is jeffreygitomer and my business account is gitomer. I want to let my family, my customers, my friends, the readers of my books, the followers of my blog, the subscribers to my YouTube channel – all of my social connections – have a chance to view me as a person and as a business person.
And you need to consider the same. Every day or so I post a picture to my personal account, and every day it is my intention to post one meaningful quote on my business account. My intention is to give my followers something to think about, something to learn about, something to smile about, and something to replicate. I try to be both a lesson and an idea.
The lesson here is that all of your connections, both business and personal, need to see your human side, and her intellectual side. There’s an opportunity in Instagram for you to create a leadership position.
Blog: I intend to make my blog much more personal this year. On salesblog.com (pretty good URL, eh?) I’ll be posting on-the-road insights from my travels, kitchen thinking, morning thinking, ideas I captured from reading, and the most important ideas I’m capturing from and for my daughters and granddaughters.
A blog is a place to document and expose. When you put yourself out on the internet, blogging is the best way to be found. Hundreds of millions of people have jumped on that bandwagon and will stay there.
The key to blogging is consistency. At the moment I post two or three times a week. You should begin by doing the same. Just a paragraph or two, but make sure they contain keywords that others can find as they search about you, your products and services, and your company.
Shape: Last year I failed to lose the weight I promised myself I would. This year I have a personal trainer and a new eating habit set in motion. My mantra will be ‘better health leads to increased wealth’.
The lesson here is that I didn’t achieve my goal; I didn’t follow through on my own intentions. But the lesson is not failure. The lesson is persistence. Just because I didn’t do it last year, doesn't mean I won’t get it done. If you don’t meet a goal, if you don’t achieve your intentions, keep moving.
Best: One thing the best people I know have in common is that they’re all seeking to become better. My best skills on the business side of my life are selling, speaking, writing, humour, friendliness, and creativity. The reason I’m excellent at those skills is that I seek to become better at them every day. My driver is very simple, I just ask myself this one question: Am I doing the best I can right now?
Ask yourself this question after every meeting, phone call, project, and social and social media outreach: Is this the best I can do?
Hopefully the words I have chosen for improvement and achievement, and the lessons I have provided, will inspire you to write and define your words for the year. Interestingly, you most likely mentally know what they are, but have yet to bring them to the visual surface as notes on your bathroom mirror.
