How To Excel In Your Career

Thirty years ago, Steve Jobs said at a meeting, all of you are technical evangelists for Apple. So Guy Kawasaki went out and got business cards made with his name and the title technical evangelist for Apple. No one gave him those cards, but Steve said, you're technical evangelist. So he called himself one, started speaking to the media, started speaking to the press. And all of a sudden Guy Kawasaki's name became known as an Apple technical evangelist because no one else had the guts to speak for themselves. For one of the things that I did to help myself grow in my career was I promoted myself way before social media existed, right? Because I left 1-800-got junk the year the Facebook was launching globally. So we didn't have social media for me to promote myself. What we did have was me talking to the media outlets. So I became a spokesperson for the company with the press I got myself and I told the CEOs of these companies back even at College Pro Painters that I wanted to speak to the media about what we were doing and how we were growing the company. And because I became kind of a self as a spokesperson, the media would talk about me. And it showcased myself over all of the other executives in the company. In fact, if you were to ask people who grew 1-800-got junk, they'll mention Brian, the founder CEO, they'll mention me. They won't name any of the other executive team because no one knows who they were, sadly. But it's because I was advocating for myself or promoting myself that, um. And then scared of failing. Well, and you're doing something that is actually brilliant that I did years ago too, which was we became a speaker to talk about our successes and what we're doing. Right. So that others could learn from us. And I would imagine that you were also speaking inside of the companies you were building. Right. That's another way that you can self advocate or self promote yourself internally. No CEO is going to come to you and say, hey Johnna, can you speak at a leadership team meeting? Or hey Johnna, can you speak at a marketing. What we have to do is advocate for ourselves internally and say, I want to share my ideas at the town hall or at the State of the Union or at our quarterly event or at a board meeting. Ask to go and present on behalf of your business area and ask to go and speak at small industry events or small association events or anywhere that will listen to you become a speaker for your brand and about operations. Very similar, by the way, to how Guy Kawasaki became a household name was about 30 years ago. Steve Jobs said at a meeting, all of you are technical evangelists for Apple. So Guy Kawasaki went out and got business cards made with his name and the title technical Evangelist for Apple. No one gave him those cards, but Steve said, you're technical evangelist. So he called himself one, started speaking to the media, started speaking to the press, and all of a sudden Guy Kawasaki's name became known as an Apple technical evangelist because no one else had the guts to speak for themselves. So everybody who's listening and watching, you're the evangelist for your company, if you will grab that baton or grab that kind of torch and run with it. That's going to really help you in your career. I dropped two other quick points in on this one is again around that self advocacy we've talked about a couple of times is the information is out there, the resources are out there. It's up to us to devour that. So in the actual member in circle, post your questions of things that you're wanting to learn as a question and allow the other members to contribute and ask. And also remember that your answer to a question won't be the entire answer, but it's going to be your answer, plus Fred's answer, plus Kelly's answer that the person asking the question can take all those ideas and make them into something. So always contribute as much as you're also here to learn, but devour that content. And then secondly, I just heard this the other day and it was a really profound idea for me. This was a podcast that I was on in Dubai last month and the the founder of the podcast said it said something on a social media post that I just really rocked my world. He said, I'm always asked what is the most important book that I've read in business? And he said, the most important book is not the book that I read, but the book that I wrote. And I was like, boom, I've now written six books. But I want every single one of you to set a goal for yourself that within five years from today you will have published a book based on your experience, based on your lessons, based on your self advocacy, based on what you have to contribute to the business world. And don't think about that. It has to become the next good to great. But you have to decide to codify what you've learned. And it can be some of the foundational experiences you're pulling from the op spot, create some chapters about what you're learning from here or what you're learning in your career, but every one of you has within you the ability to write a book that will change business people, will change others and will become part of your legacy. So don't make all of your lessons just be what you're reading from someone else. A lot of the lessons that I've learned in business were from me writing them down and it allowed me to really internalize a lot of my own business lessons. So part of it can be the self advocacy. Doesn't have to be go speak to the media or be on stages. That's going to be the 10 or 15% or 20% of us. But for the rest of us, we need to at least speak up in our meeting, right? So let's say that you're going into a meeting with eight other people. Don't be the quiet person in the eight, right. Remember that you're invited to that meeting to contribute, to collaborate, to debate, to share the data, to share opinions. And if you weren't invited to that meeting, then you're not invited. Right? You shouldn't be there collaborating, but you need to actually give yourself a voice and try not to be the person being waited on. Like no one's necessarily going to be asking you to contribute. It's hard at times if your personality profile is you're the quieter, more amiable, you know, look at someone like Simona who's sitting and listening on this call. I'll tell you, behind the scenes, Simona challenges me on things all the time. She comes to me with ideas, she comes to me with suggestions. She comes to me and says, hey Cameron, you're screwing up on this. You know, can we do it in a better way? I'm like, oh, you're right, you know, so it doesn't matter who you are, look for your voice in whatever room that you're in. You know, there's another way that we can all self advocate for ourselves in our career too. And it's that we're never going to get all of the praise that we're actually starving for as humans. Right at the end of the day I think we're all 15 year olds trapped in adult bodies. John is the 15 year old Jonna, I'm the 15 year old Cameron with a little bit more gray. But I'm still, I still have those 15 year old needs and desires and wants and some of those is praise. My job in operations is to praise myself. My job is to show myself gratitude for what I'm doing well and what I'm achieving. So what I've always tried to do is on a personal basis If I set three new goals for myself this week, I try to say thank you to myself or praise myself or feel good for myself about three things I accomplished last week. So one of the things that you can do to self advocate for yourself is internally feel good about the stuff you're accomplishing. Praise yourself for what you're getting done. It'll give you a new level of confidence to show up tomorrow and in the meeting. But don't wait for your boss or your VP or your CEO to come to you and tell you great job. You need to feel good about the good stuff that you're doing because it'll just raise your confidence up that next little level that will help you in your career. There's two sides to this story of Cameron Herald and as much as I can feel good about all the things I'm doing well, as much as I can praise myself and feel good about what I'm accomplishing, I also need to look in the mirror and see the areas that I can improve on that I am struggling with at my weaknesses. So don't wait for your CEO or your CEO or your VP to tell you the areas to improve. Examine yourself on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and not only feel good for your accomplishments and feel good what you're doing, but look in the mirror and see where can I grow? Where can I get better? Where can I ask for constructive criticism? Where can I actually learn to grow? Because if you can grow yourself more than you're waiting for your personal development plan to tell you the areas to improve. Look in the mirror and ask yourself, where can you improve? You know, if I was the COO of Mattel, then sure someone wants to hear about us, but what if you're the less known brand? For four years when I was the COO for 1-800-got- junk no one knew of us. Like, yeah, you've heard of us today, but I'll tell you. For four years we were a garbage company that no one cared about, no one heard about, no one knew about. But I still wanted to talk about what we were doing well and we had a goal or a bhag, a big hairy, audacious goal to become a globally admired brand. So by talking about our successes, by talking to the media about our successes, it helped become this globally admired brand. It helped develop the culture. But it doesn't have to be a cool, sexy company. You know, I was talking about the talking to the media when I was running a house painting company, an auto body collision repair company and a garbage company. Most businesses are not sexy businesses. We decide to put that brand or that spin or some kind of a position around those to have somebody care. But even if you're always a boring business that no one cares about, you could talk about culture inside of that boring industry, or how you've leveraged something like automations using Zapier inside of that company, or how you've actually developed and grown people within the industry that you're in. Whatever it is that you do, you've probably got some special sauce that you can still talk about and advocate about and people will still listen. Most businesses are not sexy. We decide to somehow make them a little bit sexy.