These days people are told to ‘build a personal brand’ and that everything they say and do needs to be in sync with their brand. By distilling and incorporating the essence of the following quotes you’ll develop a unique brand that will differentiate you from the pack.

Let’s start with something Cecil Beaton said that offers some great basic guidance, “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

Intelligence is something that many people believe sets them apart, but, as Rene Descartes points out, “It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”

Sandra Carey reminds us that using it well doesn’t mean only book-learning, “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”

Lao Tzu took that advice several steps further several centuries before it Carey said it, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

Long before Tony Hsieh married happiness to corporate culture at Zappos, Herman Cain offered up this bit of wisdom, “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

In case you wonder if you really are happy you can use this great yardstick from Andy Rooney, “If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.”

And Ralph Waldo Emerson was kind enough to provide a yardstick with which to measure your success through the entire span of your life, “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children…to leave the world a better place…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Flickr image credit: loop_oh

This post is dedicated to all the entrepreneurs who believe that changing the world involves more than a new way to sell to consumers.

John Ericsson was a mind-boggling entrepreneur 150 years ago; one of the few modern entrepreneurs on the same level is Gary Cola.

Ericsson designed up the Monitor, the iron-clad vessel that helped win the Civil War, but doing so was a long way from smooth sailing.

Ericsson’s design was groundbreaking and some of its concepts are still in use today, such as the revolving turret for its cannon. Before the Monitor, he shopped his ideas around and was turned down by many “investors.”

He finally responded to a NYTimes ad from the Union Navy that ran for six days, “…for a two-masted ship “either of iron or of wood and iron combined,” with a delivery date for the plans of less than a month.

Ericsson met the deadline, but the reaction to his plans was as far from positive as you can get.

“Take the little thing home and worship it,” one board member said disdainfully, “as it would not be idolatry because it was made in the image of nothing in the heaven above or the earth below or the water under the earth.”

But that didn’t stop Ericsson, who looked for and found an evangelist in no less than President Lincoln.

To understand just how unique Ericsson’s vision was, consider this,

“What makes the Monitor so remarkable is that she’s almost a stealth vessel because all the systems except the ordnance are below the waterline. Keeping the engine safe from attack was a big breakthrough. Not only did Ericsson create this radically new type of vessel, but his designs were so nearly flawless that foundries and contractors from around the Northeast could fabricate the parts, and they all fit together when the ship was assembled in Greenpoint. It boggles the mind.” –Anna Holloway, curator at the Monitor Center.

The Monitor was built in just 118 days, was made almost entirely of iron and had an armored revolving turret that held two cannon.

I’ve talked with many entrepreneurs who get discouraged because their idea isn’t software, isn’t social and doesn’t involve the Net.

Yes, there may be scoffers; yes, it may be harder to get funded; yes, it may be difficult to hire, but that doesn’t mean you should stop—it can be done. And if (when?) you get discouraged read again the stories of Ericsson and Cola and take heart.

Which do you think will be remembered 150 years from now?

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes Quotable Quotes focuses on a person, sometimes an idea and sometimes on a word. The problem is that certain words keep coming to mind, which is what happened today when I focused on “success.”

As I collected quotes I realized some were familiar enough that I must have used them in the past, but I chose the ones I liked best and started to organize them for you.

But just in case, I thought I would check; good thing I did. The first Quotable Quotes: Success was December, 2009 and the second was January this year. That wouldn’t have mattered, but nearly everything I chose I had used previously.

The old posts are worth taking a look at and here are three new entries.

Mark Victor Hansen reminds us that there is no best time to start something, except now, “Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

Many people get excited because of an external event or person, but Fred Shero offers a better way, “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”

I really like this final thought and I have to thank Emily White for sharing it with me.

“Well behaved women rarely make history.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

As for the image, I couldn’t resist. It just goes to show that the things that are most important when you are young are the same things important as you grow old.

Flickr image credit: Undertow851

“Joe” called me today. He said he was thinking of leaving his company not because he wanted to, but because everyone thought he should.

He explained that everyone who knew him kept showing him articles and telling him that he was a born entrepreneur and should start his own company.

Joe said he had worked for everything from large companies to startups and as long as he had a good manager and liked the culture he was happy. He worked hard and felt he was fairly compensated.

Joe said he had discussed it with his family and they said he should do what made him happy and they would support that decision.

However, he didn’t want to end up looking like a loser because he didn’t do it.

Boiled down, here is my response.

• Contrary to current media coverage people who work for companies are not losers and entrepreneurs are not the be all and end all of success.
• Few, if any, knowledge workers at any level work 8-hour days, disconnect and go home.
• In the current recession, entrepreneurs are to the 21^st Century what consultants were to the recessions of the 20^th Century.
• Having entrepreneurial MAP does not mean you want or have to be an entrepreneur.

The last point is especially important.

I saw yet another list of 10 traits entrepreneurs and I had to chuckle. Here it is

1. They Are Not Stopped by Fear
2. They Know When to Ask for Help
3. They Are Persistent
4. They Are Passionate About Their Businesses
5. They Are Willing to Market and Sell
6. They Know Their Numbers
7. They’re Disciplined
8. They Have Integrity
9. They’re Great Communicators
10. They Think Long-Term

I chuckled because these are the same traits that all good people have when adjusted for their position and experience.

They are also the traits that the best managers look for when they are hiring. There are, however, many mangers too insecure to appreciate them.

Many years ago I read an article about the guy who invented the tiles used on the Challenger spacecraft to protect it when it reentered the atmosphere. He wasn’t an entrepreneur, he was a Lockheed engineer. He didn’t get a bonus for his work, it was his job. He didn’t care; he was happy at his company, was proud of what he did and liked being part of something larger. He was a winner.

The lesson here is that great people work for existing companies and great people start companies and both win.

Joe is a winner.

The losers are those who disparage other people’s choice.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chokingsun/3473500703/

Are you already a devotee of insanely smart hiring, in the process of changing after reading insanely stupid hiring or somewhere in-between?

Wherever your MAP is on the subject there is one thing about hiring that you need to wrap your head around if you want your career to flourish.

You can not hire stars, but you can create and maintain them.

This is as true of executives and management as it is of workers at all levels.

Think of hiring in terms of planting a garden—only these plants have feet.

You’re at the nursery and find a magnificent rose. It’s large, because it’s several years old, has dozens of blooms and buds and is exactly what you wanted for a particular space in your yard.

The directions say that the rose needs full sun to thrive, while the space in your yard only gets four to five hours of morning sun. But the rose is so gorgeous you can’t resist, convincing yourself that those hours from sunrise to 11 will be enough, so you take it home and plant it.

It seems to do OK at first, but as time goes by it gets more straggly and has fewer and fewer blooms.

Finally, you give it to your friend who plants it in a place that gets sun from early morning to sunset.

By the end of the next summer the rose is enormous, covered in blooms and has sprouted three new canes.

One of the things that insanely smart hiring does is ensure that people are planted where they will flourish, whether they are already thriving or are leaving an inhospitable environment.

I said earlier that people are like plants with feet. Abuse a plant, whether intentionally or through neglect, and it will wither and eventually die; abuse your people and sooner or later they will walk.

Insanely smart hiring also gives you a giant edge whether the people market is hot or cold.

By knowing exactly what you need, your culture, management style and the environment you have to offer you are in a position to find hidden and unpolished jewels, as well as those that have lost their luster by being in the wrong place. (Pardon the mixed metaphors. Ed)

These are often candidates that other managers pass on, but who will become your stars—stars with no interest in seeking out something else.

They recognize insanely smart opportunities when they see them.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ideonexus/3937284735

Win some, lost some is the mantra of business from the largest global enterprise to the newest startup to the micro entrepreneur.

That’s true whether ‘win some’ means a quarter filled with Wall Street plaudits and ‘lose some’ means your stock crashed or ‘win some’ is being able to afford a restaurant dinner after the bills are paid and ‘lose some’ sends you scraping to pay the mortgage.

Winning is easier, often driven as much if not more by the economy than by management skill.

While losing is also affected by the economy, there are enough wins that losing is more about skill—or is it?

Maurice Ewing talks offers up some useful tips on losing your first million. Written for entrepreneurs, it’s applicable to anyone, personally or professionally.

Here are the tips, for details read his HBR post.

1. Making losses is part of making money.
2. Just lose money — not perspective.
3. Never love the business — love doing business.
4. Losses do not make you a loser but how you handle them might.
5. Stuff happens.
6. Loss does bring some advantages.

Perhaps losing is more about MAP.

Perhaps it’s more about what you make out of what happened.

Perhaps it’s not just/all about you.

Yet all Ewing’s tips, along with my ruminations, apply just as well to winning.

Think of it as two sides of the same coin or the inseparableness of Yin and Yang.

Win some, lose some…

As with many things, your choice lies not in winning or losing, but in how you choose to respond to whichever is currently happening.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_obsworth/4984121965/

(MOOC)

Video credit: YouTube

There is much talk these days about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurism, what makes the first and the importance of the second.

Today we look at the story of Vijender Shekhawat, a struggling small business owner turned entrepreneur with an unlikely product, but one that is changing lives for the better.

Eight years ago 29 year old Vijender Shekhawat, warrior caste and descendant of kings, did what millions of Indians do each day—he stepped in elephant poop.

But unlike the other millions, his reaction was to study the poop and in doing so he realized it was similar to the wood pulp he used to make his custom paper (that wasn’t doing all that well).

Through trial and error he found the right ration of poop to cotton to produce a unique and beautiful custom paper; he uses organic dyes, including beet juice for red paper, dried pomegranate skins for gray and the castor oil plant for green.

Talk about sustainable!

When dung prices skyrocketed because there was a market for it, Shekhawat found a solution that not only made everyone happy, but also improved the quality of his raw material.

He provided the elephants’ food, pleasing the mahouts. The beasts ate better, pleasing the elephants. And higher-quality dung emerged, pleasing Shekhawat. “Before, keepers skulked around dumping it at night,” Shekhawat said. “Now they’re delighted.”

The paper is now sold in Europe and the US.

Like many entrepreneurs Shekhawat wants to do good along with doing well and that attitude drives his expansion plans.

Shekhawat has always had a charitable bent — as a boy he gave his lunch to beggars, his mother said — and his next dream is to help villagers by moving his workshop to a rural area and providing jobs, especially for women who often don’t have much chance to leave the house, and serving as an example for wannabe entrepreneurs.

Metaphorically speaking, we have all stepped in elephant poop at one time or another and are bound to do so again.

The real question is what will you do the next time it happens?

As Shekhawat points out, “the difference between being a fool and a genius is success.”

But first you have to try.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56796376@N00/1027372659

I used to have six aquariums, the smallest was a 25 gallon, six inch deep room divider and the largest was 100 galleons.

One day I moved a small, about four inches, black ghost knifefish from the 25 gallon tank to the 100 gallon aquarium. Over the next year it grew to about 11 inches.

This happened because fish grow based on the concentration of a chemical they secrete into the water. Nature stops growth when the concentration indicates that the environment won’t support them further.

Human beings grow similarly—they will grow as long as the environment they are in supports their growth.

Curiosity, investigation, discussion, dissent and debate are the chemicals humans secrete, but the most important is curiosity.

Limit curiosity and you limit growth; shut it down and growth stops cold.

This applies just as much to parenting as it does to managing or “leading.”

Just think what would happen if each of us worked to encourage unlimited curiosity, investigation, discussion, dissent and debate in our own little corner of the world.

Think of the growth that would be unleashed; the happiness that would be generated; and the difference between that world and our present one.

Image credit: Derek Ramsey on Wikipedia

No, it can’t be done.

No, nobody will buy it.

No, [insert your own].

Whether you have an idea that will change the world or a way to do what is already being done better, faster, cheaper or a combination of them, you are going to hear no.

Not once or twice, but many times a day.

You may hear it from family, friends, colleagues, investors and startup specialists.

A critical factor in innovation, whether for an entrepreneur or in small group in a large company, is the ability to unemotionally evaluate the quality and value of each ‘no.’

Some will be valuable in helping to tweak your idea to make a better product, while others only foster negativism.

You need to sort them out, use the good stuff and delete the rest—especially from sources who really care about you—no matter how often you hear them. (This applies to most advice.)

If you do get a bit discouraged when people keep raining on your parade just remember these others who heard the same thing.

• In 1936 the editor of the Pictorial Review refused the opportunity to serialize Gone with the Wind before its actual publication.

• In 1937 Roy Disney (Walt’s brother) said that Mickey Mouse was passé and should be phased out.

• In 1962 Decca Records rejected a recording contract with the Beatles because they didn’t like their sound and believed that guitar music was on the way out.

• In the late 1980s Ken Olsen said that business would never gravitate to personal computers.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottrettberg/3207635/