Capitalizing
on Your Strengths
A
lesson in using what you already have to achieve
success
By Brian Tracy
One
of the qualities of superior men and women is that they
are extremely self-reliant. They accept complete
responsibility for themselves and everything that
happens to them. They look to themselves as the source
of their successes and as the main cause of their
problems and difficulties. High achievers say, “If
it’s to be, it’s up to me.” When things
aren’t moving along as fast as they want, they ask
themselves, “What is it in me that is causing this
problem?” They refuse to make excuses or to blame
people. Instead, they look for ways to overcome
obstacles and to make progress.
Totally
self-responsible people look upon themselves as
self-employed. They see themselves as the president
of their own personal services corporation. They realize
that no matter who signs their paycheck, in the final
analysis they work for themselves. Because they have
this attitude of self-employment, they take a strategic
approach to their work.
The
essential element in strategic planning for a
corporation or a business entity is the concept of
“return on equity.” All business planning is aimed
at organizing and reorganizing the resources of the
business in such a way as to increase the financial
returns to the business owners. It is to increase the
quantity of output relative to the quantity of input. It
is to focus on areas of high profitability and return
and, simultaneously, to withdraw resources from areas of
low profitability and return. Companies that do this
effectively in a rapidly changing environment are the
ones that survive and prosper. Companies that fail to do
this form of strategic analysis are those that fall
behind and often disappear.
To
achieve everything you are capable of achieving as a
person, you also must become a skilled strategic planner
with regard to your life and work. But instead of
aiming to increase your return on equity, your goal is
to increase your return on energy.
Most
people in America start off with little more than their
ability to work. More than 80 percent of the
millionaires in America started with nothing. Most
people have been broke, or nearly broke, several times
during their young-adult years. But the ones who
eventually get ahead are those who do certain things in
certain ways, and those actions set them apart from the
masses. Perhaps the most important thing they do,
consciously or unconsciously, is to look at themselves
strategically, thinking about how they can better use
themselves in the marketplace, how they can best
capitalize on their strengths and abilities to increase
their returns to themselves and their families.
Your
most valuable financial asset is your earning ability,
your ability to earn money. Properly applied to the
marketplace, it’s like a pump. By exploiting your
earning ability, you can pump tens of thousands of
dollars a year into your pocket. All your knowledge,
education, skills and experience contribute toward your
earning ability, your ability to get results for which
someone will pay good money.
And
your earning ability is like farmland. If you don’t
take excellent care of it, if you don’t fertilize it
and cultivate it and water it on a regular basis, it
soon loses its ability to produce the kind of harvest
that you desire. Successful men and women are those
who are extremely aware of the importance and value of
their earning ability, and they work every day to keep
it growing and current with the demands of the
marketplace.
One
of the greatest responsibilities in life is to identify,
develop and maintain an important marketable skill. It
is to become very good at doing something for which
there is a strong market demand.
In
corporate strategy, we call this the development of a
“competitive advantage.” For a company, a
competitive advantage is defined as an area of
excellence in producing a product or service that gives
the company a distinct edge over its competition.
In
capitalizing on your strengths, as the president of your
own personal services corporation, you also must have a
clear competitive advantage. You also must have an area
of excellence. You must do something that makes you
different from and better than your competitors. Your
ability to identify and develop this competitive
advantage is the most important thing you do in the
world of work. It’s the key to maintaining your
earning ability. It’s the foundation of your financial
success. Without it, you’re simply a pawn in a rapidly
changing environment. But with a distinct competitive
advantage, based on your strengths and abilities, you
can write your own ticket. You can take charge of your
own life. You can always get a job. And the more
distinct your competitive advantage, the more money you
can earn and the more places in which you can earn it.
There
are four keys to the strategic marketing of yourself and
your services. These are applicable to huge
companies such as General Motors, to candidates running
for election and to individuals who want to accomplish
the very most in the very shortest time. The first of
these four keys is specialization. No one can be all
things to all people. A “jack-of-all-trades” also is
a “master of none.” That career path usually leads
to a dead end. Specialization is the key. Men and women
who are successful have a series of general skills, but
they also have one or two areas where they have
developed the ability to perform in an outstanding
manner.
Your
decision about how, where, when and why you are going to
specialize in a particular area of endeavor is perhaps
the most important decision you will ever make in your
career. It was well said that if you don’t think about
the future, you can’t have one. The major reason why
so many people are finding their jobs eliminated and
finding themselves unemployed for long periods of time
is because they didn’t look down the road of life far
enough and prepare themselves well enough for the time
when their current jobs would expire. They suddenly
found themselves out of gas on a lonely road, facing a
long walk back to regular and well-paying employment.
Don’t let this happen to you.
In
determining your area of specialization, put your
current job aside for the moment, and take the time to
look deeply into yourself. Analyze yourself from every
point of view. Rise above yourself, and look at your
lifetime of activities and accomplishments in
determining what your area of specialization could be or
should be.
And
by the way, you might be doing exactly the right job for
you at this moment. You already might be capitalizing on
all your strengths, and your current work might be
ideally suited to your likes and dislikes, to your
temperament and your personality. Nevertheless, you owe
it to yourself to be continually expanding the scope of
your vision and looking toward the future to see where
you might want to be going in the months and years
ahead. Remember, the best way to predict the future is
to create it.
Reprinted with permission from Brian Tracy
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