Identify Your Skills, Talents And Believe In Yourself!

"I'd like to go into business for myself but what could I do that someone else would buy?" Because I hear this statement from dozens of people every week. I've decided to explore two key issues: One, how to identify your marketable talents. And two, why it's important to develop positive self-belief.

I'm constantly amazed at how often I hear people say they work on jobs they do not like and make salaries with which they're not satisfied. When I suggest that they identify their real skills and interests - the activities that excite their passions - and focus their daily activities on finding jobs or starting businesses that will make their skills pay off, they stare at me with blank expression; as if to say working at what one likes is a blasphemy instead of a blessing.

The truth is every one of us has a talent or skill we enjoy, have mastered, and are renowned for among friends and relatives. Whether it's singing, writing, cooking, repairing cars, organizing parties, even babysitting, we use these talents or skills everyday. These same skills are your most valued assets and the keys to your success as a self-employed person.

Therefore, an individual who wants to go into business should begin by taking a daily activities inventory. Consider how you spend your time everyday. Are your daily activities consistent with your interests, goals and aspirations?

For example, do you like to type? Start a secretarial service! Are your friends always asking you to bring that favorite pie or dish to the family picnic? Why not consider starting a catering service? Do you receive a constant string of compliments for your fashion flair, color sense or custom designs? Maybe your future is as a fashion designer or image consultant.

To create your own job, you have to look at yourself as a collection of skills and talents that have value to yourself and others. Take note of the traits that others notice about you and comment on (either in admiration or envy). In the process of identifying your skills and talents, rank them in terms of your interest in them and their perceived value. Eventually, you will discover the assets that comprise your personal platform for supporting the business or job that can secure your economic future.

One saying we use at Self Employment Leadership Forum, Inc. (SELF) is "Before You Can Believe It, You've Got To Believe It." This means that before you can sell anything to anyone else or achieve any kind of success, you first have to sell it to and believe in yourself. A disturbing insight is how hard it is for people to see value in themselves and, therefore, their skills and talents. Ironically, in self-evaluation, people often devalue their own skills and talents, while others recognize, covet and even envy these attributes.

One student in our workshop, Denise Cribbs, related how at least 25 people had at one time or another asked her to bake a cake or prepare a meal for a church social or other event. Those people were acknowledging her cooking talents, offering, in most cases, to pay her. Yet Cribbs talked herself out of taking advantage of this economic opportunity, saying, "Cooking? No one would pay me to do that." Most of you will recognize this scenario of self-doubt and personal devaluation.

In another case, there's the late Azell Mance, a self-employed businessman fo 33 years, who created a second career for himself by writing and marketing a new book, "How To Buy A Car Without Getting Cheated". Mance managed to get the book into select Chicago Walgreens Drug Stores and bookstores and had inquiries about the book from as far away as California and Canada. He accomplished this despite the fact that he'd never written a book before in his life, and he published the book himself without support from a publishing house.

Mance's story illustrtes that he possesses two valuable attributes: an unquenchable belief in himself and the drive to turn his self-belief into profits. The seeds of success are within you and your belief in self. Jesse Jackson said, "Your attitude determines the altitude your aptitude will carry you to." To find your millions, you have to learn that you can achieve anything you believe you can.

Entrepreneurship Your Dream? Part Two

Reprinted From Afrique Newsmagazine. Copyright 1993-2006 By Pierre A. Clark.

The Success Manifesto. Seven Concepts To Contemplate.

Our seven-part "Success Manifesto" sums up the attitude and course of action we believe you must take if you want to achieve the success you've always fantasized you wanted.

1. "You can be no more than what you choose to be...and no less than what you believe you are." A famous novelist once wrote, "We are the authors of our own lives." Only YOU can determine what you are and where you go. You make that determination with every act of your life, even if you don't act, because not to decide is, in fact, to decide...to do nothing.

2. "Each step on the road to success is a process of self-understanding...and a realization of self-worth." Successful people will tell you that achieving goals begins when you understand your fears...and confront them. Once they recognized that they were ususally better than they thought they were, and could accomplish more than they thought they could, they began to move ahead. So can you.

3. "Success is a habit...just like failure. Success is the habit of doing the right thing. Failure is the habit of doing the easy thing." Success is not easy to achieve. That's why so few people achieve it. Hard work, discipline, sacrifice...these traits are the habits of people who succeed.

4. "To be it and achieve it, you've got to believe it," James Allen said."Thoughts are things. As a man thinketh, so he is." If you can't visualize yourself as being successful, you will undoubtedly become what you visualize...a failure. So changing your thinking is key to changing your life.

5. "A dream without a plan is just a fantasy." Wally Famous Amos, the cookie millionaire, said, "Where do you start (in becoming successful)? Start right where you are." That's the first step. The second step is to create a plan to move beyond that point.

6. If you want to change your life, the place to start is with yourself. The saying goes, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always be where you've always been." You need to reprogram your life, replace old patterns with new expectations.

7. "Association creates assimilation - if you want to learn to fly like an eagle, you've got to stay away from crows!" Negative thinking grows like weeds in an untended field. Banish those people in your life that starve your self-confidence and feed your self-doubt.

Starting a business takes more than wishing, hoping, dreaming and praying. The Bible teaches us that God helps those who help themselves. You can wish and hope for your life to be what you want it to be, or you can commit to a plan to make your dreams happen.

Entrepreneurship Your Dream? Stop Fantasizing And Start Doing!

REPRINTED FROM AFRIQUE NEWSMAGAZINE - 1993

Column: "Employ Yourself" - Written By Pierre Clark. Copyright 1993-2006. All Rights Reserved.

Part 1: A Dream Without A Plan Is Just A Fantasy.(tm)

Most you know our signature saying at S.E.L.F., Inc. is "a dream without a plan is just a fantasy(tm)." This saying grew out of our esperience with hundreds of people who say they dream of success in their own businesses. However, we've learned that most people's hopes never progress beyond the daydreaming stage. Why? It's found that fear and a tendency to cling to familiar yet unfulfilling ways of living are crutches people lean on, sabotaging their own ambitions.

Previously, we've talked about practical methods of starting your own business. Yet there are many of you who still refuse to believe in your ability to put these simple methods to work.

The Capacity To Dream

The capacity to dream, to visualize an alternative reality, is a talent unique to man. Dreams, it has been said, are where ideas and desires begin and man has always been driven by them. Our awareness and evaluation of who and where we are and the perceived shortcomings of our current lifestyles, compel us to dream about being more, achieving more, being in better positions than we perceive we are at the moment.

We live our lives by the saying, "the grass is always greener on the other side," as so many of us wish we were somewhere else, doing something else or living a life we perceive to be more fulfilling and successful.

Nonetheless, most of us still live in dungeons of unrealized aspirations and frustrations, paralyzed into inaction by fears and doubts about our capacity to change our lives.

So we continue to do what we have always done, living our lives in the old comfortable, familiar patterns. We succumb to our own insecurities. We allow the skepticism of friends and family to crush our ambitions, because so many of us measure our own self-worth by what other people think of us. We succumb to the pressure to conform to the common denominator at which everyone else exists because it's easier, even if we admit to ourselves that place is not really where we want to be.

If It Is To Be, It's Up To Me.

It is our own self-perception and indecision, then, that has determined where we are now, and the eventual course of our lives. If we refuse to take action to make our lives better, it's not someone else's fault, it's our own fault for allowing our insecurities to take control. As Rev. Robert Schuller often says, "If it is to be, it's up to me."

Believing In The Dream

If you've been an entrepreneur for any length of time you've likely had the conversation with someone: "When are you going to get the big break?" What that person (usually a spouse or other family member) is really asking is: "When are you going to make some real money? You've been pursuing this entrepreneurial dream for.." "..years and you still haven't made that million dollars you say you're going to make. What's the problem?"

I said I was going to stop dealing with those questions because in one way there's no point in talking with someone who is trapped in the myopia of low expectations but that's not true of everyone, I've come to realize. Some people just don't or can't see it because they exist in a world where limitless possibilities are a pipedream. They can't see themselves having the opportunity or ability to put themselves in the position to own a successful business, purchase a big home, buy that flashy luxury car.

I've been reading some of my old columns from the 1990s. Thirteen years ago, I think I was somewhat more willing to address the issues and doubts of people who didn't believe in the dream. I'm trying to find that energy again. So until I do, I'll be posting some of my old columns and sharing with those of you who weren't readers in the 1990s the thoughts and ideas that I shared with aspiring entrepreneurs in those days.

Guerilla Marketing - Promoting And Selling You By Any Means Necessary

I haven't really started promoting our million dollar project yet and won't until July 1, the official launch date. The first two project websites will be up and our support resources will be in place.

As a prelude to the project launch I've been reviewing websites and blogs, and I keep running across this term "Web 2.0", which I've heard is supposed to describe the second wave of the Web and web usage in the 21st century. Hell, I guess I'm still getting acclimated to the first wave (I hear blogging, social network software, wikis, IM, and forums are part of the interactive nature of this second web wave and I'm familiar with all those forms of web expression).

What I know is true is that developing an interactive communicative relationship with the people whom you want to converse with, do business with, or partner with is critical to the development and expansion of any large scale project you are planning to launch. That's why I've been reviewing websites and blogs, to gain insight into how websites are developed, maintained and promoted today and the changing nature of interactive communications.

I consider myself a first adopter technocrat (I bought my first web server software package in 1994 before I even knew the difference between a URL and an IP address). So I had no problem with the interactive nature of web communications is the way we converse in the 21st century; if you're in business today your clients or potential customers, employees, partner and/or investors expect to be able to reach you through your website, e-mail, blog, discussion forum, e-mail newsletter, SMS text messaging, cell phone, IM (instant messaging), or combinations of all these now widely used forms of communications.

The all-encompassing nature of web communications today supports the concept of guerilla marketing, meaning the use of marketing strategies that operate outside the TV-newspaper-radio-billboard spectrum we commonly associate with mass marketing. But if you check the web's activities today, large companies have adopted the so-called guerilla marketing strategies because they in-fact generate better per-dollar-invested results than the traditional mass-marketing buys. People today expect one-on-one communication whether they are dealing with a billion dollar company or a one-person startup and when they look at your website, they can't tell just from looking at your site whether you have a billion dollars or one dollar in the bank.

What they want to know is: Where's your blog? What's your IM screen name? What's your e-mail address? Can I text message you? I asked you a question about your product or service, how come I can't find the answer on your site? Or I e-mailed you yesterday, why haven't I heard back by e-mail? I want to buy your product now; where's your online payment gateway? All these questions result from how the web has blown interactive communications wide open, changed the game, and ironically leveled the playing field while placing greater resp[onsibilities on us to get our messages out and stay in touch/stay connected. Promoting and selling you by any means necessary isn't a strategy any more, it's a necessity if you want to be in the game at all.