Discover practical advice, inspiration, and insights to help you succeed in business and grow both personally and professionally.
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If you’re serious about advancing your career, you have to be willing to take massive action—there’s no way around it. Top performers in any industry are those who know how to push themselves. They are constantly seeking out a new competitive edge, looking for ways to up their game and achieve the next level of results.
Whether you are just beginning your career and want to get off to a strong start, or you are a seasoned veteran looking to kick things up a notch, it’s all about the willingness to take action and put the pedal to the metal. While there will always be factors outside of your control, the ability to be proactive will ultimately determine how far you'll advance in your career and how fast you get there.
1. Don’t wait to shine
A shocking number of professionals fail to reach their full potential because they’re waiting for the people who got there first to succeed. You might be doing this without even realizing it. If you truly want to advance in your career, get rid of this mentality. Never be afraid to set the pace, even when you’re the newest member of the team.
Are you awesome at what you do? Shine. Can you break a record? Do it. Do you have great ideas? Share them. Want more responsibility? Rise to the occasion. Take action and unleash your talents on the world. Outwork the person who started five years before you. Whatever you do, don’t wait for someone else to get promoted first just because you’re the rookie.
2. Be hyper-strategic about where you take action
If you want to advance your career, it’s time to be smart about what activities deserve your time and attention. Yes, there are likely three-dozen things on your to-do list—that’s why you need to strategize.
Start by asking yourself this question, “What is one specific change that I could make that would elevate my game?” (Hint: if you’re having trouble answering this, schedule a chat with your mentor.) Simply knowing the answer to this one question can bring clarity to your plan of attack.
Once you’ve got your mission, put the blinders on. Take deliberate action to advance the specific goal that you’ve defined. Give your freshest, most valiant effort while you’re still on a full tank by avoiding lower priority tasks until you’ve made satisfactory gains. If you catch yourself sending your valuable resources in the wrong direction, be sure to pivot quickly!
3. Spring clean your life
Now is the perfect time to get impeccably organized. Set aside a weekend to dust away anything extraneous in your day-to-day life. Put away your winter clothes. Go through the files you’ve downloaded to your desktop. Get rid of old voicemails. Finally hit inbox zero—and come up with a system to keep it that way. This might mean skipping your normal Netflix-dedicated Sunday, but it will be worth it. Nothing feels better than having your ducks in a row. By cleaning up and simplifying your world, you will eliminate distractions and clear up space to focus on how to take action to advance your career.
Remember, successful careers aren’t built overnight. Little things add up to big things. Keep working hard and never stop asking yourself how you can up your game. Be so good they can’t ignore you. You have the power to increase the pace at which you advance in your career.
When asked for his advice on how to achieve success, renowned comedian, actor, and writer Steve Martin once said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” But isn’t that easier said than done? We all want to be good at what we do, but how can you become so good that you stand out from the crowd? And, more specifically, what will you be good at? It’s tempting to say that you’d like to be good at everything you do, but to stand out from the crowd and reach your most ambitious goals, it’s important to figure out what you do uniquely well. Then, you can start to build a game plan for how you will push yourself even farther, so you’re not just good, but great. With work and focus, everyone has the potential to become so good they simply can’t be ignored.
1. Make the Choice
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Decide to get out of your comfort zone in order to achieve success and stand out from the crowd. Realize that you can accomplish more and choose to be your best in everything you do. Change your mindset toward action and you’ll discover that nobody can motivate you more than you can. Push yourself to work differently or to put yourself in situations you normally wouldn’t—those are the moments when you can truly learn, and more importantly, grow.
2. Play to Your Strengths
Don’t focus outward at your colleagues and wonder why they are so lucky or how things seem to come so easily to them. Instead, focus inward, and ask yourself why nobody sees all the talents you possess. It might because you’re not using your abilities to their fullest. Take advantage of the things you already do well and figure out what it will take to become great and to achieve success. What do you do best, and how will you become better than anyone else at that one thing? How will you make that unique skill or talent your calling card? How will you stand out from the crowd?
3. The Time to Achieve Success is Now
Change is hard, so it might be tempting to drag your feet, but don’t put it off. Waiting will only keep your goals out of reach that much longer. There is no time like the present to start pushing yourself to achieve more. First steps are often the hardest, so getting past that first hurdle might be all you need to start building momentum.
4. Take Control
This works in sales but it also works in life: Don’t waste time wishing for things to be easier. Instead, seek ways to make yourself better and stand out from the crowd. Realize that the direction of your career and your future are in your hands. You have the power to write your own story and decide where it will lead. Be an example to others by actively tackling the obstacles before you and realizing that challenges are really opportunities in disguise.
5. Remove Limiting Beliefs
Stop doubting yourself and giving yourself reasons why you can’t achieve success. There are enough setbacks along the way—there’s no reason to create your own. Be humble and stop letting your ego stand in your way. Realize that you don’t have to have all the answers, and embrace the idea that the journey to discovering those answers can help you acquire the knowledge and skills you’ll need to bring your ambitions to life.
Nobody ever said that achieving success was easy. Becoming the best version of yourself and figuring out what you’d like to be known for and how to stand out from the crowd is going to be work. It’s going to take passion, commitment, and endurance, but the alternative is most likely a career path that won’t take you where you want to go. By taking ownership of your story and your future, embracing your strengths, and committing to the values you hold dear, you can open doors to even your most ambitious aspirations. What’s important is realizing that you have much more power than you think you do. Once you figure out how you will “be so good,” you’ll become someone nobody can forget.
Finding your first job after college can be difficult. You’ve spent a great deal of time working towards your desired career, and you want to get it under way. The problem is that while you have the skills you need, you may not have the real world experience that employers are looking for. That’s why it’s important to weigh all of your options when you are searching for that first job. You may not have considered taking an entry level sales job before, but it is definitely worth investigating. Starting you career in sales can set you up for success in a number of different ways.
Communication
It’s hard to overstate just how important quality communication is. Virtually nothing can be accomplished in business or in life without clear, concise, and considerate communication. You may have the most brilliant idea in the world, one that will help your company out-pace the competition two-to-one. But if you can’t communicate it effectively, it won’t do anyone any good. Landing a first job in sales is an opportunity to hone those vital communication skills. In order to be successful in sales, you need to learn both how to listen to your potential customer and how to vocalize your point of view in a way that the customer can appreciate. Unless you know what the customer needs, and unless they are convinced that you have the solution to their problem, you aren’t going to close the sale.
Time Management
Most entry level sales jobs give you a great deal of flexibility as to how you make the most of your time. And as you get out into the field, it will become evident very quickly that time is a limited and valuable resource. This means that you alone are largely responsible for how you structure and manage your time to achieve maximum results. This is a skill that is critical for success in any professional field, and it will surely serve you well in the future.
Making Your Case
Your potential client isn’t going to seal the deal if they aren’t convinced that you have the right solution. You need to be able to summarize all of the important information and communicate how your service will solve the customer’s problem. You need to be flexible and adaptable in your approach. You need to be able to read your audience and be able to adjust as needed. These skills will come in handy later on, whether you’re selling your next big idea to the board or nailing that opening interview.
Networking
They say it’s not what you know, but rather who you know. The networking that is inherent in an entry level sales job is of great value. By learning how, when, and where to network, you’re both exercising vital business skills and creating the framework from which you’re future network will grow. You will be in contact with seasoned professionals that you may be able to enlist as mentors or supporters as you pursue your goals. You’ll connect with peers who will help to keep you informed about changes in the business. The networking that in inherent to the sales field will help you master the critical art of relationship building, which is foundational to almost any business transaction.
Negotiating
With a first job in sales, you will learn quickly that everything is a negotiation. In business and in life, moving forward often comes down to resolving the differences between conflicting parties and opinions, and that is the essence of negotiation. Since achieving success as a salesperson demands that you learn to become adept at negotiating, that skill will become an advantage you can use to get ahead in any number of future pursuits.
Goal Setting
Because your success with an entry level sales job is determined by how much effort you put in, goal setting and follow-through become vital. It puts you in a decision making position that requires your self-discipline and focus be consistently outstanding. With that skill set readily at your fingertips, you’ll be far ahead of your competition in any field. You will learn how to drive your own success and hold yourself accountable.
Grit
Setbacks and obstacles are unavoidable. Everyone encounters them from time to time. The important part is how you deal with the situation. It’s easy to get discouraged and get off track if you allow yourself to be overly affected. Salespeople know, however, how to get right back up and keep going. That doggedness and determination will be a valuable asset no matter where your career takes you. In situations where others may falter, you will thrive.
Leadership
If your first job is in sales, there is a very good chance that it will be the first opportunity you have to exercise your leadership skills in a professional setting. By taking the lead on a team or taskforce, you will have the opportunity to discover what your personal leadership style looks like. You will learn first-hand what motivates you and your team. You will understand how to empower your team to achieve their goals. Every profession needs leaders, and you’ll be ready to step up to the challenge.
Clearly, there are a number of benefits to working in sales, especially when you take an entry level sales job right out of school. When a potential employer sees that your first job was in sales, and that you excelled, they know exactly who they are hiring. There will be no doubt that you are a resilient, capable asset who will undoubtedly see any task through to completion.
Congratulations! Your college career is coming to a close and the future is exciting, but it can also be a little intimidating. Everyone’s either looking for a job or has one lined up, and the college-to-career transition might feel like a race. But the truth is, everyone’s path and pace are different, and finding success after college is about exploring opportunities and discovering where you’d like your journey to lead.
Nobody is ever fully prepared for life after college, but what it takes to succeed remains the same: focus, determination, and confidence. Below are Cydcor’s quintessential tips for success after college.
#1 Have a Focus
Landing your dream job takes time and dedication, but it helps to know where to focus your efforts. To land a job you'll love, research companies whose values align with yours, or where you can learn and grow into that position. When you know your career path, you can focus all your energy on impressing potential employers.
#2 Establish your Personal Brand
Your social media profiles say a lot to recruiters about who you are. Check them for anything you wouldn’t want to come up in an interview, and if you’re not on LinkedIn, make a profile and introduce yourself. LinkedIn allows anyone to self-publish, so seize the opportunity establish your expertise with an informative blog post. Join relevant discussion groups, and instead of asking people where they work, expand the conversation and ask how they got there. You might learn a different approach to landing your dream job and gain a reference who will put in a good word for you when you apply.
#3 Build a Winning Resume
A great resume can be a make-it-or-break-it tool for landing a great post-graduate job. When writing your resume, get plenty of feedback from friends, family, and another professionals in the field, and use language similar to what’s in the job description. Most companies use online resume checkers to filter out job applications based on certain keywords and phrases.
#4 Start Somewhere
When you find a job that interests you and has upward mobility, apply. It might not be your dream job, but landing a job is the first and most important step to getting there. You’ll gain real-world experience and chip away at student debt, but not at the expense of your dreams. It’s also easier to get a job when you have a job.
#5 Keep Learning
Yes, you just spent the last two decades learning and a lot of it wasn’t interesting. But, you also learned how to learn. Take advantage of your student mentality and learn more about what interests you and how to improve your skills. Read blogs about industries that fascinate you and seek out a professional mentor through your alumni network. Did you really enjoy an elective class that was totally outside your major? Look online or at a community college for more specialized classes, sharpen your skills, and turn it into a career. Life after college is all about applying what we know.
The reality is the world probably changed a lot while you were in college: new jobs that you haven’t dreamed of emerged, workplace culture norms evolved, and a job market with different expectations emerged. But don’t let that stop you from diving in. There’s no telling what twists and turns your career might take, but what’s important is to keep growing, keep going, and embrace the journey. Congratulations, and welcome to post-college life! Things may be different now, but if you’re open to them, exciting opportunities are around every corner.
There are only so many hours in a day, and you only have so many resources at your command. Luckily, there are a number of productivity tips you can embrace in order to get more done. Learn how to save time, increase productivity, and take control of your day. Incorporating these five productivity hacks into your routine can make all the difference in achieving your goals.
It’s fairly common knowledge that it is vital to create long term goals for yourself, to give yourself something to strive for. What you may not have considered is that giving yourself a deadline to work against can actually improve productivity! If there is an end date you need to have a project completed by, it’s much harder for you to procrastinate.
To get an early jump on your day, start planning for it the evening before. You should examine your schedule for the upcoming day to start planning out how you are going to organize work hours. Do all of your appointments make sense as they are scheduled? Do you have any materials you need to review ahead of time?
Set aside blocks of time to make phone calls or to complete tasks between meetings. Once you have the general shape of your day mapped out, write out your to-do list for the day. Capture all the important tasks that you want to complete the next day and rank them by level of priority. Choose your outfit and set it aside. You may even want to take 15 minutes and make your lunch ahead of time. That way you can get up and go immediately without any lost time.
It’s easy to get caught up in the mentality of working wherever and whenever you can manage to. Time management and being productive when you're working from home is just as important as workplace productivity. While a stop at the coffee shop to knock out a few items on the to-do list may be helpful, it’s important for you to make your home workspace your own.
Start by decluttering your space. A space free of clutter sets the appropriate mental tone to maintain your focus. This should also help to minimize distractions that may take you off task. Consider using a program to block social media and other websites where you like to spend personal time. It can be really easy to get lost in your friends’ vacation pictures when you should be taking care of business.
The first thing many of us do when we wake up is check our email. Don’t! Break yourself of this time draining habit. Stay on top of your correspondence, yes, but don’t let it dictate your schedule. Part of learning how to increase productivity is to taking control of your time. Set aside a predetermined amount of time early in the day to address emails. Start with the most critical ones, and work downwards by level of importance. If you don’t get to a lower priority email during your allotted time, it can wait until later in the day after you have completed your most crucial tasks.
You may be tempted to go full force without stopping to achieve your daily goals. However, in order to be more productive overall, MIT Senior Lecturer Bob Pozen suggests that a bit of a break allows your brain the opportunity to take advantage of one of our body’s built-in productivity hacks. That time lets your brain switch modes so it can actually process and organize all the information that has been flowing through it.
Try setting aside a period of time once a week for to conduct a review of all of your activity from the previous week. This can give you the opportunity to clean up any lingering action items, get up to date on your progress towards your goals, and gives you some time to think creatively about how you want to invest your energy going forward. Giving yourself space to breathe and collect yourself is an important step in learning how to increase productivity in a sustainable manner.
In order to truly master your life and your time, it’s important to stay focused on what you need to do and how you need to do it. These productivity hacks will help you master your own potential and stay in the present moment. Practice them every day, and soon you will be unstoppable!
Everyone knows that “Coffee’s for closers,” but sales and marketing professionals take extra special pride in knowing all the best movie and TV sales quotes inside and out. Test your quote IQ with this quiz, featuring quotes from all your favorite movies and TV shows about business, sales, and marketing, and find out how you rate against the competition.
As businesses develop their strategies for growth, more and more management teams are recognizing that outsourced sales and marketing can be their secret weapon to achieve their company’s revenue goals. Outsourcing marketing activities can provide significant benefits including fewer costs, faster growth, and greater efficiency. By enlisting the help of a sales and marketing company like Cydcor, businesses can edge out their competitors and achieve their sales goals while focusing their internal resources on key projects to drive business forward.
An expert, full-service outsourced sales company can effectively drive sales growth while also reducing the need to devote as much of your marketing budget and resources to recruiting, training, managing, and retaining competent sales staff. Cydcor can rapidly launch and grow sales programs staffed with teams who are fully prepared to represent your brand, serve your customers, and deliver sales results.
By outsourcing your sales function to a company that specializes in driving sales revenue growth, your company can benefit from having a focused, full-time sales team whose only objective is to sell and help drive revenue. Cydcor’s sales teams understand how to quickly and efficiently make an impact on customers. While your internal team works to develop your business, a dedicated outsourced sales and marketing team will be calling on decades of expertise, experience, and sales cycle knowledge to acquire new customers to fuel that growth.
While it’s certainly important to partner with the right outsourced sales solution provider, entrusting companies like Cydcor, a leader in outsourced sales and marketing services, offers the benefits of reduced financial risk: Your organization will only pay for the results it gets.
Working with an outsourced sales and marketing leader gives your company the opportunity to take advantage of years of experience in direct customer acquisition. Outsourced sales and marketing has been one of the best-kept secrets of some of the best-known brands and Fortune 500 companies in the United States and Canada for more than 20 years. With well-honed, face-to-face and multi-channel customer acquisition techniques, outsourcing can deliver faster, better results through a tested sales approach to help your company achieve its revenue goals.
Outsourcing provides a level of flexibility that might be too costly and demanding of resources to attempt internally. Outsourced sales specialists are built to handle rapidly changing sales needs and can quickly grow programs or shift resources where they are needed most to keep costs down and maximize productivity and results.
Building effective sales programs can take months—if not years—of testing, adjusting, and applying learnings before coming across a winning formula. But by outsourcing to an expert sales company like Cydcor, companies can take advantage of years of experience developing programs that swiftly deliver results. We understand how to quickly gather and apply data, adjust pricing, and create impactful offers and incentives to acquire more customers and increase revenue. Our sales processes have been honed and developed based on thousands of customer interactions, and our clients have been reaping the benefits.
Onboarding new clients and launching new programs can be challenging for internal marketing departments who may not have the infrastructure and resources in place to handle the additional workload. Cydcor, however, has a tested pilot program through which we’ve launched dozens of new campaigns. We can quickly and easily mobilize teams to introduce new products and establish territory. In addition, our experienced, in-house marketing team works in partnership with our internal sales campaign management team to develop a marketing plan including specialized brand materials and sales collateral catered toward our unique customer acquisition approach.
By outsourcing your organization’s sales and marketing functions to a leader in outsourced sales like Cydcor, your company can empower your internal team, while ensuring consistent sales results. Enlisting Cydcor’s help to build a world-class sales and marketing program gives organizations a competitive edge allowing them to save money, acquire customers faster, rapidly boost revenue, and quickly and efficiently growth their business.
Leadership is a popular topic in business, which means leadership myths abound. After all, a company cannot survive for very long without strong, consistent, visionary leadership providing direction to the team. Good leaders affect everything from big-picture growth to the daily details of operations. So, what constitutes good leadership? You may be surprised to learn that conventional thinking has shifted in the office environment. The following outmoded leadership mantras are counterproductive to building an effective, cohesive team. Being aware of these team-leading myths—and correcting them—can have considerable impact on your bottom line over time. How many of these leadership myths are still accepted as fact at your company?
Leadership Myth #1: A Leader Directs
While this statement is true to a certain degree, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. This team-leading myth evokes the distant, hands-off approach that is increasingly seen as out of touch by the workforce of today. To define effective, well-rounded leadership, the sentence should read: A leader directs by encouraging active communication and engaging employees in coming up with solutions.
Leadership Myth #2: Strong Leaders Must Always Be Right
Being able to admit when you’re wrong shows those around you that you are not unreasonably rigid and are able to adjust your views when new information becomes available. Mistakes are part of the journey, and good leaders grow into great leaders by acknowledging mistakes and improving because of them. Infallibility is not a quality that defines effective leadership.
Leadership Myth #3: Winning Leaders Motivate Through Fear
Using intimidation as a means for obtaining results is one of the fastest ways to lose the engagement of your staff. While you may have their full attention while you’re wildly gesticulating, issuing ultimatums, or otherwise creating emotional mayhem in the office, what you’re really doing is undermining your own authority by losing your employees’ respect. Instead, lead by example, with empathy.
Leadership Myth #4: Natural Leaders Command Attention
This leadership myth presupposes that leaders must be in the spotlight—getting or seeking attention—to operate effectively. In fact, effective leadership recognizes that the spotlight is best and most valuable when shared. Attention should naturally shift to various members of a well-balanced team as circumstances dictate to give each team member their moment to shine and have a unique impact on results.
Leadership Myth #5: True Leaders Are Extroverts
This fallacy incorrectly assumes that only extroverts can be natural leaders. Some of the top names in tech, such as Bill Gates, Marissa Mayer, and Elon Musk (admitted introverts all), shoot that team-leading myth right out of orbit.
Leadership Myth #6: Legitimate Leaders Have a Certain Position or Job Title
Leadership is an attitude, not a specific position. Employees at any level within an organization can demonstrate leadership, and their efforts to provide guidance to their teams should be valued. The best, most effective companies help employees hone and grow those skills to turn budding leaders into the results-driving executives of tomorrow.
Want to be a more effective leader? Start by rejecting false assumptions about the true meaning of leadership. Everyone wins when leaders encourage, challenge, and acknowledge their team in the effort to motivate them to be the best they can be. Effective leaders seek balance, learning from and admitting their mistakes. They work hard while also delegating wisely, and they lead by example. So, what are you waiting for? The most important trait of an effective leader is the willingness to step up and try.
By Dwight Coates, Chief Information Officer | Cydcor
Building a department’s strategy, holding meetings, and orchestrating the delivery of technology to our business are not the only ways people can build leadership skills. In fact, one of the most effective ways for team members to learn critical leadership skills is by helping others. There is a myriad of benefits to volunteering. Volunteering takes team members out of their everyday routines and out of the office environment. It shakes up typical work groups, team structure, and processes and it challenges team members to think differently, look to each other for input and guidance, and unite behind a shared purpose. While volunteering, team members aren’t focused on getting ahead; they are focused on completing tasks, overcoming obstacles, and accomplishing goals—which is exactly why community service projects are such powerful teaching experiences.
1.Volunteers Connect with the Whys of Life: While serving others or working on behalf of the environment, volunteering can remind team members of their own values and help them reflect on the things that are most important to them. This process helps build more empathetic future leaders, and encourages team members to engage their hearts, not just their minds, in their work. It also helps team members see the bigger picture, to realize that thier work can have an impact far beyond any single project.
2. Enables Networking: Volunteering can have an equalizing effect, mixing high-level executives with employees fresh out of college. These volunteer activities give employees the opportunity to break out of their typical work circles and meet people from whom they may be able to learn valuable leadership skills or who may be able to offer support to help them grow their careers. While volunteering, team members often form lasting friendships and partnerships.
3. Teaches the Importance of Having a Vision: When teams volunteer, they unite behind a shared vision and commit, as a team, to shared goals. Because the stakes are often so high, it is easy to create alignment within the team, and team members can see how that level of alignment can pay off in the form of rapid results. When people band together behind ideas and trust in a single vision, it is astounding how much they can accomplish, and this experience can translate back to how a team works together on behalf of company goals as well.
4.Volunteer Work Energizes: When employees are stressed, doing work that benefits others, the community, or the planet releases endorphins and lifts spirits better than any sports game or team wine night. Volunteering reinvigorates overworked employees, reignites their passion for their work, repairs bonds between team members, and makes them more efficient and productive by challenging them to solve new kinds of problems and follow different processes.
5.Trains Great Mentors: As volunteers, team members benefit by offering guidance and support to each other in different ways than they might as part of their everyday role.Volunteer work gives team members a voice who may not always have one, and allows them to step up and show leadership skills and benefits they can offer the team that may not be as easy to recognize while at the office.
6.Exposes Employees to Other Cultures and Other Ways of Working: While volunteering, teams may have to follow new systems or processes than they do as part of their daily work, and this helps to challenge their thinking and adaptability. Team members are sometimes also asked to work with people who come from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds, and this helps team members learn new skills and improve their abilities to bridge communication gaps and relate to others regardless of differences.
7. Fosters Collaboration: Volunteering encourages partnerships between those who may not normally work together. While participating in philanthropy projects with my teams, I often intentionally assign employees to tasks that force them to work alongside team members they’re not used to working with to help bridge those communication gaps and force employees to break through barriers to find solutions together.
Besides the leadership skills volunteering imparts, spending time helping others can change the way team members feel about their work. Employees want to work for organizations that stand for something, and showing a dedication to service may help to improve employees’ outlook on the company as a whole, which may support team member retention. An additional benefit of volunteering includes strengthened bonds between team members, helping them to function better as a team and produce better results. Community service and philanthropy, beyond their clear benefit to the community, are invaluable team member development experiences that no department head should overlook as you strive to help your people be their best.
Dwight Coates, Chief Information Officer, Cydcor
Dwight Coates is the technology driver for Cydcor’s customer relationship management solutions. With more than two decades of leadership experience, Dwight has had the opportunity to see, first-hand the impact community service activities can have on IT and other professional teams as they work together to achieve outstanding results.
What do you call an accomplishment that isn’t preceded by a set of goals?
A lucky break!
Setting goals is an essential stepping stone leading to any achievement. Goals set direction, allow you to maintain focus, and reflect a reachable destination. But be careful: If you make those stepping stones too slippery with misdirected purpose or too far apart with unrealistic expectations, you won’t get any closer to your dream. In fact, you may fall off the path completely. Here’s a list of common goal setting mistakes—and how to avoid them.
Don't be Unrealistic
While goals should certainly be challenging and effortful to achieve, they should not be completely out of the realm of possibility. For instance, you might set the goal to complete a marathon. On the way to pursuing that goal, however, you need to ramp up your endurance in increments. Attempting to run 26.2 miles without properly training is just setting yourself up for failure. Rather, plan a training schedule that will get you in optimum shape for the race. As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.”
Don't Overlook the Details
Have a bigger plan. If you’re setting goals to get promoted to manager by next year, there are probably many things you need to accomplish to make that happen, not just one. Think of your goals as part of a larger plan, not just arbitrary numbers. Seeking to become an author? Start by writing shorter pieces, investigating the publishing process, joining a writer’s group, and taking the steps for bigger success.
Don't Give Up After a Few Setbacks
Remember that failures are essential to growth and success. Anything worth accomplishing will probably come with its fair share of hurdles. The key to avoiding this goal setting mistake is how you handle those setbacks and the lessons you take from them.
Don't Stifle Your Passion
Set goals that you truly care to reach. Setting goals is personal, and you shouldn’t set goals solely based on what other people want or expect of you. Accept advice from well-meaning people, but avoid adopting their views as your own without doing some real soul searching. To achieve a significant goal, you’ll need ample passion and commitment, and that comes from setting goals you care about.
Don't Ignore the Journey While Focusing on the End Result
Remember that goals aren’t just about where you end up—they are also about the growth you experience along the way. If you are not paying attention to the progress you’re making against your goal, you could be left scrambling at the last minute—another recipe for failure.
Don't Overfill Your Plate
Setting an abundance of goals can sap your energy. While you want to make sure you’re focusing on all the right things, trying to achieve too many different things within the same period of time can feel scattershot and unfocused. Instead of making this goal setting mistake, and taking on seven or eight goals and then struggling to juggle them, hone in on three or four big goals and crush them.
As best-selling author Seth Godin says, “Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.” So while you aim high, keep this list of DON’Ts close to keep you grounded. Soon, you will find yourself reaching new heights. If you set challenging goals that are right-sized, you will be well on your way to achieving your dreams.
By Gary Polson, Chairman and CEO | Cydcor
1. Take Control
Whenever I have struggled, made excuses, wanted something, or quit something, my Mom would tell me, “God helps them who help themselves.” Benjamin Franklin’s famous words teach us that we all control our destiny. A related Franklin quote is, “He that is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”
2. Be Prepared
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” This is truly a lesson to live by from Benjamin Franklin. In every endeavor, the more I prepare, the better I do. I even use the Franklin Covey planning system.
3. Maintain a Student Mentality
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Franklin’s focus on self-development is a major theme in his autobiography. It inspired me when I read it in college. It taught me the leadership lesson that you can learn anything in business if you have the right student mentality.
4. Be a Doer
“Well done is better than well said.” As a great businessman, statesman, scientist, and philanthropist, Franklin did a lot.
5. Work Hard and Stay the Course
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Without either of these qualities, there is no success.
Gary Polson is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Cydcor, the market leader in outsourced sales. With more than 25 years of business operations experience in accounting, legal and senior management, Gary has propelled Cydcor to unprecedented achievement with clients, culture and philanthropy since 2001. Under his leadership, Cydcor has increased its revenue more than six-fold since 2001 and has been recognized as “…the most respected sales outsourcing company in the world” by Datamonitor and The Black Book of Outsourcing, and one of the “Best Places to Work” by the Los Angeles Business Journal for eight consecutive years. Gary’s passion for excellence and never-satisfied approach has led Cydcor to earn both industry and employer recognition. With Gary at its helm, Cydcor has built its reputation on maintaining long term relationships with clients by consistently delivering results and by going above and beyond to help Cydcor’s clients gain market share and grow.