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Why I am Creating more Content in 2015

February 2, 2015 by Thomas Henson Leave a Comment

I’ve started every year with the promise to blog more.

Each year I’ve failed!

So why is 2015 different?

Why have I increased my total blog in the past month?

It’s simple I want to accomplish certain things in my career and blogging can help me get there. So what exactly are my career goals:

  • To be known as an EXPERT

  • To SHARE my knowledge with others

  • To become an AUTHOR

  • To give a KEYNOTE a major conference

Photo by KROMKRATHOG at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/
Photo by KROMKRATHOG at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Who are you to say blogging more will help

Look at the first piece of advice Scott Hanselman gives in this get involved in tech course. It’s to start a blog. Scott Hanselman is a known author, speaker, and expert. He’s a known expert by software developers and routinely gives Keynotes at major conferences. So if he says I should start I blog it’s probably a good advice.

Around Christmas I got the flu and had a lot of time on my hands. Sitting around for a couple of days I was able to finish Soft Skills by John Sonmez.  Now John Sonmez is also a known software development expert, speaker, and author. One of the things John stresses in this book is to start a blog. In fact, John Sonmez attributes a lot of his success to starting a blog. Okay now that is two experts, authors, and speakers with the same advice. There must be something to starting a blog.

How to make it succesful

Having a blog is important but how can I make it successful?

How can I create content that will help the community?

I already had a blog but I wanted to make it successful. Creating a blog was one thing but making it successful was something else.

After a week of recovery I found a new email course on how to start a blog by John Sonmez. I was skeptical at first because I already had a blog. What I was looking for is how to make a successful blog.  I signed up for the course and started receiving the emails over a 3 week period.

The course was great it outlined the strategy for creating great content and where to focus your energy. Now I’m not going to spoil the course for you but I will tell what hit home for me was the consistency part. All the times I wasn’t consistent was the reason for my unread blog. Sure my content, style, and ability to connect with readers matters too, but you cannot get better at those unless you are writing the blog post week after week.

So that is why I have been able to blog more already in 2015 that other years past. I realized at of things that matter most its my consistency that will help me achieve my goals.

Experts are consistent

Authors are consistent

Keynote Speakers are consistent

I am consistent

 

Filed Under: Career Tagged With: 2015, career, Motivation

Book Review – Winning Jack Welch

January 5, 2015 by Thomas Henson Leave a Comment

Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book by Jack and Suzy Welch is a book about how to succeed in business the Jack Welch way. The book offers advice for your career from Jack’s experience.
success starts here sign
Jack Welch was the famed GE CEO that come up from the ranks at GE. Welch’s tenor as CEO was from 1981 – 2001. During Jack’s time at GE a lot of people under him went on the become executives or CEO of other companies. Winning gives tips for navigating your career as a whole. Not a how to guide for your career but a wholesitc approach to career/business management.

In Winning Jack describes his philosophical management approach. Welch provides many examples from his career at GE and speaking engagments around the world since retirement. One story that stuck out was about Jack’s first big mistake. Early in his career Jack was running a factory at 28 and was responsible for creating an explosion at his plant. Jack was sure he was going to get chewed out by his leadership but instead was asked what he had learned. Imagine the impression this left on Jack, throughout his career Jack took the same approach with his staff. Success has cost and Jack is very open those costs. He admits to failing in the work life balance area and that he didn’t have a very good relationship with his kids while they were small. Part of this could be attributed to a generational mind set because it wasn’t seen as a priority in his era. The book overall covers how to succeed in the world of business and life the Jack Welch way.books on shelf

With every book I read I like to pull out the points that I can apply in my business/life.

Winning’s  3 key themes

  1. Optimistic outlook – One key theme Jack hits you over the head with is to never consider yourself a victim. Even in times where you are the victim it is does you no good to play the victim card. Instead he encourages readers to take a can do attitude with them into everything they do. Sitting around blaming others is not going to fix the situation, the most important thing is to move forward. Do not let setbacks derail you. Jack devotes a couple of chapters on career development and having a positive attitude is the first key to having a successful career. No matter what position Jack was hiring for he always placed a positive attitude as the first trait he was looking for in a candidate.
  2. Candor – The most used word in the book because it is at the core of all the principles Jack teaches. None of the other principles will work unless you are in a candid environment. Welch differentiates between being candid versus mean spirited. Candor allows you to have honest and open evaluations in your organization. People know where they stand because of the candor in your organization. Think about how well you could benefit from open and honest feedback from your staff and leadership.
  3. Executive Training Programs – During Jack Welch’s tenor as CEO at General Electric, GE was known as a hotbed of talent. Many Senior-level executives and future CEOs came from GE. While hiring great talent accounted for some of that success, the main reason was because of their executive training programs. Jack says the seed for the idea was from Pepsi but the success of the program was from the GE leadership. Management would identify potential future leaders in the company and enroll them in the executive training programs where they would be trained to become executives.  In baseball terms Welch called this stacking his bench. He was always trying to ensure when they lost a great leader they always had someone ready to step in and replace him.

Conclusion

This was the second time I read this book and probably won’t be the last time I read it. It’s one of those books you need to read every so often to keep yourself motivated. Some good career tips about how to find the career you want and how to go about evaluating companies you want to work for. Hopefully you will read this book and apply some of the same strategies to your career. If you liked this article be sure to sign up for my email list.

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: Book Review, Books, Business, Motivation

Steve Jobs – Book Review (#1)

September 28, 2013 by Thomas Henson

Steve Jobs Book Review

Before reading this book about the life of Steve Jobs I did not know much about Jobs. I never was really into Apple products until the first iPad came out, and then I only used the iPhone and iPad. What I had heard about Jobs is he was a creative genius, who in the 80’s fought with Bill Gates for the first personal computers. Wow did I learn a lot from this book. The book was written by Walter Isaacson, although he was tasked by Jobs to write the book, Isaacson interviewed more than 100 people including Jobs. Throughout the book Isaacson would write the stories as Jobs told them and then present what he thought really happened from the others he interviewed. The overarching theme of Jobs in the book is he had a distortion reality field around himself and he could pull others into that field. By distortion reality field it meant the way Jobs thought things happened were not always the truth. Without giving too much away about the book I wanted to give 3 great messages I took from the book.

Lessons from the book

photodune-2526527-books-xs

  1.  Surround yourself with great people.– From as early as his high schools days Steve Jobs surrounded himself with very influential people, there was a story early in the book where young Steve called up the Bill Hewlett, CEO of HP, to get a part for school project. Before Steve came back to Apple he very close with Larry Ellison, CEO of Sun Microsystems, and relied on him as a trusted adviser. In fact Larry Ellison offered to raise the capital to take over Apple before Jobs was brought back in the late 90’s.
  2. People will pay for quality. – It is easy for businesses to get caught up in the Walmart type competitive environment, in which all that drives consumers is price. Jobs wanted to create quality products for people who wanted great products. Those quality products also had to be visually pleasing as well. In business it doesn’t have to be a race to the bottom for great products or services.
  3. Create something people don’t know they need. – There were times where Jobs was advised to pole consumers to find out what products they wanted to see Apple develop. Jobs pushed back saying consumers did not know what they wanted and it was Apple’s job to give them something they didn’t know they needed. While most businesses need to rely on customer feedback, the point here is to not let that feedback stifle your innovation. New markets are created not by customer surveys but by innovative products. See Blue Ocean Strategy for more about this topic. 

 

My favorite quote in the book is about presentations, Steve Jobs hated PowerPoint or slides of any type he would say “If you know what you are talking about you don’t need slides”.

Here is a video we watched during a marketing meeting in 2012. It might be an older video but the message is timeless.

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: Apple, Book Review, Books, Motivation, Steve Jobs

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