The hard part

Long term goals are hard to achieve for 2 main reasons where our human nature betrays us.

1. At any moment, when we feel something is important, we want to do it right now. But you can’t accomplish a long term goal in a day.

2. It’s almost impossible to accomplish long term goals without some checkpoints and measures along the way. And checkpoints and measures are not a natural way of living. It’s an additional effort that many people don’t believe they have time for and are not practiced at. So it’s hard.

Your Career Year of Action

In this month’s webinar we talked about long term career goals. We used my Career Year of Action Guide as the basis for the conversation.

Download the Webinar Podcast Here

In the Career Year of Action Guide I have quantified how you can make progress on different aspects of your career over a one year period. The guide also helps maintain your motivation and focus by creating monthly measures and checkpoints for yourself.

Get the Career Year of Action Guide Here
(FREE TO MEMBERS)

Your Desired Outcome

It all starts with your desired outcome. Step back. Pause. Think.

What do you want all this work to amount to? What is the ultimate job you want? If you don’t have a specific goal, think about what your desired job would be like. Start to define what you want in your work and life long term.

Having a desired outcome defined gives you an abiity to ask yourself at any point in time, is what I am doing now helping me get to, or taking me away from my goal?

The hard part – the Middle

All strategic, long term goals share this problem, whether they are individual, personal goals or a strategic business initiatives.

Human nature gets us very excited about defining the problem up front, and then describing the end goal a year out.

But what happens in the middle? How do you specifically, get there?

When I work with teams or individuals to define that hard part in the middle, this is where the magic happens.

By defining concrete, intermediate, outcomes and measures to support your long term goal – things that you can achieve each month or quarter – you are way more likely to get there.

In the webinar, we talked about how to do this for your career and gave some examples.

4 areas of effort to think about

The Career Year of Action Guide is sorted into the following 4 categories to ensure that you make progress in your career, not just work yourself to death.

Test yourself. In a given month, how much do you think about the ideas covered in these 4 areas of effort? Careers get stuck when you let a year (or more) go by and only focus on the work.

1. Business Leadership & Strategy:
How to make sure your work delivers enough business impact and you are not just being busy. Topics are: Ruthless Priorities, Team Assessment, Delegation, Performance Management, Tuning your Job to have more impact

2. Career Development:
How to manage your workload so that your work is serving your career as well as your business. It covers topics like high-impact annual objectives, building on strengths, creating value specifically for your boss, and using mentors.

3. Personal Strategies:
How to incease your personal effectiveness and use your time better. This category covers things like Making Room, Managing Time & Energy, Building Trust, and Personal Brand

4. Steady Effort Communications:
How to build work habits to make sure you are not invisible and that you regularly share information. It includes topics like Stakeholders, Team Communications, and Networking

4 Specific Ideas

Because we couldn’t cover the whole Career Year of Action Guide in the webinar, we discussed one key idea in each category.

1. Ruthless Priorities

Business Leadership and Strategy: Decide what the business values and map your work to that. Create your annual objectives to make sure you are doing things that create real business value. We talked about how to negotiate specific, concrete outcomes and measures with your boss. Do not put your ruthless priorities at risk. Get them done. Develop a reputation for finishing important things. Set monthly and quartly goals for yourself to ensure progress.

2. Make Time and Energy

Personal Effectiveness: Remember, your job is to do your job AND keep yourself OK. If you lack energy you will not be good at your job. Think about what renews and give you energy and schedule time to make sure you are building and maintaining your energy. You need to think strategically, be creative, and overcome challenges. You can’t do that if you are burned out.

3. Mentors

Career Development: Do an assessment of your mentors. Add one this year. Think about your desired outcome. Figure out what type of person can help you, and start looking for them. Ask your boss, ask your neighbors, ask you accountant. We talked about how to find people who can help you, how to meet them, and how to create mentoring relationships.

4. Stakeholders

Steady Effort Communications: Remember, invisible doesn’t work. Know who your stakeholders are, and communicate with them regularly. Know who can influence your plans, resources, projects and compensation plan. Know all their names and make sure they know yours. Know what they care about and communicate with them, on purpose, in a way that is useful and relevant to them.

Your Stories

One other key thought we covered is to record your best stories so you remember them later.

At a minimum, update your resume each year. But when you accomplish things that you are proud of, or that others think are great, make a note of them. You will forget otherwise. And these stories are a powerful tool as you meet people, interview, or negotiate things moving forward in your career.

We also talked about how to proactively create headlines for the coming year as a motivator to make them come true.

Your next year

What do you want to be different this time next year? What are one or two goals that you want to commit to take action on this year? Decide, write it down, and create monthly or quarterly measures for yourself. Find a partner or a coach. Good Luck!

Want more?

Download the webinar podcast here

Get the Career Year of Action Guide Here
(FREE TO MEMBERS)

Become a Member
and get this Webinar, the Career Year of Action Guide, and free access to all the other webinars in the Member Library for one year.

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About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, and follow her on Facebook and  twitter.

Special January Membership Offer – 3 Months Free

Get your career goals on track. Now is a great time to join.

 
Membership Benefits:

Members get free access to everything in the Member Library and…

• You can download the webinars and listen at your own convenience
• You get all the worksheets and templates from the webinars to put your career plan into action
• You get access to Personal Coaching from me in the Monthly Coaching Hour
• You get the Career Year of Action Guide (an additional $39 value) which provides step by step, month-by-month guidance to ensure you make progress in your career

Surprisingly low cost

For just $179 for a whole year, you get access to a quality of information that is not out there at any price. And you get access to me.

If you join now, you’ll get 3 months free (15 months for the price of 12) AND you can get started with the Career Year of Action guide in January.

If you decide to join, I promise you are making a good decision. And if you don’t find it useful, you’ll get your money back.

Managers: Give membership to your team

Companies find this to be a highly practical, effective, and low cost option to provide meaningful development to their employees.

Contact me for Group or Corporate pricing.

More Work Satisfaction

Sometimes work can pressure you into being less than you can be.

As we begin 2011,
I encourage you to take back your career.

Succeed More. Like your Life.

I created my membership program to give people the tools, support and confidence they need to create a permanent improvement in their career.

You can thrive more at work

I was lucky to have a lot of help in my own career.
I built this program to help others.
Help works.

People love this program.

If you enjoy reading this blog, you’ll benefit from membership.

Membership gives you specific, practical and actions you take take right way, to improve your business and career.

And it serves as a monthly reminder not to forget about yourself when you get too busy in your job.

Join Now (in January) and Get 3 months free.

That means you’ll get 15 months for the price of 12, and your membership won’t expire until April 2013!

Here are some of the topics we’ll cover in the program in 2012.

• Ruthless Priorities (and Guilt)
• Influence and Matrix Management
• Maximizing Personal & Team Brand
• Improving Business Strategy
• Communicating for Greater Impact
• Increasing Team Performance
• Executive Presence & Standing Out
• Authentic Networking
• Social Media for Career & Business
• Making More Time & Energy

How the Membership Program works:

Each month I do a webinar on a topic of Business Leadership and Career Success.
Also, each month, members get to call into a monthly Coaching Hour conference call with me to get personalized coaching.

Members get access to everything in the Member Library and…

• You can download the webinars and listen at your own convenience
• You get all the worksheets and templates from the webinars to put your career plan into action
• You get access to Personal Coaching from me in the Monthly Coaching Hour
• You get the Career Year of Action Guide (an additional $39 value) which provides step by step, month-by-month guidance to ensure you make progress in your career

Surprisingly low cost

For just $179 for a whole year, you get access to a quality of information that is not out there at any price. And you get access to me.

If you have been thinking about joining now is a great time to do it.

You’ll get 3 months free AND you’ll get started with the Career Year of Action guide in January.

Managers: Give membership to your team

• Several companies have created a corporate membership for their employees.
• Many mangers have provided membership to their team as a development program.

.
Companies find this to be a highly practical, effective, and low cost option to provide meaningful development to their employees.

Your team wants career development. And it’s often hard to provide.

This program is a win-win.
Because my approach to career advancement is to add more value to the business, your team will add more value to your business and develop themselves in the process. And they will thank you for it.

Contact me for group or corporate pricing.

Steps to Effective Performance Objectives

Thank you for reading this far.

I’ll leave you with a practical way to establish your performance objectives for this year:

• Know what your business values in general, and this year in particular
• Establish your Ruthless Priories to deliver value to the business
• Create specific performance objectives to support the Ruthless Priorities
• Make sure you can connect the dots between your performance objectives and business value
• Tune your performance objectives to better suit your natural strengths and give you more energy
• Provide specific, concrete descriptions of outcomes and measures
• Provide a timeline for their delivery
• Document for your manager, a recommendation for how to measure you on your objectives
• Proactively negotiate the finer points of all of this with your manager, and get buy in.

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About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

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I want to kick off 2012 with some big (maybe controversial) ideas about how you can genuinely like your job more.

1. Don’t try to LOVE your work

This may sound heretical, but I just don’t believe in trying to LOVE your work.

I know I am going against people like Oprah and the late Steve Jobs who keep telling us that the only path to true success and happiness is to find what you love and do that for work, and the money will follow.

But “You must love your work” is just BAD ADVICE.

Here is a picture that shows how we are told to think about this.

Obviously you want to avoid the lower right, “Hate your work” and “Don’t make enough money”. But the problem is that upper left is unrealistic for the rest of us.

Almost no one achieves it. So why torture yourself?

Setting the goal as “Do what you love”, and then trying to make enough money at it, makes otherwise competent, successful people feel like they are failing when they don’t achieve it.

Here’s what breaks down for most people in the pursuit of the upper left quadrant:

1. In the upper right: Make a lot of money, but don’t love your work. This makes people feel like they are selling out and doing something wrong. It leaves them feeling guilty and unsatisfied.

2. In the lower left: People who pursue things they truly love but fail to make enough money at it, also feel like they are failing. And they have also ruined their hobby by turning it into a bad job.

I want to redefine how we think about this to be more positive and achievable:

Try these labels instead.

Instead of setting the goal as “Love Your Work”, set a new goal so you can actually get into the upper left quadrant without needing to be a rare, mutant, superstar. I say, “Like Your Work” and “Make Enough money.” We can all achieve this.

I love my family and friends. I love scuba diving. I love art.
I work for other reasons than love. I make enough money. I spend the money on enjoying the things I love.

This is the first step in liking your job: Give yourself a break and don’t feel like you are failing if you don’t LOVE your work.

Now, to get to the second step of actually really liking the job you do…

2. Follow Your Energy

The trick is to to figure out what gives you energy (vs. love) and do more of that.

If you follow what gives you energy and avoid what drains your energy (certain types of work and people you can’t stand), you will find yourself liking your job.

Here is picture for how to think about this.

Advance your career and feel satisfied in your work…

The trick is to find the intersection of the three things in this picture.

1. Your Values: Who you really are when you tell the truth to yourself. What is really important to you in life? What is OK and not OK? You will not like your work (and your energy will be drained) if your values are compromised.

2. Your Strengths and Skills: Where you get energy. You will thrive the most when you get to use your natural strengths at work. When you are using your strengths, you build energy and feel great about what you are doing. If you are in a job where you don’t get to use your strengths, it will drain your energy and you will feel unhappy.

3. Your Actions & Behaviors: Learn what your company truly values. Tune your job description to do more of the things your company values, but make sure you find the places where those things intersect with your personal Strengths and Values.

Find this intersection for YOU, and you will like your job.

You can choose the kind of work you want to do, and re-negotiate your job description over time so you put yourself in a position to thrive most of the time. This is the what the most successful people have figured out and do.

When I finally figured this out in my own career, my family started saying to me things like, “Am I imagining this, or do you actually like your work now?”

It makes a huge difference. And it’s achievable.

I hope you can take these ideas and create an improvement in your career.
Best wishes and much success for 2012!

Want some help with all this?

A webinar

In last month’s webinar, we discussed how to find this intersection for yourself in your own career. We also talked about the steps to tune your job to add more business value and be more satisfying.

Members can download this Build Career Value webinar for free.

Non-members can purchase this individual webinar or become a member, and get this webinar and all the other webinars in the Member Library for free.

Special Membership Offer – Get 3 Free Months

SInce it’s the new year, and it’s a great time to focus on doing things on purpose for your career, I want to remind you of the Membership program, as a great resource.

If you are interested in becoming a member, here is how it works:

Each month I do a webinar on a topic of Business Leadership and Career Success.
Also, each month, members get to call into a monthly Coaching Hour conference call with me to get personalized coaching.

For just $179 for a whole year, you get access to a quality of information that is not out there at any price. And you get access to me.

What you get

Members get access to everything in the Member Library and…

* You can download the webinars and listen at your own convenience
* You get all the worksheets and templates from the webinars to put your career plan into action
* You get access to Personal Coaching from me in the Monthly Coaching Hour
* You get the Career Year of Action Guide (a $39 value).

Join Now (in January) and get 3 months for FREE.

If you have been thinking about joining now is a great time to do it.

You’ll get 3 months free AND you’ll get started with the Career Year of Action guide in January.

Members report that they are able to create a permanent improvement in their career (and life) with the tools and confidence they gain from their participation in the program.

Managers: Be a Hero – Offer Membership to your team.

Membership is a highly practical, effective, and low cost option for you to provide meaningful development to your team. It’s a win-win. They learn how to add more value to your business and develop themselves in the process.

Contact me for group or corporate pricing.

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About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

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Success and Satisfaction

In this month’s webinar we talked about how to maximize your success and get more personal satisfaction from your work.

BUILD CAREER VALUE

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

The Magic Intersection

• Your Strengths
• Where you Get Energy
• What the Business Values

.
Satisfaction does not come from loving your work. It comes from working at this intersection where you get energy, you are using your greatest strengths, and you are doing things the business values — so you’re good at your job, you get the recognition and rewards you deserve, and you enjoy doing the work.

Strengths

Use your strengths
It is very painful be in a job where you have key strengths that don’t get used or appreciated. The most successful people know their strengths and make sure to use them. They renegotiate their job over time to put themselves in the position to use their strengths most of the time — that’s why they’re so successful.

Know your strengths
As humans we tend to take our natural strengths for granted. Our own strengths don’t feel impressive to us so we tend to overlook them. We talked about the problems this causes and how to discover and use your natural strengths.

Stretch
We also talked about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone, the difference between strengths and skills, and how to use your strengths to make successful leaps into new and bigger roles.

Energy

Satisfaction
When you get energy from your work, you feel more satisfied and have more fun doing it. We talked about how to learn to follow your energy and make job choices that will maximize it.

Build energy
The more energy you have, the more value you will create. Think about the things in your work that give you the most energy and the ones that drain your energy. We talked about how to tune your work so you are building energy, not having the life drained out of you.

Business Value

Negotiate
Don’t treat your job description as a life sentence. Your job is a contract with your company. We talked about how to renegotiate your job over time to suit you better. Don’t wait for someone else to figure this out or do this for you. It’s up to you.

Make a business case
You can’t just say, “I want my job to be different so I’ll enjoy it more”. You have to make a business case for the change. We talked about how to build that business case, and show your boss that your desired way of working is better for the business.

Visible, But not Annoying

Communicate
Share your value. Deliver high value outcomes and then communicate about them. As long as you are communicating based on excellent results, it is not annoying. People like to know about good results. They like to feel in the loop.

Less Chaos

Value not activity
Working frantically does not mean you are more committed. Think about outcomes not output. Make sure you are adding value. Don’t compete on being the most chaotic! We talked about the risks of being over-busy and how to compete on value instead (and how to deal with a boss that demands long hours).

Want more?

Downloads are free to members
Listen or download the podcast – Build Career Value
Download the complete webinar – Build Career Value
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

Become a Member

• Get yourself a membership.
• Get a membership for someone whose career you care about.
• Provide membership to your team as a practical and useful development program. (Contact me for group rates)

.
Become a member

• Get this webinar and all the other Webinars in the Member Library
• Get personal access to Patty in monthly member-only Coaching Hour conference calls
• Get a personal career advantage

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About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
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What is the job worth?

Many people ask me how to go about negotiating their compensation.

They struggle to figure out “what they are worth”.

Or sometimes when I suggest they are not paid enough and they should ask for more, they ask “am I worth that much?”.

What you are worth is never the point.

Whenever you negotiate for salary or contract rates, don’t focus on what you are worth, focus on what the job is worth, and what the outcome that job delvers is worth to the company.

You need to do some homework to figure this out. Find out what others in a similar role are getting paid. Understand what outcomes the business values most.

If anyone ever says, “You are not worth that much”, You can come back and say,
“If this job delivers these outcomes at this level, my data shows that it is worth x in this market, what does your data show?”

“You don’t have the experience…”

I was thinking back to a time in my early career when I was a field-based sales engineer. It was my job to be the technical counterpart to a sales person. I needed to demonstrate the product, and show customers how our product could be configured to meet their needs and improve their business.

It was my second job out of college and I was about 22. (I graduated at 20).
My salary was $30k/year. About 6 months in, the only other female in our peer group said to me, “Do you know that all the guys in this job are making $36,000 a year?”

My first reaction was, “I guess it’s because they have more experience”. She said, “It’s not fair”. (She got paid the same as me, but had more experience than I did).

Gather the data. Build the business case.

So I thought about it for a few weeks. Then I watched how the guys did the job. I looked at what they were doing and not doing, and compared it to what I was doing.

It turned out that on every aspect of the role I was performing at the same level or at a higher level than the guys. In addition to that, I was doing a bigger job. I was being used in sales in situations on additional parts of our product that some of these guys either, couldn’t or wouldn’t do. I was being left alone with customers to close business, and develop marketing and training with reseller partners.

So I then I finally thought, “this doesn’t add up.” ( I was a little slow…)

Ask for it

Back to the plot, in my next meeting with the VP of Sales and the CEO, they thanked me for my good work and I said, “You’re welcome, and I want a raise”. Their first response was, “You haven’t been here long enough”. I said, “All of my peers are making $6k more than I am”. “They said, “They get paid more because they have more experience.”

So I then said, “But I don’t seem to be getting any kind of slack or break on the work because I have less experience. In fact I am doing more advanced work than they are. I do everything thing they do, and more, so why is their attendance record worth more than my results? I think my salary should be raised at least to what you are paying the others.”

They agreed to raise my salary shortly after that.

The final point in the story is that the other woman called me later and said, “Thanks, you got me a raise.”

What are the lessons here?

1. If I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t get
2. If I didn’t do my homework on knowing what the job was worth, I would not have had a business case to base my request on. Learn the market rate for your job.
3. A business case is much harder to argue with than, “It’s not fair”
4. A business case is much more productive than, “You are discriminating against me because I am a woman.”

It’s worth expanding on this fourth point. Looking back, of course they were paying me and the other woman less than the men. It took me about 15 more years to notice that by the way. (Again, I was a bit slow on this point…)

Business results speak loudest

But I’m glad I was oblivious. If I had become upset about being treated unfairly as a woman, I would have used up a lot of energy and emotion on that. I might have argued on that basis. I might have got labeled, even unofficially, as “difficult” and that might have cut off future opportunities.

By focusing on the business case, I was putting all the right energy in all the right places. I was distinguishing myself on the value I was adding to the business, instead of complaining about how the world works.

No one is completely immune from stingy bosses or companies trying to get you to work for the absolute minimum they can get away with.

But I can tell you, at any level, whether it’s an entry level job or a C-Level position, it is always more productive and compelling to focus on building and selling a business case for the compensation you want, based on what the job is worth the the company, than debating about fairness.

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About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download
LIMITED AVAILABILITY – find out more

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New Random House Edition

I’m excited to share the news with you that my book RISE has been picked up by a large commercial publisher.

Here is a sneak peak at the new cover. It’s also been updated with additional examples, and re-organized a bit, but the content and the tone remain the same.

If you loved the original, all the stuff you liked is still there.

Get RISE now, or wait till May

I wanted to let you know that RISE will be unavailable for a few months as we switch over to the new version.

So if you want to get a copy as a holiday gift, or for your team or book club, you’ll need to order now. Otherwise you’ll need to wait till May 2012.

Here is all the information on availability.

Dec 31, 2011
The last day to buy the original version.

Jan 1, 2012
You can pre-order the new version.

May 1, 2012
The new version will be shipping.

Get your copies now

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Barnes & Noble

CLICK HERE FOR
VOLUME DISCOUNTS

Increased Distribution & Audio Version!

RISE will be published May 1, 2012 by Ten Speed Press, an Imprint of Crown Books, a division of Random House.

Starting in May 2012:

• RISE will be in book stores and in major airports nationally
• We will also finally have distribution in India which many of you have been asking for
• There will be an audio version (with my voice…James Earl Jones was busy).

Thank You

Thank you for all your support, interest and feedback on RISE. I really appreciate all the reviews, and how many of you have passed it on and are buying it as a gift for others. That is such an honor!

Thanks again.

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About Patty

Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Download a FREE excerpt

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More Success, More Satisfaction

You, or someone you care about deserves a better job and a better life.

I built my own career from entry level engineer to General Manager and CEO.

I say that not to brag, but to make sure you know I had A LOT OF HELP to get there.

I wrote RISE to share all that help.

A Practical Guide

I put everything I learned about advancing my career and standing out as a leader into RISE. It is a very practical and useful guide to get ahead in your career AND like your life.

RISE makes a great holiday gift for your friends or your team.

Buy RISE now for someone whose career you care about.

I promise it’s: Real Advice. No Fluff. Non-annoying.

Here are some of the comments RISE has received over the past few months:

• …a book so well organized, so thought provoking, so damn relevant
• It will save you a lot of headaches, and you’ll avoid a ton of mistakes.
• You have enabled me to see options in my own career I previously could not.
• THE most useful business book I have ever read – literally.
• You’ll put her ideas to work right away, feel liberated as a result.
• …Patty becomes a friend, whom the reader comes to feel, really does want you to benefit from her advice and experience
• …simply the best and last business book of its kind that you will ever need to read.
• Until now I could not recommend one specific book, With Rise: I have “the” book to recommend.

Buy RISE Now as a Holiday Gift

 
 
>>VOLUME DISCOUNTS

Thank You!

Thank you all for your support of RISE so far and making it such a success. If you have any thoughts to share about it, please leave a comment in the box below.
Thank You.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

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Summer is a great time to check in on your goals — to make sure you are making the professional progress you want.

If you have been thinking about becoming a member of Azzarello Group to get actionable ideas and guidance to optimize your career, now is a great time to join.

Join by June 30 and get 3 months Free

Your membership will be active through September of 2011. (That’s 2 summers!)

Join now

Employee/Leadership Development Option

Did you know that many companies use this membership program as an employee/leadership development program?

If you’re not familiar with this program, this is unique development resource for your team.

The program is delivered through:

• Monthly webinars on topics of effective business and personal leadership. Browse webinar topics.
• Worksheets to put the learning into action
• Live coaching from Patty in a member-only Coaching Hour each month

Personalized Approach

As members, your employees can personalize this program to:

• Participate at their own pace, on a schedule that works for them.
• Download specific resources when they need guidance or support on a particular leadership or business topic.
• Ask their own questions and get direct access to Patty in monthly member Coaching Hours

.
It works.

Members who use this program have got promotions, raises and recognition.
They have learned how to be better leaders, think and work more strategically, communicate better, and deliver more value in their business.

Companies who offer this program get lots of points for providing employee development!

Many companies use this as a primary employee development resource.

It’s low cost. It’s easy to provide, It’s easy to use. People love it.

How to join

Individuals can join for only $179 for a whole year!

(with the 3 months free option, that’s just over $10/month! – a no brainer)

This program is a remarkably good deal. The quality of the content is unmatched.

It’s valued at over $1000/year. But since the economy is still struggling, I want to keep this priced so people feel comfortable asking for reimbursement or can pay on their own.

I really do want to help.

So make sure get the extended deal, don’t wait. Join now.

Learn more about membership
Join now and get 3 months for Free!
Contact me about corporate discounts to use this as a development program for your team.

Thanks so much,

Patty

Why a Personal Brand is useful

1. It gives you more confidence and energy in your work.

2. You consistently position and sell yourself better

3. You get a professional advantage

BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND VALUE

In this month’s business leadership webinar we covered how to translate your personal brand into value that other recognize.

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Here are some of the things we covered in the webinar:

What’s the advantage?

More Confidence and Energy. Having a strong personal brand makes you feel more confident because you’ll use it to always put your best foot forward. You will feel less defensive, and more decisive in difficult situations.

Sell Yourself Better. We talked about how your Brand gives you the speaking points to be very clear about why people should value what you offer, and get that across quickly, clearly and consistently.

Professional Advantage. The most successful people have a knack for being able to talk their way into good situations. Because your brand gives you certainty about how to position yourself, you will be more persuasive and influential more of the time. That’s good for advancing, selling, and negotiating.

Your Current Brand

You Have Brand Today. You have a Personal Brand right now whether you know it or not. Do you know what it is? Do you know what are you known for? Is it want you want it to be?

Behaviors and Consistency. Aristotle once said: Excellence is a habit, not an act.
Your brand is granted to you by others based on the behaviors they experience from you most consistently. We talked about how to build your brand through behaviors.

Building Your Brand

Build on Your Strengths. The best way to build your brand is to start with your natural strengths. As humans we tend to undervalue our strengths. We discussed why that is, how to overcome this, and how to zero in on your natural strengths and build them in to your brand.

Be YOU. Your Personal Brand should be based on who you actually are, not a marketing-version of some other person you think you should be. It needs to be something you can live up to consistently. So if you define your brand with a big gap to reality, it will never actually be your brand because you won’t do it.

Find the Intersection. To translate your brand into what others will value, you need to get to know what is important to your audience, and tune how you speak about and behave your brand values to align with what they care about.

Define Your Playbook. A big part of putting your brand into action is to focus on your playbook. We all have one. Think about what you did the same in every job you ever had. We talked about examples of personal brand playbooks and how to create and use them.

Using Your Brand

Work in your power alley. Part of the reason that having a strong brand gives you more confidence and energy is because when you combine it with your playbook, you end up working in your power alley. You are doing great at what you are good at and it feels great.

Your Brand and Interviewing. Think about the power this brings to an interview. You can quickly establish your credibility. You build confidence in yourself and your prospect when you can articulate why you are good at what you are good at, and give compelling examples from your playbook of being at your best. No stumbling!

Your Brand and Your Company’s Brand

Does your brand ever change? Your core Brand values don’t change much, but the story at the intersection changes depending on your company or customers’ culture and what they value.

What if you don’t fit. If you feel like your brand does not mesh with the culture of your company this can be painful. In the discussion I gave some examples of how to use your Brand to put you on the high ground and go counter-culture in a productive way.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – Build Your Personal Brand Value
Download the complete webinar – Build Your Personal Brand Value
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

Join Now and Get 3 Months Free

Why not become a member of Azzarello Group and get all the good stuff for free.

A personalized program for you

Membership provides a personalized leadership development resource for you or your team. You can learn and use the resources at your own pace, on your own schedule.

Members get access to everything in the Member Library, and personal, live coaching from me in a monthly member-only conference call.

At only $179/year, it is an exceptionally good value, and the quality and usefulness of the content is unmatched.

If you join by June 30, you get 3 months free. Your membership won’t expire until Sep 30, 2011.

Learn more or Join Now

Contact me for group discount rates and corporate licenses.

THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW

1. Subscribe.
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

2. Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

3. Check out  my new book
RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.
Free eBook Download

First of all, a big THANK YOU to everyone who has helped me spread the word, and make RISE a success! Your help made a big difference.

Since the launch some very cool things have happened:

We broke into the the top 30 Leadership Books on Amazon during launch week!

RISE was also recently listed one of  The 10 Business Books to Read this Summer on the American Express Open Forum website!

Also some other great stuff…

1. Book Clubs have formed
2. Amazing Success Stories Told
3. Great Reviews & Interviews
4. New Ways to Share

1. Book Clubs

One of the most gratifying experiences is that several organizations are using RISE as an employee leadership development framework.

They bought copies for the whole organization and created a discussion guide to talk about 1 or 2 chapters each month.

Each month someone has the job to apply the lessons in RISE to their unique environment, and recommend some specific leadership actions to improve. This is awesome!!

2. Success Stories

Thank you to all of you who have sent me notes about how you have used RISE to create a breakthrough in your career and life.

This is why I wrote the book!

I wanted to inspire peoples’ imaginations about what is possible, and then give them the specific tools and insights to give it a try.

So BIG Congratulations on the promotions, the raises, the successful job transitions, and the newfound confidence you have achieved.

And thanks so much for letting me know! Please keep these stories coming.

I know often times these breakthroughs and transitions are very personal, but if you are comfortable doing so, I would love it if you would share your stories, insights and experience on the Facebook page for RISE or write a short review on Amazon.

3. Great Reviews & Interviews

Rise has been reviewed in many places, and I’ve been on lots of radio shows talking about how to take more direct control of your business and career success. We are in the process of collecting all the media coverage to put in one place on the website.

For now, here are a few really good ones:

Reviews:

The San Francisco Book Review
RISE…Destined to Become a Classic

Radio Interviews:

The Cranky Middle Manager Show – Weasel-free Career Advice
The Engaging Brand – Don’t forget to succeed

4. New Ways to Share

Also since the launch I have created some new ways to get and share information about the book.

1. Free eBook

There is now a free downloadable eBook, in which you’ll be able to get the full Chapter on Ruthless Priorities, one of the key concepts in the book.

2. New web page
There is a new page dedicated to the book at www.risebookonline.com.

You can find everything you need to learn about RISE, share it, purchase it (or get the free download) on this page.

3. Facebook page
There is a new facebook page Rise by Patty Azzarello.  Click to “Like” the page and you’ll get updates on a wide array of business topics, and pointers to new leadership and career resources in your facebook stream. (Not too many, I promise!)

Could I ask another favor?

Now that the book has been out for a few months, and many of you have had a chance to read it, I would really appreciate it (again) if you could share these new resources with your network.

I know you are super-busy, but if you could do even one of these ideas, it would really help further spread the word. And let me know how I can help you in return!

Ideas:

Email:

1. Send the link to the new web page for RISE http://www.risebookonline.com to your network and encourage them to check it out.

Post On Twitter:

Get a free eBook chapter of @pattyazzarello’s RISE… http://ow.ly/4QH46 <-- Worth reading!

Or

This is a Business Leadership book worth reading: http://ow.ly/4QH46 from @pattyazzarello

Post On facebook:

Post a link to http://www.risebookonline.com and share a personal note about the book.

Thank you all so much for your wonderful support!

Please keep the success stories coming!

Patty