5 Features of Every Gold-Medal Personal Brand
Article provided by Brand-Yourself.com
The 2010 Winter Olympics have concluded, and as usual, I was inspired by consistently amazing performances from the world’s best athletes. To win a gold medal is truly an incredible feat, given that an entire world of competition is fighting for that one single prize. While an actual gold medal may never be possible for most of us, here are 5 features of every gold-medal winner that we can all emulate and incorporate into our personal brands.
1. Passion
It is highly possible that we can all be good at an activity without feeling true passion for it. Maybe we can even be great at it. But to be the best? That requires an inner-passion that can’t be taught, learned, or faked. I’d bet good money that every gold medal winner has a passion burning within them that keeps them up at night.
What about you? I suspect you are building a brand around a certain niche or specialty. Do you truly feel an inner-passion for that niche that keeps you up at night? Without passion, you might still end up being pretty good – but to be the best, you simply can’t do without it.
2. A Mentor
Before Kim Yu-Na of South Korea skated the highest-scoring performance in women’s figure skating history, she received a few last words of wisdom from her coach. In fact, almost every athlete received coaching directly before and after their events.
Think about that for a minute – if world-class performers rely so heavily on the tutorship of others, shouldn’t you? In my opinion, mentorship can come from many angles. Maybe it is your boss, maybe it is a family member, maybe it is even an expert blogger in your field. Find someone smarter and more experienced than you, and learn everything you can from them.
3. Practice, Practice, Practice
For almost every gold-medal winner, the story reads the same way: Start at age 3, get up at 5 a.m. every morning, practice, go to class, practice some more, repeat. Even the youngest competitors have over a decade of practice under their belt, and thousands upon thousands of hours of refining their craft.
What about you? Are you expecting instant success without the hard work? Chris Brogan speaks of the fallacy of an “overnight success” in this video series.
4. Specialized Skill-Set
If you took the gold-medal winners in curling and ski-jump and forced them to swap sports, I can guarantee they would both be terrible at the opposite sport. Same goes for top personal brands. Try forcing Gary Vaynerchuk and Brian Clark to switch places for a day. You would get one awful wine video, and the worst copy-writing article you’ve ever read! Both are brilliant at what they do, but also understand their own strengths and weaknesses.
And you? Are you trying to be too many things at once? Drill down your niche as precisely as you can, and crush that one area better than anyone else.
5. Previous Failure
Whether public or private, I’m certain that every current champion has experienced previous failure. Take Apolo Ohno, for example. He almost quit speed skating for good after finishing dead last in a major race as a youth. For others, maybe it was a particular jump that was missed the first hundred times they tried it.
As Seth Godin points out brilliantly, “see failure as a learning event, not a destination, it makes you smarter, faster”. We all fail, and some of us do it quite often! It is how you rebound from failure that can turn you into a gold-medal winner.
These are just 5 of many features shared by Olympic champions. Can you think of any more?
Ryan Rancatore sometimes fails, and sometimes succeeds, at building a gold-medal blog at Personal Branding 101. Also connect with Ryan on Twitter at @RyanRancatore, or on Linkedin, Facebook, or Brazen Careerist.
Article courtesy of Brand-Yourself.com for actionable tips to put you in a position of power in the job market
