In this economy, many people are in transition and looking to reinvent themselves.  Many can take heed of the lessons from author and New York real estate legend Barbara Corcoran.  Corcoran offers 10 rules for a career reinvention she discovered the hard way and by knowing herself:

1. There’s no such thing as part time: “If I was going to succeed I knew I had to work 40-60 hours a week with that fire in the belly.”

2. You can’t change your wiring: When Corcoran’s copy machine broke down, she hired someone to fix it, instead of attempting to do it herself. She had to treat herself as a business leader and not get bogged down in tasks she hated. So she spent money hiring someone, and spending money is something she loves to do and is good at.

3. Good things come out of insecurities: Corcoran’s “D-student” past only fuels her to work harder.

4. Girlie traits that once worked for you when you were younger can’t be relied on anymore: The charm she counted on when she was younger, especially when working with men, changed. She couldn’t play naive anymore — she wasn’t. “The intuitive stuff got in the way,” she said. So she presented herself as a realist, someone who takes their passion seriously.

5. The greater the success in a previous career the bigger the insult when you’re not taken seriously: Producers only called her back to get real estate advice.

6. Reinvent yourself in stages: “You have to reinvent yourself in chunks, little chunks, even if you like a nice neat picture.”

7. Contacts in your old field are totally useless: “Once you leave your business you’re old news.” Yes you have to start all over in making contacts — don’t forget the “thank you” follow-up e-mails.

8. In building new contacts, focus on young people: They’re the ones who are moving up, becoming the bosses.

9. Have a sense of belonging in online social networking: She missed her community at work the most but found a source of encouragement online. “Tweeting gives you a quick sense of belonging — an opportunity to build a community with people…It’s not a substitute but it’s nice,” Corcoran says of watching her Twitter followers grow and respond positively to her attempts to “make it” again.

10. Talents in your old business are useless in the new one: It’s a whole new jungle.

If you are a seasoned professional looking to reinvent yourself, consider joining the industry’s premier network of consulting professionals by visiting https://consultants.msquared.com/cfdocs/msquared/consultantlogin.cfm

Business is all about customers and selling. That’s why every manager and executive should be a salesperson once in his career. The skills and lessons are indispensible and difficult to learn any other way. 

Whether you manage engineers, marketing, operations, or customer service; you’re still a salesperson. You sell every day. You don’t just sell products and services; you sell your projects, budget, ideas, and capabilities. And your customers aren’t just the paying kind; they include everybody you interface with.

What Every Manager Should Learn From Sales 

A brilliant essay in the Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com) this week entitled “How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo” by Richard Greenwald wisely points out that while anybody can become a consultant, not everyone does it well.  He continues to prescribe what’s needed to thrive as a consultant in today’s business environment.

Some key findings from his research:

Think Long Term

Too many freelancers see their condition as only temporary—one that will go away as soon as economic conditions improve. It’s just a stage between jobs, they figure.

Some of them may be right. But the odds are that most are wrong. They’re going to be on their own for a long time. So freelancers need to think in terms of the long haul, preparing for a marathon, not a sprint.

Understand: This isn’t easy. Many of these people have known only 9-to-5 jobs, and it can be scary to think of freelancing as all there will be.  Scary, but necessary. Because if a freelancer views the condition as temporary, it’s almost a guarantee that however long it lasts, it won’t go well. Unless you think about it as a job itself—requiring time, investment, thought—you won’t get much of a return. Waiting for business to find you is not something successful consultants do. Clients know a halfhearted attempt when they see one.

Join a Network

The image many of us have of the lonely consultant toiling on his or her own is touching. And dated.

Most successful consultants are in a network or community of consultants. These networks are important sources of new clients; most consultants, in fact, say they get as many clients from these networks as they do from client referrals. What’s more, an increasing number of consultants share work, taking on bigger projects that require more hands. In this way, teams of consultants can function like a small boutique firm.

Have Your Own Space

We have long been told that one of the joys of working on your own is being able to putter around in your pajamas and bunny slippers. And such flexibility is, no doubt, an attraction of consulting.

But there’s a limit, and successful consultants say that having a work space separate from your living space is crucial. Clients do not want to have an important phone conference interrupted by a nagging two-year-old, a TV in the background or the sounds of street traffic. Most freelancers I spoke to have a space in their home that is solely for work—a bunker, as it were.

Others have started using shared spaces that provide a quiet space and a cubicle or desk to call your own. These spaces, called co-offices, often have other incentives. They give freelancers a place to go, which helps them keep schedules. They usually also provide a receptionist service, so someone always answers calls. And they provide a sense of workplace that is something many consultants complain about missing.

Think Like an Entrepreneur

Here’s probably the most important ingredient that distinguishes the most successful consultants: They think like entrepreneurs.

Too often, freelancers drift from project to project. That’s a mistake. They need to have a business plan or mission statement. If all they do is take everything that passes over the transom, they will be viewed as a nonspecialist in a world of specialists.

Consultants are known for the work that they do, and this often means the work they don’t do. With a mission statement and business plan, they can decide if a certain job is worth it. Sometimes the short-term gain in income becomes a long-term loss in reputation.

This doesn’t mean you should starve: Sometimes, any work is good. But too many consultants say yes to anything that comes along, so when the perfect project arises, they might be too busy to take it. What’s more, in this competitive world, prospective clients want to know what projects you’re working on. If they aren’t impressed, they may not hire you. So being able to say no to certain work, referring it to someone else, is a sure measure of a certain level of success.

To learn more about joining M Squared’s elite network of consultants, visit http://www.msquared.com/consultants/introduction.html

In an article this week, Forbes reported that three decades ago as much as 95% of the average corporation’s value consisted of tangible assets.  Today 75% of that average corporation’s value is intangible.   In other words, a business’s most valuable asset is its good name, its brand and reputation. In a recent survey by World Economic Forum, three-fifths of chief executives said they believed corporate brand and reputation represented more than 40% of their company’s market capitalization.  That value is the organization’s brand reputational value. Strong brand reputational value equals greater profits. 

Many companies that seek to protect and grow their brand contact M Squared Consulting for assistance.  A company’s brand reputational value has four basic elements: expectations, perceptions, business relationships and unique intellectual property assets. Improved quality in each of those areas increases financial value for the organization. For instance, a company with a reputation for quality and safety can charge more for the same product than their competitors because customers put a price premium on quality products and services that give them positive experiences. Companies with strong brands can retain employees better, too. A recent study suggests that 80% of employees between the ages of 18 and 30 will leave a company if they believe it has a weak brand or no association with ethics.

In today’s business climate there are four main avenues by which you can quickly lose your company’s brand reputational value. They are:

1. The Internet and social media. Any ethical or compliance failure, even an isolated and apparently minor one, can be instantly broadcast all over the world. Only a few years ago experts were saying you needed a top-notch public-relations capability to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle. Today 24 hours is an eternity. You need to be on your toes more than ever.

2. Subcontracting and outsourcing. A customer, partner or contractor may be the guilty party in violating ethical standards, but they don’t always receive the worst of the brand reputational value damage.

3. Regulatory. Litigation over ethics and compliance violations has been on the increase, and it will continue to increase. The Obama administration and other governments around the world are ratcheting up investigations and enforcement actions.

4. Employees. According to The Network, Inc., which runs the ethics hotline tnwinc.com, employees commit fraud more often during tough economic times. The company reports that of all the complaint calls it gets, the portion that were fraud-related whistle-blower calls rose from 14% in the first quarter of 2007 to 21% two years later.

Companies must treat their brand reputational value like any other asset. They should manage it just the way they manage real property and equipment. Here are five steps to take:

1. Invest in the three to five areas that will be most profitable. There are at least nine major areas in which ethics problems can hurt a business: markets and customers; strategy; product and service; design, brand and quality control; intellectual property and knowledge management; leadership; workforce; sub-cost-of-goods-sold expenses; risk management; and procurement. Determine which three to five of those represent the greatest business potential and risk for your organization.

2. Invest for the long term. Improving ethics in business for profitable gain is not a quarterly or one-year undertaking. Management needs to have at least a five-year plan and must try to foresee demographic and economic trends that can affect that plan. Ethical investments, just like investments in manufacturing facilities, can easily take five years to materially pay off.

3. Maintain an open communications structure. To protect a company’s brand and reputation, information has to be able to flow immediately to a sufficiently high level of the organization. One way to guarantee this is by having a consistently open line of contact between an ethics officer and senior management. If you don’t have a communication structure that allows concerns to become known, then build one.

4. Insure against individual idiocy and the ill-educated. It only takes the improper actions of one employee, one remote office or one outside agent representing the company to significantly damage your brand. Smart companies recognize and focus on the individual, always asking who exactly they’re hiring as an employee and whether they’ve done enough checking and testing of the person. Also, they know whether they are making sure their requirements concerning expected behavior reach every individual.

5. Insure against outside institutional incompetence. Apply all the same expectations for your company’s compliance, ethics and control standards to your vendors and partners as well. Not only must you exercise due diligence on entering into a relationship, but you also need to continually verify, at least for the top 10% of your supply chain, that your compliance and ethics controls are implemented and working.

In summary, your brand is a bigger part of your business’s assets than ever before. You can’t afford to let it be endangered.  For more information on how to protect and build your brand, visit www.msquared.com.