When you’re number four or five in a market, when number one sneezes, you get pneumonia. When you’re number one, you control your destiny. The number fours keep merging; they have difficult times. That’s not the same if you’re number four, and that’s your only businesses. Then you have to find strategic ways to get stronger. But, GE had a lot of number ones.

Jack Welch, interview, Business Today, February 7-21, 1995

A big part of defining your brand is understanding what you don’t do.

If you’re working for an organization, the it’s possible you don’t have control over whether the decision makers properly align themselves. However, you do have control over yourself and what you do or offer personally.

Michael Jordan should never had played baseball. M. Knight Shyamalan should have stuck with horror and suspense films and never ventured out into big budget action. And, Rudy shouldn’t have played football.

I disagree. Telling someone you don’t need a strong resume is really bad professional career advice. Resumes matter. They’re just not the ONLY thing that matter.

Today resumes aren’t just that one or two pager that outlines your work history. One of the most powerful forms of your resume today is your LinkedIn profile.

According to Forbes, LinkedIn is a recruiter’s most powerful search engine.

Not only does LinkedIn provide you with a place to pack a beefy resume, 2000 characters per job to tell your story. But, it’s a place for you to get written endorsements for the work experience you’ve written about as well as the skills you hold.

Take for example my profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/belalkhan

If you’re job hunting and aren’t utilizing LinkedIn for seeking out opportunities, then you’re missing out.

If you’re a professional, or even a student in college and you’re not on LinkedIn, shame on you. Get with the times my friend!

One summer as a kid I was visiting my cousin near Boston who had a pool in his back yard. I jumped off the diving board with arms and legs stretched out, “GERONIMOOOOO!!!”

SPLAT! It felt like some giant hand slapped me hard.

In college I learned life stings just as hard as a belly flop if you stretch yourself thin.

If You Don’t Have Focus, You Will Burn Out

Most high school students don’t know what they want to be, much less what they want to study.

Ask them where they see themselves 10 years from now, and you’ll realize most haven’t got a clue. Sadly, some may find it’s the same story with many college kids.

I was in the same boat.

Throughout most of high school I was never clear on what I wanted to be career wise. I knew I didn’t want to study medicine or computer science.

In my junior year of high school, after studying 20th century US History, I got interested in Economics and Law. I followed up by enrolling in Advanced Statistics and Advanced Macro Economics in my senior year.

At that point I decided that I wanted to get into investment banking and bond trading.

I figured I’d major and study economics with a concentration in business. After graduating, start off as an analyst and be on my way to abundant wealth and riches.

In my second semester of college I took “Money and Banking” and came to realize how our entire economic system is heavily reliant on debt.

I came across professionals that were in the financial industry and they painted a not so pretty picture of the life style and reality of the work place. These folks although had insanely high incomes, had just as insane debt.

I figured that I wouldn’t fall into the same trap, but they responded with telling me that’s what they all said. The pressure from peers and the environment they lived and worked in was too strong to allow them to go any other way.

At this point I became somewhat unsure of whether this was the direction I wanted to go.

By the end of my freshman year in college I had taken a few courses in Islamic sciences outside of the university. I came to learn that dealing in interest was generally prohibited, which finally rendered my career choice null.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do or be professionally. I lost any and all clarity that I had for my future. Depression and frustration set in and I lost interest in school. To cope, I buried myself deep in community activities. Anytime an organization requested my help of involvement, I said, “yes.”

It wasn’t long before I burned out and failed most of my classes. I was soon notified that I was on academic suspension. That was a wakeup call.

If I wanted back in I’d have to take classes off campus. I can tell you that my parents weren’t too happy about that.

First order of business was to cut all distractions. I pulled myself out of all the various community activities I was engaged in. For the next two semesters I’d focus on work and school, and nothing else.

I managed a 3.8 GPA and was allowed back into university. But, now I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

I continued my education part-time the first semester back and then took the next semester off to explore my options.

I knew whatever I’d decide, the focus of the career would be something that would allow me to understand and leverage the art and science of influencing people. It’s where I felt I could have the greatest positive impact.

When choosing an area of study I saw four options:

• School of Broadcasting
• Film School
• Mass Communication (included: Public Relations, Journalism, and Organization Communication)
• Business with a Marketing concentration

I had already taken more than half of all the required business courses, but I still had a deep interest in film and media and wanted to educate myself in that area as well.

I approached the head of the film school and some of the professors there and asked if it was okay to sit in some of the courses they taught. They didn’t see a problem.

I decided on business and marketing while unofficially attending film classes until I finally graduated.

Fortunately I had been working full-time through all this, so when I graduated I had built up various skills. That coupled with a degree opened up more opportunities that allowed me to advance my career further.

3 Tips to Give Clarity to Your Vision

This whole ordeal made me appreciate the importance of focus. The following three tips helped me gain clarity for what I personally wanted.

1. Understand your innate talents. Gain knowledge. Practice and Develop skills.

To overcome ordeals in life, both tangible and intangible, you need strength. You can develop it by seeking knowledge in the area you wish to develop expertise.

Take on projects to gather experience and credibility so that you may be to be taken seriously by people. Once you see your reputation developing and your strengths deepening, you’ll realize the possibilities of what you can offer the world.

Through this passion will develop.

2. Be Clear on What You Do, and Where You Want to Be.

Peter Senge, author of “The Fifth Discipline” address the visioning process and gaining clarity of the future we seek to create for ourselves and why.

He suggests starting with understanding your purpose, you mission if you must, then paint a picture that helps you fulfill that purpose in a way.

Take for example Kennedy era space mission:

• Purpose/Mission: Advance man’s capabilities to explore the heavens.
• Vision: A man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

The vision is rooted in the core purpose. When you come across opportunities, you’ll have the power to say, “No” because you’ll understand with total clarity that it doesn’t lead you to fulfill your purpose and thus it’s not the best use of your time.

When you have a clear picture of the future, you can humbly ask, “Is this opportunity worthy of the purpose I’m seeking to fulfill?”

3. Maintain a Sense of Adventure. Be Tenacious.

Seek the unknown. Be fascinated with discovery. See failure as a valuable lesson that brings you closer your vision and away from that which will waste your time.

Remember that Thomas Edison tried over 10,000 experiments before he figured out how to make the light bulb work.

My sensei would always tell me, “Perseverance and consistency are the key to mastering any skill.”

Prepare as best as you can for the challenges ahead. Think things through, but never delay action. Defeat is temporary and never fatal until you give up and leave your dreams to die.

One such film was a documentary titled “Happy.”

It was interesting to learn that the among the most unhappy nations in the world are the United States and Japan, and part of the reason for that is the over emphasis on productivity.

Happiness Experiment

The filmmakers explore the workings of the human mind and what it takes to be happy. The concepts and stories they presented were fascinating. But, what I found most interesting was the an experiment they presented.

From two groups of people, the experimental group was told to spend at least one day a week counting what they were thankful for. When they took their readings, all measures were indicating that the experimental group was happier than the control group.

Then they took it a step further.

This time they told the experimental group to do random acts of kindness toward other people. When they came to see the effect, the researchers learned that they people did simple acts like putting change in a meter and feeding a poor person.

The results came back much stronger than simply counting one’s blessings.

Apply the Concept to Yourself

Imagine if such concepts were readily advocated in our communities.

Take some time out of your day. Step away from the hustle and bustle of life and take a moment to count just a few of the blessings which you’re thankful for.

Sprinkle your days with some random acts of kindness. Share a smile perhaps. Pass on a nice complement. Feed an individual.

At the end of the day, take a moment to reflect. How do you feel?

One way you can influence your reputation by working toward building a presence in the community you’re active in. If a lot of your engagement is online, or those whom you wish to engage with are online, then maintaining an online presence is critical. Simply start by engaging folks by sharing and producing value.

Having said that, how do you address negative comments and reviews online?

If you get a negative comment or review, know it’s not the end of the world. It happens to the best of us. No one has a spotless reputation. It’s what makes us human.

If the Comment is Slander or Clear Hatred

It’s possible that someone simply hates your guts and they’ve made it their purpose in life to tarnish your good name online.

One option is to take legal action. If you don’t want to go through the headache, then you can bring it up with Google. See their Request for Removal page. Here are the removal request instructions.

Addressing Someone’s Poor Experience Directly

Most negative reviews are a result of a negative experience. Generally there’s no way to remove that which has been posted online. You can contact the original poster directly and try to rectify the situation. If you find that it was a negative customer experience, see how you can rectify the situation.

Bury the Negative with Positive

When it comes to negative words about your name or brand, the best approach I can advise is to bury it. People normally don’t go past the first few pages of a Google search result.

Burying the few negative comments with positive ones. You’ll have to work for it, reach out to past customers and engage new ones proactively.

If you’re trying to fix your personal online presence and you haven’t started in this area and you find that there may be negative things associated with your name. You can fix this in a couple weeks time. Simply follow if you follow action items #1, #2 (just setup a wordpress blog), and #6 that I’ve listed here: 7 Actions You Must Take to Manage Your Online Reputation