Harry Beckwith, author of one of my favorite business books “What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business,” has a new book entitled You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself . The book is all about selling YOU — the most important product of all.
The book is all about improving yourself, whether you are presenting to clients or trying to make a good impression to employers. It offers a number of ideas to help propel you to the next step to achieve success. Some ideas are common knowledge and have been preached since time immemorial, but are still worth repeating (just because our moms lectured us about something doesn’t mean that we actually follow it :o).
Business owners can definitely benefit from reading the book — the book’s approach is to first focus on a story whether it is about the real life experiences of a person such as the actor Jim Carrey and then distills business lessons from it. The author then summarizes the main learnings from the story shared into a one-sentence nugget of wisdom.
Take for example the section on Thinking Outside the Box. He used the story of singer Paul Simon who have written songs that have become instant classics. He flourished inside his box particularly in the 60s, and then he didn’t. His box failed him. He solved it by not changing his thinking but by growing his box. He went to Africa and got inspired with that continent’s sound and music. What resulted was the Grammy winning album Graceland.
The main lesson from Simon’s story? Grow a bigger box. Simon didn’t think outside his box, but he grew his box by studying different cultures and bringing in new things.
Other important lessons from the book from its chapter on communicating include:
- The real first rule of communicating: Make yourself clearer, and people will think you are an expert.
- Simplify. Simplify gives people certainty and certainty they can deal with.
- Watch your white space. Silence talks (in reference to talking and the importance of pauses; in visuals and the importance of white space)
- You have a brand. Make sure yours is honest.
- If you worry “Is my idea professional?,” it probably isn’t.
- Touting your credentials: Be careful in complimenting yourself.
- In terms of telling a story: Put the audience, not you, in the hero’s shoes.
Check out the book You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself
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