Competency Is Just Table Stakes

Message from RG:  I’m lounging under a palm tree on a much-needed vacation for a few weeks.  So to fill your insatiable need for brilliant and helpful self-development info each morning, I’ve asked some of my clever friends to sit in for me during my absence.  Today’s guest blogger is Bruce Turkel.

Many people complain about the various external forces that keep them from achieving the level of prosperity they want. But with great resources such as Randy’s blog available, it’s becoming more and more clear that often the very things that hold us back are our own fears, insecurities, and concerns.

While its easy to simply quote Nike and say  “Just Do It,” when someone is confronting a wall of resistance to achieving a goal or starting a project, it sometimes takes a little more pragmatic bit of advice to help the people who feel like they’re holding themselves back. If that sounds like you, please read on.

If you spend a lot of time on the Web and read a lot of the new gurus of prosperity and productivity you’ll be confronted with a lot of advice that tells you to “Be The Best,” “Be Sensational” or to “Be Unique.” And often that seemingly good advice becomes the insurmountable obstacle that stands in the way of you getting what you want.

I’m here to tell you you’ve been lied to. You don’t have to be the best to be successful. Fact is, the best of the best rarely make it to the top. They’re too concerned about being great to be good. So let’s talk about that today and in our next post we’ll talk about the myth of uniqueness.

Success requires a lot more than just an unwavering commitment to your craft. It calls for perseverance, marketing, attention to detail, and not just a little bit of luck. But if you’re too busy sitting home and working on your guitar arpeggios or obsessively perfecting your sales pitch, you’ll never get the chance to get out there and make something happen.

As Sting sang in Consider Me Gone, “To search for perfection is all very well, but to look for heaven is to live here in hell.” Truth is, you don’t have to be the best at what you do, you have to be the best at branding and marketing what you do and convincing your prospects that what you do will make their world better.

Remember that in whatever you do you’re probably better at it than you were yesterday and not quite as good as you’ll be tomorrow. But as far as the market is concerned, you’re already good enough.

So what are you waiting for? Get up, get out, and show the world what you can do. And here’s the big bonus. While you’re busy building your path to success, you’re also improving all the skills you need to be successful.

- BT

Bruce Turkel is the branding expert who makes his clients’ products and services more valuable.  Bruce works with Discovery Channel, Metropolitan Health Networks, and Miami. He’s spoken at MIT, Harvard, TEDx, and hundreds of conferences. He’s been on NPR, CNN, and FOX and featured in The New York Times and Fast Company Magazine. He has published three books on branding including Building Brand Value.  You can read Bruce’s weekly blog at: http://turkeltalks.com/