When it comes time to find a new career that you love, looking at Personal Excellence is the first place to start.

It’s really a review, forecast and re-cast of the most important of all invisible and intangible assets that you have or can build on.  If you follow Brian Tracy you’ll know that achieving personal excellence in your life, business or industry requires lifelong dedication.

We get to talk to retired, packaged–out executives all the time. Here are some of the things they tell is.

• I want to re-invent myself.
• I’d like to use the skills I build in corporate
• I like the people side of business, how can I do more of that?
• I got a package and I’m fed up wit buyouts and transfers.
• No one is hiring senior level executives, but I’m too young to retire….

So how do you go from being at the top of your field in one industry to success in another? Can it replace an executive level income? Can you be the best at it? Can you be passionate about it?

Here’s a list from Brian Tracy that we use all of the time to show people how to change direction, build a new life, build a new business, or change careers.

1. Build a list of your Intellectual Assets
   
   Each person has or can acquire three forms of intellectual capital. These require an investment of study and hard work, but they pay off in higher income for the rest of your life. The first type of intellectual capital you can acquire consists of your core knowledge, skills, and abilities. These are the result of education, experience, and training. They determine how well you do your job and the value of your contribution to your business.

Action Item: List what you believe are your top skills and abilities. List also what your specialties in business were.

Example: Top Skill #1. Managing people. I was the manager who got called in to get different teams working better.

 

2. Build Your Internal Knowledge
   
   The second form of intellectual capital that you posses is your knowledge of how your old business or industry operated. You most likely have non-compete and confidentiality agreements as part of a severance package, but you wont be revealing secrets. Each industry has a series of systems, procedures, methods, techniques, and strategies to market, sell, produce, deliver products and services, and satisfy customers.

Each industry has internal systems for accounting, administration, and financial controls. These systems take many years to develop and considerable time for a new person to learn. A person who knows and understands these systems intimately has a form of intellectual capital that is leveragable into a new career.

Action Item: List the business process and systems you have knowledge in.

Example: I have a background in…

• Managing people and teams in multiple countries
• Getting projects completed on time and on/under budget
• Consumer goods marketing.

3. Build Your Ability to Get Results

The third form of intellectual capital that you possess, and that is perhaps the key determinant of your earning ability, is your knowledge and understanding of how you can get financial results in a competitive market. This includes your knowledge of various products and services and how to sell them.

Again, while respecting confidentiality, this includes your knowledge of customers and suppliers and how to deal with them. It embraces your familiarity with bankers, lawyers, accountants, and government officials and how to interact with them effectively. This form of intellectual capital may take years to build, and it is extremely valuable.

Your first responsibility to yourself is to develop your earning ability to a high level. You do this by continually increasing your intellectual capital, by dedicatign yourself to continuous learning in the areas of your expertise.

Action Exercise: List your ideal job title if you were to re-create yourself, any way you wanted. Think of roles you enjoyed most in past positions and create a new job title based on that.

Example:

My old role: Managing people on different teams.

My dream title: VP of People Development/ Team Development Consultant/ Executive Coach

My old role: Selling complex solutions

My dream title: VP of Strategic Sales/ Sales Consultant/ Sales Coach/Sales Trainer/

Thanks for reading our blog. If you have any questions, send us an email, or leave a comment!