Why Your Career Is Flat — And What You Can Do About It.

"You are either getting better or you are getting worse. You never stay the same." - Jim Harbaugh Welcome to 2013 and I thought I would start with a cold, hard quote. It says it all.

If your business or career isn't getting better  — it's getting worse. Like I've said so many times before, you are either going up or down, your business/career is never flat. Why do I say this?

If you look at your performance, history, or success, look at it as an absolute. You are either going up or down. Many of us get caught in flat-land — where losers go to die. If you live in flat-land long enough, you will either be out of business or out of a job. And that's a fact.

You don't have to be crazy about it — but you do need to keep your eye on the ball at regular intervals during the year.

Since it's the beginning of 2013, take a measure of where you are right now. Look at:

• Your income/revenue - is it growing? Look back 5-7 years and see where the trend-line is.
• Your relationships - are you meeting new people? Are you growing your circle of friends?
• Your knowledge - are you getting smarter? Are you learning more?
• Your happiness - are you excited to go to work every day? If not, what can you CHANGE?

Because — if it's not getting better, it's getting worse.

And you have to start making changes . . . TODAY.

Is Your Career Dying?

Not in the Hollywood sense of dying, where Bruce Willis finally kills you in a fiery crash or fall from the top of a skyscraper. I'm talking about the slow drip-drip-drip death as you watch your career eke away and there's nothing you can really do about it.

I run into this all the time. I have clients who own their own businesses and suddenly realize for the past 4-5 years their revenue and profits have been going down-down-down.

Or the executive who lives in a corporate hole their in working for an asshole, in a department of do-nothings, for a company who hates their employees (and loves the almighty dollar — but it doesn't go to the employees).

Sound familiar? 

People's careers are dying all around us. It's due to a number of factors:

1. GLOBAL - The world is changing faster & faster. Institutions we thought were going to last forever are either no longer there or are on their way to disappearing. Publishing, media, technology, transportation, education, advertising, manufacturing, and medical just to name a few.

2. COMPANY - Focus on short-term profits vs. producing quality products. Top management has one focus — how to please Wall Street. They gear ALL of their decisions on hitting their targets and they quickly forget the product, the customer, and their employees in the process.

3. PERSONAL - People have lost their enthusiasm, drive and energy for what they are doing. They've been doing it so long it becomes a chore or they realize they have changed and are interested in more important things.

How do I diagnose and treat this situation? I ask a simple, three-part question — Do you want to:

1. Stay and do nothing? (not a good idea)
2. Stay and change the dynamic to make it better?
3. Leave and/or do something else?

When your decision point drops down to this simple diagnosis — it instantly clarifies your situation and it sometimes scares people.

Most clients instantly recognize they've been doing #1 for many years. They've been sticking their heads in the sand and hiding in their cubicles waiting for something to change. Some knight in shining armor to whisk them off and save them. But it never does.

The truth is: YOU are the only one who can help YOU. You are in charge of your career and you need to stop waiting for things to happen to you and start directing your life (and explore your limits).

Step One: Get off your ass and stop living in #1. Start doing SOMETHING.

Step Two: Change the dynamic where you are. Start meeting new people, understand where the hot areas of where you work really are, and move towards that light.

Step Three: Get out and start meeting new people outside of your sphere. Open yourself up to new ideas and new ways of doing things. Start pushing yourself way out of your comfort zone.

By the way, I cover all of this in my award-winning workshop, "Bulletproof Your Career". Early next year, I will also be launching my personalized coaching program specifically geared towards bulletproofing your career. Stay tuned!

Happy With Your Career? Not For Long.

One of my favorite quotes from Bruce Lee: "If you alway put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else — it will spread into work and into your life. There are no limits — there are only plateaus and you must not stay there — you must go beyond them."

What is Bruce really saying when it comes to your career or business?

Everything in your life is a plateau on an endless mountain. You work hard — you move up — and make it to the next plateau. You get settled — you enjoy that plateau — and then you make plans to move from that plateau to the next plateau on the mountain.

And I promise you — if you stay at that plateau for a long time — one of three realities will occur:

1. You WILL get bored of that plateau and start self-sabotaging behaviors.

I see this happen all of the time. We get comfortable and we get to know our responsibilities, our deliverables, our customers. Unfortunately, a career without challenges tends to become predictable and boring. And when things in our life become predictable and boring — we tend to take them for granted.

We start to let some areas grow fallow — we start to procrastinate on delivering — just a bit at first, but then it becomes endemic. We might start coming in later to work or leave earlier. We might not get back to our best customer as quickly as we used to. We spend a little too much time surfing or sleeping on the job — and everyone begins to notice.

Solution: When you start to get bored — the very millisecond you get bored — start looking for the new plateau to move to and START CLIMBING.

2. Someone WILL kick you off that plateau.

In my Welcome Packet I send to new clients, I have a powerful quote on the front cover: "If you aren’t continually reinventing yourself, your company, or your brand, it’s only a matter of time before you become obsolete, irrelevant, and go out of business." And that's 100% true.

Someone or some company is going to come along and shake your apple tree. You might see the apples fly all over the place and say to yourself, "I have a strong stem — nothing will happen to me."

But you're wrong. Think of what's happening right now in the marketplace — what has happened to the publishing, newspaper, media, advertising, music, auto, banking industries (just to name a few)? If things aren't falling all around you — you might be falling off the number one spot to number two (or three). Or your vocation is changing and YOU need to chart out a new direction for your business to sail towards.

Solution: Keep your peripherals moving at all times — keep looking around and see if anyone (or any company/industry) is going to begin to take over your plateau. Don't get comfortable, get moving.

3. Your plateau WILL disappear and you will fall.

We frequently make the wrong assumption and think, "This is a great job/company, I am challenged every day, and nothing will really change (at least for the time being)."

You're WRONG. 40-50 years ago, you might be right — my father had his position at Electrolux until the day he retired. But stop kidding yourself — those jobs are GONE.

In fact, each year, the market is moving faster and faster. Industries that were booming just a decade ago are now gone.  I'm always in awe when I visit my local cable company (usually to trade in my broken DVR player) and see just 10-15 years ago all the awards on the walls, the photos of all the accomplishments, the parties, the fun that filled all the offices and people there.

Now there are two VERY bored people on the other side of the glass partition who collect cable payments and exchange DVR players. That's it. Everyone else is GONE.

Solution: Sometimes plateaus disappear instantly, but most of the time, it take awhile for them to totally evaporate. So you have time — not a lot of time — but just enough to find that next handhold and start climbing up.

So the only logical decision to be made is to start climbing up. Because you don't want to start climbing down.

There's no time like the present — START CLIMBING.

P.S. By the way, this also applies to your life too. Your marriage. Your friends. Keep it fresh! Keep it growing!