“Nu găsim angajați competenți” spun antreprenorii. Poate ar găsi dacă …

Văd frecvent mesajul acesta postat pe rețelele de socializare de către traineri: “nu găsești angajații competenți? Te înțeleg. Este una dintre cele mai mari probleme ale antreprenorilor și managerilor din România. Partea bună este că lucrurile nu trebuie să rămână așa.” și promit soluții.
Ei bine, deși cred și eu că nu este ușor de găsit angajați competenți, sugerez cu tărie în același timp, dacă nu chiar înainte de a se uita după angajați competenți, atât antreprenorii cât și firmele care se confruntă cu această problemă să arunce o privire și în ograda proprie și sa verifice în primă fază 2 lucruri:

1. Oferă firma ta pachete atractive pentru angajații competenți? Adică nu este normal dacă vrei ca angajatul sa fie performer să-l și plătești peste media pieței? Când spun media pieței nu mă refer că tu antreprenorul, ai întrebat vreo 2-3 prieteni antreprenori cu cât își plătesc oamenii ci să cumperi un studiu de piață care îți spune mult mai acurat (nu precis dar mai acurat) unde este media pieței. Deci, asigură-te că plătești bine ca să atragi forță de muncă de calitate. Ieftin și bun nu există.
2. Cum stai atât tu, antreprenorul, cât și echipa de management la capitolul dezvoltare personală? Aveți cursuri de leadership, comunicare, management, etc.? Pentru că știm cu toții că oamenii vin atrași de pachet dar pleacă datorită șefului – aproape fără excepție. Când a fost ultima dată când echipa ta de management și tu ați fost la un training de upgrade pe soft skills? Mă gândesc că recunoaștem cu toții ca nu avem cum sa le știm pe toate și că în permanență trebuie sa învățăm. În jurul nostru lumea se schimbă deci și noi trebuie să ne adaptăm. Altfel, angajații competenți nici nu vin și dacă vin din cauza pachetului bun, vor pleca în curând din cauza șefilor direcți sau lipsei de viziune si consistență a companiei.
   

Știți “gluma” cu directorul financiar care îl întreabă pe patron: “ce facem dacă investim în dezvoltarea angajaților și apoi aceștia pleacă?” Răspunsul a fost pe măsură: “dar ce facem dacă nu investim în ei și rămân?” Clasic, nu? 😋
Câți dintre cei care se plâng că nu găsesc angajați competenți au participat în ultimele 6-9 luni sau vreodată, la un program de leadership sau management skills?
Nu poți să obții performanță cu un mod ieftin de gândire (adică focusat doar pe reduceri de costuri). Bun și ieftin nu există – “you pay peanuts you’ll get monkeys” ar spune americanul.
Pe scurt, dacă vrei angajați de calitate, asigură-te că plătești bine ca să-i atragi și că ai manageri de calitate ca să-i și păstrezi.
In plus, e bine să conștientizăm că nu toți sunt făcuți să devină antreprenori. Foarte mulți sunt făcuți să fie angajați și ca atare nu te mai aștepta că dacă tu gândești ca un antreprenor și oamenii tăi vor gândi la fel. Nu, ei gândesc ca un angajat. Nu ai cum sa ai o firmă plină de antreprenori pentru că dacă ar fi așa nu ar mai sta lângă tine, și-ar deschide propria firmă, nu?
Doar ca o paranteză, atunci când ești hotărât să înveți, mai uită-te și de la cine înveți – a dovedit trainerul tău la scală largă că știe cum să atragă talente? Câți a atras și angajat el până acum? Întrebați vă rog, că doar sunt banii tăi pentru aceste cursuri care vă învață cum să atrageți talente. Dacă trainerul/consultantul nu are un răspuns la această întrebare atunci este doar încă o părere (nevalidată de viața reală). Ceva de genul “chibiților” de la stadion care știu mai bine decât jucătorii cum se joacă fotbal deși ei nu au jucat niciodată la nivel profesionist 🙂 Serios? 🙂 In cel mai bun caz vă va povesti din experiența altora, așa cum a auzit-o el. Adică ceva de genul “hai sa-ti spun cum a gătit un vecin peștele, dar eu nu am fost de față – iți spun doar ce mi-a zis el (cu speranța că așa o fi fost …)”. Adică să aflu de la tine ce a făcut altul dar să te plătesc pe tine? Simpatic, nu-i așa?

Așa că, grijă mare pe cine ascultați.

In speranța că am fost de ajutor, vă doresc mult succes.

Să auzim numai de bine!

Romy

“When you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys!”

This is a quite popular quote and everybody who’s in business probably knows it. The popular meaning is that being employer, when you are not willing to pay good salaries you can’t get great employees. And without great employees you can’t build a great business. Bottom line – being cheap is dangerous.

This time I want to refer at it in the precise context of learning and personal development. 

There are people who achieve not much or nothing so far in life  and because of that they believe everything is a scam and are very sceptical in investing in their own education. Probably you met them or you are one of them (I hope not, but there is a chance, statistically speaking …). I want to talk about these guys and add here some food for thought…

1. a seminar is always more meaningful than a book from obvious reasons (one is that you’ll directly interact with the speaker and ask your clarifications all the time)
2. you should want to learn from experienced coaches who actually did successfully what they teach. Like in sport, to get good it takes time and a lot of practice which means these guys spent a lot of time and put a lot of effort to get to their excellence level, therefore their experience costs them a lot of money and as a result it cannot be cheap to buy this experience. It is like hoping to buy an Apple new generation iPhone with 10 USD. It is not possible. Same goes with learning – a useful one cannot be cheap
3. without education “injections” you can’t move fast in your career. It’s like hoping to play to a world class sport team by just training yourself at the backyard of your house – it will never happen. You need a coach who used to play professionally and not one who watch professionals playing

Today statistics shows that 90% of people are not so successful or not successful at all and they all work for the 10% which are successful.

If you interview a good sample from the 90% you’ll see that they invest nothing or only “peanuts” in their personal development. That is why they will always get “monkeys” for their professional development. How can you get great just by learning in a single job or a single company?

The funny thing here, there are people (the ones I mentioned above) who are not willing to pay much and they would like to pay less (“peanuts”) and get in a 1-2 days seminars the world wisdom which will magically change their life for good, in better, in matter of days … Funny isn’t it? As there is no such things .

Cheap trainings are delivered usually by “train the trainer” graduates, who will never be able to answer you real life situations questions because they never walked that road. This kind of trainings are as valuable as a book – it is only one way communication. You cannot even hope to do a great networking because actually you’ll meet there same minded people – the ones who think to pay cheap for their education.

Today, in all countries I have been, no matter how poor somebody is, you can borrow 1000USD from certain financial entities like banks for example – it is called loans for personal purposes and if you are employed, you’ll get them easy and pay back maybe in a year. This is the right way to start a great professional journey – invest good money in your education – at any age! You are never to old to reinvent yourself.

The investment in your personal development shouldn’t fall in the same “selection process rules” like other things when you are not wealthy. You can say “I do not have money yet for a great house, or car, or holiday, etc” and it is wise not to buy an expensive house, car or holiday, etc. when you do not have enough money. But you should never say “it is an expensive seminar to take” if you’ll have the opportunity to learn from the right coach. By not investing in your development you’ll just make sure you’ll remain behind most people in your generation and your understanding about many important things in life will remain basic. Very dangerous. You will remain “the guy who only saw a lake in his life and nobody can’t explain you the sea” – your horizons will always be limited. Never whish for that!

A career is like a business:

• you invest in it rightly, it will grow faster
• you brand it rightly, it will grow faster

What means “rightly”? Well, go for a good seminar and you’ll get the right answers 🙂

Nothing which is great (man made speaking), cannot be cheap. My humble advice: instead of paying “peanuts” for trainings, better by a great rated book.

There are things which are expensive but not great. Always check the speaker background related to the topic he/she is teaching.

Let’s take leadership learning for example – was the speaker ever a successful recognized leader of big organizations?

• Yes, then you might get good insights, if they will show you the whole picture, not only the bright side
• No, for sure you’ll not get them so, just skip it.

Life is short and tomorrow is never promised. Be wise with your investments.

Never pay “peanuts” for your personal development.

Make efforts even when it’s hard. Great learning is priceless!

All the very best, until next time,

Romy

When you send me a message from an iPhone but at the same time you say you don’t have money… Something must be fundamentally wrong!

Something is very much wrong with your priorities if you are willing to buy a new iPhone but you are not willing to invest at least the same amount into your personal development. Which one should come first when you do not have money to have them both? What are your benefits from having a new expensive phone versus knowledge when you are “broke”?

Just for the record, it can be any other expensive phone brand, the question remains the same.

Most (if not all) junior employees have entry level salaries and very basic or not at all personal finance education (because no formal education teaches that). Due to these 2 highlighted elements, life is usually tough especially when you have financial obligations like a loan or a leasing or some tuition fees. You will struggle with your holiday budget and any other nice to have things in life. Bottom line – not too much fun but a lot of work, work, work!!!
If your income is small and you do not acknowledge that you must “pay yourself first”, not last, then you are going to struggle for the next decade at least – this is based on my experience working in many companies – the necessary time for an average employee to double his/her earnings is around 10 years.
I wish someone would have told me when I was in my 20s that my primarily focus should be my personal development – what do I need to learn to fast track my career progression.
That is why, from yours no matter how limited resources, you should save monthly a minimum 10% (the golden number) and invest these money in yourself – meaning buy books, online trainings and go to seminars. How do you plan to go ahead of others if all you know are just your learnings at your work place? This is what others learn too. If you want to be ahead of others you must do something others are not willing to do because they wrongly prioritise their investments (if any…).

You must invest in yourself first, not in your mobile phone! 

If you always pay first your duties, bills, family needs, etc. with a mall salary you’ll be always left with close to nothing for yourself. You should pay for your development needs first and only after should come the rest of duties. If your family do not understand that is better to “sacrifice” 10% now but grow faster to a better life style instead of keep you out of investments in your personal development and keep the same life style for almost ever, you need to do ASAP a family meeting and reset the priorities right.
If you are earning up to 1000 USD a month, you’ll be making around 12000 USD a year which will allow you to have a 10% = 1200 USD for your personal development. In most countries you can get good and valuable learnings for these money – at least one good quality seminar plus some relevant books.
If you are saying that you cannot save 10%, try to start with 1% – anybody can save 1%. Then next month go for one percentage more. Soon you’ll get to the 10% and that’s the moment you should start looking for personal development opportunities. Look first for the ones which are general valuable no matter what job you do.

If you are so tight that 10% is hard to save, then you should ask yourself what are you doing in your free time. Get a part time job for a while to invest in your personal development. Believe me, it’s all worth it! If you do not have free time and you are broke, that is super dangerous because you’ll be always busy of staying poor. You should consider immediately quitting whatever you are doing and start something better.

If you are willing to learn, nobody will stop you but if you are not, nobody can help you.
All great companies invest 10-50% in their development. This is how they grow fast – by investing not organically. Do you want to grow fast or stay where you are?

Invest in yourself first.

The sooner you’ll understand that if you do not invest in you, you will never grow fast enough which will never brings you to your desired income, the better for you and your family will be. Don’t do what most do – stay in confort zone …

When all you have is money but no education you can’t see much in life! Same goes when you do not have education at all. Money growth and education must go hand in hand. The more you earn the more you should learn.

Develop yourself!

All the best,
Romy

“Cum să explici marea cuiva care toată viața a trăit lângă un lac?”

Mi-a plăcut mult această metaforă așa că m-am gândit să dezvolt puțin subiectul…
Practica spune ca e aproape imposibil să explici marea cuiva care toată viața a trăit lângă un lac? “. Am spus “aproape”😎 😋 Ai avea o șansă să o faci  dacă omul de pe malul lacului ar accepta că există și altceva în afară de “lac”, chiar dacă nu știe exact ce și cum, dar crede că se poate mai bine decât ce are acum in jurul lui.
Credința în mai bine este primul lucru de care ai nevoie. Dacă ești genul care le știe pe toate și numai tu ai dreptate, ai zero șanse să te dezvolți. Zero!!! Si de ce ai face-o? Doar tu le știi deja pe toate, nu-i așa? 🙂 După ce o ai pe asta cu credința ,ar mai fi totuși nevoie si de următoarele:

1. Educație – pentru că nu ai cum să le știi tu pe toate! Si aici nu ma refer doar la cei 7 ani de acasă. Deci citește cât mai mult ca să înveți și de la alții și nu doar din proprie experiență (că atunci te vei limita doar la ce te învață “lacul”). Poți să și intri pe YouTube sau alte site-uri și vei găsi articole interesante. Mergi la seminarii utile – îi știi pe cei care dau 30.000 de Euro pentru o mașină nouă dar nu dau 300 de Euro pentru a investi în creierul lor?!?  Nu fii printre aceia dacă vrei să-ți fie mai bine decât astăzi!
2. Călătorește – ca să îți lărgești orizonturile în multe arii ale vieții. Nu-ți mai fă concediile în același loc doar pentru ca îți place ție – vei fi plăcut surprins câte alte locuri îți vor fi dragi sufletului.
3. Ai grijă cu “cine te însoțești pentru  că aia ești” – suntem media celor 5 oameni cu care ne petrecem cel mai mult timpul. Deci, dacă vrei sa fii bogat dar îți petreci majoritatea timpului cu oameni săraci, nu ai cum să reușești, pentru că nu ai de unde învăța. Dacă vrei să slăbești dar îți petreci majoritatea timpului cu oameni care nu știu ce înseamnă un stil de viață sănătos, nu vei reuși din aceleași motive. șamd
4. Ia-ți un mentor pentru zona care pe vrei să o îmbunătățești. Cineva care a fost “acolo” unde vrei tu să ajungi, ca să te învețe scurtăturile corecte. Să investești într-un mentor este mult mai ieftin decât te vor costa toate greșelile pe care le vei face neștiind ce trebuie să faci.
   

Simplu, nu? 😋
Să nu uităm că electricitatea nu a apărut din îmbunătățirea continuă a lumânării.
Dacă vrei ceva ce nu ai avut, trebuie sa faci ceva ce nu ai făcut!

Acum este posibil sa revenim la interminabila conversație cu “nu am bani” pentru că “nu am timp” și asta pentru că “sunt ocupat” să fac ceva care mă ține departe să fac bani – intreabă-ți mentorul financiar dacă am dreptate 😉
Du-te să vezi și marea, că lacul l-ai văzut suficient până acum!

Sa auzim numai de bine,
Romy

Ceva ce nu poți să vezi TU, nu înseamnă că nu există!

Scriu aceste rânduri pentru cei care nu pot să-și scoată acel mare NU SE POATE din cap si rămân din păcate o viață întreagă limitați de niște paradigme pe care și le-au construit singuri datorită orizontului limitat la care viața i-a expus pană în prezent.

Iată un exemplu care mi-a plăcut foarte mult si care este foarte relevant pentru acest punct de vedere:

“Imaginați-vă un om preistoric care s-ar trezi neașteptat in zilele noastre și ar vedea ceva ce nu a văzut în viața lui – electricitatea. Adică fiind într-o camera vede cum se aprinde și se stinge lumina. Pentru el este MAGIE, pentru că nu a mai văzut așa ceva și pentru ca nici nu înțelege cum se poate întâmpla.”

Noi știm că nu este magie pentru că știm cum se produce electricitatea. Pentru el însă este magie.

Acum înțelegeți probabil de ce am făcut această comparație. Ca și omul preistoric, in viață avem aceste reacții când auzim vorbindu-se despre anumite lucruri care se întâmplă.

Un exemplu ar fi sa te uiți la câștigul tau lunar actual. Noi știm ca din păcate, prea mulți in Romania astăzi primesc lunar un venit de tip “ceapă” – adică te uiți la el și îți vine să plângi. Și de aceea mulți nu își pot imagina că ar putea câștiga dublu. Și-ar dori dar nu își  pot imagina că se poate întâmpla. Iar dacă mergem mai departe și ii punem sa își imagineze că ar putea câștiga într-o lună cat câștigă acum într-un an ar fi deja foarte greu de imaginat iar dacă împingem lucrurile și mai mult si spunem “haide să ne imaginăm că vom câștiga într-o zi cat acum într-un an“, deja pare să fie și la noi MAGIE!

Și aici se termină “filmul” pentru mulți și nici măcar nu mai încearcă, pentru că este magie.

Sunt sigur că știm cu toții că există oameni care câștigă foarte mult dar nu ne putem imagina că noi am putea-o face și atunci renunțăm să și încercăm. Păcat!

Viața e scurtă, mâine nu este promis la nimeni și cu toate astea prea mulți renunță prea ușor la visele lor. Unii nici nu mai îndrăznesc să viseze pentru că este MAGIE!

Rețineți vă rog următoarea frază:

CEEA CE MINTEA TA NU POATE SĂ VADĂ, NU VEI AVEA NICIODATĂ!

Învață să visezi din nou că viața poate fi frumoasă și nu te lăsa copleșit de prezent și/sau trecut. Nu te aștepta la minuni “peste noapte” și urmează visul pas cu pas – nimic important nu se întâmplă repede dar dacă nu începi primul pas, sigur nu se va întâmpla niciodată. Iar acolo unde nu știi, întreabă! Faptul că nu vezi tu o soluție, nu înseamnă că ea nu există.

Dacă faci ceea ce ai făcut pană acum vei avea ceea ce ai avut pană acum. Învață ceva nou dacă vrei o “revoluție” în viața ta – electricitatea nu a apărut din îmbunătățirea continuă a lumânării!

Dacă crezi că nu ai timp te înșeli – în medie, un om are 37 de ore libere pe săptămână, după ce excluzi dormitul, mâncatul, serviciul si “naveta” la serviciu. Timp suficient să înveți ceva nou și să faci ceva nou. Problema este la tine – vrei sau nu vrei! Timp există…

“Deșteaptă-te române …  ” zice chiar și imnul 🙂

Să auzim numai de bine,

Romy

 

Dacă vrei ceva ce nu ai avut niciodată, trebuie sa faci ceva ce nu ai făcut niciodată.

Simplu!

Paradoxal, foarte multe din lucrurile pe care ni le dorim și nu le avem acum, le-am putea avea cu un efort minim de schimbare.

Cuvintele cheie aici sunt “efort” și “schimbare”.

Adică, ma gândesc ca e foarte clar ca dacă ar fi ușor, toată lumea le-ar avea. Deci da, trebuie sa faci un efort. Nu mai crede toate prostiile în care iti spun unii ce ușor le-a fost. Când auzi genul acesta de povești fi sigur ca nu ți se spune toată povestea. Ți se spune doar finalul cu “happy end”. Nu există așa ceva!

Genul de poveste cu “te îmbogățești lucrând o oră pe zi sau slăbești cu 10 minute de exerciții pe zi și alte fantasmagorii. Repet, nu exista așa ceva!

Pregătește-te să depui un efort mai mare decât depui astăzi. Punct!

Al doilea cuvânt era” schimbare” și aici e și mai greu decât maritul efortului depus. De ce? Pentru că e totul în capul tău și creierul nostru are doar doua moduri de operare:”frână de urgență” și “pilot automat”. Aici e provocarea – sa îți convingi creierul ca vrei schimbarea.

Oamenii nu vor sa se schimbe ușor – pilotul automat e funcția “rege”. Unii încă mai cred că schimbarea vine din mediul înconjurător și așteaptă ziua în care va veni și pentru ei. Ziua aceea nu va veni niciodată, pentru că nu există, deci nu are cum sa vină. Exteriorul poate cel mult sa îți ofere un “de ce” sa te schimbi dar schimbarea efectivă este o ușă care se deschide doar dinăuntru.

Deci, ca să o lamurim, nu mai are rost să dăm vina pe tot ce putem, de la vreme, la politică sau situația economica, etc. Nu ne schimbăm, pentru că NOI nu vrem. Și atunci, dacă nu vrei sa faci ceva ce n-ai făcut niciodata, nu ai cum să ai ceva ce nu ai avut niciodată. Punct!

Cei la care “pilotul automat” este mai puternic decât dorința de schimbare vor rămâne toată viața în același loc. Știți cum se spune – dacă te naști sărac nu este vina ta dar dacă mori sărac este 100% vina ta. Și asta pentru că nu ai vrut să schimbi nimic și ai rămas pe “pilot automat”. De ce? Simplu! Pentru ca este mai confortabil. Schimbarea necesita efort și după ani buni de comfort, de ce am face eforturi, ca doar e bine și așa, nu?

Schimbare plăcută vă doresc 😊

Sa auzim numai de bine,

Romy

In Romania nu se traieste rau deloc – dupa 15 ani ma intorc in tara si ii gasesc pe toti cu burta de mic/mare burghez :-)

Am decis acum 15 ani ca este o oportunitate sa lucrez in afara tarii, pentru o mare corporatie din Fortune 500. Pana in ziua de astazi cred ca a fost o mare oportunitate si ceea ce am invatat in acesti 15 ani de expunere internationala, in 11 tari de pe doua continente ,nu as fi avut cum sa invat ramanand in tara:

• nici din punct de vedere profesional, pentru ca am avut ocazia sa lucrez in toate modelele de business, desi am activat in aceeasi companie – foarte util pentru ceea ce pot acum sa dau mai departe.
• nici din punct de vedere cultural, pentru ca am avut ocazia sa vad atatea culturi diferite, atatea obiceiuri, bucatarii si mai ales sa intalnesc oameni deosebiti de la care am invatat foarte mult

Dar, sa revenim la conversatia initiata de titlu 🙂 Am fost intotdeauna adeptul unui stil de viata sanatos in viata mea de adult, dupa ce in copilarie am fost un copil gras. Mi-am spus ca nu mai vreau niciodata sa fiu gras. Si, cu o singura expceptie din viata mea de adult, cand m-am lasat dus de val si am mancat ca si cum nu ar mai exista “maine” pentru ca in sfarsit “aveam cu ce”,am reusit. Aceasta perioada a durat in jur de vreo doi ani, prin anii 2000. Doi ani! Atat m-a tinut mancatul de gen “oriune, oricand, orice si oricat”.

Intr-o zi, cand m-am uitat in oglinda, nu mi-a mai placut ce am vazut si am decis ca nu e directia care trebuie. In urmatoarea luna am dat jos cu ajutorul unui nutritionist 14 kilograme si de atunci nu mi-am mai batut joc de sanatatea si aspectul meu.

Calatorind peste mari si tari cum se spune, am intalnit oameni in etate care zilnic faceau sport si aveau o alimentatie corecta. Va puteti imagina ca unul dintre cei care venea la sala de sport avea 82 de ani si inca lucra cu greutati? Iar cei care aveau “doar” in jur de 60 de ani inca alergau pe dealuri … Pare din alta lume, nu-i asa?

Atentie, nu vorbesc de o alimentatie spartana ci de una corecta! Suntem oameni si avem pofte (mie-mi spuneti!) :-). Dar, vestea buna spune ca: “este o problema sa mananci fast food?” Raspunsul este: ” Nu!. Este o problema daca mananci fast food in fiecare zi !”

Deci oamenii acestia din Asia si India stiau si sa-si traiasca viata dar si sa-si pastreze sanatatea ca sa poata sa se bucure de viata si de familie un timp cat mai indelungat. Pentru ei varsta este doar un numar si nu o povara. Au stiut sa faca si bani dar nu au uitat niciun moment de sanatate.

Iata-ma asadar,  ca dupa 15 ani, revenind in tara pentru cateva luni si ce gasesc? Burti bine intretinute la tot pasul 🙂 Cred ca noi romanii inca am ramas blocati mental in perioada de trista amintire in care nu aveai ce pune pe masa si atunci, cand dadeai de mancare, mancai cat primeai caci, vorba aceea inteleapta romaneasca: “mai bine mate sparte decat mancare aruncata”.

Dragi prieteni, mancarea nu mai este o problema in zilele noastre. Se gaseste oriunde aproape orice. Deci nu trebuie facute provizii si nici mancat astazi cat de mult pentru ca nu se stie daca maine mai gasim.

Informatia este si ea la indemana oricui prin intermediul internetului si este GRATIS – acel cuvant romanesc ata de iubit – GRATIS! Daca parintii nostrii mai au o scuza pentru ca nu au stiut mare lucru despre nutritie acum 30-40 de ani, noi ce scuza avem? Ca ne-a fost lene sa citim la ce riscuri ne expune un corp supraponderal? Sau ce trebuie sa mananci pentru o nutritie sanatoasa sau ce exercitii sa faci pentru a reduce depozitele de grasime? Toata aceasta informatie se gaseste gratis pe internet, in toate limbile planetei datorita lui Google Translate.

Incep deja sa aud de prieteni si cunoscuti din aceeasi generatie cu mine care deja au probleme mari de sanatate si unii chiar au si murit  de boli datorate 99% unui stil de viata necorespunzator.

Ma intreb oare cand ne trezim?

Prieteni dragi, va spun cu certitudine de 100% ca fiecare dintre noi poate gasi o ora pe zi in care sa faca exercitii fizice. Avand un job cu responsibilitati mari si presiunile de rigoare corespunzatoare pozitiei, imi pot permite sa ma trezesc la 6:30 dinimeata, in fiecare zi, sa imi fac ora de sport. Si nu am ratat-o aproape niciodata in ultimii 15 ani. Daca eu pot, sigur poti si tu. Nu-ti place 6:30 AM? Alege alt interval orar. Ceea ce conteaza este sa iti gasesti o ora in fiecare zi pentru activitati fizice. Si nu iti mai cumpara tot felul de aparate “minune” de la teleshopping sau spera in tot felul de exercitii minune care te slabesc in “doar” 8 minute pe zi, etc. Nu exista asa ceva. Este doar marketing.

Crede-ma, un an de-acum inainte iti vei dori sa fi inceput astazi sa faci sport!

Nu iti place sa faci sport? Tot noi romanii avem si raspunsul, in inteligenta noastra mioritica: “pofta vine mancand”. Apuca-te si vei vedea ca atunci cand incep sa vina rezultatele, o sa-ti placa din ce in ce mai mult. Putine lucruri iti ofera acel sentiment de satisfactie ca si un corp atletic (poate doar prajitura preferata) 🙂 Dar atentie, placerea de la o prajitura pe zi dureaza doar 5 minute iar efectul ei negativ dureaza o luna, pe cand un corp sanatos poate dura mult mai mult – atat cat ai grija de el, deci chiar o viata intreaga. Iar povestea cu “acum sunt prea batran sa ma apuc” este o scuza penibila (scuzati-mi franchetea, dar asa este). Cu atat mai mult cu cat o auzi de la cineva care nici nu a trecut de 50 de ani. Niciodata nu e prea tarziu sa incepi sa ai grija de tine. Singura competitie esti TU – nu trebuie sa iti propui sa fii mai bun decat altii, trebuie doar sa fii mai bun decat ai fost tu ieri!

Invata sa mananci ca sa traiesti si nu sa traiesti ca sa mananci!

Pentru lumea civilizata, a trecut de mult perioada in care daca erai gras inseamna ca esti avut. Prietenii mei asiatici spuneau ca daca esti gras inseamna ca nu esti sanatos. Cand nu ai sanatate incep sa se reduca mult numarul lucrurilor care te pot face fericit. Si nu asta ar trebui sa fie esenta vietii, asa cum mi-au povestit-o calugarii tibetani cand am fost in Himalaya – sa fii fericit? Fii fericit, asta este esenta vietii. Cum poti sa fii fericit daca esti bolnav? Stii la ce risc cardiac te expui daca esti supraponderal? Dar ce implica efectele diabetului? Citeste si incepe sa faci ceva pentru tine ASTAZI!

Si lasati dietele – au efect temporar! Schimba-ti stilul de viata – asta este singura solutie pe termen lung, restul e marketing.

Vrei sa stii ce am invatat toti anii astia despre cum sa pastrez o balanta sanatoasa intre munca si viata personala? Lasa-mi un comentariu mai jos sau scrie-mi la romy@cby.solutions

Viata este prea scurta ca sa o traiesti fara satisfactii! Cum spunea cineva: “propuneti sa aduni amintiri nu vise!”

Sa auzim numai de bine!

Romy

 

In loc sa cauti tot timpul lucrurile pe care “ti le permiti”, schimba ceva ca sa-ti poti permite lucrurile pe care ti le doresti!

Ai trait situatii in care nu iti cumperi ceea ce vrei ci ceea ce iti permiti, pentru ca nu iti permiti tot ce vrei? Ti s-a intamplat asta cand ti-ai luat excursia pentru vacanta de vara si nu ai putut sa-ti permiti sa stai la hotelul la care ai fi vrut? Sau poate atunci cand ti-ai cumparat masina a trebuit sa iti iei un model inferior sau chiar un brand inferior pentru ca nu ti-ai permis ceea ce ai fi vrut cu adevarat? S-a intamplat acest lucru si atunci cand ai vrut sa iti cumperi haine sau pantofi? Dar atunci cand mergi sa cumperi mancare la supermarket – alegi dupa pret ceea ce pui in cos? Ai fost la piata sa iti iei legume si fructe si nu le-ai luat pe cele mai frumoase (dar scumpe) ci pe cele care aveau un pret bun?

Exemplele pot continua dar intrebarea ramane aceeasi: de ce nu iti iei ceea ce cu adevarat vrei? Cel mai des auzi doua raspunsuri:

• “sunt scumpe” si/sau
• “nu avem bani”

Daca vrem sa le deslusim sensul, pentru ca nu exista cuvantul “scump” in valoare absoluta, ci raportat la ceva si acel ceva este de fapt buzunarul nostru, in realitate toate raspunsurile duc la unul singur: “nu avem bani!”.

Cand stim motivul, deja este mai usor de rezolvat cazul, pentru ca putem construi solutia.

Deci daca problema este ca nu avem suficienti bani, solutia nu ar trebui sa fie legata de “cum sa facem mai multi bani” decat in a ne pierde timpul alergand prin oras cautant unde este mai ieftin un anumit produs. Cei care sunt in alergarea aceasta continua nu inteleg un lucru essential – cea mai importanta resursa pe care o ai este timpul. Nu-l irosi pentru ca odata pierdut, nu ti-l poate da nimeni inapoi.

Exista o ecuatie simpla care spune ca banii tai sunt rezultatul inmultirii dintre numarului de ore lucrate si suma cu cat esti platit pe ora. Adica daca esti platit cu 20 lei / ora si lucrezi 5 zile pe saptamana a cate 8 ore, inseamna ca ai un venit de 20 x 5 x 8 = 800 lei / saptamana deci 2400 lei pe luna. Cum faci sa castigi mai mult? Pai haideti sa vedem ce ne invata soacietatea legat de solutii pentru bani mai multi?

1. Daca vrei sa ai mai multi bani munceste mai multe ore. Din pacate asa ajung unii sa lucreze si 10 ore pe zi si de multe ori si in weekend. Dragilor, mai mult de 24 de ore/zi nu avem niciunul dintre noi – viata trece pe langa tine si tu ce faci? Muncesti mai mult! De ce? Ca sa faci bani mai multi pe care oricum nu ai timp sa-i cheltuiesti pentru ca tu esti vesnic ocupat. Englezii au o denumire pentru tipul acesta – “workaholic”. Trist! Foarte trist. Ajungi la pensie, ai muncit din greu toata viata si esti atat de ramolit fizic si emotional ca oricum nu prea iti arde de concedii exotice, masini de lux si case frumoase pentru ca banii ti se duc pe repararea sanatatii pe care ti-ai pierdut-o muncind din greu. Am trecut prin faza asta dupa ce am terminat facultatea si faceam de toate in speranta ca eu si sotia mea vom trai mai bine. Nu a fost asa dar au fost anii in care am fost cel mai obosit din intreaga mea viata activa de 25 de ani si evident am castigat cel mai prost. Din fericire dupa 5 ani mi-a trecut si am trecut la nivelul urmator
2. in loc sa lucrezi mai multe ore pe zi, mai bine inveti lucruri care pot sa-ti aduca mult mai mult decat 20 lei / ora. Simlu? Nu stiu! Pentru ca asta depinde de ceea ce faci TU cu timpul tau “liber”, adica dupa ora 17 cand vii de la serviciu. Unii nu fac nimic, adica mai exact se uita la televizor, mananca si stau la povesti non-productive. Deja celebrul Jack Maa spune ca ceea ce faci dupa ora 17 iti va defini succesul. Statistic si chiar si practic, toti avem 37 de ore libere pe saptamana – calculeaza si tu scazand din 24 x7=168 de ore, dupa ce scazi orele de somn, orele petrecute la serviciu, orele in care faci naveta la serviciu si orele cat mananci si iti faci toaleta si vezi cat iti ramane. Ar fi cu siguranta suficient timp ca sa inveti ceva ce iti va creste valoarea si vei castiga mai mult pe ora. Intrebarile ar fi: cate carti in domeniul in care vrei sa te perfectionezi ai citit in ultimele 3 luni si la cate seminarii in acelasi domeniu ai fost in ultimele 6 luni? Am trecut si prin faza asta si m-a ajutat sa-mi dublez venitul de cateva ori in ultimii 20 de ani. Multi se opresc aici, pentru ca nu e rau. Dar daca se poate mai bine? daca se poate mai mult si mai bine? Pai se poate, si acolo te-as invita sa faci o incercare
3. daca ti-ai facut deja obiceiul sa inveti, ceea ce este foarte bine pentru tine, atunci e bine sa pui punctul pe “i” si sa inveti cum sa faci bani in timp ce dormi – acesta este singura varianta care te poate face independent financiar. Daca tu faci bani doar atat timp cat lucrezi, inseamna ca daca te opresti din lucru nu mai faci bani. Si asta din pacate fac prea multi – depind doar de venitul activ. Si aici iti sugerezi sa ajungi – invata cum se castiga un venit pasiv. Adica invata cum sa faci bani intr-un mod in care nu este obligatorie interventia ta constanta. Lucreaza de oriunde si doar cand vrei tu – nu suna bine?

Noi, oamenii nu suntem facuti ca sa muncim – blasfemie vor striga unii 🙂 Ma refer ca nu prea cred ca Creatorul nostru s-a gandit ca noi toti trebuie sa lucram 8 ore / zi, minimum 5 zile pe saptamana, timp de vreo 40 de ani, pana iesim la pensie. Sa mananci cand ti se spune ca e pauza de masa, sa-ti iei concediu cat te lasa si cand te lasa angajatorul si sa muncesti 5 luni pe an pentru stat si doar 7 luni pentru tine? Tu ce crezi?

Motivul pentru care “nu ai suficienti bani” sa iti cumperi ce vrei si esti nevoit sa iti cumperi doar ce iti permiti este pentru ca te-ai oprit din invatat si pentru ca nu stii cum sa ajungi nici macar la punctul doi, daramite la punctul 3.

Le-am parcurs pe toate 3 in ultimii 20 de ani. Vrei sa incerci si tu cum este sa nu iti tot verifici portofelul ca sa vezi ce iti permiti si ce nu? Lasa-mi un comentariu mai jos sau scrie-mi la romy@cby.solutions. Sunt convins ca pot sa te ajut si pe tine cititorule sa-ti dublezi venitul!

Viata merita traita acum pentru ca nu stii cat dureaza si, crede-ma ca poate fii si altfel decat sa te uiti tot timpul in portofel sa vezi cat si ce iti permiti atunci cand mergi sa-ti faci cumparaturile la supermarket sau la mall. Gestul acesta ar trebui sa-l faci doar atunci cand vrei de exemplu  sa-ti cumperi o casa sau o masina.

Sa auzim numai de bine!

Romy

 

 

Pe ce sa nu cheltuiești!

Interesant, nu-i asa? Sigur ca exista lucruri pe care nu ar trebui sa ne cheltuim banii, si aici nu vreau sa ma refer la maruntisuri ci as vrea sa punctez o cheltuiala foarte importanta, care ii ajuta pe unii sa isi faca o cariera rapida si frumoasa iar pe altii sa ramana vesnic in acelasi loc, far prea mari perspective, traind sub posibilitatile lor si avand un stil de viata mediocru dar, atentie! fiind convinsi ca e “rau cu rau dar mai rau fara rau”… E pacat, dar din pacate asta se intampla. O vad aproape zilnic in jurul meu si se intampla mai ales in provincie dar nu numai.

Despre ce vorbim aici? Vorbim despre faptul ca joburile bune si foarte bune nu sunt asa cum spune romanul “pe toate gardurile”. Ele sunt limitate si nu sunt distribuite uniform intre orasele tarii ca si repartitiile pe vremea de trista amintire.

Ce vreau sa spun este ca trebuie sa fii in locul potrivit la momentul potrivit. Nu intram in aceasta conversatie si in faptul ca trebuie sa fii si “omul potrivit” pentru ca asta banuiesc ca se subintelege si oricum, pentru a argumenta cum sa fi “omul potrivit”, este mult mai mult de scris asa ca o lasam pentru conversatii viitoare, in care sa dezbatem cum poti devenii si “omul potrivit”, nu doar in locul potrivit la momentul potrivit.

Revenind la “locul potrivit” si “momentul potrivit”, acestea sunt evident corelate si inseamna ca daca vrei sa prinzi acel job pe care il visezi si care sa te duca inspre cariera pe care ti-o doresti, trebuie sa fii in locul potrivit la momentul potrivit.

Si aici ne intoarcem la titlul conversatiei – “pe ce sa nu cheltuim”! Pai, pe un apartament nu ar trebui niciodata sa nu cheltuim la inceput de drum in viata. Haideti sa argumentez si de ce. Atentie! Nu am spus sa nu cheltuim niciodata cumparand un apartament al nostru ci am spus sa nu va cumparati un apartament la inceput de drum in viata, asa cum ne invata societatea si probabil si parintii. Suna aiurea, nu-i asa? Pai sa nu am eu coltisorul meu unde sa ma intorc in fiecare zi de la munca? Ba da, dar nu il cumpara, INCHIRIAZA-L!

De ce nu e bine sa il cumperi cand esti foarte tanar:

1. pentru ca venitul tau este relativ mic si te vei baga in datorii mari la banca pentru plata ratelor lunare, care iti vor “manca” aproape tot venitul. Asta inseamna ca atunci cand esti tanar si vrei mai mult sa-ti traiesti viata din plin, tu nu prea ai resurse pentru ca banii familiei se duc pe rate la casa si foarte probabil la masina. Te vei hrani doar din vise de genul “intr-o zi voi face …”, intr-o zi voi calatori in …”, etc.

2. pentru ca daca ti-ai cumparat o casa evident ca vrei sa stai in ea si asta te face imobil pentru orice super job care apare pe o raza mai mare decat esti dispus tu sa faci naveta. Si asta este marea problema! Vei fi imobil! Cand esti imobil vei lua doar ce vei gasi aproape de casa si, cu cat orasul este mai mic, cu atat este mai mica probabilitatea sa ai sanse sa prinzi un job bun cand esti tanar. Deci, va trebui sa astepti pana ajungi la o varsta la care sa se  pensioneze sefii si atunci, daca esti bun sau si mai rau (dar adevarat in anumite conjuncturi), daca “ai pile”, poate prinzi si tu un serviciu cu un salariu mai mare. Nu e cam tarziu sa ajungi la un venit decent cand te apropii de 50 de ani? Cum vei sta cu sanatatea ca sa te bucuri din plin de acest venit majorat? Probabil, ca multi altii, o vei neglija ca sa castigi bani. De ce ti-ai dori acest scenariu pentru tine? Doar pentru ca asa l-ai vazut si la altii? …

INVATA SA FI MOBIL PE PIATA MUNCII!

De ce sa risti si sa astepti cel putin o decada daca nu mai mult, avand in tot acest timp datorii la banca si sperand ca pozitia pe care ti-o doresti se va elibera si vei fi TU cel ales? De ce s-ar putea imtampla asta? Pentru ca nu stii ce nu stii si faci tot ce fac si altii. Alegeti mentorii corect si vei vedea ca de fapt se poate si altfel. Pentru ca unii stiu si altii nu, astazi lumea este impartita in 7% oameni bogati si 93% oameni care vor sa fie bogati si lucreaza pentru cei 7%. Invata ce au facut cei 7% si nu imita ce fac cei 93%!

Daca stai in chirie vei fi mobil si poti pleca oriunde pe planeta aceasta unde te califici pentru job-ul pe care ti-l doresti. Chiar imaginandu-ne ca vei plati in primii ani pe chirie la fel cat ai plati pe rata unui apartament, ai cateva avantaje majore:

1. faptul ca esti mobil te va duce catre un job platit mult mai bine decat cel pe care l-ai fi gasit acasa ca si proaspat absolvent si deci vei ramane in mana cu mai multi bani sau iti vei permite o chirie mai mare deci un nivel de trai mai bun

2. vei fi expus unui mediu profesional mult mai dinamic si avansat care te va ajuta sa devii mai repede un expert in domeniul tau

3. vei cunoaste oameni importanti pentru cariera ta pe care nu i-ai fi cunoscut probabil niciodata ramanand “acasa”

4. vei cunoaste si altceva decat “acasa”, ceea ce este un avantaj enorm pentru dezvoltarea ta personala – nu vezi lumea doar in concedii, practic traiesti in lume –  nepretuit acest avantaj!

Cand vine momentul si te simti financiar in siguranta, atunci investesti intr-o proprietate a ta si daca ai un mentor bun vei stii cum sa o faci ca sa nu devina o povara pentru tine ci o investitie. Ai observat ca am folosit cuvantul “investesti” si nu “cheltuiesti”. Astfel vei avea ceea ce toti vrem, o proprietate a ta (sau poate mai multe) dar ai facut-o urmandu-ti cariera catre care esti predestinat si ti-o doresti in loc sa iti construiesti cariera in functie de ce serviciu gasesti in jurul casei.

Pe scrut, cand esti tanar, nu cheltui pe un apartament, ramai mobil, construieste-ti cariera si traieste-ti viata asa cum meriti si nu asa cum ti-o dicteaza nivelul orasului in care te-ai nascut. Crede-ma ca iti vei cumpara cu siguranta apartamente mai tarziu si inca ceva… Acele apartamente pe care ti le vei lua vor fi mult mai bune si valoroase decat ti-ai fi putut permite tu la inceput de drum.

Daca esti parinte si citesti aceasta conversatie, gandeste-te de doua ori inainte sa iti sfatuiesti copilul sa urmeze o reteta care nu mai are cum sa-i asigure succesul in secolul 21.

Repet: Nu mai are cum!!!

Suntem in secolul 21 si nu ar trebui sa ne mai traim viata dupa regulile deceniului in care au trait parintii nostri. Lumea s-a schimbat! Regulile trebuie sa se schimbe!

Ai grija cine te sfatuieste!

Impartasesc acest lucru cu tine dupa 20 de ani de cariera, dintre care 15 ani  in mediul international, conducand business-uri in 11 tari pe doua continente, calatorind in lumea intreaga, locuind doar cu chirie in locatii in care nici sa visez nu indrazneam acum 20 de ani si avand un stil de viata asa cum mi l-am dorit la varsta care ma si bucur de el din plin. Si toate acestea mi s-au intamplat pentru simplul fapt ca am fost mobil acum 20 de ani si am spus DA atunci cand multi altii in locul meu ar fi spus NU.

Te pot ajuta sa intelegi cum sa-ti construiesti planul financiar personal ca sa poti investi unde trebuie si cand trebuie si sa eviti “cursa sobolanului” (prietenii stiu de ce :-)). 

Programeaza-te acum la o discutie cu mine pe adresa romy@cby.solutions sa gasim impreuna cea mai buna solutie pentru tine.

Pentru cei care se întreabă de unde vine “cby”, vine de la Create the Best of You – adică o platforma de training online si offline, care sa te ajute sa creezi cea mai buna versiune a ta. Noul meu site este încă in lucru dar asta nu ne împiedica sa demaram planul de acțiune pentru tine.

Nu e niciodata prea tarziu sa te reinventezi!

Sa auzim numai de bine,

Romy

 

 

Cât de important este sa fii sfătuit bine si corect!? Aici poți găsi răspunsul la întrebarea “de ce alții au si eu nu?”

Nimeni nu se naste atotstiutor si ca atare tot ce stim invatam de undeva si ajungem ceea ce suntem mai ales bazat pe ceea ce stim. Cu alte cuvinte “ai carte, ai parte” si invers – nu ai carte, nu prea ai parte. Sigur ca nu e cazul sa venim cu contraexemple de interlopi sau alte categorii care evident nu au carte dar au ceva parte obtinuta neortodox, pentru ca ma gândesc ca nu vrei sa faci parte din aceste categorii si vrei sa dormi linistit noaptea, fara stres ca vin” prietenii ” sa te puna dupa gratii!

Pentru ca vrei sa faci parte din categoria corecta, desigur ca vei avea nevoie de o indrumare corespunzatoare. Scoala ar trebui sa fie parte din acest proces dar, desi am terminat ca sef de promotie atat liceul cat si facultatea, pot spune ca nu acest lucru m-a ajutat sa fac progrese rapide in cariera si nici sa imi gasesc un job bun devreme in viata mea profesionala.

Si daca nu scoala, atunci cine? Nu vreau sa ma erijez in detinatorul tuturor raspunsurilor corecte si nimeni nu ar trebui sa o faca dar, pot spune ca daca nu ai parte de sfatuitori avizati de-a lungul oricarei “calatorii” pe care ti-o propui, fie ea financiara, profesionala, de familie sau spirituala, ori vei ajunge intr-o “fundatura” ori vei merge pe un drum gresit ori (daca esti norocos si / sau disciplinat) vei ajunge unde vrei dar incet si anevoios.

De ce sa crezi ca tu ai toate raspunsurile si de ce sa-ti pierzi vremea ascultand pe cei care nu au reusit niciodata sa faca ce vrei tu sa obtii? Asta e intr-un fel ca si la meciurile de fotbal când vezi toti acei “parerologi” sau “chibiti” care intotdeauna stiu cel mai bine cum ar trebui sa joace echipa sau ce schimbari sa faca antrenorul, desi poate in toata viata lor nu au jucat fotbal deloc sau au facut-o doar la ei in cartier – niciodata profesionist. Este o specie des intalnita si isi dau cu parerea despre orice. Lasa-i sa vorbeasca si tu asculta-i pe cei care au demonstrat ceva pana acum.

AI GRIJA CINE TE SFATUIESTE!

Boala mea cand merg la sala de fitness si vad antrenori care arata mai prost ca si clientul sau in cazul mai fericit nu are burta, dar atat – nici vorba de un corp atletic… Pai daca vrei sa arati bine, invata de la cineva care arata bine. Daca vrei sa fii bogat invata de la cineva care este bogat. Cu totii stim ce greu se traieste astazi in Romania din pensie. Cum sa asculti sfaturi de la cineva (chiar si de la parintele tau) daca ceea ce au reusit este sa ajunga astazi sa traiasca de la o luna la alta din pensie. Asta iti doresti si pentru tine? Sa traiesti de la o luna la alta din pensie? Asta iti inveti si copilul sa se pregateasca sa traiasca de la o luna la alta din pensie?

Daca ai un business, asculti pe cei care nu au realizat mare lucru dar isi dau cu parerea sau te orientezi catre cineva care a lucrat cu investitii si stie cum trebuie construit un P&L care sa sustina dezvoltarea companiei? Multi antreprenori muncesc greu sa fie unde sunt si se expun unui risc permanent de a pierde ceea ce au daca se imbolnavesc sau intra intr-o incapacitate de munca mai mare de 3 luni, pentru ca sunt singurii care stiu cum se aduc banii in firma. De ce sa-ti asumi acest risc când exista pe piata cunostintele necesare sa te ajute sa iti continui dezvoltarea afacerii tale fara sa fii nevoit sa fii implicat 110%.

Intrand putin in spiritualitate, pentru cei care cred ca exista un D-zeu sau un Creator, sincer chiar credem ca am fost conceputi ca specie ca sa muncim? Va las pe voi sa raspundeti dar pe orice esantion am incerca vreun studiu in acest sens cred ca raspunsul va fi acelasi – daca nu exista o balanta corecta si sanatoasa intre munca si relaxare, lucrurile nu pot merge in alta directie decat frustrare.

“De ce altii au si eu nu?”

Pentru ca altii invata si de la altii si tu inveti doar din proprie experienta. Cate carti in domeniul tau ai citit in ultimele 3 luni si la cate seminarii in domeniul tau ai fost in ultimele 6 luni? Nu iti mai pierde timpul reinventând roata! Ia-ti un consultant / mentor / coach, sau cum vrem sa-l numim, pentru principalele arii din viata ta si invata scurtaturile care sa te duca acolo unde multi din pacate nu sunt si nu vor fi niciodata, dar unde iti vei gasi satisfactia dorita. Asigura-te doar ca mentorul tau a dovedit ca stie sa faca bine si chiar foarte bine ceea ce ai tu nevoie sa te invete. Simplu? Cred ca da!

Ai un business si l-ai dus singur pana intr-un punct dar nu prea vezi cum l-ai dubla in urmatorii ani? Cauta pe cineva care a condus business-uri de doua ori mai mari ca al tau si iti va spune cum se ajunge acolo. Ai un job dar vrei sa-ti dublezi venitul in urmatorii doi ani? Cauta pe cineva care castiga de 10 ori mai mult ca tine si iti va spune cum se ajunge acolo.

In era digitala sa fii non-digital indiferent de obiectul tau de afaceri este o pierdere de oportunitati fabuloasa.

Intr-o economie bazata masiv pe reclama / marketing, sa nu ai o politica clara de a bugeta investitii de branding este o pierdere fabuloasa de oportunitati.

Sa nu iti instruiesti forta de vanzari pentru a fi cu un pas inaintea competitie este o alta piedere masiva de oportunitati.

Ai pe cineva in organizatia ta care stie sa faca cele de mai sus pentru firma ta?

Pe scurt, fie ca esti om de afaceri si vrei sa iti dezvolti afacerea, fie esti angajat si vrei sa iti dezvolti cariera, nu incerca sa te descurci doar singur. S-ar putea sa nu reusesti dar vei pierde mult timp si ” Time is money ” (adica timpul inseamna bani) spuneau englezii odinioara – acum tot mai multe voci spun ca “Time is LIFE” adica timpul = viata.

Nu-ti irosi viata cautand singur toate solutiile. 

Maine nu este promis nimanui, asa ca invata de la cine trebuie astazi!

Mi-am petrecut ultimii 20 de ani conducand afaceri in 11 tari pe doua continente si pot sa-ti arat toate “scurtaturile” de care ai nevoie atat ca si antreprenor cat si ca angajat. Programeaza-te acum la o discutie cu mine pe adresa romy@cby.solutions sa gasim impreuna cea mai buna solutie pentru tine.

Pentru cei care se întreabă de unde vine “cby”, vine de la Create the Best of You – adică o platforma de training online si offline, care sa te ajute sa creezi cea mai buna versiune a ta. Noul meu site este încă in lucru dar asta nu ne împiedica sa demaram planul de acțiune pentru tine.

Sa auzim numai de bine,

Romy

Spală-te pe dinți cu mâna stângă!

Asta este o îndrumare pentru dreptaci 🙂 Pentru stângaci, încercați cu mana stânga.

De ce sa facem așa ceva? Pai pentru simplul motiv sa vedem ca a schimba un obicei nu este deloc simplu si prima tendința este sa revenim la modul in care suntem obișnuiți, corect? Când încerci sa te speli pe dinți cu mana stânga după ce o viață te-ai spălat cu dreapta, nu este ușor si iți vine sa treci periuța in mana dreapta si sa continui așa, pentru ca așa ești obişnuit TU!

Acest exemplu metaforic in felul lui este ca sa înțelegem ca de cate ori ne vom apuca de ceva nou ca de exemplu un stil de viață mai sănătos, un stil vestimentar mai relevant pentru ce fel de impresie vrei sa creezi, prima reacție este ca nu ni se pare OK si vrem sa revenim la modul cum eram noi obișnuiți. Îți trebuie ambiției sa continui si acesta este motivul pentru care multi eșuează in schimbările din viață lor – nu au ambiția sa meargă mai departe chiar daca la început este puțin (sau mai mult) inconfortabil.

Câți nu am început o cura de slăbire si nu am dus-o la capăt? De ce? Pentru ca e greu sa mănânci tot timpul ceva cu care nu ești obişnuit. Bine, desigur si poate ca cei din jur nu te încurajează, sau alte motive. Dar aici vorbim strict de cele doua moduri ale creierului nostru: pilot automat si frâna de urgenta. Când vrem sa facem o schimbare creierul intra in modul frâna de urgenta si ne aduce înapoi in modul automat unde ne simțim confortabil.

Situația sta exact la fel si atunci când schimbi modul in care te îmbraci. Sa spunem ca înainte te îmbrăcai după cum credeai tu ca e bine, adică cel mai probabil, cum spunem noi romanii, te îmbrăcai  “după ureche”. La un moment dat ai acces la informația corecta si începi sa-ti achiziționezi altfel hainele si pantofii. Când le porți prima data ti se pare ca te speli pe dinți cu mana stângă si unii revin la vechea garderoba in care se simt “confortabil” si noile achiziții rămân in șifonier pentru totdeauna. Sau mai exista varianta in care păstrezi si vechiul si noul si atunci este delir curat, pentru ca nu mai ai identitate vizuala – ești când bine îmbrăcat, când mediocru.

Schimbarea ia timp si răbdare si probabil cel mai bine de înțeles este si o comparație cu sportul – nu poți sa fi bun intr-un sport pe care de-abia te-ai apucat sa-l practici. Îți trebuie câteva luni de practica constanta pana când ajungi sa joci bine (nu excelent).

Dați-va suficient timp sa asimilați schimbările din viața voastră si fiți disciplinați si ambițioși in a va atinge telurile propuse, indiferent in ce arie se afla ele: sănătate, financiar, profesional, familie, spiritualitate, etc.

Mult succes la schimbare va doresc. Progresul nu este posibil fără schimbare – nici electricitatea nu a apărut doar din îmbunătățirea lumânării.

Sa auzim numai de bine!

Romy

 

 

 

Cum ar fi sa nu ne mai îmbrăcăm doar ca să nu fim dezbrăcați? Adică mediocru sau prost!

Păi ar fi foarte bine!

Desigur ca felul cum arătam nu spune cine suntem ca si persoane dar spune foarte mult despre care este părerea noastră despre noi. Felul cum ne îmbrăcam este o reflecţie a standardelor noastre – când ai standarde înalte pentru tine, ești atent cum te îmbraci si idem când nu ești atent cum te îmbraci, adică cel mai probabil ca te îmbraci doar ca sa nu fii dezbrăcat.

Desigur ca nu avem timp si spațiu aici sa dezbatem tot subiectul așa ca punctam doar pe scurt câteva scenarii:

1. Ești in regula din punct de vedere fizic si al fizionomiei dar te îmbraci prost. De ce ai face asta? Pt că haina nu face pe om? Este cam veche zicala aceasta si nu prea mai e probata practic in zilele noastre. Ia sa încercam sa facem o vizită la autorități îmbrăcat prost sau îmbrăcați bine si vedeți cum sunteţi tratat. Eu zic ca va fi o diferența in modul cum veți fi tratat deși ești acelaşi TU. Corect? Nu prea! Adevărat? Cu siguranța! Si acesta este doar un exemplu simplu…
2. Nu ești ok din punct de vedere fizic si sa zicem ca nici fata nu te ajuta foarte mult si in plus mai ești si îmbrăcat prost. Superb, nu? Pai nu prea… Si încă mai vrei sa o ții pe aia cu haina nu face pe om? Adică ai o șansa sa mai îmbunătățești ceva la imaginea ta si tu ai decis sa nu faci nimic si sa te îmbraci ca si cum ai face-o pe întuneric si nu prea știi ce ai luat din dulap si ce-a ieșit a ieșit …

Acum, ce înțelege fiecare prin a fi imbracat bine e foarte diferit. Pentru ca spre exemplu daca ceea ce vezi zilnic in jurul tau sunt doar oameni îmbrăcați mediocru evident ca arătând ca ei ai impresia ca ești OK, pentru ca ești din acelaşi peisaj dar de fapt tu ești mediocru. Cei care ar putea sa-ti spună daca ești îmbrăcat OK sau nu, nu au cum sa fie rudele, vecinii sau prietenii ci oamenii care au studiat ceea ce înseamnă un stil vestimentar corect. Părerea lor merita si ar trebui sa o asculți ca sa ajungi sa te îmbraci bine, deoarece mi se pare evident ca nu poți să-ți dai cu părerea despre ceva ce nu știi. De fapt problema este că poți sa o faci si mulți isi si dau cu parerea si de aceea avem atâtea profile incorecte in jurul nostru.

Hai sa vedem cum se îmbracă cel mai probabil majoritatea bărbaților :

1. Cum vad in jur… Adică suntem oglinda oamenilor cu care ne petrecem cel mai mult timp. Cu cat aceștia sunt îmbrăcați mai prost, șansele ca tu sa fii îmbrăcat bine sunt aproape nule.
2. Cum le validează nevasta sau prietena (sau amândouă). Asta ar putea fi OK, daca nevasta sau prietena au cunoștințe despre cum trebuie sa îmbrace corect un bărbat. Majoritatea nu au aceste cunoștințe si, in plus, unele nici nu prea sunt interesate sa investească foarte mult in tine – orice asemănare cu realitatea este pur întâmplătoare 🙂
3. Cum vad la televizor – o varianta necâștigătoare si aceasta pentru ca in general la televizor nu se promovează ce ai tu nevoie ci ce vor ei sa vândă
4. Cu ce au la dispoziție – dezavantaj locuitorii orașelor mici, deoarece oferta vestimentara dintr-un oraș de provincie este foarte departe de ceea ce poți achiziționa intr-un oraș mare. Mi-aduc aminte de o perioada de acum vreo doua decenii când pe litoral vedeai sot si soție îmbrăcați la fel, adică in echipament FUBU (preferabil si aceeași nuanța). Si sa nu ne gândim la variantă originala ci la cea pe care o găseai in piața de duminica unde se vindeau de toate pentru toți, inclusiv treninguri FUBU. Deci da, mergeți sa va faceți cumpărăturile intr-un oraș mare daca vreți sa aveți o vestimentație corecta, desigur daca nu rămânem adepți fideli ai lozincii haina nu face pe om – caz in care îmbrăcatul pe întuneric rămâne varianta câștigătoare, care te va transforma in visul oricărei femei, nu? Ce femeie nu își dorește sa aibă lângă ea un bărbat îmbrăcat pe întuneric. Si aici știm ce vor răspunde unii, dar eu ma refeream la femeile care trebuie.
5. Oricum, dar sa fie ieftin. Cum sa dai 200 de Euro pe o pereche de pantofi de piele made in Italy? Pai cate beri si mici poți sa-ti iei de banii ăștia, nu?

In business se spune ca trebuie sa te îmbraci pentru job-ul pe care îl vrei nu pentru job-ul pe care îl ai.

Ridicați-va standardele!

Cum ar fi sa nu mai umblam cu o freza interbelică sau cu cea pe care o aveam in liceu (ceea ce pentru unii înseamnă secolul trecut)? Cum ar fi sa nu mai purtam pantaloni modelul burlan si evident prea lungi pentru ca se aduna deasupra pantofului, de parca aștepți sa îți mai crească picioarele si e bine sa mai păstrezi ceva material? Cat de greu poate fi sa ii duci la un croitor sa ii scurteze? Cum ar fi sa nu mai purtam cămăși cu mâneci de muschetar pentru ca sunt prea largi si prea lungi dar au fost la un preț bun? Cum ar fi sa nu mai purtam sacouri din mânecile cărora nici nu ti mai vad palmele si arata pe tine ca o husa? Cum ar fi sa nu mai purtam cravate scurte peste cămăși colorate in carouri cand mergem la nunti sau evenimente? Cum ar fi sa nu mai purtam pantofi obosiți, din imitație de piele, de proveniența îndoielnica si asortați apoteotic cu șosete imposibile? Cum ar fi sa nu mai purtam ceasuri sport la sacou si la costum doar pentru ca noi credem ca daca am dat multi bani pe ceas asta înseamnă ca pot sa îl port la evenimente?

La toate întrebările de mai sus, răspunsul ar fi : pai, ar fi foarte bine! Dar nu e așa ușor precum pare, pentru ca obiceiurile vechi mor greu si vei fi tot timpul tentat sa revii la cum te îmbrăcai anterior pentru ca te simți mai confortabil (obișnuința bat-o vina!) ca sa nu mai vorbim de oribilitatea de a arunca lucruri care tie încă ti se par bune si pe care ai mai dat si bani, doar pentru ca cineva te învață acum ca nu ar mai trebui sa le porți. Pai cum? Ca sunt aproape noi! Stai ca le mai port o vreme si pe urma ma mai gândesc 🙂 Este ca si cei care vor sa se apuce de slăbit dar mai au încă in frigider ceva prăjituri si pizza – pai cum sa le aruncam? Le mâncam si pe urma ne apucam de slăbit, nu? Așa fac si cu hainele – intr-o zi se vor descotorosi de ele… Tristețea este ca acea zi nu mai vine niciodată si o viață întreagă vei rămâne cu un aspect mediocru. Trist, dar adevărat, daca e sa ne uitam la ce vedem in jurul nostru.

Eu as spune ca viața e prea scurta ca sa arătam mediocru. Ridicați-va standardele si veti înțelege ceea ce astăzi nu știti ca nu știti.

Mai este un aspect foarte important pentru cei care încă se îmbracă cu încăpățânare pe întuneric – sa te îmbraci bine nu înseamnă sa te îmbraci scump – deci nu folosiți aceasta scuza pentru a arata mediocru, deoarece nu este relevanta dar, vom vorbi despre asta intr-o alta conversație.

Sa auzim numai de bine!

Romy

 

Ati observat ca dupa o anumita varsta ne uram tot mai des “sa avem sanatate, ca-i mai buna decat toate”?

Am dreptate cand spun ca majoritatea oamenilor trecuti de o anumita varsta, atunci cand isi ureaza ceva, intotdeauna incep cu “sa avem sanatate, ca-i mai buuna decat toate”?

Desigur ca inaintand in varsta ne dam seama ca nu vom trai vesnic si in plus, neglijarea sanatatii in anii tineretii incepe sa se simta la acea varsta. Putine lucruri in viata asta sunt mai rele decat sa fii bolnav. Cand esti bolnav este foarte greu sa te bucuri de viata si atunci cand nu te bucuri de viata este greu sa fii fericit iar lipsa fericirii nu prea da vietii prea mare sens.

Si atunci, de ce punem asa putin pret pe sanatate? Cel putin 3 aspect am in vedere aici:

1. lipsa miscarii – raportat la totalul populatiei, foarte putini fac sport regulat. Ganditi-va din toti oamenii pe care ii stiti, cati dintre ei fac sport zilnic? Probabil ca nu prea multi si cu toate astea, majoritatea dintre ei isi ureaza “sa avem sanatate ca-I mai buna decat toate”. Probabil ca spera ca aceasta sanatate sa vina de undeva din exterior, asa ca un fel de mostenire – pleosc, te trezesti cu ea pur si simplu nefacand nimic
2. lipsa unei alimentatii corespunzatoare – facem acelasi “studiu”: raportat la totalul populatiei, cati oameni mananca corect? Ganditi-va, din nou, la oamenii pe care ii stiti si vizualizati-i. Pe scurt, toti cei care sunt supraponderali, clar nu au un stil de viata sanatos si o alimentatie corecta si cu toate acestea toti isi ureaza acelasi “sa avem sanatate”!Ma gandesc ca, in general, si ei ca si prima categorie spera ca aceasta sanatate sa vina de undeva, ei facand nimic in ceea ce priveste alimentatia lor
3. lipsa unei educatii corespunzatoare data copiilor. Pai daca stim ca noi la peste 40 de ani ne tot uram “sa avem sanatate, ca-i mai buna decat toate”, oare de ce nu ne educam copiii ca ei sa aiba sanatate si sa-i trimitem zilnic la sport si sa-i alimentam sanatos, pentru ca putem face asta – suntem parintii lor si noi le platim mancarea si educatia. Pai daca nu ii educam in sensul unui stil corect de viata, ce sanse au ei, copiii, sa ajunga la varsta noastra sanatosi? De fapt ei ai sanse si mai putine ca noi cei aflati deja peste 40 de ani, nu? Ganditi-va ce varietate de mancare nesanatoasa exista acum comparativ cu acum 20 de ani si cum noua generatie sta de 10 ori mai mult pe social media decat o faceam noi si in loc sa iasa in fata blocului sa “bata mingea” stau in casa pe calculator… Trist, dar adevarat! Sa inteleg ca nu ne dorim sa avem copii sanatosi si de aceea nu ii invatam cum trebuie sa traiasca sanatos, ca sa nu repete greselile noastre? Sau suntem prea ocupati cu altele ca sa mai avem timp si de “prostii”.

“Sa avem sanatate!” Dar nu facem mai nimic in acest sens. Pe o scara de la 1 la 10, tu, cititorule, ce nota ti-ai da pentru stilul tau de viata? Dar pentru cel al copiilor tai?

Stiati ca, statistic, fiecare dintre noi avem in jur de 37 de ore libere pe saptamana dupa ce calculam timpul necesar pentru munca, transport catre munca si inapoi, mancat, dormit si alte rutine zilnice? Pai daca avem in jur de 37 de ore pe saptamana si pentru o sanatate mai buna ne trebuie doar 6 (considerand ca duminica nu mai facem sport, ca e duminica, nu?), tot mai ramanem cu 31 de ore libere in care sa facem ce vrem noi cu familia sau cu alte hobby-uri personale.

Care at fi scuza care ne opreste? Pentru ca cea cu “nu am timp” tocmai am demontat-o anterior? Sa fie faptul ca fiind deja grasi ne este rusine sa mergem la sala sau sa alergam ca “ce zice lumea” sau “rade lumea de noi” … Adica cum, “om batran si te apuci de prostii” in loc sa stai si sa-ti numeri economiile, cel mai probabil precare si ele dupa cateva decenii de munca. Sau poate fii si textul ca “nu stii ce sa faci la sala de sport”. Pai si asta e simplu, ori iti iei un instructor, ori intri pe YouTube si vezi cum se fac exercitiile care te intereseaza – toata informatia necesara este disponibila.

Ma gandesc ca nu vrei ca de prima data cand mergi sa faci sport, dupa ani de absenta, sa te descurci admirabil, nu? Pentru ca nu ai cum. E nevoie de practica pana sa iti reintri in forma. Asa cum spun “cercetatorii englezi” – you can’t fake fitness 🙂

Partea cea mai frumoasa in acest proces de remodelare a stilului tau de viata este ca niciodata nu e prea tarziu sa te reinventezi din acest punct de vedere si toti suntem doar la o singura decizie departare de un stil de viata sanatos – trebuie sa decidem ca de maine vom face o ora de miscare pe zi, vom manca sanatos si ne vom educa copiii sa faca la fel. In ceea ce priveste copiii nu e foarte greu, mai ales daca sunt la o varsta frageda pentru ca ei vor face ce vad acasa. Daca tu mananci numai ceafa de porc cu cartofi prajiti in o tona de ulei, asta vor manca si ei. Noi suntem responsabili de educatia generatiilor viitoare. Si sa nu uitam ca ei at trebui sa ne plateasca pensile, nu? Pai in mana cui lasam viitorul?

Haideti sa avem cu totii sanatate, ca-i mai buna decat toate si sa ne imbunatatim stilul de viata, pentru ca se poate!

Vrem solutii? Exista! Putem vorbi oricand pe romy@cby.solutions

Sa auzim numai de bine,

Romy

 

Change is hard and accepting we are wrong, for some people is impossible!

Like any process, to dress proper is not random or a matter of flair, it is regulated and if you do not know the rules, of course is hard to look great despite how high standards you have for yourself.

One thing I witness during my image building mentoring sessions is that people do not want to get rid of the wardrobe pieces they should, because actually they do not want to admit they do not know how to buy their clothes.

Have you noticed that usually we runaway from the thing we guess we are not good at? This topic of dressing well is falling in this category for sure. Try to have a conversation with somebody who look awful about how he present himself and how important this matter is for his self esteem and success and most of them are going to tell you that you are right but they will go home and tomorrow will look the same, meaning do nothing about. Why? Because is too hard to change! And we runaway from changes because you remember, our brain function on two modes only: “autopilot” (no change accepted) and “emergency break (when change appear, we avoid it and go back to autopilot).

It’s a fact that for somebody who never encountered any professional knowledge about power dressing, at least 50-70% of what they have home in their wardrobe, are wrong choices. Yes guys, it is true, even if you believe that this statistics do not apply to you – “it’s impossible” you might say, you are wrong – it is statistically proven. Of course it can sounds impossible if you do not know what you do not know.

In all cases, the main issues are:

• the fitting,
• the materials
• the colours and patterns
• the cut

If some of these 4 elements are wrong, your whole look is affected (not in a good way). If you add on top an overweighed or too skinny body, things goes totally wrong and you lose the opportunity to make a good to great impression – which is critical for anybody who chase success.

So coming back to wardrobe, it is funny to see how people react when they find out they have a big portion of wrong clothes and they use to wear them. First reaction is to reject this feedback because, somewhere in their mind they calculate how much money they spend on those items and now what? They should simply just throw them away? Actually yes, in most cases, unfortunately. Some items can be adjusted and they can become super OK, but some cannot (especially shoes) and you must (not should) consider to donate them or simply throw them away. But what if they are almost new? Well, tough luck! You have to do it. My second thought is, if we know statistically that most probably we have a significant chunk of wrong clothes and shoes at home, and if we do not learn the rules, this will keep happening from now on, year after year. Giving this fact, shouldn’t be cheaper and wiser  to learn the rules so you can save very good money or at least buy the right clothes for you?

Why to keep buying wrong items just because your pride cannot accept that you are wrong? And actually you are not wrong intentionally, you are wrong because you do not know what you do not know – the rules of dressing right in any circumstances, from sport and casual to business and elegant. So it is nothing wrong with you and you can be relax 🙂 You just don’t know these things. Like we do not know many other things. The great thing is that you can learn them pretty fast and this knowledge is like bicycle ride – once you learn them you’ll never forget them.

So what choices we have in our balance? On one hand we can reject the fact that significant portion of what we buy because we think is impossible and you’ll keep buying wrong items and look not necessary bad but, in best case scenario, average. On the other hand to learn once how to build properly your image and save a lot of money. When I say a lot I mean few thousands dollars a year – depending on your shopping  budget for clothes and shoes. Some people spend 20.000 $ or more annually on clothes and accessories and saving good chunk of it should be relevant. Others, with lower budgets, spend up to 5000$ a year or less. Nevertheless, for each category of people, saving 40% is significant.

In conclusion, as a smart person, we shouldn’t reject something we do not know almost nothing about. The most “dangerous” categories are the following two:

• the ones who believe they know how to dress correct, although they never been to a training on the subject, but they simply know, because generally they know everything and only they are right – you must know for sure this category – almost like Gods, they have opinion about everything and their opinion is always the right one. These people are very difficult to be thought and I believe we shouldn’t even try, unless we have something masochistic in us and we really want to punish ourselves trying to change the “almighty Gods” opinion
• the ones who do not care at all about the way they look. These are the people who dress just not to be naked and a discussion about this topic with them is a waste of time because they will apply nothing and often come with the excuse that there are important people who always dress in t-shirt. I just want to remember that somehow, even those people, when they went for an audience at White House (for example) didn’t appear there in t-shirt but wearing a suit. Anyway, you can’t convince somebody about something they do not care.

Luckily, we are not part of any of those category and we’ll do something about it. My point of view will always be that the way we dress definitely do not says who we are as a person but it says a lot about what is our opinion about us. Do not have low standards! For at least one reason – you will attract around you just people with low standards. Must be inspirational, I guess …

It is like, you do not go to gym because you are fat and people will look at you because you are not very good in what you are doing there. Are you going to the gym for people or for you? Why it should matter who say what as long is for your own good. Same story goes for dressing well – you need to do it for you, not for others!

If you want to discover the main tips of power dressing and start saving a lot from your shopping write me at romy@cby.solutions and you’ll find out what you do not know. From there on, there is only one way – you’ll get much more better, with a 100% warranty.

All the very best, until next time,

Romy

 

How others see you is important. How YOU see you is everything!

I was lucky enough to visit more than 55 countries in the past 20 years and I overviewed the activity of 500.000 sellers along all these years. The following thought applies to every nation I visited and to people I worked with:

How you see YOU is everything!

You will never be more than you can imagine and you will never have things that you don’t believe you’ll have.

If you see yourself living in a small flat from an average neighbourhood and plan everything against this vision, how can you ever live on a beach house or a penthouse in Manhattan? You even have no idea how much this will cost – for sure you think “it’s very expensive”! The point is that “expensive” is a relative word. It doesn’t exists an absolute “expensive”. Something is expensive versus something else or versus our purchasing power, which means if I change my purchasing power, “expensive” will have a different value, right? Yes, right and true!

But if I cannot see myself in that house, or in that trip, in that hotel, driving that car and wearing that watch or jewellery or branded clothes, anything … If I can’t see myself doing that, it will never happen. And this is happening with most people – they do not dare to dream big! Don’t be that type of person!

Do you have your personal finance in order? Are you investing in your growth or all you do is save, like most average people you know?

Raise your standards! Aim high! Dare to be bold and DIFFERENT! Look who’s talking – do not take advices for people who achieved nothing in life. Get a good mentor to help you set your pace and direction! Sky should be your limit not what society told you everyday.

Travel more to see what others can – do not limit your horizon to your county or country. The more you see the more you’ll learn. I cannot understand why people, despite the fact they have only one big holiday a year (most of them), decide to go in the same location for years, like there is no other place on Earth to explore. Maybe they plan to become experts in that area … Before retirement, we have more or less 40 years from the moment we start working, which means more or less 40 holidays. Why to spend most of them in the same locations? In most countries today there is freedom of traveling abroad. Use it and go as far as you can, as often as you can. For me as European, for example, working in Asia in the past 4 years was simply amazing – so much to see, so much to learn and so much to explore and experience. Can you imagine how much you are losing by not traveling? Priceless! And remember, tomorrow is never promised. What if this one is going to be your last holiday?

Don’t you know how to set achievable goals and build realistic financial plans behind them? Write me at romy@cby.solutions and let’s make things move in the right direction for you, together.

Don’t live somebody else’s life and never settle for average – build the best version of you!

All the very best, until next time,

Romy

It’s never too late to reinvent yourself – age is just a number!

Humans are a very complicated mechanism and sometimes the decisions we took look totally abnormal. One of them is the answer to the question: “if you could be better, would you?” To be more precise is not the answer, because everybody will say “yes” but the actions are the surprise, because most people actually do nothing even if it’s obvious they should do and, eventually they found million excuses not to do any change.

After interacting long enough with people, you realise that it is very true that human brain has too modes: autopilot and emergency break. We like to go on autopilot, meaning no changes. We hate changes! And when any change appear, our brain switch to “emergency break” mode and try to stop you doing the change you plan and move you back to autopilot. That’s it! Take your own case when you wanted to do something different after a long practice of something else and see how emergency break works for you – if you try to quit smoking after being a smoker for a long time, if you try to lose wait after being fat for a long time, if you try to be rich after long time of being not necessary poor but not wealthy for sure… It is always sooo hard – due to “autopilot” and “emergency break”.

Are you in mid 40s? Or even elder or maybe younger, but if you look in the mirror, and you don’t like what you see (physically speaking), are you going to do something about it or no? I am talking here that your body might be out of shape or is totally out of shape and/or your face is showing super visible signs of aging. Do you like what you see or you don’t? If you don’t, how about doing something about it? Do you know that the human body is designed to be back in shape at any age but, unfortunately for the lazy ones, you can’t fake fitness, meaning it will take some time to get back where you should be, after decades of eating wrong and most probably not exercising at all, having the excuse of “no time for exercising”. When we see certain images we can definitely say that something, somewhere, went totally wrong!

The Canadian Government, with the great intention to promote physical activities, launched a campaign which has a very educational video which shows how your elder times could look like if you do or if you don’t exercise – health is the most important wealth a human can have. Personally, I pity all those financially rich people with a ”potato shape body” and do nothing about it – what the point of having money if you lose on health, happiness and relations? In today world supermarkets offer too much food with too much variety, which obviously confuse the consumer, who starts to buy more and most of the time unhealthy.

Getting back to a healthier life style should be a goal for all of us, really! For what we do all we do, if we will end up not being healthy and looking bad? Do we really have such low standards for ourselves just because we saw the neighbour looking the same and we decide that this is “normal”. No, it is not normal – take any book with human body anatomy and you’ll never see fat bodies named there as “normal”. A lot of issues come together with gaining fat and, to visualize them, imagine that by having 10 or 20kg more than you should is actually the same like being normal weighted but carrying all the time a back pack with 10-20Kg with you all the time. Have you tried to lift in a gym a 20 kg dumbbell? Well, that is what you carry daily, all the time! How pleasant that can be? Fat is not good, that is why all our efforts should not be to lose weight but to lose fat!

It is never too late to reinvent yourself!

Unless you are seriously sick (which is a very small probability) you can do it with discipline, in few months. Do not chase results in few weeks – these are almost always temporary. Chase something which lasts! Eat less, eat healthy, drink a lot of water, sleep enough and exercise daily should part of the new YOU!

If you are overweight, no clothes can look great on you, it is impossible to be healthy and it is very unlikely that somebody is really physically attracted to you, unless he/she has low standards too. And why you should want near you somebody with low standards? Where is your pride? And if you thing that you can have all of these in just half a year, I believe it should worth.

If you think that you cannot go to gym because you are out of shape it is like saying that in hospital shouldn’t be sick people. Exactly because you are out of shape you should belong to gym. You hate gyms? Fine! Go for a 60 minutes run, daily. Or go for swim… Just make sure you do a moderate physical activity daily. Later you can switch to intense physical activity.

Start now!

Of course, whatever you do, in case you are out of shape, will be decent not to wear yoga pants or any other tight outfit to create the visual effect of the Michelin doll – nobody is excited to see that. Use comfortable clothes until you can really go for elastic type of outfit.

If you look around the people from your generation are you looking best , average or worst? Are you still having the same haircut you had in high-school? Never used skin care regimen although you crossed 35 years old sometimes ago? On short, on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 is best and 1 is worst) where your personal appearance ranks?

Come on! Life is short and tomorrow is never promised! Get healthy, look good, be proud of you and let others be average, lame and uninteresting.

Inner Piece is the new SUCCESS!

Health is the new WEALTH!

Happiness is the new RICH!

Kindness is the new COOL!

And now asking again: “if you could be better, would you?” how many will answer “me” and starts something from … NOW? You know better than me 🙂

Don’t settle for average! Create the best version of YOU!

If you want to do something and have no idea from where to start, write me to romy@cby.solutions and we’ll find out together what solution works best for you.

All the very best till next time,

Romy

 

Repeat after me: “I am free!”

Working when it’s asked (most of the time from “9-5” or whatever the working schedule you have), taking meal breaks when it’s asked, having limited vacation (sometimes you still need to check mails during your vacation or, even worse, actually it is expected you to check mails) and only with approval and get a payment which is also limited. Even today I remember a true story with a conference call when the Global HR was very specific in mentioning that the point of company compensation is not for the expats to get rich. Nice, right? Imagine if people get rich and leave companies to live their own life the way they want. This is bad, right? The best for most companies is people to work hard and get paid just enough not to leave. So it is OK that the CEO makes few good million $ / year (something like the entire annual profit of an average market they have in portfolio) but the employees shouldn’t get rich … Go on http://www.salary.com and have a look for yourself – it is public, so enjoy 🙂

You hear quite a lot and also often about restructuring, lay-offs or whatever names different companies used for firing people to “better manage the P&L” and make the organization leaner and more agile. Do you hear as often also that the global management decided to reduce their packages in order to fuel the company growth? Companies who do not value their people shouldn’t expect to be valued by their employees!

Most statistics say 7% of the world population is rich and the other 93% works for them. If we look in most iconic biographies of people belonging to the “7%”, you’ll almost never hear the common story / advice of “go to school, get good grades in order to get a good job, get married, buy a house and a family car, make kids, pay your bills, retire and die”. So what should be the purpose of doing all these? Because “everybody else is doing the same”? This is not a smart reason, from my point of view. So again, all these without a meaningful purpose… ? If this is your purpose and not happiness, like it is greatly visualised in the picture I used, you are (metaphorically) already dead but you just wait for the certificate – metaphorically speaking 🙂

If you really want to get free, you must do what free people do.

I understand that we all need to do what we have to do until we can do what we want to do but, if it is not clear what we want to do, we will do what other people are telling us to do: “go to school, get good grades …”  and we will never get out from the 93%. And if we teach our children the same scenario, guess in what category they will most probably land? “93” or “7%”?

If you do not plan your future, others will plan it for you. And guess what they will plan for you? Not much …

I like so much the picture I used for this article because it explains perfect where some people are heading “to be free”.

If this slogan ever worked, it is not working anymore. If you do what most people do, you’ll have most people have. This slogan of “go to school, get a job, …” is like a bible for 93% of people so, by following it, you cannot land on the “7%” category.

The hardest part is not to understand that you shouldn’t follow this scenario. The hardest part is actually to do it – get out from this scenario after years of hearing it around and seeing it around.

Wouldn’t be nice to earn enough so you can work only when you want, to travel where you want and to have the life style you want together with your loved ones? What most people will say about it? – it is impossible! And because it’s impossible, what they will do about it? Nothing!

You know that electricity didn’t appear from constant improvement of the candle.

But what we cannot imagine we will never have. So learn to dream BIG and you’ll see that what for other people it will look like magic, for you will be a reality.

If you are not the brave type which leave everything and start confidently something new when he/she see that the old you will not bring you where you want, at least start in your part time until you develop the second income stream which one day will grow bigger than your previous main income stream – that’s the time you should say GOOD BYE to the old you and say HELLO to the new you.

All the very best, until next time

Romy

Because personal branding is much more than just wearing a suit

Guys, we do not know what we do not know. And one thing most do not understand is what is personal branding. searching on Google, for sure you’ll get a lot of definitions but for sure personal branding is not “wearing a suit”.

First correction could be: wearing the right suit. Anyway to think that personal branding is just wearing suits is very limitative and actually not true. Then what is personal branding? Well, lets divide the term in two: “personal” and “brand”. Now it should be a bit simpler – personal branding is “your brand”. In this very moment it is good to mention that it is not about if you have or do not have a brand. Everybody is a brand! The question is, what kind of brand are you? A “cheap” one or an “expensive” one? Of course an expensive one. Now, based on your appearance, what kind of brand other people than you will say you are? Would they say “expensive” as well?

Everybody is a brand. The question is: what kind of brand?

Always keep in mind the products branding. Imagine mobile phones, or cars, or clothes, or hotels, or restaurants or watches / jewelleries, bags, etc. Think of their visual characteristics and I am sure you got the point. Now let me ask you: how often are you paying a lot of money for a cheap looking product? Unless somebody is are retard 🙂 how often will we pay a lot for a cheap car, or a cheap watch, or a cheap hotel room, etc.  On the other side, how often we pay more money for expensive looking products? Make sense so far? Bottom line, generally speaking, we pay a lot more for expensive looking products than for the cheap looking one.

Let’s come to the main point now, although I bet you already guess where I am going 🙂 If you want to get a good salary, should you look cheap or expensive? Companies will pay more for people with stronger personal brand or wicker personal brand? For me the answer is obvious.

And we all know that for a product we do not appreciate only the technical features, because nobody paid a lot of money for a car which have a great engine and that’s it – all the rest looks average or poor/cheap. Which means a big part of the product brand power is its image. If you’ll agree that we are also brands, then you’ll also get the point that your image is a very important part of your personal branding.

Point #1 –  your image matters big time for your personal branding power

If so far you didn’t treat yourself as a brand, obviously you do not know how much a strong personal brand can influence your success. Now you know what you do not know – personal branding is very important and your image is a big contributor of your personal brand power.

You can try the following easy exercise:

1. think based on what you see in the mirror, which can be 3-5 words which will describe your look / image?
2. are these 3-5 words the ones which you would like your personal brand to be associated with?
3. the moment of truth – ask few friends / colleagues (whom you know will give honest feedback) which will be the 3-5 words they will use to describe your look / image?
4. compare their words with your words?

You’ll have a good reflection moment.

Point #2 – look for professional help to improve your personal brand image

Most people dress the way they see others looking. Conclusion – you will look like others. Aim more for yourself – raise your standards.

The best news here is that once you learn the correct way, it is like learning to ride a bike – you will never forget it.

Give it a try! Life is too short to wear boring clothes.

All the very best, until next time,

Romy

 

 

90% of what you are saying it ain’t coming out from your mouth!

60% of your communication coming from your body language and 30% depends on the intonation of your voice which means 90% of what you are saying it ain’t coming out from your mouth.

How many boring presentation you saw in your life? Too many?! How are your presentations?

After having the right image, having good presentation skills is the second most important quality you need to develop along your success journey.

Some people have presentation skills and some don’t. The great news is that these skills can be developed. The bad news is that you can’t develop them over night. It takes time and PRACTICE!

What’s the point of being smart if when you open your mouth you are not able to transfer the right message to your audience because you lack presentation skills.

Don’t be most presenters who spend most of the preparation time only on the content of their Power Point slides and almost no time on how they are going to deliver that content.

In any interview, always will win the one who knows how to present himself best not the one who is the best. It goes the same when you have to convince an audience about your idea. What’s the point of being good / great if you do not know how to “sell” yourself to an audience? Your personal branding matters a lot!!!

Even more, worth mentioning here is that too many people think a presentation is a sort of speech in front of others. Well, this is true but a phone call is also a “presentation” in which you try to transfer the message from you to the person you are talking. Almost any type of conversation is a presentation and therefore having the right presentation skills will help you achieve what you are looking for.

If you have doubt how good you are in presenting, ask a friend to video tape you when you deliver a presentation. It will be a very a-ha moment for you because very few people actually saw themselves talking, especially in public. You might think you are good but after you see yourself on that video record, most of us change our mind.

Does your presentation have an opening, than the main content and a closure? Are all this parts built using the presentation skills techniques? No?! Then do not blame others for where you are in life!

Remember that only focusing on your technical knowledge won’t bring you too far in life. Fix your image then improve your presentation skills and you’ll notice a totally different dynamic in you career progression.

Do you know how much costs a great presentation skills training? Have a look on internet. My advise: is good to take few online trainings in this area but if you are serious about it, I strongly suggest you’ll go to a live seminar to do and see few live role-plays.

All the very best, until next time!

Romy

 

Using trainers who never practiced with excellence what they are teaching others, is like eating junk food – you’ll get addicted but it’s not good for your career development

When you eat unhealthy food you’ll still feel full, even more, the taste was great but unfortunately the benefit for your body is negative – most of them create addiction, will make you fat and you’ll get high cholesterol, obesity, etc. etc. But again, the taste was in most cases really great and you feel like you want more.

Well, the same is with participating on trainings delivered by so called” gurus” who teach what to do and how to do things which they never practiced with excellence. I have in mind here especially serious topics like for example leadership. How can you come to teach me and even ask serious money from me and you never had under command a big team which eventually you lead them to success? Why would I listen to you if you lack the proven fact that you did it successfully and you’ll show me a path you been there before, successfully. You can’t! For at least only one reason – you didn’t proved successfully in practice what you are teaching. Even more, you should prove it several times until you can claim it as a proven success system. Which means you need to spend time to prove your system before you share it with others. That is why I can’t understand when I see young people teaching others about management and leadership? When did they have time to manage big teams and lead them successfully in order to make them expert in this field? You got my point?!

Leadership topic is just one example but there are too many, from professional to personal life. How to learn about personal branding from somebody who looks … average? How to learn to loose fat from somebody who never had a great body? How can you learn how to be a good manager for somebody who never lead successful a management team ever? And so on and so on …

Some of few dangers with these trainers / coach / consultants or what titles they are using is that:

1. because they never did it, they cannot offer you any guaranty that it is going to work and they cannot articulate the “how” part, because they never did it. And without a solid “HOW” the rest is just bla, bla, bla which you can get from any theoretical book or article you might read on that area which will tell you what to do. A useful training is the one which gives you the HOW part because the WHAT is always much easier and also more obvious. Focus on HOW!
2. because they never did it, they will tell you much more than you actually need to know in order to solve the particular issue you want the trainer to teach you how to do it. They are like the school system – you spend 17 years of your youth but seriously, how much of all the learning you got in those years you are really using in you real life? And, like in school, you might get out with the “trauma” that you are worthless because you can’t coop with all the information and you fail the tests you are getting and ending with the conclusion you should drop it because is too difficult for you and in reality actually is not. Schools teach you first and then give you tests. Real life first gives you the test and after comes the lesson.
3. because most of them are teaching you on a much higher level than they should. It’s like taking a kid which is in the first grade and teach him the information which is usually delivered to kids in the 12th grade. If you do not set the right foundation, all the rest is not very much useful but, on contrary, in most cases confusing. And how can they teach you the foundation if they never built it for themselves?

On summary my point here before getting any training, ask for the background of the trainer / coach / consultant. If there no clear signal that he/she did it successfully in the past, what’s the point on wasting your time? Eventually time is not only money, TIME IS LIFE! We shouldn’t allow anybody to waste our life.

Look WHO’s talking! Always! Remember, they are like junk food! “Taste” good meaning in their cases “sounds” good but will make you unhealthy which means you’ll not learn what actually is really important and how to do it and will create addiction most probably which in time will bring you to the wrong destination – like junk food for your health.

All the very best, until next time!

Romy

If women with muscles look like men, then men without muscles look like women?

Guys, let’s be serious! We have to pay attention on having a male look. And nothing complete better a male look than a great body.

Yes, I do understand that we are all busy and most of us are busy sitting most of the day (in the office, in the car, on the couch, at the eating tables, etc.). Exactly because of that we should pay attention on allocating a specific time for exercising.

We all have on average 37 free available hours a week. Using 6 of them ( 1hour / day) is a great investment in our look, health and confidence, at least.

Not to mention that nobody expects all of us to look like Schwarzenegger or Brad Pit in Troy. For the beginning, if you never practiced, you can definitely work your body at home, even using just your body weight. All you need is an empty 2 square meter space, which we all have at home … Push-ups for upper body, planks to flatten your belly and squats to avoid looking funny like the Vanilla Ice cartoons character (massive chest and shoulders with skinny legs …). Do as many cycle of these 3 exercises you can do in one hour at home, daily, for 3 months and you’ll see how great your body gets improved. Then, when you’ll get the taste of exercising and see the fabulous benefits of active life style, you can think to chose a gym near home where you can bring your routine to a different level. When you’ll travel you can either go back to your home routine for few days or simply choose hotels which have a gym.

Attention, I love running and I am doing it regularly but, only run cannot build a great physique. Please don’t do just running! Add exercises for the rest of your body too. A man suppose to have:

• massive shoulders
• wide chest – who likes men boobs?
• V-shape back – with the wider part up, of course 🙂
• thick enough arms – so from the back, when you wear short sleeves, everybody will have no doubts you are a guy, not a lady 🙂
• no belly – nothing can make you look better than losing your beer belly
• athletic legs – not only the thighs but the calves as well, because is no glorious look having thin calves while wearing shorts

All these features cannot be built by running only and we must be all clear that thin people look good in clothes but fit people look good naked too! 🙂

And if you do not do it for your look, than do it for your health and your confidence level. Do you feel good walking at the beach with a potato shape body or a skinny body which requires to avoid windy days not to be taken by the wind? And you can avoid this by just changing one detail of your daily routine – introduce fitness exercise, daily!

Once a boy, seeing a muscular looking lady, told her: “dad says muscles are for men” and she replied “really? So, why doesn’t he have any?” 🙂 Men, be an inspiration for your boys!

What’s the point to be a smart guy but have a poor looking body? I always thought that smart people do understand that health is very important and one of the key component of a good health is to have an active life style and, honestly, looking like all your life the only sport you ever played was chess shouldn’t be an option 🙂

Be a lion, not a lamb!

Build the best version of you! Body shape is a must part of your journey. Why to look average when you can look inspiring? Progression, not perfection! Don’t aim first to be the best looking guy, but set yourself an objective to among the best looking guy in your community – I really hope you do not have only fat people around you and get some real challenge from younger guys who look fit, although today, somehow, elder people are in better shape than youngsters who just sit in front of computer and drink coke while eating fast food.

It’s never too late to reinvent yourself and by doing today what most people won’t, tomorrow you will be able to do what most people can’t. Yes, I know, everything is hard before it’s easy! How about starting from tomorrow morning? Don’t wait for traditional “I will start from Monday!” 🙂 Enjoy the new you!

All the very best until next time!

Romy

If you want sustainable results, stop investing in the “swimming pool” and start investing in training the “swimmer”!

The bigger the company is, the more pressure on financial results you’ll get. It’s like for these guys it’s never enough 😊 and in today’s world, with so much opportunities but also so much risks, the volatility is much higher than a decade ago. My point with this introduction is that when this financial pressure comes, the first things which will be cut from the budget (if you are lucky to work for, or in a good management team) are the “nice to have” things and here is the tricky point – how you define “nice to have” things?

To make a metaphor, it is like flying with a zeppelin and suddenly you realize that you’re free falling when you shouldn’t suppose to 🙂  What are you doing immediately? You start throwing away all the things which make the zeppelin heavier, right? So, becoming lighter you might have better chances to keep flying and stop falling.

Each of us might have different ideas on what to throw away in such cases, and this is normal because we are all different as human being but, I am sure that we all agree that we shouldn’t throw away one by one the people who are flying with the zeppelin and for sure nobody will throw away the conductor, right? Actually, the best-case scenario everybody would like to have, if ever such thing happens to them, is to have an experienced and very well-trained people running the zeppelin because this will give us much higher chances to survive in a case of free falling because they know what to do.

For comparison, things are exactly the same with companies – people are the best assets of any company. Not the building, not the technology but the people who “run the show” come first always. Both the leader and the team!

In business, like in flying zeppelins, sometimes you can foresee troubles coming but sometimes you cannot. Even more, what’s the best you can do is to properly train the team how to fly the zeppelin in any conditions so, when troubles come, they are better prepared.

To close this conversation, let me give my favorite example: let’s imagine a swimming sport club who wants their swimmers to win the Olympics. What the management of the club should do FIRST:

1. build a great swimming pool, with nice showers, fluffy towels and the best possible water in the pool, with the perfect ph and perfect temperature? or
2. bring the best coach and invest in training the swimmers and motivate them with a nice reward if they’re going to win?

Which club do you thing is going to win? The one who invest first in the swimming pool and only after, if any money left, in the training of their swimmer and recruiting a great coach? Or, the one who put first the training of the swimmer and build the facilities benefits along the way?

Following the zeppelin and sport examples, what any great company must do in order to have always the highest chances to win in the given circumstances is to first invest in their team training, from skills but also from mental point of view. Build for the “battle” an army of lions not lambs.

In which company would you prefer to work? In the ones who invest in everything first but people or in the ones who always put people development first?

Great business leaders, who shared their philosophy on how they became best, said: “treat your employees nice and they will treat your customer nicer” or in another word, the quality of external service will never exceed the quality of internal service – employees should come first, then customers.

And now coming back to how we start this conversation, what most companies do when financial turbulences are coming? Cut trainings budget because it’s a “nice to have” thing and throw away people from the team, who supposed to manage the zeppelin when weather is bad and free falling happens because they are not able to fly properly the zeppelin. How smart is that? And who’s fault is that people who supposed to run the zeppelin are not well trained to do it? Of course, there is no black and white answer but it is a food for thought and I’ll leave you with this thought so you can answer for yourself and if ever you are in the situation to lead a team in challenging situations you might consider these examples too.

All the very best till next time !

Romy

The unfortunate image of today office “uniform” which can transform you in one of many. Stop wearing a backpack with a suit.

Why unfortunate? Because this image will never bring you somewhere significant in your professional life.

When you see an average quality suit (99% of the time black), with black square toed shoes (which are fighting for the title of the ugliest choice somebody could pick), most of the time with light blue shirt, unappropriated socks (of course the white sport ones are the terrifying choice of all), backpack for laptop and (for corporate people only) the access card always hanging on your neck either on top of the tie (in case they wear a tie), which is awful enough or stuffed in the shirt chest pocket (which is bad either), them you just witness the perfect and complete picture of today working “slaves” uniform (sorry for the tough metaphor but I wanted to stretch the point to make the point). These are people whom I respect for their hard working, most of the time making unfortunately “peanuts” money, doing often overtime and with very less chances for promotion and even when get promoted, always getting the message from their bosses / HR people of how grateful they should be and that company expects them to work even harder to prove that it was the right decision to be selected for promotion. Wake up people! None of us were born to work, pay bills and die. This is for sure a part of our life but it shouldn’t be all our life!

All of us, and I really mean all of us, are one decision away from a totally different future all the time.

If I put together all my 20+ years experience in the corporate world, I could say that all the people I met who looked like I just described above, hardly or never saw them made it to the top. When I say “to the top” I mean to be financial freedom. I am not saying is impossible, I am just saying that in my 20 years I never saw one. There must be few somewhere … I guess. It is again, the personal branding concept – if you have low standards for yourself, why would you expect others to value you more? Looking cheap is almost all the time having the consequence of being paid cheap. And having square toed shoes and wearing a 100 USD suit, blue shirt and backpack for carrying laptop is exactly the look you should avoid by all means. Apart of the fact it is looking cheap, the other bad part is that you’ll look like many and, how you’ll expect the opportunity to find you, if you can’t detach yourself visually from the crowd?

RAISE YOUR STANDARDS!

Working hard is great from many reasons but if you do not grow your personal brand at the same time, all your effort is valuable mainly or solely for the company you work for but very little for you – you’ll most probably remain at the same level of purchasing power and in ten years from now, you’ll just be tired but not even close to rich. If, like most companies, your company increases the annually salaries more or less inline with inflation, this means if you are an average performer, with an average annual salary increase, in 10 years you’ll earn more or less same as today in constant dollars (the inflation will “eat” all your annual incremental). Wow, isn’t it? Is this what you are targeting for yourself? To work hard 10 more years and have the same purchasing power as today (or even a bit less) doesn’t sounds for me like a great catch. Please don’t tell me “it can be worse”. Of course it can be but also it can be much better – are you the type who sees the glass half full or half empty?  There are other options and, in one of our next conversations I will share few of my learnings on dealing better with life progression.

In my imagination there is only one reason why working hard worth – if you work today more than you are paid because one day you’ll be paid more than you work. If you already work more than a decade and this is not the case, then you are doing somewhere, something wrong. And remember, we are all the time just one decision away from a totally different future and we do not have to stay forever in the same place – we are not trees 🙂

Life is short and tomorrow is never promised, don’t wear boring clothes just because you see others doing it.

How others see you is important but how YOU see you is EVERYTHING!

So the question is: if this picture is wrong, how should I look to avoid looking like a 21 century corporate slave? (sorry for the  metaphor but is really important here to understand that this look is something you should avoid making it yours).

Sorry also to disappoint but, there is no short answer for this, otherwise you’ll not see so many people looking like this, right? It took me few years to learn the details but don’t despair, anybody can be fixed 🙂 Before learning the whole transformation process, step number one is to change immediately minimum these 3 elements from the picture I described above:

1. the square toed black shoes – if you have them, throw them immediately or give them to enemies. Instead go and buy a good pair of brown leather brogues worth at least 100 bucks and a belt of the same colour
2. the black trousers – black is basic and basic is boring. Go for navy blue and grey options instead
3. the backpack – if you wear it, to the same like with the black toed shoes – throw it away or give it to your enemies. Instead by a briefcase – brown will be good to match the shoes you already bought (not exactly same brown of course). Please don’t tell me you got the backpack with the laptop so you are carrying it because it was for free – this reason do not stands in personal branding professional image 🙂

By just doing these 3 adjustments you’ll look already different than 90% of the corporate world people.

Almost forget – stop carrying the company badge hanging on your neck. Find other option because they are, just be creative 🙂

Learn to build your professional brand image and, sooner than you expect, you’ll see the change. It’s like in physics – the cause and effect law 🙂

All the very best until next time.

Romy

 

Why entrepreneurs need to start their personal development asap and not “one day”!

I worked with entrepreneurs in the past 20+ years on two continents and I can say I saw many and in different stages of development.

I am trying in this conversation to highlight few mistakes that most are doing and maybe you, the reader, will manage to avoid it when comes the time to start something on your own. Actually the word entrepreneur shouldn’t be only for the one who really start a business. It is for everybody who start something and by this it means we are all entrepreneurs in some moments of our life 🙂

One of the greatest mistake people who start something (and especially a business ) is to not learn “yesterday” as much as they can about how to handle what they plan to start. Too often when comes to personal development we hear around the quote “but I do not have enough money or time”. I can get it, that we all have to do what we have to do until we can do what we want to do. But there must be a limit of “punishing” ourselves this way 🙂 People do not have time or money for primarily reason that they work for a job which just pay them enough not to quit but definitely not to get rich and because they are busy to work for “no money” they will never have time to make money. On short you do not have time and money because you have a job who keeps you busy while not making the money you want. An instead of learning how to do things different, which can be called “personal development” and is the only way to get better, they stay busy until get too much used to be busy and to make less or average money. That is a dangerous place to be because to “unlearn” how to be busy and get “peanut” money it is not easy and you might quit and just enrol in a long grey queue of people who have no dreams, no goals and do not achieve much in life – what a sad scenario. If you can be better, would you? Everybody can!

Jim Rohn said it very right – “you need to work more on yourself than on your job”. Personal development is critical when comes to your progress. It’s insane to think that by doing the same things which brought you where you are today, will help you go somewhere else – it won’t! Start reading, watching videos and go to seminars (live or online, just go) that matters instead of doing unproductive activities.

So in one of our next conversation we will talk also about how to do a great job and go home on time so you can have enough time to develop options which can bring you faster and more certain to where you really want, financially speaking. Let’s stay focused today on why too many fail. As a result, even more do not dare to start – which is really pity, because entrepreneurship is a proven way to financial wealth.

For a better understanding I always like to compare business with sport, because it is having the same principles to get successful and I will highlight here one, which I believe matters a lot in this conversation.

Get a coach, with proven success record, for all the area you are not strong enough to handle yourself!

Let’s thing about sport again and imagine you have a team and you want them to play in tournaments and to win, well … what are the chances that this will happen without a very good coach? Actually there are no serious teams without a coach, which in 99,9% of the cases is a different person than the owner of the team.

Well, in business things work exactly the same. It is very unlikely that you will have a successful business without having a team to help you get there. Now comes the question: are you a great coach too? If we deep inside accept there are people who can be better coaches than we are, how about get them do this job. I can understand that at the beginning of any entrepreneurial journey there are not much money to invest and you think you can do it in a later stage. Nobody says you need to pay huge money (which you do not have yet) to hire a great “coach” which today we call consultants (can be mentors as well or both). But you can instead read their books (that is not expensive at all, right?). Or go to their seminars if they do such things or at least watch their videos or enrol for an online training – none of these options are very expensive and if you truly care about your success you need to let aside the “arrogance” of thinking you know everything and invest in your personal development. And here is the biggest mistake I see everywhere – people who start any entrepreneurial business get so busy that they “do not have time” for “silly” things like reading, learning, etc. – they are serious people who deal with serious things, right? This is the mistake number one – not investing in your personal development from day 1! 

The same mistake comes also for most entrepreneurs, immediately after first success, when the same entrepreneurs believe that now they know it all so what’s the point to hire coaches, mentors or at least listen to them and read their materials or invest in their personal development? Seriously, how can somebody be great in the following 4 roles anybody actually very much needs to be good at, from the very beginning, if having success is the target:

1. The leader – to inspire his team and motivate them to do the extra mile. If you can’t lead them with inspiration and develop them as well along the way, you must be aware that good ones will always leave. You cannot treat them like mushrooms and expect them to super perform just because you paid them a bit more! What is the mushroom treatment? Simple: keep them in the dark and put some s..t on them from time to time! I saw it several times – lousy leadership! Actually this is not leadership at all. Can you picture now few bosses who treat people like mushrooms and they believe they are great because they are “tough guys”? I can picture few and it’s good that I have them, because I learned how not to treat people!
2. The finance manager – to manage his own P&L (can you imagine some entrepreneurs not even know what P&L means? …) You need to know how to release financial resources for growing the business, how to prioritize your investments and not to do the first thing like some I met: buy an expensive new car to show off they are the bosses 🙂 Read Kiyosaki and you’ll see why this is not such a good idea. Nobody says don’t do it, but do it at the right time!
3. The technical expert having the knowledge for the business you start – you suppose to know what you are doing if you plan some success along the way
4. The visionar – if you can’t see the destination, how will you ever get there? It is terrible to work for people who do not know what they want and “every day” they change the business direction, they have new ideas… – it drives the team crazy but of course they do not care about what they people think , because they are the bosses and the rest should just follow them, right? Well, it is not exactly like this! And sooner or later the great employees will always leave these kind of bosses and the business will remain with an average team which hardly can guaranty a fabulous future.

The probability to have all the 4 roles in one person is very small, that is why you need to get help! You do not know what you don’t know! So please go get the professional help – it is available out there and it is affordable for every stage of your development but please, DO NOT ENROLL IN ANY ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY WITHOUT STARTING AT THE SAME TIME YOUR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY!!!

One more point about having the coaches for your personal development and your business progression is to get the right ones. “Look who is talking!” Do not “hire” people who never did it. What is the probability to do it for you? 50/50? I will say much more less…

And then the final point here is: listen to what they said and do as they said because that is why you hire them (they are better than you are in that particular area because that is why you hire their expertise, right?). Here I would say it’s like in music – you like somebody’s song and you plan to sing it as well but you decided (because you know better then the song writer) to change few notes. Guys, it will never be the same song so it will never sounds the same. Keep your improvisation for latter when you’ll get good, but at the beginning just learn and practice what you learned. Just sing “the song” the way they do, so it will sound almost the same. Same in business – do what the coach says and do not change few “notes” just because you think you know better. If you are that good, you supposed to wrote that song already before them but you didn’t. So, even if you are who you are, listen and follow your coach.

Entrepreneurship is a great thing! Please avoid this number one mistake, which is to believe you are good at everything, and you’ll be successful one day for sure. Not tomorrow but one day! Like in sport, you can’t become great after only few practice. You need a lot of practice if you plan to be a champion one day. Same is in business! Learn from the right coach, then practice, practice, practice and future is yours.

In one of the next conversations I will share what I believe is the second biggest mistake most entrepreneurs do in their journey to success or failure.

All the very till next time,

Romy

Stop wearing wrong trousers if you care how you look! Our trousers must look like they are ours and not borrowed.

If unfortunately not all the guys chose for office attire to wear a jacket, fortunately all of them wear trousers 🙂 The question raised here is: are we wearing the right trousers or we are just dressed not to be naked?

Because none of us shouldn’t dress just not to be naked, there are few things we need to pay attention when comes to our trousers.

1. FIT IS KING!

The same case like when we talked about jacket, the case you must chose is to wear trousers for the body you have, not the body you want. Imagine if you have the right jacket but your trousers are too long and too large – your look is completely ruined.

What means too long? The length of the trousers should be long enough just to cover your socks when you stand and wear formal shoes. Not longer than this! Otherwise it is looking like you expect your legs to still grow in the near future, so you will be able to use your extra fabric. Guys, it costs around 2 USD to adjust the length of your trousers and almost any tailor can do it. Why to wear too long trousers just to save 2 USD? Or are we that poor we cannot afford 2 USD to make our trousers looking are ours not borrowed? Seriously!

What means too large? Your trousers shouldn’t look like one more guy can easily jump in your trousers and walk together, because is more than enough space between your legs and the trousers. Some people have thin legs and others opposite. Make sure your trousers fit your body – a tailor can always make the difference if you know what to ask. I am highlighting this because I saw the case when people do go to tailor but ask them to do their clothes in the wrong way because this is how they are used to wear them. Guys, if you anyway go to tailor, let them chose what fit you better – they are professional more than you!. What the point to pay a tailor made suit and to still look average because you instruct the tailor and not the opposite. If the tailor do not know what to suggest, then you are at the wrong tailor. Thanks God, there are enough tailors so I suggest you to change him if they cannot make you look better than before.

The fit story should be valid for any type of trousers – jeans should also fit the body you have. Do not wear skinny jeans or low waist jeans if you are over weighted – what’s the point to look like a Michelin doll? Too tight trousers which might look almost like a yoga pants should be avoided no matter how great your legs looks and especially if your legs do not look great. For example, If you have skinny legs you shouldn’t opt for skinny fit jeans to highlight how skinny are your legs – you might look like walking in hands …

A great fit can cover even a not so good fabric. Always pay attention on your trousers fit!

2. THE FABRIC

There are plenty of options out there. If you visit a tailor (which I suggest you should) you can see hundreds of options and he can also help you choose the right material depending on season, where are you going to wear them, etc. Some look premium and some more into business casual / casual (like chinos). Good to remind us that elegance never went out of style, so go for good fabric to upgrade your look instead of downgrade it by all the time wearing chinos or similar.

3. THE PATTERN/COLOR

One thing most guys do and exactly because of that you should avoid it – do not wear black or black only. Again, nothing bad with black: you cannot see they are dirty as easy as on the light colours (but this do not means they are not getting dirty like other colours), you can match it with any other colours of your outfit but … and there is a big but – black is basic and basic is boring, not to mention that most guys wear black trousers – why you want to be “most guys”?

I am trying to imagine how somebody will go to a tailor, where you can opt from hundreds colours and patterns eventually you’ll decide to chose black. Unfortunately most people avoid tailors because they have the opinion that it will be prohibitively expensive. Obviously better and cheaper cannot go together. At the same time the word “expensive” is a relative word – something can expensive in comparison with something else or with our purchasing power. Based on my experience, most people have at home more trousers than we actually need and most of them actually are wrong choices. So having less but better should be a good choice. And eventually if you want to strengthen your personal brand, obviously you have to invest in your image. Funny scenario for me is when I hear people saying they have no money for dressing for success but you can see they have the latest smartphone model. So you can pay a lot of money for a phone but you cannot invest in few trousers …?!

Go for colours guys and do not stay away from patterns like checks and stripes. It is looking stylish and you’ll be different – which you want in a competitive world! If people can notice you, they can remember you and this is what you need in order to move further – the right people to notice and remember you!

CONCLUSION: tailor made your trousers for the right fit, chose a more premium fabric – it is you who are going to wear them and stay away from black – colours and patterns are highly encouraged.

All the very best, until next time

Romy

Wear the right watch! “Right” is given by its function not its price/brand. Learn to make the difference and avoid to devalue your personal brand.

Your watch reflects your relation with time 🙂

When you wear the wrong watch for your attire might shows two things – you do not know much or nothing about watches and / or you just want to show-off with your acquisition, which by all means is nothing but cheap. And real men doesn’t look/act cheap!

For men, the watch is one of the key accessory as we have far less options than women when come to accessorise our outfit. Therefore few basic information about what to choose and what not to do, will be helpful to avoid not wearing the right one in any circumstances.

Same as for sport apparel, most watches, apart of showing the time, have a purpose and that is why the variety is so wide – you can have formals, chronographs, for outdoor, for swimming, diving, pilots, kids, gents, ladies, big size, small size, etc.

That’s the reason why we need to make sure what we wear is right, when comes to build our personal branding image.

Eventually you can wear whatever you want, whenever you want and how you want. The point here is, only if you plan to build a professional and solid personal brand, then you need to follow few rules. It’s like when dining, you eat first appetizer and at the end desert because there are certain rules even all food goes into the same place, eventually (your stomach). Same with wearing watches – something you do and something you don’t. Just imagine you wear a proper tailor made suit with right shoes but you wear the wrong watch – you will just destroy a great image and you will look silly (in the best case scenario) if not even ridiculous.

Few tips when comes to watches for men who care how they put themselves together:

1. you need at least 2 watches: one for formal  (even casual) and one for sport. The more variety, the better but these 2 types are a must have
2. The high acquisition price and the brand of the watch do not make it formal. For example you can buy very expensive sport watches. This do not means you should wear it to your suit just because you paid for it 3 times the price of your suit. I saw senior business people wearing rubber strap sport watch with shirts with cufflinks and suit – almost an idiotic look. It is a style free look not a freestyler. I will be like what? You plan to dive in a suit or you count your running performance running in business attire? Of course you don’t! So wear sport watch for sport activities and formal watch for formal activities.
3. If you opt for leather strap, that makes your watch out of sport range and you should try to match you leather colour with your shoes and belt colour (assuming you choose them all right for your suit). Brown with brown, black with black and so on. Some people might consider this difficult to follow, that is why the best watch to start your collection is a silver look one with metallic strap – it can match with almost everything. The simpler the better. What I mean here is with less buttons, for different functions – you do not need either chronograph or altimeter options when you are in business meetings, right? One button for fixing the time should be enough 🙂 The more dials, buttons and indicators it has, the more far it goes from elegant and formal.
4. If the strap has a silver look, avoid to wear gold jewelleries. Silver jewelleries with silver strap and gold jewelleries with gold strap (the only exception is the wedding ring – you do not need to match it with nothing) . That shows you pay attention, which many don’t and as a result, you are not one of many, you are one of few which is great for your personal branding.
5. Don’t go to gym or do sport activities with your formal watch just to show people you have an expensive watch. It is actually a cheap look – gym attire and luxury formal watch (I saw rich coming with golden Rolex at gym…). Don’t do that! If you have money to buy a Rolex than for sure you can afford a good sport watch too 🙂
6. Don’t put on small hands big watches and vice versa
7. If you do not have enough financials to invest in more watches, then avoid buying particular watches like: for diving (especially if you never dive) or for outdoor, to measure altitude, have barometer etc. if the only thing you climb the most is your couch to watch TV 🙂
8. a smart watch is great option but do not make it your only one watch. If you can buy more straps from different colours and materials do it! It’s a great choice but still consider to have a “clean” looking one for your formal look, when you want to look at your very best.

Your watch is a symbol. Choose right to look right! Remember: a silver look one with metallic strap and a sport one is all you need to start right. From there, the journey is yours 🙂

Enjoy your watches! The right ones really make you step out of the crowd.

All the very best, until next time

Romy

 

 

 

We don’t know what we don’t know! Today a personal branding tip about your shirt chest pocket.

If wearing the wallet in the back pocket of your trouser is a style sin, let’s have a look how the shirt chest pocket can be turned in the sin #2 🙂

I am not going into the history of how the shirt chest pocket appeared but I will just refer here on the visual aspect of it.

Same with trousers pockets case, if you stuffed too many things on your shirt chest pocket it will also be a bad idea.

Let’s see the two cases we have here:

1. You wear a too large shirt for your body so you can imagine how it will look that shirt on you with an even more accent on your left side, where your pocket hang even lower because is stuffed with things like pens, mobile phone, etc. Can you picture this image? It’s a style free image 110%! It’s not bad enough that you wear the wrong size shirt but you want to ring the bell even more by having the pocket looking like you are some supplier… The most you see this picture in offices and on airports where people on top of the regular things stuffed there add as well the boarding passes and their passport…
2. You wear a good fit shirt. Why would you destroy your good look in your tailor made shirt with a chest pocket full of things?

In both cases from above we can have the 3 scenarios, depending on our body shape:

• You are over weight so you do have men boops – why would want one of you chest side to look even bigger? Trust me – it doesn’t look good.
• You are too thin and you never did a push-up in your life which make your chest to be flat. How do you think that it will look when your left side is bigger than your right side? Definitely not good either.
• You do have a good chest (which is a rare thing to see these days). Why to ruin a good figure by stuffing things in your chest pocket? You guessed right already: it doesn’t looks good either 🙂

Bottom line, stop stuffing your chest pocket with things – it is a killer for any professional look. Use your business bag to carry all that you plan to stuff in your chest pocket. It is possible – I worked 20 years in corporate world and I do not need to carry anything there.

My best tip is: stop buying shirts with chest pockets. All my formal shirts are tailor made and none of them have pockets. You’ll see the difference and others as well…

Now, when it comes to think about what we carry the most, I would say that honestly, I do not understand why some people carry all the time a pen on the chest pocket? Are you constantly signing documents so you need permanently a pen available? I believe you don’t. Then why?

Or maybe you give constantly autographs to your fans so you desperately need the pen all the time, because you’ll never know when you’ll meet a fan who wants your autograph… 🙂

If it is for taking notes, maybe a good reminder is that every smart phone has Notes, where you can highlight any note you want to take not to forget. And you can even send your notes to others or to yourself by mail or WhatsApp, etc. Ever since I learned it I keep using it. It’s very easy.

Now, even in the case you constantly take notes or you are so popular and constantly give autographs, I cannot understand why to carry 2 or more pens in your chest pocket. Are you a pen supplier or what?

And even further, why to carry a cheap 1 dollar pen, or more than one cheap pen? Why? Invest in a good pen which will last longer and will always look premium. A powerful brand pay attention to details! So should we 🙂

If you want to be somebody don’t do like everybody!

All the very best, until next time

Romy

The wallet in the back pocket – a 100% killer of any look from casual to formal. Avoid it by any chance if you consider your personal brand image important.

There is one thing I struggle to understand – why so many guys keep all the time the wallet in the back pocket of their trousers?

Apart of the fact that is clinically proven is bad for your posture when sitting, it is extremely bad looking.

First of all why we need to carry all the time the wallet with us? Are we buying something all the time? It’s like in any minute will be an opportunity to buy something, otherwise what’s the point of carrying the wallet ALL THE TIME. Nobody (especially guys) do not buy something all the time. Then why? Maybe safety reasons? But in the office shouldn’t be thieves – just keep it your office bag. And while we commute I assume we all have a man bag, briefcase, etc. So why not in your office bag?

Lazy reasons? Real men shouldn’t be lazy when comes to their personal brand! Are you not in the mood to carry any bag and you prefer going empty handed? Really? So where we keep the mobile phone, the car key, the house keys, maybe a pen, or whatever…? All in your pockets? Wow, you must be looking amazing from waist down with all pockets full of something. Seriously guys, just carry a man bag, stylish, from leather and you can keep anything you need there. There is no trouser invented by men 🙂 which looks good with all the pockets filled with visible things. Just look in the mirror how you look with all these stuff and please reconsider, if you do care about your personal brand image.

Or maybe the good feeling that I am sitting on my money? 🙂 Or you have such a close relation with money and you do not want to break it? 🙂

Imagine you have a nice tailored suit, in the office or business meetings but, you constantly carry that wallet in the back pocket. It is not nice and most of all, not necessary as you’ll never buy something during the meetings. Are you going for  lunch? Perfect, just take your credit card or some cash and you are done – there are solutions if you really want to get rid of this awful look.

Here are some points to consider in the favour of NEVER AGAIN wear the wallet in the back pocket of your trousers.

There are 3 scenarios here:

1. You have a big butt (let’s just say bigger than it should be according to your height and age). Why on Earth would you like to make it look even bigger, but only on one side? 🙂 It is already bigger than it should be. Work better on the other direction – try to make it smaller or at least look smaller and carrying a wallet there do not help for sure.
2. you have a visually almost inexistent butt. Why would you want to show that you half only a half butt? 🙂 Better do some serious squats routines and fix the issue.
3. you have a normal butt. Why would you like to destroy something which can be an asset? 🙂 Wear the wallet in your man-bag and stop making you look weird, for whatever reason before you carried the wallet in the back pocket.

As you can see, in none of the 3 scenarios, carrying the wallet in the back pocket is not a winner case. The fact that we face mirror when we look at it, that not means nobody will see us from behind…

Invest in a good quality man-bag, which you can easily find in any branded bag shops and you are done. As per office time, just keep the wallet in your briefcase or backpack – whatever you chose as you office bag. Just for the reference, I hope you do not opt for a backpack for office, unless you’ll do some trekking on the way to office. Suit with backpack is another bad combination which we’ll address in a future article for sure.

Conclusion – never again wear the wallet in the back pocket of your trousers if you want to have a proper look either in formal or casual environments.

All the very best until next time,

Romy

 

 

 

Casual wear shouldn’t means a kitsch look. Avoid this too common mistake when comes to sport shoes, which is one of the biggest style sins.

Sport apparel companies invest a lot in building the gear for us when we play a particular sport and if we enter in any serious sport outlet you can see that there is not such thing that one fits all. You see different sport shoes for tennis than for running or football.

There is a lot of science behind any pair of sport shoes, that is why you see many sections in the sport outlets: running, fitness, tennis, swimming and never one paire of shoes fits all !

Now, if to connect the dots to personal branding we need to avoid one big sin which is a total killer for your look:

Do not wear sport shoes for any other activity than sport, if you do care about your personal brand image!  

Let me explain why not …

Today you can see a lot of people wearing confortable shoes for daily activities. That is cool but let’s clarify some Do’s and Don’s:

• Casual attire can go with the right sneakers but not with any other sport shoes IF YOU CARE ABOUT HOW YOU LOOK (and you should). All good sport brands produce great sneakers for your relaxing attire – you can find them usually in the section called “city” or similar but not at “running” section or “tennis”, or any other. SNEAKERS ARE FOR CASUAL LOOK! THE END.
• If you never run, stop buying running shoes. Buy shoes for what activities you do. It is looking awful to wear trousers, especially formal ones, with running shoes.
• When you buy sport shoes you go for the section you intend to play and choose your shoes.
• Sport shoes must be wore only for sport attire  🙂
• And another colateral style sin, would be to wear sport shoes with casual shorts and with long white socks (so long they almost cover your calves) especially if your calves muscles are close to inexistent. This will only emphasize too thin legs. Avoid this bad look by all means – do not dress just not to be naked!

One of the point here is that your image shouldn’t be good only when wear formal attire. You must look great in any occasion and casual or sport wear are very popular today. What’s the point to look great in formals and totally ridiculous in casual wear by throwing running super colourful shoes to chinos or even worse to formal fabric trousers.

Bottom line, when come to sport shoes, remember from which section you bought them from the sport outlet and wear them for that particular sport only, if possible. This of course only if you do care and understand that what you wear defines your standards.

Avoid looking in casual wear like you just jumped out from your TV couch and had no time to put yourself together – might be easy but it’s not how you should look like!

Why to have low standards just because you do not know what you don’t know – now we know: sneakers only for casual wear and sport shoes only for sport attire.

Don’t be cheap with your image – one sport shoes do not fits all!

Invest in a nice pair of sneakers which will match your most casual outfits and in one sport shoes for your sport activities. When comes to sneakers, white ones can be a great option which will fit almost every casual outfit  color combination. Of course you can go for black too, but you know the rule: black is basic and basic is boring 🙂 If are OK with colours, then New Balance offers a wide variety of great colour combinations, just make sure in this case you match the rest of your outfit with it. When comes to sport ones, in my view, the more colorful the better with the basic condition to match the color of your sport attire, otherwise you’ll risk to look like a parrot

Two pairs of shoes will not bankrupt anybody but will make you look good and also will show that you know how to wear them, which most people don’t (based on what you can see in the streets). Do you want to be most people? Successful people are never “most people”.

One thing worth mentioning at this point would be to make sure, if anyway you’ll buy just two pairs (I hope soon you’ll reconsider and have few more), to buy two beautiful ones. Don’t just pick the first two pairs you have in front of you, choose them wisely – you’ll wear them, right? This effortless look shows more laziness than what you want people to think about you, in case you do plan to be successful.

Learn these easy tips which will make your personal brand image looking always stylish and premium no matter what you wear.

Enjoy wearing your right sport shoes 🙂

All the very best, until next time

Romy 

Having a camera do not make you a photographer! Make sure your personal brand is not affected by your social media display pictures.

When comes to personal branding, details matter a lot. In today world, everybody is on social media and for all of them, if you really want people to find you, it is necessary to add a display picture.

Here comes the issue for many people as they use all kind of photographs but the right ones. You can see for example on Facebook display picture showing kids, cats, dogs, landscapes, etc. Or you can see picture of the owner done from “helicopter” so it’s almost impossible to spot who really is in that picture. On the other extreme you can see selfie pictures taken from so close that you can count the nose hair of the owner 🙂 Or with an unappropriated background . Or you can see pictures with the owner looking funny / weird (not to use other wording) 🙂 And the list can go on.

Now, if on your list for that particular social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.) you have on your list not only your friends and family, you should pay more attention how you look. Do you know that these days most recruiters use social media to figured out who you are? What you picture would you like to say about you?

Especially by using WeChat, WhatsApp or LinkedIn where most probably you have all your business connections, would be very much advisable to put a professional photo of you. When I say professional I do not mean necessary that you should look professional, although if it’s for LinkedIn I would very much suggest so, but at least the picture to be taken professionally.

We all need in life a set of good pictures for ourselves, for different usage so how about talk to a photographer to do few shots for you. In the display picture we should see your face. No matter how great body you have, keep it for other occasions, unless you are fitness trainer and you want people to see that you walk the talk .

On the other hand, if you are not so excited about what you see in the mirror, it’s good to know there are beauty saloon which can help in this directions. I am talking here for both ladies and gents. A good hair style, done by a hairstylist can’t harm anybody, or trimming the beard, maybe a face-spa treatment to get rid of the dark circles and add some glow to a dull skin tone. I saw a great add on a man hair saloon – “if we can make you look good, you’re ugly” 🙂 They really know what they are doing.

Additional for ladies the right make-up can be also a good idea. Nobody says you should look like preparing to act in Othello opera but, a natural and clean look will do just perfect.

Pay attention on details if you care about your personal brand. Remember, the way you look is a reflection of your standards. Do not settle for average – raise your standards! It’s YOU we are talking about. If you could be better, why don’t you?

I hope you’ll not think that this might be expensive. It is not! You do not need to go to the Elle magazine photographer (although if you can afford, why not? It’s you who is going to be in the pictures, right?) 🙂 Just ask and you’ll see that it is all worth it.

I cannot imagine why somebody for example in a senior management position, or being in public services, who interact a lot with people and expect people to search for them would not invest in a good branding for themselves. Why to show a boring face, with a hair style from second world war, non-smiling and dressed bad. Why?

And this is the least you can do for image – have a great display picture in the social media.

I hope I triggered your curiosity to assess your display pictures from social media and if the case, you’ll do something about it.

All the very best, until next time

Romy

 

 

Forever student or never student – two options to stay away off if you are serious about getting successful!

In my development process of 20+ years I met two types of unproductive and most of the time, unsuccessful people:

1. the ones who keep going to all kind of seminars but do nothing about it
2. the ones who never read a book or go to any seminar

I have been regularly in my life to seminars in many countries. They provide great learning opportunities and also interesting network opportunities. While you learn something new, you meet new people as well which are also interested in the same topic you are so it become very easy to connect.

THE FOREVER STUDENT

One of the people you meet there are the ones who are a kind of seminar hunters. You can spot them easy because the keep asking you which seminar have you been so far and which ones are you plan to visit in the future.

Don’t mistaken me – it is great to invest in your education but without action, this education do not worth much. These guys are “forever students” and they spend years and money with the hope they will find the ”chicken with golden eggs”. There is no such thing and even the speaker usually tell his story how he started poor and in debt, then he found the magic idea and today he is a very successful entrepreneur (most of the time average or poor dressed) who have the life of your dreams, living in great house, driving Ferrari and travel overseas all the time. One think is obvious but the forever student don’t get it – this process of become rich do not happen over night for this guys as well. In order to be in front of you and telling their story, they’ve been through a lot of work and transformation. They definitely do not work from 9 to 5 then go home to watch TV and have cosy dinners with their family.

School is not necessary a good example to follow because first they teach you the lesson then you go for test compared with life when first you get the test and only after you’ll get the lesson, therefore I suggest to follow the sport training – if you want to get better, after you learn the rules go and keep practicing every day and only after you get better.

Dear forever students, will be more beneficial for you if you do one training only then practice enough until you really get good at what you learn and only then you should move to the next ones.

This instant gratification some people chase, is sometimes annoying and let me give you one example of today situation – you subscribe to a certain newsletter and then you get bombarded daily with lot of information about what to do. Who can absorb so much information and also practice it on daily base? Seriously! Most of us spent 15+ years in schools to get an education and we do expect to get everything we need to change our life in a two days course with zero practice after? Let’s not full ourselves.

It’s great to keep learning, with one condition – to keep practicing as well.

THE NEVER STUDENT

These guys are also amazing. Once somebody wrote a funny definition of being insane: “keep doing the same things but expect to get different results”.

We all have people around us who complains about practically everything but themselves. Everything is bad: the politics, the economics, the legislation, the weather, the company they work for, neighbours, etc. One thing in common for most people who fall into this category is they only watch TV but they never read books or go to seminars. If you asked them how many books they read in the past 90 days, the answer is zero and how many seminars they attended in the past 6 months, the answer is also zero.

If we do not educate our self, how could we seriously expect to get better and have a better life? TV is rarely an education channel, unless you watch informative programmes like Discovery, Animal Planet, History or similar.

We all have on average 37 free hours per week (see my previous article about this), try to spend an hour daily to read something useful for your progress. You’ll still remain with 31 free hours but in a year time you’ll know much more about that subject than most people you know. Information is power and today is widely accessible through internet and most of the time free. Our parents have that excuse to not know many things because information was not available at their active times but we don’t have this excuse. I keep remind people this phrase I like big time – if you born poor it is not your fault but if you die poor is 100% your fault.

Dear friends, if you have around you forever students and never students please do your best to wake them up. The more people gets better, we’ll all get better.

Each one, teach one!

All the very best, until next time 🙂

Romy

Clothes make the man! Naked people have little or no influence on society.

If your goal is to be more successful than today, that will involve for sure, among other things, a better financial situation than today. Unless you are an entrepreneur, in the employees world, that means promotion which led to leading a team which means be a leader. Part of being a great leader is also dressing the part. If you want to be taken seriously as a leader, you should endeavour to dress the part. People will take you more seriously if you dress appropriately. Therefore, dress for success.

Your style should match your ambition.

The way we dress affects the way we think, the way we feel, the way we act and the way others react. Don’t just show up. Make a statement!

One thing must be clear in order to move on – swag is for boys, class is for men.

Success = more money = being a leader = dress the part. The bigger your ambition – the bigger this equation should have the multiplying factor.

When come to class and make a statement, one piece you must have, if you are serious about your success journey, is THE JACKET.

How many people you know who own a well fitted, great looking jacket? Exactly! Not many.

Most people have unappropriated jackets and that will make them look average , boring, dull or, in some cases, actually really bad. Why would you do this to yourself if you are serious about success.

How can you spot if you have a wrong jacket? Here are few tips you can easily notice, which will tells you are wearing the wrong jacket:

1. too large for you and therefore it doesn’t look fit. You do not want to look like you borrow it from a bigger man. To look fit it means it is visible the jacket was made for your body not somebody else body.
2. sleeves are too long, so nobody can see much from your hands. I saw some people with such long sleeves that you cannot say if they do have hands or not – simply awful! If we cannot see 1 cm of your shirt, the length is wrong – go to tailor.
3. you wear a 3 buttons jacket although you are not a tall guy
4. you wear a double- breasted jacket although you are not slim. Why to add an extra layer to your waist if your body has already extra weight?
5. your lapel is wide but you have a thin body or vice-versa.
6. you wear black (unless you go for funerals or you belong to The All Blacks rugby team 🙂

There is no ready made jacket which will fit you perfect. Conclusion: if you do not want to look average, go to tailor. How many people you know who have their jackets tailor made? Exactly!

Go to tailor and get the right one asap.

I remember my first experience when I made my first tailor made blazer – simply amazing. Let me share with you why:

1. there are so many patterns, colours and textures to chose from. This bring you to the question: how come when you’ll see all these hundreds beautiful options, you’ll say ” aaaa, give me a black one!” Are you insane? Black is basic and basic is boring. Why to chose to be boring? Please stop wearing black jacket. Chose anything you like among blue, grey or brown choices. Not plain please, but with a pattern (stripes if you want to look slimmer or checks if you want to look bigger). Thicker material for autumn / winter and lighter for spring / summer.
2. you’ll get professional help in choosing the right option for you
3. it will be fully customized for your body shape and your life style (more formal look or more casual look). If you are overweight then you look a jacket which will not emphasize this. If you are too thin, you need a jacket which will not emphasize this. If you look great, what a pity not to emphasize this. For all 3 options, you need to go to tailor to make it perfect for you.
4. the price range varies a lot – it can fit any budget. This is one reason most people avoid tailors. Wrong, wrong, wrong! 🙂 Do you know how much costs a good jacket which will make you look good many years? From my experience, most people just guess. Please do not take conclusions about something you do not know. And do not look at price in an isolated way. Look at the choices, at the fit (which is most important differentiator for you and many others) and the service behind.
5. you’ll look better than all people you know who do not wear a tailor made jacket and if you know how to chose the materials and the cut, you’ll look younger and more attractive too 🙂

One thing I can tell – from the moment I first tried a tailor made jacket, I never bought anymore ready made jacket from outlets – why would I do that as the tailors will provide the best choice for me?

When comes to clothes I believe very much I know what I am talking. Why? Because when you move a lot you realize how many clothes you have and how many actually are totally unnecessary but we bought them because “was a good offer” or other non-relevant reasons to buy clothes. So far I changed 2 continents and 7 business units. Every time we packed and unpacked our stuff we realized how much we have and we shouldn’t 🙂

After I train myself in the art of power dressing I realize actually how much I started to save by buying less but more 🙂 What I mean is buying less pieces but at much higher quality. As a result I increase my premium look and I saved more. How many jackets you need? How many suits you need? How may pants and shirts you need? Do you know that with 12-15 pieces you can look different every single day for two months by building the right, interchangeable wardrobe? How much can cost a 12-15 tailor made pieces? Much less than all your formal clothes you have today in your wardrobe – I know because I’ve been there and done that 🙂

You might face the issue of not having a good tailor in your city. Do not use this excuse to look average. In every country I worked and travel I found a good tailor. So what they are in another city then yours? You do not need to visit them daily. You’ll meet them when you chose the items, when you do your first trial and when you’ll do the last trial – 3 meetings in around 3-5 weeks (good materials need to be imported which will take 2 weeks minimum).

Bottom line, no matter in which climate are you living, if you are serious about your success, start by having one tailor made jacket (later on you’ll expand, because once you started, you’ll never get back to ready made ones). I worked in India and I worked in Malaysia – both countries are hot all year round plus sometimes humid too. So what? If you are successful, you’ll stay in an aircon apartment, travel in an aircon car and working in an aircon office. What the issue? For 4 years I never went to office without jacket and I never felt uncomfortable but I always felt different than most people I interact. In both markets I mentioned, and you can extend that to entire South-East Asia, you can see “office” people dressed in pants (almost always black), shirts (almost always blue) and square toed shoes (almost always black) but almost never with a jacket. When the jacket was present in the formal attire, unfortunately, almost all the time matched the 6 sins of “how not a jacket should look like” presented before.

A great blazer plus a white tailor made shirt will make it almost for any occasion: you add jeans and you are smart casual, you add chinos and you are business casual or you add slacks and a tie and you are dressed business. The right fitted blazer is your first step to build the right wardrobe.

One little tip – because you want to look good in that blazer, make sure you keep it wrinkle free so, when you drive or fly or go by train, etc. always take your jacket off, otherwise, no matter how good is the fabric, you’ll not look good at the destination.

Go to tailor, make a beautiful blazer and start your power dressing journey. You will never be the same again and you’ll look better than most people you know – this is how to do a great first impression. I saw this happened with all the guys from my teams who followed the transformation process I shared with them. Very proud of all of you guys!

Dear friends, one day or day one?! You chose, but those who did it, never regret it.

All the very best, until next time! Please do not dress just not to be naked 🙂

Romy

Dreaming BIG is a powerful weapon. Having a mentor will help you use it right.

What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve. The moment you convince your mind, the body will follow.

I would like to share with you a good example I picked from one of the seminars I attended recently, as a metaphorical reason of why some people will never make it – they believe “it’s magic” and they cannot see it.

It’s a simple exercise: imagine a human being from 2000 years ago teleported in 21 century. Imagine his reaction if in a dark room, he is going to turn on the light accidentally from the switcher and suddenly the whole room is enlightened. Try to imagine his reaction. What he would most probably say? “It’s magic!” We know it’s not magic and we know how the light happens, but he cannot know so for him it’s simply magic. Something we can’t understand it becomes magic, right?

Now let’s use this reaction in the following situation: imagine your annual salary! Can you imagine that you can make your today annual salary in a month (not in 12 months)? Some people would say ”yes” and others will say ”no”. In which category are you, “yes” or “no”? Now how about to imagine that you can make your today annual income in a week? How about in a day? Less and less people will answer yes. It’s hard to believe that what you do today in a year, tomorrow you can do in a day, right? This will be magic, right? Because you cannot imagine how this will happen, it will be a kind of magic – like for the ancient human … This wouldn’t be the problem (to believe it’s magic), the actual problem is that you cannot see yourself making those money! That’s the biggest problem.

That’s one of the issue for most people – they simply cannot imagine themselves having a much better life. I really mean a much better life! Not just moving from 2 rooms apartment to 3 room apartment but to a beautiful house with a nice garden, a lovely view, etc. Most people can only see an improved life, but this is not enough if you really plan to be successful.

It all came with “the programmes” we have in our head, built for many years of doing the same things and living the same life. Imagine somebody in his 20s who lived all his life with parents and siblings, in a small apartment – would it be easy for she/he to imagine to live on a owned villa on the beach? Or to travel the world in the most exclusive hotels if you just did it so far in a 3 stars hotels? First of all because you never did it, you can’t know how it is and might make the mistake of saying it’s not big deal. Well, I am a true believer that money is not everything, at the same time I can confirm that is much better to cry on a Mercedes than on a bicycle. We should all go for a good life – give me a reason why not?! Another example can be if you drive a small 5000$ worth city car, can you see yourself driving an S-Classe or a GTR?

Now what if you are already in your 40s , and the above questions applies to you as well. Even harder to imagine, right? I am sure you get my point. The more we accept something as “normal” the lesser the probability we’ll fight for something much better – simply because life “thought us it’s not possible for us”.

It is all in our head. If you cannot see you driving a Maserati, you will never will. If you cannot imagine having a house on the beach or a penthouse in Manhattan, you will never have. If you cannot imagine you having a great body, you’ll never have, etc. Sad but true!

Learn to DREAM BIG!

Don’t worry if the dream is not too big at first attempt 🙂 Just make sure when ever you dream again, you’ll upgrade the previous version – progression, not perfection!

Same will go for your education, your job and anything that might interest you. Your body shape it’s in the same scenario – I just love one comments which seems to belong to Arnold Schwarzenegger: when people told him “we do not want to look like you” he will reply “don‘t worry, you’ll never will!”

Learn to dream big, so you do not have to say “it’s magic” but instead to say “I saw this coming one day for me!”

When building your personal brand, dreaming big it’s something you need to embrace, practice and master.

Again and again, I have to say that traveling will open your eyes big time. The more you see, the more you can imagine. It’s either you’ll appreciate more what you have, like it happened to me first time I travelled to Russia – seeing so much poverty on the train stations we stopped on the way to Moscow more than 20 years ago, gave me a good feeling that I should be happy being a Romanian born, in comparison to all what I saw along the way. In our country we lived better. Or, on the other hand, you travel in countries which offer far better standards of living than your own country and you learn how not to settle for less because it is possible (it’s not magic) to live better.

On short, one of the key to success is to visualize in details what you want to become, in all aspects of your life, then make sure you’ll meet the relevant people who can bring you there. Remember that “meeting” in today world doesn’t have to be face to face. Virtual meetings will do good too.

GET A MENTOR!

Somebody who did what you want to do! This is priceless and will save you all the time spent to learn every single step by yourself. Also learn to be humble – use the learnings how you got it! If you take any famous song and change few notes, it will not sound the same. Don’t think (like many I met) that you know better and start changing the receipt you got. Follow your mentor precisely – what a man can do, another can do!

Isn’t it amazing how many people, despite the obvious still procrastinate the action or they “know better”? Don’t be these people and stay away from this people!

Some people always have to “think about it”! It’s like by going home and talk with friends or family, who are obvious not experts in the matter, will give you better advices. Of course, there will be a lot of people ready to give advices – please look who’s talking! It’s like when you’ll go to a football (soccer in some countries) and you see all those people who tell players how to play but most probably they never played or if they did, they did it very bad. But, they offer advices. Even if it is proven there is a way, some still needs “to think about it”.

Some people “knows better” no matter what you told them. I like these ones very much – although they never studied the subjects, they have the right answer. If their mentor says “go left” (in the happy case that they do have a mentor – usually because they know everything, they have no mentor), they usually go right.  I am sure you can picture in your mind few people in each category –  they are all successful, right?

Anyway, the most annoying ones remain the people who constantly seek for your advice but they never apply anything you told them. They are a kind of energetic vampires. Stay away from these people, they only drain your energy and waste your time = life!

Bottom line friends, people who do not read books, do not go to seminars for personal development, do not have a mentor, listen to everybody advices and do not travel, are far less likely to become somebody in their life. The only chance might remain for them is to end up married with a “somebody”, but this do not make them a somebody too, right?

And being somebody doesn’t means at all just having money. “Easy money” people are easy to spot: their manners are close to none, life style is all about showing-off what they have (cars, houses, etc.), wearing visible branded clothes and accessories.  Although everything they wear is very expensive, still the whole appearance looks cheap.

If I am to analyse my past two decades and how I got “from-to”, I would advise anybody who seek for success to:

• learn to dream big in every area of your life. Dream big and visualise the details.
• never stop learning as there is no magic – everything has a logic and you just need to learn it. Our parents were not exposed to information the way we are today. If you born poor is not your fault, but if you die poor is 100% your fault
• get mentors in every areas of your life – if you are lucky, you might get one for few areas – these are the priceless ones, rare to find, but they are still available – keep looking.
• don’t let someone who has done nothing tell you how to do anything and stay away from STILL people:
  1. still broke
  2. still complaining
  3. still hating
  4. still losing
  5. still not making a change
  6. still living in the past
  7. still making excuses

 

If you could be better, would you?

Do not settle for average, build the best version of you! Don’t decrease the goal, increase the effort! If you don’t like where you are, move! You are not a tree.

“If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you!”

All the very best friends, till next time,

Romy

 

 

You can’t have an outstanding complete personal brand with an out of shape body. Take care of your body – this is the place you’ll live your whole life.

It is very important to understand there is a difference between our age according to our date of birth and our biological age according to how old is our body depending on our health. You have to check your biological age, especially if you look like in the above picture. If you are in your 40s according to your ID, actually your body most probably is 60+ and if you are in your 60s, most probably your body is 80+, which means you can have right now illnesses that people in their 80s have.

In a funny way, I think there is no God who planned us to look this way and anatomy books are the science proof for that 🙂

Of course this shape has to do a lot with aesthetics but has much more to do with your health. Try to remember how many over-weighted people you know, who are above 60? How many above 70? How many above 80? … The number decreases dramatically, right?

You might thing you are in shape but if this is a ”potato shape” then maybe it is time to do something about it. For your personal branding image strength, your healthy and fit image is a very important differentiator especially in today world, when you’ll see much more people looking physically unattractive than the fit ones. Losing this fat will add years to your life. You can easily see this also by measuring your biological age before and after you body transformation – you can’t miss this exercise!

HEALTH IS WEALTH!

Coming back to the golden rule – you do not know what you do not know! most people do not know how to lose weight properly, they follow all kind of diets and eventually they returned back in few months to the same weight. I am not a fun of dieting because I like to eat 🙂 and I am not either a nutritionist guru. But, reading a lot about this topic, meeting relevant people both from fitness industry and from nutrition industry I figured out what actually work for me.

Of course, like most things, everything start in your head. You have to seriously want to look great. And you need role models as well – you have to visualize how you would like to look like very clearly – remember that what you cannot visualize, you will never achieve. Here comes also the point which says to dream big – do not visualize yourself just with an average body but with the body that you really want. Assuming that you did all this and you know how you want to look like then the only thing you need is to know what to do and even more important – to start doing it!

People are different, so what works for some might not works for others, so don’t give up easy but continue to learn on what stimulants, your body reacts the most. After a short while you’ll know your body better and you’ll follow the steps are bringing you the best results.

HOW I LOST 8 KG OF FAT IN 1 MONTH

I am not new to fitness but due to business life style, with lot of traveling, business meals and most times irregular meal plans, I lost some disciplines and I end up with 90+ kilograms which is a bit too much for my 175 cm high. Although I was keep practicing all these years, still the calories that I consumed were lower than the ones provided by heavy food. So I started to feel slow, uncomfortable in my clothes and most importantly unhappy with my look. Last two point where very important because changing my wardrobe would be a very expensive exercise and having a potato shape body was not on my list either. So here it is what I did to lose 8 kg in one month and remain at that weight ever since:

1. fasting minimum 14-15 hours between dinner and next day breakfast. Challenge here for most people was the comment “but I like to have dinner with my family every day after working time when we get all together back home”. Well, you need to chose what you want more: lose weight, saving years of your life, look better and be healthier or having late dinner with your family. If you eat a light “dinner” at 5-5:30 PM at office then your next meal should the breakfast no earlier than 9 am. In between these two meals no solid food at all. You can drink tea, water, coffee (in the morning). Can you do that? Of course you can if you want!
2. drink more water – minimum 3 litters / day. Not so difficult as one you’ll do it during the 1 hour daily exercise and the other 2l along the day. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
3. eat for breakfast only one regular (not big) bowl of oats + 1 banana + Greek yoghurt + few forest fruits + 1 spoon of honey (you can add also hemp, goji, dry raising or apricots, as long as you do not need a second bowl for them). This is it! Nothing else for breakfast. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
4. avoid carbs for dinner. Carbs are meant primarily as food to gives us energy. IN the evening our body do not need so much energy as it is preparing for sleep. So cut your carbs at dinner. The big challenge here come for Asian people who are used to eat rice or noodles at every meal (it’s time to adjust this habit if we want a dream body). Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
5. cut soda drinks (I mean no more, at all). In case you didn’t do it as of now, this should disappear for good from your drinking habits right now. Go search on internet what damages to your body these drinks can cause and you’ll understand why you should stop drinking them yesterday. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
6. combine meat with vedgies , carbs with vedgies and avoid meat + carbs. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
7. do not take snacks between meals. The weak people will say “but what if somebody is offering me a bite, or we get a coffee break?”. Well, you simply say “NO, thank you!” Their next question will be: “are you in diet?” and your answer can be: “nope, I just eat according to my goals!” Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
8. do one hour of cardio per day like this: 5 min light run + push-ups as many as you can = this is one cycle. Repeat as many cycles as possible for 1 hours. I like to do it as first thing in the morning. When I was working “from 9 to 5” I used to wake up at 6:30 AM, do my cardio then go to work. Now I do it from 8:30-9:30 AM 🙂 Watch on YouTube how to do correct a push-up and that’s it – I am suggesting this as I saw many people doing wrongly the king of the exercise = the push-ups. Doesn’t matter when you’ll do this one hour routine, just do it! We all have on average 37 free hours every week (see my previous article about this topic). We can use 6 of them for our health which is life! Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
9. to make things fun, I allowed myself to have “cheat” meals in weekends. I told you O like to eat 🙂 That do not means that I was eating like a pig. No! That means I was eating one slice of cake, or a pizza, take a glass of wine, etc. With moderation friends 🙂 Because of this, I didn’t felt stressed during the week  because I knew that “payback” time comes in weekend. Everybody can stay straight for 5 days! Great news, right? 🙂 The best part is that after a while you’ll feel less and lees to have “cheat” meals as your body get used to a new life style – a healthy life style. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
10. check your weight every day to see the progress – when you’ll see results coming, you’ll get even more motivated to move forward. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
11. watch your portions and avoid too many combinations at the same meal – we shouldn’t eat like there is no tomorrow. I can think of few situations: the all inclusive menus which are a killer as people eat much more than your body need and what you like you usually go for twice shots. If you want to build a lean body avoid all inclusive options because is hard to stay focus on your goal with so much temptations around. Another example is the Chinese meal where usually you have 8 dishes in one meal. This is way too much and for your goal is another killer. One think I did, I started to use small plates instead of regular ones – it worked. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!
12. stay out from temptations, therefore do not keep home any kind of food is against your goal. At least, in situations when you really feel like eating something not healthy, you do not have it home so you help yourself to stay focused. Can you do this? Of course you can if you want!

This is it! In one moths I lost 8 kg of fat. Pay attention on one very important thing: mistakenly, most people are targeting to lose weight. Weight is not the issue. According to BMI, Vin Diesel and The Rock are obese 🙂 We need to target the fat loss not weight loss. That is why I suggest to do what I did = to buy a very affordable Tanita machine, which measures all your body parameters and also is telling your biological age. Last time I checked, the price was around 50 USD. A great investment!

Please check your body age – it will an amazing eye opening. This is how my father started exercising when he realized that although he was 65 years old, his body was 80+

In the above 12 steps is important to highlight that if the eating habit will help you lose fat fast, the fitness activities will help you body to stay fit too because we know that eventually thin people look great in clothes but fit people looks great naked too 🙂

I wish you the best of luck in loosing fat and adding years to your life. Another ugly truth, sometime difficult to digest is that …

YOUR BODY IS A REFLECTION OF YOUR LIFE STYLE!

If the above method doesn’t suits you then you can try this one – eat naked in front of mirror! 🙂 making the following deal with yourself: if you do not like what you see, do not open your mouth for unhealthy food! Joking, still … 🙂

Also, when comes to daily exercise, please do not consider walking one of them. Might be good for your heart (100% true) but I never saw anybody having a great fit body because they used to walk. Please do some serious stuff with serious intensity. I agree it’s never coming easy at the beginning. No problem – progression not perfection! Push harder than yesterday if you want a different look tomorrow. Raise your bar every day – please do not be those guys who still look the same after 6 months of going to gym.

Good to mention also another collateral effect of a healthy / non-healthy life style – what your kids will learn from you?! By having a healthy life style and a good body, you’ll set a good example for your kids to leave a healthy life too and stay healthy, plus they’ll be proud of you – is one thing when your kids needs to point you to their friends as “my father is that fat one who dress sloppy” or “my father is that one who looks like Brad Pitt in Troy”, right? 😊 We must be good role models for next generations – they will pay our pension one day, will they?

The truth is when daily exercising and eating healthy will become part of your life style, you’ll never again have issues with your weight and body shape. When people will ask you: “why do you exercise every day?” you’ll just reply: “why don’t you exercise every day?” 😊

TODAY I DO WHAT OTHERS WON’T SO TOMORROW I CAN DO WHAT OTHERS CAN’T!

Next summer you’ll either be jealous or fit. It’s hard to be fat and it’s hard to get fit. Pick your hard!

I know you tried many diets or maybe thinking of some. This one is tested and for sure you can do all the 12 steps, right? One year from now you would like to have started now and what ever is now hard, in a year time will be just your warm up!

When comes to personal branding, your body shape is a big label for you. Because YOU CAN’T FAKE FITNESS, this is why a great body will say a lot about you. When comes to your performance at work some people might say – “how can you control a business if you can’t control your body.

And remember that the “have no time” excuse should not stand from at least two reasons:

• Everybody has on average around 37 free hours per week apart of sleeping, eating, showering, commuting, working (see one of my previous article on this topic). You just need 6hours / week out of your available 37 hours, to build a totally different body in 6 months from now – do not look for instant gratification – you can’t fake fitness!
• your health should be always a priority – gain years for your life to enjoy it with your loved ones!

All the very best, until next time, when you’ll be few kilograms lighter 🙂

Romy

5 grooming tips to build your personal brand image like a pro!

There is a question which comes first in most cosmetics trainings: which is the biggest organ of a human being and, against all odds, 🙂 the correct answer is our skin. Our skin is the biggest organ we have and the look of our skin says a lot about how much we take care of it.

I spent most of my last 20 years leading companies which sell cosmetics and I believe I had great support to get right, the information about what, how and when guys also need to use cosmetics. I know that cosmetics topic is or can be a boring one for men but the quality of your skin is a part of your personal branding image, that is why few words about it can’t hurt.

Remember that your face is the first focus point when comes to the first impression and if you start treating your skin for a better hydration and against aging when you reach 40+ might be a bit late. I know also guys who never used skin care products because it’s “a girlish thing”. Again guys, you don’t know what you don’t know! A healthy glowing skin will always look much better than a dry, dull and full of wrinkles and spots skin. Why to look older than you actually are?

Nobody says that you should spend 30 minutes daily to take care of your skin but, a bit of basic grooming can save you to look like a dry raisin when you’ll get elder.

Because I had many discussions with men along my career, and I also saw how some ladies (I do not want to say most because might not be fair) think when they purchase cosmetics for their men. Almost always the tendency is to buy less and cheap – am I right? A bit more information here might change your point of view so, for the beginning I would ask you: how much do you think your skin worth? Please take into consideration that we have only one skin and you cannot make a call when this one is getting worse to ask for a replacement. You’ll have what you nurtured over the years. So again, how much would you pay / day, to make sure you really do not look at 40 like you are 60? Let’s try 2$ /day. Is it much to consider that your skin worth 2$/day? I hope you’ll not say 0$ … 🙂 Let’s just ignore the zero part! So, what can you buy today with 2$? A coffee? A buss ticket? A bread? Etc. When we arrive in this point, most people start to raise the bar and say something like ” aah nooo, more than 2$!” and most of them starts to scale-up the amount. No need guys! A complete high quality skin care set for a great grooming for men do not costs more than 2$ / day. Amazing? How come? Well, generally a skin care jar lasts between 60-90 days. Multiply this with 2$ / day will means around 150$ / set. In any duty-free shop, when you travel, you can purchase premium skin care sets for men with this amount and these products are high quality and more than OK to give you the look a successful person needs. So, next time when you go shopping remember that if 2$/day make sense for you, then $100+ it’s the amount you should spend for your face (not somebody else face but your face). Be careful not to jump on the other extreme and buy skin care products only because they are expensive. Find out what is your skin type (oily, normal, dry or sensitive) and buy good quality products accordingly.

Also do not follow the “natural” way of putting all kind of cucumber and other stuff on your face because your grand-mother told you. These were different times when they maybe couldn’t afford skin care products or maybe those products were not even invented. Today all the serious brands have impressive R&D facilities to propose best products on the markets. Bottom line (in my humble opinion), stick for the technology and leave the cucumbers for salads 🙂

If you want to be particular about your skin, you can visit face-spa saloons from time to time but daily care is more than enough to look decent. Otherwise, if you ask me, a basic daily routine at home should consists from a cleanser, a toner and a hydration lotion or cream (if the weather is colder and/or you have a dry skin) and an after shave lotion. After you crossed 35 (especially if you do have a dry skin or you live in a polluted urban area) a serum and an eye cream are very welcomed for daily usage and a face mask, once a week, couldn’t go wrong. You do not know what exactly to buy? No worries – these guys from those professional shops will be a great support to choose what you need. Just ask what would they recommend for your skin type. Recently after I use them for more than 6 months, I have a great respect for Korean brands and always you’ll have the classical ones like Biotherm Man, Lancôme Man, Shiseido Man, just to mention few.

Good to understand also that when comes to skin, the first signs of aging, on top of your wrinkles, will be visible on your neck and on your hands. That is why, when you’ll apply your cream on your face, do it also on your neck. You’ll thank you later for this.

To move further, having in mind that your skin do not ends where your neck ends, let’s say few words about grooming your hands, body and feet.

Your hands are also an “accessory” we all use and show very often. An aging sign on your hands doesn’t look nice at all. Therefore, a hand cream is something to always keep around, especially if your skin is dry.

When comes to body skin care, my best preference will remain a full body oil massage, make sure my skin will stay hydrated as well. To be honest this is just a collateral effect of a good deep tissue massage to relax our body after a week of work. If you never tried a good massage, now is the time to start or if you tried and didn’t liked it, most probably you took the wrong one in the wrong place with the wrong therapist 🙂

If you do not drink enough water (most people have this issue), you might have dry skin on your feet and if you live on warm countries and wear open shoes / flip-flops often, then you might consider to use  daily a nourished foot-creams as well, to avoid a “Grand Canyon” look for your heels when you’ll expose them in public.

Not much more to say here so guys, pick these priorities when comes to your grooming routine:

1. invest in a very good quality face skin care set for you after you heck your skin type (apply on your neck as well)
2. have an oil body massage from time to time (weekly will be best)
3. use regularly a good hand cream
4. apply regularly feet-cream if you do have a dry skin on your feet

That’s it! Fast and less furious 🙂

All the very best, until next time when we’ll cover another never – ending topic: how our body shape influence our personal branding.

Take care,

Romy

 

Your personal brand image transformation starts from the top! Risks and opportunities coming from your hair management to build the right personal brand image.

When comes to first impression, the first thing most people see at you is your face. To be more precise not only face but also the “surroundings” like your hair style, facial hair for guys and some old ladies 🙂 and all the accessories available for this area: earrings, glasses (for reading or for sun protection), etc. This is the reason why our first focus on the transformation journey should start from here as well.

In this article I’ll stay focus on the hair risks and opportunities to build a strong personal branding. About face and accessories we’ll talk some other time. I chose to start with hair because it is really fast and relatively cheap to fix this aspect (in case there is a need for any modifications – in most case there is!)

When comes to hair, there are only two options: you do have hair or you do not have hair. The third option, which is “you do have some hair”, it’s not an option! What I mean by “some hair” is when somebody can count just by looking at you how many hair you do have on your head or on your beard. When you fall in this “some hair” category, you have only to options:

• you move into “have hair category” by doing an implant which is expensive and not guaranteed
• you move into “no hair category” and you shave it (in case of beard) or shave it or trim it short when comes to the hair on your head – this the recommended option and characters like Vin Diesel, The Rock, Statham and many more prove it works very well 🙂

Why to avoid “some hair” category? Because it will never look manly! Guys with few hair in beard look like they just moved the armpit hair instead of beard and this really look not cool at all and stylish never. Simply you cannot have a strong professional image if you just moved your armpit hair as your beard.

For the bald guys, things are simple – just shave it regularly or keep it short trimmed and you are done.

Now, for the ones who do have good hair of course it is very important to take care of it. First of all because in most cases it will not last eventually, so better to prolong this moment than shorten it.

Hair dues, like clothes are fashionable. That is why you should not plan “to die” with the same hair style you had in high-school 🙂 For all the guys who are today above 40, this was last century (I mean the high-school period). Stop presenting yourself with an obsolete and boring hair style. How do you know if your hair style is obsolete? Well, if you didn’t changed anything about your hair style in the past 5 years, then it is obsolete! Dare to change your look from time to time, even you decide also, from time to time, to still comeback to the old look – this what real men do: have confidence in themselves!

Your hair style should suits you,  your face shape and your profession in some cases. How do you know if your hair style suits you? Easy! Did you ever got any compliment about your hair style? NO? Then it’s kind of clear – you have an average/boring look or your style can even be horrible – can you picture these guys? …

The great news is that in 21 century there are amazing hair styling products which can improve as well the way your hair looks like. Give it a try and you’ll see that nothing bad will happen.

Now for the privileged ones who still have good hair (not “some hair”), do not treat it cheap, like going to the cheapest hairdresser in town, or to some old aunty to get it for free, or using the cheapest shampoo which will make your hair looking more close to hemp than to silk. In all cities around the world I cut my hair, going to a hairstylist didn’t costs more than 15USD. Com’on guys, it’s your hair! 🙂 Make it a signature one!

I remember I had a friend who always went to her grandmother for a hair cut. Not because she was some hairstyle guru but because it was for free and his father also used to do it – kind of family tradition: until the granny is alive all males in the family got the hair due done with granny’s signature. So, both father and son had the same hairstyle – the grandmother knew only one hairstyle to do – the most ridiculous one I saw until Trump appeared 🙂 Please do not be those guys!

Advantage to go to a hairstylist is that they can suggest what suits you and also they can do it for you. On top of that, they work on professional hair saloons and therefore use professional hair products. Give it a try if you didn’t do it so far – nobody will get bankrupt for a 15$ hair cut 🙂

This is the easiest thing you can do for your professional image immediately and with 15-20 USD – go regularly to a hairstylist to cut your hair. By the time you realize it’s time to go to hairdresser, others will observe as well so better do it every 3 weeks and you get one very important point solved.

Worth mentioning here is that, there is more facial hair than only beard to take care of. What I mean here is that in case:

• you have huge eyebrows, do not let them just grow like a wild forest – simply use a scissor and adjust them to a decent size (it takes no more than to minute and if you do not have Parkinson you can do it yourself in the mirror). Take also care if you have the eyebrow like a bridge over your both eyes – eliminate the excess and make from one, two. This is how it should be – two eyes / two eyebrows (not only one for both eyes) 🙂
• some guys have rain forest hair coming out from nose and ears – I bet you can see that by yourself in the mirror if it’s your case. If you see hair coming out from your nose or ears, others will see as well and it is not nice at all. Same solution – a scissor in front of mirror and it’s done

Important to said that, unless you’re Einstein, what’s the point to be a smart person and have a lousy hair cut, right? And that story about some people likes the “effortless” style it’s OK as long it’s really effortless, which means you arrange it to look like being not arranged. It is not effortless in the case it is not to be arrange at all 🙂

Did I mentioned that has to be clean? NO? Well that’s basic!

Not much more to say about this topic. I hope this part was easy so, on summary we can say:

1. no hair – easy! Keep it this way
2. some hair – no way! Shave the beard if it looks like an armpit hair and shave it / trim it shortly for you head. It’s simply not nice to see guys who brought a lot of hair from one lateral side to cover the other. God forbid to be windy, because then you’ll have 2 in 1 look – from one side it looks like you are a hippie / rocker and from the other side like … something …
3. good hair – lovely! Cut it every 3 weeks to a hairstylist and use styling hair products where the case. Don’t just cut it with electric machine using size 1 or 0 just because is more convenient. Have you looked in the mirror and you were like ” OMG, I look so great”? If not, then why would you want to look like just released from prison?
4. trim your beard – never let it grow wild
5. trim your hair, nose and eyebrows hair where the case – we do not want to see these hair coming out from those places 🙂

That’s it folks! Just five things to remember / do. And seriously, this can be done in 1 hour from now on. Do not wait until next salary to do it! Because you remember – the great brands pay attention to details – these 5 things are your details to focus, as of now 🙂

All the very best, until next time, when we’ll talk about what’s also important when comes to your face image.

Take care,

Romy

 

Why you should build asap a strong brand called YOU

We’ll always pay more for premium cars than for regular ones. We’ll always pay more for 5 stars hotels than for 2 stars hotels, we’ll always pay more for a branded bag than for a fake one sold in open market or for a meal in a fine dining than on a food court, etc.

The faster we understand that we are brands too and we need to work on building up our brand, the better we are getting closer to success. How you build a brand? Usually, by investing in it. If you do not invest in YOU as a brand, why would others do it?

Why having a powerful personal brand is critical for your success? Let’s take few examples to make the point:

• people will pay much more for a strong branded car than for a cheap, local brand. The stronger the brand of the car is, the more it will attracts people with higher purchasing power. And one of the characteristic is the image of the car. Nobody will pay huge money for a car which have an amazing engine but all the rest is made from cheap materials and overall look cheap. If you want to get customers with  lot of money, the image of the car should be simply WOW. A premium car might costs 10 times more than a local cheap brand. Does that means it really goes 10 times faster? NO! And actually it is not legal to over-speed. That means both cars will bring us to destination in more or less the same time. But looks great and you feel privileged to own it. Conclusion: people are willing to pay a lot more, on top of the engine performance, if the image and look & feel of the car is premium.
• people will pay much more for a meal in a premium restaurant than on meal bought in some food court. And people with purchasing power will go for premium restaurants because most of them do not wants to be associated with cheap places (that do not means that food do not tastes good, but the look and feel is cheap). People will pay much more money for a dish served with a nice plating. A fried rice at food court costs much less than a fried rice dish served in Michelin restaurant. Funny enough not because is more tasty (sometimes actually it’s not) but because of the look & feel of the place and also how the food is served. Conclusion: people are willing to pay a lot more, even if the taste it’s not necessary much better, if the image of the restaurant and the dish plating are having a premium look & feel.
• people will pay very much more for a branded bag bought from a premium outlet with amazing service and premium look & feel than for a no-name brand bag, bought from a no-name outlet somewhere on open-market. Conclusion: people are willing to pay a lot more, even the size and purpose of the bag is same, if the image of the bag is premium and is bought from premium outlet brands.

If you apply the same thinking to people, we can also see that some people are paid much more than others for apparently the same services. Not all dentists have same tariffs, right? Not all lawyers has the same tariffs. Not all consultants have the same tariffs. Etc. etc. These two must be the biggest take-away I would like you to remain from this article, because it will really accelerate your personal income progression:

• people are willing to pay more for your services if your look & feel is premium
• companies are willing to pay more for employees with stronger personal branding

Will be brilliant if everybody who sells something – products or services, understands that by working on the quality of their image, they will sell much more. Just try to remember if you ever saw any salesman in premium outlets who look poor? What about the ones in open markets? Out of these two, which salesman you believe makes more money?

My point here: if you want to earn more, start investing in the quality of your image!

For my second point, let’s look again to the above examples and think if the premium image consists also in attention to details? 

Let’s take the premium car image – the attention to details is amazing, isn’t it? The leather quality, the stiches, the metallic paints colours, front panel, gadgets, lights, sun-roof, … When you get in these cars you feel you want to move there!

Let’s take the premium restaurants image – the attention to details is also very high too: the location, the interior, the table setup, the dishes platting, the waiters dress code, … When you serve dinner in such places you truly felt pampered.

And examples could continue with premium clothing, 5 stars hotels, holidays, houses, etc. The attention to details is key!

This is also a very important point for this article: when you build your premium look pay big attention to details! For example, most people will just buy a suit from the rack. Others will tailor made it, will order it with 3 pieces (a vest included), will use a pocket square an Italian look. Which will look better by far? Of course the second option. Do not stop only to the big items – the suit. Pay attention to details: the material, the pocket squares, the cufflinks, the matching tie, great shoes, etc.

You want to make serious and fast progress in your success journey? Treat yourself as a powerful brand – invest in the QUALITY and the DETAILS of your image! Do not dress just not to be naked!

In the next hundreds 🙂 of articles we’ll talk about which are the right choices and which are the wrong choices to build your successful image in order to attract the top opportunities. Why I believe we need to do that? Because the way most people shop it’s wrong enough not to get the right image. How we choose our attire?

1. we look around how other people dress which might be wrong because there is no certainty they know how to do it. You can spot very easy the difference between the look of people from rural areas and people from urban areas. Why? Because they get inspiration from what they see around plus most of the time there are limited options in the rural areas too
2. we look on outlet windows what the mannequins wear. Could be wrong again because fashion comes and go but the right professional image will always be in fashion.
3. we look on media what the celebrities are wearing. Well in case you are not a celebrity, this might not be the right reference for you as well.lo
4. valid for guys – your wife is choosing your attire!!! Well, unless your wife is not a male dress code specialist, in most cases you might get some average choices, not because she do not have taste but in most cases, she would save the shopping money for her choices – no worries, I heard this is happen only in other countries then yours (thank God) 🙂

On summary:

• people with strong personal brand are more successful than people with cheap / weak personal brand
• invest in your premium look & feel to build your personal brand
• attention to details will detach you from the rest
• look who is talking when come to advices on how you should look like

Having that said, let’s keep in touch and next time see some options together. At the very end you do what ever you want with your image, but at least here you’ll have one more opinion – a documented one. Enjoy! 🙂

All the very best, until next time,

Romy

 

 

 

What you wear do not defines who you are, but says a lot about what is your opinion about you. If you don’t value yourself, why to expect others to do it?

Most people would like to be more successful in life than they are now – it’s a fact! What achieving success requires?

One of my first learning while climbing the tough leader of success is also the first food for thought of this article: you can’t be successful if you have low standards for you and your life!

I remember one of my first days in one of my Asian assignments when I gathered all office employees for a town hall, with the purpose to address one branding issue I noticed – despite the fact that we were beauty company, I didn’t saw any signs of make-up or fashion among our employees. How can you sell beauty to the world when your team who supposed to prepare all the product launches and events looks dull? In order to sell great, you must believe in your product and there is no other way to believe in your product than using it extensively.

I started my speech with a question: “who wants to be successful?” Everybody had the hands up … “me, me, me …” 🙂 My second comment was: “who looks successful today? Please come on the stage near me”. You guess right – nobody!

First impression matter big time and we do not have the second chance to make the first impression right. Now, the fact that you are not aware about how important the correct dress code is for your personal brand, do not means that this is not true – we do not know what we do not know!

I simply just love few metaphorical examples I heard along the way about why we should pay attention on your image so I am going to share them with you here:

1. imagine that you have a priceless preciously gift you want to offer to somebody who is very important to you. How would you like to offer this amazing gift to the very important person for you: in a supermarket plastic bag (the one you usually carry your groceries), or in a very elegant and stylish gift box? If they will get the gift in a groceries plastic bag will they believe that the gift is absolutely great just because you’ll say so or, due to the packaging, the content might be devalued as well? All of my audience always answered: “in a very elegant and stylish gift box”. Make sense, right? And here comes the boom: what if the gift is actually YOU and the very important person is YOUR CUSTOMER? How would you like your customer to get you? In a “plastic bag” look and feel or in an “elegant and stylish gift box” look and feel? Do not present yourself to the world especially if you do truly want to be successful in a “plastic bag” look and feel!
2. as second case study, I used to do the following exercise with my audience when comes to prove the importance of your appearances: I show 3-4 different pictures of 3-4 different characters. Regular people, that we do not know and ask audience to tell us few things about them based on what they can see in the pictures. Questions like: do you think it’s an executive or not, is he rich or just average, what car does he drive, how is he spending his free time, what TV shows does he watch, etc. Together we can see that in less than 5 minutes we can say a lot of things about people that we see first time in our life and we never heard about them. What if next time that picture shows you? What kind of stories you believe people could make up by seeing you for the first time? Look in the mirror and tell yourself how inspirational your story will be perceived by whoever will see you today, based on your appearance?
3. the third case starts also with a question – I ask the audience to describe me how they will choose from a crowd the most successful people just based on appearance. No matter in what country or continent I am the answers are very similar: posture when walking (shows confidence), accessory (watch, jewelleries, bags, etc.), dress code, the shoes they wear, their hairstyle … Not a single one said that somebody with baggy too long pants, a two size bigger t-shirt which look on you like an Indian kurta, some horrible black square toed shoes, an undefined hairstyle and a rainforest hair coming out from your ears and nose will define you as an amazing successful person. Raise your standard and always put yourself well together – you’ll never know when the opportunity comes your way and finds you looking so average.
4. we show the audience 2 pictures with 2 men dressed differently: one very sharp and the other, although wearing a suit, the pants are too long (like he still expect his legs to continue to grow in the near future) and too large (that you can bring one more person to walk with you at the same time in the same pants), with awful cheap shoes and a jacket which such long sleeves that makes you try to guess if he does fingers or not (because you can’t see them anyway), and the size of the jacket is obviously to big plus, too make it just perfect, with 3 buttons so being large and long will really makes him looks like a Christmas tree. Not to mention that of course the colour of the suit is  … of course black, to make sure that you really look like everybody else so nobody ever will spot you in any black crowd, as they usually most are. After we show these two pictures I asked: “which one of these guys do you believe is more successful?” Everybody choose the sharp looking guy. Then I ask: “do you know their bank account so you are sure who is more wealthier than another?” Everybody said NO, but it is obvious and then we close by saying that “actually if you look closely you can realize that actually is the same guy simply dressed differently. Each of us can look more successful if we put our self well together to attract more opportunities because never forget – SUCCESS ATTRACTS SUCCESS!

This is the moment when dressed down looking people, jump into the conversation and proudly gave the example of some iconic rich people who wear t-shirts and jeans which prove it is possible to look bellow average and be rich. Well, to each such example I can give 100 examples of successful people who really look sharp because they understand why but, to make things clear we could say that there is a line beyond which you can wear whatever you want (walk in panties if you want and it’s allowed) because you are so rich that the image do not matter anymore for your financial success. Still, on the other hand, of course it matters a lot for your image as man, unless you do not care what story you’ll project to the world by your appearance. At the same time, if you didn’t crossed that “richness line” yet, you should never let yourself being seen looking poor because this will said a lot about how high is your opinion about you. If you want a good visual, watch the sequence from the movie “Crazy stupid love” in which, Ryan Gosling actually through over the balcony the guy sneakers telling him that “if you are not Steve Jobs or some billionaire, you should never wear these kind of shoes again”.

We like it or not, this is it – people react on our appearance. Here one last example: try to remember last time you visited a Government office for some paper work or a bank for some transaction or whatever. If you are wearing a nice suit and a tie, are the chances to be treated well, higher or lower, than in the case you go there with flip-flops and some lose, too casual clothes?

How about going to a date? Are you trying to look at your best or you don’t care how you look?

How about going to a job interview? Are you putting some business attire or you just go the way you were dressed at home, watching a movie on your couch?

Most people believe that by just learning the technical skills required at the job is enough to become successful. My 20+ years experience thought me different – it is necessary but certainly not enough. To be successful, my experience thought me that you need also 3 knowledge which no formal education will teaches you:

1. professional image – no matter how intelligent you are, your image will enhance that or devalue it. Can you picture some of your company executives who when they step on stage for a speech or meet some business partner you feel kind of ashamed to be represented by such person
2. presentation skills – you can be smart, you look professional but when you open your mouth to talk everybody fall asleep, or do not understand anything because you do not know how to convey a message to a diverse audience. Even if we take any job interview, the ones who win are not the smartest ones but the ones who know to present themselves best
3. leadership skills – I cannot imagine how can somebody become successful without having a team behind. If you have a team, you need to know how to lead it. There is a big difference between a manager and a leader. You must be able to be both.

Whatever helped me in my 20+ career experience to become successful and can be grouped in the above 3 criteria, I will share in this blog journey from now on. Never the less I want to underline 3 more things which sometimes are annoying for the one who want to teach and barriers for the ones who needs to be thought:

• you might disagree that image is critical and we all respect that, but do you agree that it’s kind of silly to have opinion about something you never studied in your life? Making statements about something you never read any books or articles or studies or watch videos made by professionals in this area sounds a bit silly. Or put it in another way, the fact that somebody do not know something, does not means it didn’t exists. In a big favour of the importance of image in our success journey are all the guys (not some, ALL! ) I helped along the time to change the way they look and who never decided to go back to “the old you”. Because they experience it and saw the benefit. For me, when I started to know how to do it right, the change in my personal branding image had an impact of doubling my income in 2 years. How many employees you know can double their income in the next two years and, how many would like to know how to do it?
• changing requires time and disciplines, not to mention that most probably you’ll have to get rid of some of the clothes you bought and now you understand that you shouldn’t wear them anymore. Still, you’ll say “but they are still new, how can I just throw them away?” Do not throw them – give them as charity, for example. Well, it’s same when you want to change your eating habits but you still have food in the fridge and you do not want to throw it away, although you know for sure it is unhealthy food. Quitting after first try is not serious. It is like you want to try a new sport but because you are not the best at it after your first practice, you decide to quit.
• there are people who are in such a denial mental mode that they do not accept any suggested change, because they think they know the topic although they never attend any training nor read materials about professional image. For this category I am sorry the most. How can you know something when you never study it?

Not to mention also that our brain has primarily two modes: autopilot and emergency break. Our brain likes a life with as less changes as possible, it likes to be on autopilot mode therefore, when ever a change appear, our brain switch immediately to emergency break mode until you quit so then can go back fast enough to autopilot mode.

When on top of your brain modes, you have all your “supporters” against your change, it is almost mission impossible and you need to become Tom Cruise to make it. When I say “supporters” I mean your family, friends, colleagues, etc. Remember the sharing from the previous article: look who is talking. Are your supporters experts in professional image? If not, then politely disregard their opinion and learn only from the best.

On a very short summary, please do not dress just not to be naked!

If you want to join us in promoting the beauty and eradicate the ugly, please click like, share and subscribe to stay tune to what is coming 🙂

All the very best, until next time,

Romy

What they do not want you to know about how to manage your personal finance.

If you born poor it is not your fault but if you die poor it’s 100% your fault.

Unfortunately there is no formal education which will teach you how to properly manage your own money.

My professional life so far counts 25 working years and I wish I knew at the beginning of this journey what I know now related personal finance.

To make the story short here are my tips which I learn both from experience and by reading few eye opening books plus attending 1 live seminar with Robert Kiyosaki.

First of all, because you do not learn this knowledge in school and because you need it in your daily life, one of the most important channel is to learn it from somebody and here most do mistakes. Sounds logic to learn how to get rich from rich people? For me, yes it does! In reality a lot of money habits are learn in family, by living with your parents. If your parents are rich then make total sense to follow their personal finance model but if your parents are not rich, they never were and looks like they will never be, do not take their advices or their money habits. Look who’s talking should be the first habit you start to apply. Take advices only from rich people when comes to habits of how to make more money by better managing your personal finance.

Secondly, there is a lot of truth in the saying: “we are the average of 5 people we spend most of our time”. That was proven to me because when I started to spend more time with rich people my income started to improve slowly but steadily. Some might say but I do not know any rich person whom will spend time with me so I can learn from them what I need to change in my personal financial habits to improve my family income. Really? How come? Who said that you physically have to spend time with rich people? If you do not have direct access to any, then how about listen to their videos on YouTube, read their articles or participate to their seminars (like I did in Robert Kiyosaki case). You remember from my previous article when we said that we have 37 free hours / week, right? How about spending few good hours per week “meeting” the rich people you admire so you’ll understand their money philosophy. When our parents were young there was a big limitation on information. Today, almost everything is on internet. What is our excuse of not searching for this wisdom out there?

Third important lesson was “pay myself first”! This means I understood that I have to invest in myself if I want to get better. Everything which can make me become a better brand came first on my monthly payments and only after, I paid the rest of the duties. My professional image was always on top of my priorities to build my personal brand image over the years. I disagree when I hear people saying “I cannot afford expensive shoes because I have family obligations”. Well, exactly because you do not invest in you, nobody else will do it as well and actually, you will never be able to better help financially your family by looking poor. I can actually prove how you can double your income in maximum two years by strengthening your personal branding.

The next 2 lessons I learned from a book called “On what not to spend” which I found by accident in London airport more than 15 years ago, on my way back home, looking for some good read and the title caught my attention. There were a lot of good advices there but 2 of them I considered very feasible for my case and since then, I apply them regularly:

1. do not buy your house but stay in rented places. For me, like for most people in my region and I believe in most emerging markets too, this doesn’t make sense at all. Everybody wants to own their place. Think twice! Here are the comment which changed my mind: if you buy the place you are not very movable anymore and you might lose great job opportunity simply because they are in another city or country not to mention that if it is a great house / condominium you’ll pay lot’s of money which can go easily up to 250-500k$. How many months you can pay the rent with this amount by living in the same conditions? Most probably from 15-30 years (do your math for your particular case). And you’ll have less responsibilities because the landlord take care of almost everything and for sure, like in my case, because you are movable you’ll get in these many years better job offers which will help you earn more and afford a better and better house (like in my case). Of course, nobody says you shouldn’t buy properties. You should , but for investment purposes and not to limit you opportunities.
2. the author said “save enough money to be able to sustain 6 months the same life style you have today in case you’ll lose your job or you decide to resign”. In 6 months for sure you’ll get another job and by having these savings you eliminate the pressure on your shoulder related to how my family will survive if my income just suddenly disappear. Coming from South-Eastern Europe I decided to play safer and I plan to save enough money to be able to sustain our life style for 2 years. I have to tell you that when I completed the amount on my bank account was one of the greatest day of the decade because I felt I am really free. From that day on, I will not work anymore because I have to , but because I want to ! Such a relieve knowing that if you just get fade up on your job or your lousy boss you can just walk away and NO tragedy will happens. Try this and you’ll never work because you have no other choice. It took me few years but thanks God I did early in my 30’s so my work pressure just disappeared. I did the best I could in my jobs but I never took any pressure and actually that was great for all the teams worked with me all these years which can confirm that almost never they felt the pressure being transferred from me to them because actually I had no pressure 🙂

Another important great learnings came from reading Robert Kiyosaki books and later on, participating live in his seminar “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. This book is a must read for everybody. It is available I believe in all languages so please take some time to have a look on the principles he teaches with very clear and simple examples.

The last but not least lesson was to learn how to manage your career but this is not a short story to be covered in one paragraph so I am thinking to share this in one of my future sharing.

This subject deserves a lot more space and in my personal development seminar I spend more time with my audience to understand these basics but on short, what helped me the most in accelerating my personal income growth was:

1. look who’s talking!
2. spend more time with rich people, even that means on a virtual way by listening their videos, read their books or participate in their seminars
3. pay yourself first
4. never buy a house in which to get stuck decades and loose great opportunities outside your city / country
5. save enough money, which you’ll never touch under any circumstances, to be able to sustain the same life style for at least 2 years (you can go for less … up to you) even in the case you lose your job
6. read ” Rich Dad, Poor Dad ” by Robert Kiyosaki
7. learn how to manage your career!

I hope this helps.

All the very best, until next time,

Romy

Do you know how many holidays you still have? It is never too late to reinvent your life!

If to live 100 years, how much still is left for you? And if to look back on what’s already passed, what are your key achievements that will make you proud? For what are you going to be remembered after you’ll be gone?

One of my big achievement in life so far is that by mid 40s, I saw more than 30% of the world and I so much enjoy it every single minute.

Some years ago, somebody showed me the table I attached above where you can visualise you life time (if to live 100 years) and I liked the message that is conveyed by this visual.

This was connected with the question: do you know how many summer holidays you still have left? If you are in mid 40s for example, that means by the time of retirement, assuming you are still in good physical shape, by that time you are having no more than 20 summer holidays left. After that, moving on pension income, for most countries, this means a limitation in income compared with the period you worked. So you get less money and also get even elder. How many more summer holidays would you add to your remained portfolio? 10? 15? 20? … Whatever you think, remember that tomorrow is never promised!

When I saw this table, first thing I did with my wife was to sit and write down (separately) all the destination we would like to visit in this life. Then we get together and compared the lists. From two lists we made one by eliminating everything which was doubled in both lists and we end up with our family travel bucket list. The rest you can imagine – we counted the bucket list destinations and compare this number with the empty cells from the table. Yes, we had more places we wanted to go than potential summer holidays we are left of …

Some people might start cutting destinations from the list, but for us that means we just need to do more than one trip per year to fulfil our dreams. Worth mentioning that so far we do travel extensively – we visited more than 55 countries around the world and spend time in more than 260 cities from all continents in the last 20 years. The more you travel, the more you want to explore and start thinking what’s next 🙂

My first point here is to start calculating your own left holidays and build your travel bucket list. Nobody live forever (as of now) and traveling every year in the same country and even worse, in the same city / hotel is like suicide – you have no idea how much you miss.

Working hard when you are young and saying that one day you’ll go there and there … My friends, it is not working. Why? Because you get trapped in daily routine and the more you postpone, the farther this scenario will go from you.

Why is so important to travel? The answer for me was the more I see and experience, the more big I started to dream. It simply enhanced my creativity when I built my life goals.

You see, when you travel you see a lot and your imagination increases exponentially. You’ll see different culture, meet different history, try different food, made friends with different mindsets. The main two words about traveling are: “you’ll see and you’ll experience”  which is simply PRICELESS!

Why priceless? Because when you start to make your own dreams, because you saw and you experienced al lot, your goals will be more rich and wide compared with someone who only see his home town or his county. Traveling the world you’ll get inspired in everything you’ll do after. My goals are higher because I travelled a lot, because I worked in multiple countries where I met fascinating people which irremediably adjusted my thinking and polished my vision. I will never be what I am today, if we were not be brave enough 15 years ago and accept my first expat assignment and start exploring what is out there.

I want to share with you just a watch-out experience when traveling. The further you go, the more different the environment, culture, food and people will be – which is very good because you’ll learn a lot. Enjoy them and explore them to the maximum extend your budget allows it. Who knows? You might never comeback to that place again in your life so better make the best out of it when you are there. Imagine you coming back and people ask you “how was the food” and you’ll say “I do not know as we eat only our type of food”! Take city tours, visit their landmarks with a guide so you can understand why they are who they are. Visiting Vatican without understanding its story it’s a crime. Going to Angkor Wat and not understanding the history behind it is pointless – you are just looking for selfies? Don’t spend so much money traveling so far but save on understanding where you are. Simply pointless!

And food is a big part of any culture so, in my view, you do not travel overseas to eat what you cook home on daily base. You must try what they are best at. Don’t go in Asia and eat pizza or steaks. Try their noodles and fried rice, the amazing fruits and veggies and all the awesome dishes they have. Drink what they drink. It is like going in Italy and look for sushi and sake instead of trying pizza, pasta, tiramisu and Chianti. Try a Thai massage in Thailand and a sauna in Scandinavia, not vice-versa.

Guys, tomorrow is not promised! World is beautiful and you definitely have limited holidays to see it. Don’t waste your time by living the same holiday 30 times and call it fun.

Are money and available time the main issues not to travel? I’ll share with you in one of my next articles how the money issue can be fixed and how I do my bookings to always get the best price on the planet. And if you have a look on my previous article (“Stop Procrastinating!”) you’ll get some practical tips about how to manage the time issue.

Summary of this read:

• we all left with limited holidays to spend
• make a travel bucket list and match with your potential holidays remained
• set the clear destinations for this year
• make sure you just do not go there and do the same things you do at home or eat the same food you eat at home
• trips shouldn’t be just to do selfies and tick on your list you’ve been there. Explore, experience, try new things, be open!

I hope these thoughts help and hopefully will give you some A-HA moments, to make some changes in your life – it is never too late to change your life!

We are all the time just one decision away from a totally different life!

All the very best, till next time 🙂

Romy

 

 

 

 

Stop procrastinating! Tomorrow is not promised

If you born poor it is not your fault but if you die poor it is 100% your fault.

Dream BIG, visualize your goal in details, make a plan, understand what you need to get there in terms of knowledge and / or money and use your 37 free hours per week to get things done by practicing/learning preferably every single day – that’s the summary!

If to add again some data, there are studies who said more than 90% of people are not happy with their life and with their job. I can agree that we all first have to do what we need to do in order to later can do what we want to do but, if we keep doing forever things that are not making us happy just because we might be afraid to change, then we shouldn’t blame the country economics or politics, the company you work for or people around you. In any country, in any city and in any company there are people who get successful and most who don’t.

If to just look back in my professional experience, in the same city, with the same brochure in hands and same samples available, some people were extremely successful and others don’t. It is YOU where you should look first, like it or not.

When we used to do recruitment events and 10 sales leaders went out to stop people and try to recruit them for our company, at the end of the day some come back with lot of potential recruits and some with just 1-2 or even worse, with none … The comments I always hear from the poor recruiters, no mater which country we did this events, was always the same: “nobody want’s to be recruited today”. Politely I always have to correct them by saying that the correct statement is “nobody want’s to be recruited today BY YOU!”

Finding excuses is one of your main obstacle to success. And we are all master of it!

In professional life is like in sport – if you keep practicing, you’ll keep get better and if you don’t practice, you’ll never be successful. If you do not learn new techniques, you cannot get better – times are changing and we need to keep it up.

When I try to make my point, I always take the cases of my drivers, that worked for me in Asia. Except the time when they brought me to and from office, plus few trips in town for meeting business partners from time to time, most of their working time was waiting for me. You can easily calculate 3-4 hours of waiting / day on average. Imagine how many things you can achieve if you just read in these hours or listen some courses about something to help you change your status by getting a better job eventually. Are they doing this? No! They actually are on the phone, checking Facebook and other social media applications or watching movies but, generally speaking nothing to upgrade themselves. On the other hand they complain how hard is for them to survive with the salary they got and having a family to take care at home.

If you want to be successful you must understand that you must keep learning new things, either about your job or something else which one day might be useful as additional source of income for you. How many books most people read in the past 90 days? How many seminars they took in the last 6 months? Most people would say none for either case. So how can you expect to get a better life if you do not get better?

Then comes the thing that I also want to highlight in this material – most people said “I do not have time to do any extra because I am busy!” OK, let’s have look at the graph which assesses how much free time an average person would have in a week out of a total of 24h/day x 7 days/week = 168 hours / week.

If we sleep 8 hours / day, work 8 hours from Mon-Fri and spend another 5 hours / day for eating, commuting, showering, etc. we are still left with 37 free hours / week.

Of course some people said they commute longer time or have to work more than 8 hours / day, etc. So what? Then why don’t you just sleep 7 hours / night or use the commuting time to read, listen or watch personal development materials?

Jack Maa used to say that what makes you successful is what you do “after 5 PM”, after you finish your work. Most people go home, eat, watch TV, spend some time with family then go to bed and tomorrow just repeat …

So, before get into learn the techniques which I believe made my success, you need to understand that you need to clarify what you want to become and then plan your free time accordingly.

Here might come another problem for some of us – people lost imagination and they set things like the traditional “I want a better life” – what exactly that means? My learning was that something what you cannot visualize most probably will never happen to you. I like the most this example from one of Jim Rohn talks: “how any building appear? First somebody imagine that on that particular land they want to build a certain building and also have an idea how it should look like than they bring the specialists to make the plan and build the building.” Without somebody imagine to build that building that building will never exist.

It is exactly the same with your future as well. If you cannot see yourself rich, you’ll never be. If you cannot see yourself fit, you’ll never be, etc. So guys, please start visualizing what you want to become, in as many areas of your life you can. Imagine what kind of job you’d like to have. Then you ask what qualification a job like that requires and start get the necessary learning in your free time. Imagine what kind of house you would like to have, than understand from the market how much a house like that might cost, see where are your earnings today, understand the financial gap and plan the learning in the free time to make the necessary money to cover the gap. Imagine what kind of car you want to drive and do the same steps like we just mentioned for your future house.

And dare to be bold – dream big! When the world already made amazing, stylish, cool fast cars why to dream to have a Prius? Because maybe you cannot afford a Porsche or a Benz?! Exactly my point: check what is the financial gap and look for opportunities to find the money you need to buy what is your dream car. Life is too short to drive boring cars!

This dreaming big reminds me one training I was part of more than 15 years ago in which we got a task to describe how we see a day in our life, five years from now if money were not a limitation. Guess what? Most people cannot articulate anything clear. Some of them said “I will leave in a bigger house” but cannot see details of that house, some said “I will have a nice car” and when the trainer asked “which car” they cannot name the brand nor any other detail. The saddest moment for me was when one of our younger colleague actually said that “she will live in a studio apartment and drive a Dacia” (the one and only Romanian car brand – nothing but more than a lame choice). Can you imagine? The young who suppose to have a lot of dreams, actually see in her mind that in 5 years from now she will still live far bellow her means. Don’t do that to yourself please! Dream big for any aspect of your life and visualize it in details. It is working! Something you cannot see most probably you’ll never have.

What about your holidays? Where are you usually take your family for vacation? I hope not in the same location every year, when the world is so big and beautiful that you need more than a life time to see all the lovely places are out there. Is it because you do not have money or you do not speak foreign languages or you just simply get in a routine which is convenient? Whatever it is, we get back to square one: make it clear where you want to go, check how much it will cost and see how much additional money you need and plan your free time accordingly.

Imagine what kind of person you’d like to date, then look in the mirror and answer you honest based on what you see if that dream person will ever date a person like you. If the answer is “clearly no” or even “maybe” or “I hope so” go back to square one and use your free weekly time to build the person you should be in order to date your dream partner. Don’t settle for average!

Do you realize that by exercising 1 hour / day, that means only 6 hours / week (you keep your Sunday for rest) which still leave you with 37-6 = 31 free hours to use  / week, you can totally transform your phisique in 6 month time? And let’s plan to read / listen or watch videos just 1 hour / day, to improve your necessary skills to get the money you need for your dream house, or car or trip, etc. this will still leave you with 31-7 = 24 free hours / week.

Then you search for good seminars available on the topic that interests you – these seminars usually take 2 full days = 18 hours in total. If you do it twice a year than from the remained free time you’ll still remain with around 23 free hours on average / week.

I am sure you got my point: use your free time to learn new things which will help you get a better job, make more money, get healthier, etc. This is what helped me to get better year after year – keep yourself in a developing mode all the time. Progression, not perfection!

Just by doing the above you’ll still remain with 23 free hours per week out of 37 (62%) to use them with family and friends and hobbies but if you plan to be successful in life, please do not use your free time only to watch TV and / or spend it with your family. If you do not invest in yourself why would you expect others to do it?

And don’t look for instant gratification. Nothing great ever happened fast. Every master was once a beginner. Practice everyday the skills you need for achieving your goal and for sure you’ll get there. The bigger the goal the hungrier you must be.

On summary this is what I did to improve my life:

• dream BIG
• visualize my goals in details
• make a plan where I want to be in a year time or 5 years time …
• understand what I need in order to get there in terms of knowledge and / or money and
• use my 37 free hours per week to get things done by practicing/learning preferably every single day.

This is it for today. To make it linked with this material, in my next writing I plan to talk about how I enhance my creativity to manage to dream big.

All the very best, until next time!

Romy

 

 

Time is LIFE!

I spent my last 20 years working for others in a big corporate world. I did pretty well and therefore I got 9 promotions in 20 years, having the opportunity to lead, as General Manager, 11 markets from 2 continents and overall an army of 500.000 sellers.

Giving the start I had in life, as door-to-door salesman in a small city of 50.000 inhabitants from Romania, I couldn’t dream to get so far. Side by side with my career, my earnings got really well too, which allow me to live a good life, traveling the world in more than 50 countries, having all the man toys I wanted and built an impressive wardrobe following my believe of what a successful image should look like – eventually you attract what you are and we should never dress just not to be naked. You want a better life you have to get better.

Despite the good life, while time passes I realized there is one thing that I am not handling well and this was my time. And because time is not only money, time is actually MY LIFE, when one day I read “we were not born to work, pay bills and die” I paused for a moment and asked myself “is this what am I doing?” (although with some premium rewards along the way) and the answer was “kind of YEEES”. I believe that was the moment when I woke up and think why am I doing what I am doing? Of course in my 20s I did it for glory, later, in my 30s I still fought for glory but money started to become important too and now in my 40s I am thinking more and more on my purpose in life, although money still remains important – eventually is still better to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle, right?

Mark Twain said there two important moments in anybody’s life:

1. the moment you born and
2. the moment you find out why

It is not easy to find the answer to “why you were born” but definitely the answer cannot be: to work hard, pay bills, live bellow your means and then repeat these 70+ years and call it life and then die.

My actual answer so far to this question is a plan. I truly believe that unless you are not building the best version of you will never be able to say at what you are really good at and what actually you love doing which will make you HAPPY and living a life with much happiness is kind of serious waste of time. Nobody came back from deaths to tell us if it’s better in another life so let’s better get the best out of this one instead of hopping the next one to be better.

So for the past few years I am working on myself for myself. It’s all about progression, not perfection. Be better than you were yesterday in all areas of your life: financially , health wise, spiritually, as friend, as husband, as parent, as colleague, etc. I come to believe that focusing on only one area, you’ll miss big things in life. I am sure you all know super rich people which are actually not happy and some of them even end up neglecting their health by working all the time, so they cannot actually enjoy their financial wealth, others work so much that this is the only thing they do and they know – work hard but no breaks, no meaningful holidays, no time for family and some super rich we can read in newspapers end up even suiciding.

I put myself the task to never settle for average and in this life work to create the best version of myself. Initially I did it instinctively but in the last years actually I really do it because I believe this is the key to get a life worth living. It is so good and changed my life so much that I decided is worth sharing.

Another conclusions which now are written in stone for me could be summarize in:

• INNER PEACE is the new SUCCESS
• HEALTH is the new WEALTH
• HAPPINESS is the new RICH
• KINDNESS is the new COOL

I worked a lot in my business life with data and statistics, so here is one to reflect on: out of the world population, just around 7% are really wealthy and the rest 93% work for the 7%. Do we know why? The 7% know for sure. What about the 93%?

Because in my past 20 years I actually started as one of the people in the bottom of the “93%” category and I went all the way up so now I belong financially to the “7%” (according to data I know), I believe I do have some relevant answers to the questions on how to get into 7% group. I am building this blog by myself. with the only intention to share what brought me here in all aspects of my life: why and how my mindset changed over years, what I did and worked but also what didn’t worked. If all these learnings helped me to navigate to a good life while still being employee, maybe it will help others to do it as well.

Most people talk that being entrepreneur is the only way to get financially wealthy and I am here to say there is another way and all people who are employed and will never start their own business can thing to come to a much better financial position by following my life lessons.

I do a lot of talks to my teams and I see change happening to these people but I have limited access to people and I was looking for a way to share this to the world so when of my friends told me “Romy, why don’t you start a blog?” I said “why not?!” and here I am starting this journey. On top of this challenge from my friend, I was also encourage by my small writing on TripAdvisor reviews from all over I was traveling. I realized that in less than one year I have almost 100.000 people who read my reviews and I got a congratulation message from TripAdvisor saying that I am in top 1% of the Malaysian reviewers.

Because of the nature of my job, I put all these success stories learning in a system, to be easy to follow and also make them so simple that everyone can do it.

If each one teach one, already we all get better.

On a summary, everything I believe helped me all the way up is strengthening my personal brand – this is it. This is what I did and I am going to share here how I did it. It really worked big time for me and you know the saying: what a man can do, another can do.

Most companies spend a lot of money strengthening their brand but very few invest to strengthen their people personal brand and unfortunately most people do not invest in themselves almost at all. If you do not learn new skills how will you expect to get better? If you do not get better, how you expect your life to get better? When I asked my audience how many books they read in the last 90 days, very few people raised their hands. If I asked how many went to a seminar related to the area they hope to get successful, almost nobody did it.

On the other hand, there are people who learn a lot and still didn’t make it. My main educated guess is that their personal brand is really weak.

To make the story short, if you do not strengthen your personal brand you are not going to go far in life. Exactly like any product you know – if that brand is not strong, the company will never be successful.

One of the things I want to leave you thinking of before my next article is that all of us we do not know what we do not know. If you never studied ever something about personal branding please do not make statements about it or saying if it’s working or not working. Let’s go together to the transformation journey steps and see if that works for you. I will share here a lot of food for thoughts.

Some will do something about it and some not. Are you guessing how many in each category? My guesstimate is 7% will most probably do and 93% will most probably not.

It’s my first try as a blogger, so please be gentle 🙂

Until next time!

All the very best to all of you,

Romy