Step 1: Plant a Flag
The first step to becoming forever employable and future-proofing yourself is to plant a flag. And what do I mean by “plant a flag”? A flag is a topic, an expertise, or a point of view that you’re going to own, and then go all in on. We’re really looking at two things when we talk about planting a flag.
One, you have to have an opinion-a strong conviction about some topic, whether it’s eating a plant-based diet, the most lucrative side hustles, or how to get people to continue to use a social media app on their iPhones. We all have opinions, but when you plant a flag, you build a platform on top of your informed opinion about a very specific topic.
Two, you have to have a story-something that gets people interested in what you have to say, and then keeps them listening. Many people freeze at this point. You might think you don’t have a story to tell, or at least nothing unique. Not true. Your experiences are unique, even in a crowded profession. Most important, no one else has your story. Your story might focus on how you ended up in your industry, or how you got your first job in the space. Or it might be something surprising you realized about your profession, or all the horrible attempts and failures early in your career, or the most ridiculous things you’ve seen in your industry. The possibilities are endless.
So, what flag are you going to plant, and where are you going to plant it?
Step 2: Tell Your Story
Once you decide on the flag you’re going to plant, the next step is to tell your story. Why is it important to tell your story? It’s important to tell your story because this is how you start to develop a voice and build credibility about your flag. And telling your story provides you with a golden opportunity to experiment with a variety of different paths and tactics to find the one that resonates best with your target audience. With this feedback, you can continuously improve the way you tell your story while building your self-confidence and reinventing yourself.
Here are five things you can do right now to start building traction for your story:
- Follow leaders in your field. Who else is talking about this, and who already has a platform? Who are the thought leaders there, who is leading that conversation? Follow them on social media and keep an eye on what they’re talking about and how they’re talking about it.
- Join their conversation.
- Share your work regularly.
- Provide value, not just noise.
- Scale the ideas that resonate.
Step 3: Follow the (New) Path
As you begin to tell your story, you’ll use your expertise to build a foundation. And as you build your foundation, you’ll start to attract an audience and create a following. You become part of the conversation, which will attract even more people to you and your content. Forever employability is an outcome of your willingness, flexibility, and agility to follow new paths as they reveal themselves. Get an offer to speak? Take it. An offer to write a book? Write it. Don’t know how? Learn how.
Here are some things you can do right now to get moving forward on the new path you’ve decided to pursue:
- Take the risk. Change is exciting but it can also be a bit scary. Understand that taking a new path-or even just thinking about taking a new path-is going to make you feel uncomfortable. That’s normal; it’s expected
- Make bold asks. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel-others have already done what you’re about to do. You can and should reach out to people in your field who are on the path you want to get on and ask them for their advice.
- One important thing to do as you follow your path and build your personal brand is to reciprocate. When someone does something nice for you, be sure to do something nice back.
- Don’t be afraid to kill your darlings and reset. Renowned author and Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner once said this about what it takes to succeed in his chosen profession: “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” You might think, for example, that you have the best idea ever for building your target audience. However, as you roll out your new initiative, you measure the results and for whatever reason your initiative isn’t creating the behavior change you want. In fact, it’s a total flop. If, after a reasonable amount of time, it’s apparent that things aren’t going to get any better, it’s time to kill your darling-bid it goodbye-reset, and try something different.
Step 4: Teach
Proofing yourself and becoming forever employable-you’re going to gain even greater expertise in whatever topic it is that you’ve decided to pursue. It’s just natural to get better at something the more you practice it. However, if you really want to make a significant leap in your expertise, then teach. When you teach a particular topic, you’ll be surprised at just how much more you understand it. As physicist Richard Feynman once said: “If you want to master something, teach it.” But not only will you master your topic, you’ll also continuously improve how you teach it, building more self-confidence along the way
One of the best ways to learn how to teach is to watch great teachers teach, and then do the kinds of things they do. To become a better teacher, do these five things right now:
- Identify key thought leaders in your space. Do Google searches for the leading thought leaders in your area of interest. Check out and follow their Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook feeds.
- Watch their videos, listen to their podcasts, read their articles and blog posts, and see them present in person. Consider each of these sources to be a master class in teaching. Be a good student and pay close attention to what they teach and exactly how they teach it.
- Make a list of the techniques you find to be most effective. Some teaching techniques are better than others. Which ones does the audience respond to? Which ones do you respond to?
- Eat your own dog food by teaching your material in the real world with real people. Start small by making presentations to local meetups where you can test your material. If your material resonates with people, then build a presentation around it that you can take to a conference or turn into a workshop, podcast, blog post, article, or book.
- Rinse and repeat. Remember: The more you teach, the better you’ll get at it. So, teach lots.
Step 5: Give It All Away
The counterintuitive thing to do is to give it all away. Your blog posts, your podcasts, your webinars, your articles, your templates, your recipes, your blueprints, your unique method of achieving success, your unique method of completing a task-everything. Remember: The key to becoming forever employable is to shift your perspective on what you’re able to do with your existing body of knowledge and some additional effort on your part.
Next, the more easily you can make your work and yourself findable and accessible, the more it will come back to you in new business and added revenue.
It’s easy for me to tell you to “Give it all away.” However, there’s a right way and a not-so-right way to give away your content. The right way ensures that when you give away your content-or your time or anything else of value-you create a positive outcome for building your personal brand. Just randomly giving away your content is not a sustainable brand-building strategy.
Here are five things you should do right now as you get ready to give it all away:
- Follow leaders in your field. Who else is talking about this, and who already has a platform? Who are the thought leaders there, who is leading that conversation? Follow them on social media and keep an eye on what they’re talking about and how they’re talking about it.
- Join their conversation.
- Share your work regularly.
- Provide value, not just noise.
- Scale the ideas that resonate.