3 Things That Can Stand You Out

My Mentor (Deolu Akinyemi) shared this stuff at a meeting..i decide to share it with you.

Experience - Someone stood up and said, they’ve seen something like this before .

Perfect. If you have some experience doing what you are looking for an opportunity to do, you’ll have better chances. Experience is not experience because you were paid for doing it, it is experience because you did it. An ounce of experience is worth a ton of theory. Don’t go to class alone, look around you for opportunities to gather experience. It is the little victories that you have had while you were in obscurity that qualifies you for the big opportunities. My own personal story indicates the value of experience. I had been recruiting on campus, for Exploit makers, for SCM, for EEESS and all. When I got my first Job post NYSC as a recruiting Manager, I had experience! I also talked about over 5 people who came to our office as volunteers, and within a period of less than 5 months were able to bag great jobs in other companies. They had the experience, it didn’t matter that they were volunteers.

Preparation - Some people did not even have paper of pens for the exercise. The opportunity came and they did not have the resources for it. They didn’t have the foresight to prepare!

Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Preparation begets performance. Fortune favors the prepared mind. To prepare is to be set when your opportunity comes. Preparation involves enlisting in a routine of developing habits out of things that failures hate to do. It involves living every day alert, being ready for ones opportunities. The quality of your preparation determines the quality of your performance. One of the great example of preparation in history is Hitler. Hitler is said to rehearse his public presentation to death before embarking on it. Hitler rehearses minute things like his smile, his body kinetics e.t.c while making a speech. Another good example is Tyson, Mike Tyson is said to spend hours on end watching knock out scenes in historical fights. When Mike Tyson enters the ring he has prepared for numerous knockout routines, small wonder he knocks people out in 30seconds.

Knowledge - Someone stood up and said, “they knew something we didn’t know!”

One man I respect a lot usually said, Ignorance of ones ignorance is the minimum requirement for admission into the college of fools. Every human being is born at the level of unconscious incompetence. The journey to mastery involves migration from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence. Awareness makes one move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, training makes one move from conscious incompetence to conscious competence, practice makes one move from conscious competence to unconscious competence. What you don’t know will hurt you, make a resolution to damage your ignorance daily. An empty bag will not stand upright. Leaders are readers, if you need to hide something from a looser, hide it in a self development book.

Courage, Perseverance, Skill, Focus, Innovation were other items spoken about (wouldn’t want to write a book here )

Ultimately my overall position on developing a competitive edge is staying innovative. Staying true to the things that make you unique, different, apart. Focusing on your passions, your strengths, your possibilities. We compete because we do not create. Who says you have to be in the same business with the other guy? Who says your competition is the other guy? I reminded them about my professor of philosophy friend, the story I started with - I told them that after I got philosophy clear, he called me to the side and told me, he would suggest that I use the clean water to wash the clean person. I should then use the water that washes off him, which is suggests I collect because it will still be relatively clean, to wash the dirty man. This way I use the same tools to achieve more than I would with a competitive mindset. This he told me is not philosophy, but creativity!