Branding David

The biggest question people have been asking me, and probably themselves on an increasing basis as the year closes out is “what are my goals?”

It can be really difficult to define them sometimes, but holding your dreams, goals and aspirations close to your chest will allow you to chase after them, and hopefully reach them. I was recently asked what my goals are with regards to my career. People were assuming that I wanted to become a full time consultant like other Internet personalities try to present themselves as.

But for me, I just want to continue to learn, teach others, and give myself a variety of tasks, roles and things to do in my daily rotation, so that I keep happy, all the while keeping my family afloat by bringing in enough money that my wife can continue her University studies.

My goals are fairly simplistic on the surface, but really complex in practice. Trying to find ways to enjoy everything I do, and make enough money to keep my household afloat is difficult to do, especially during these trying times, but that is my goal, and I am going to stick with it.

I hope everyone reading this has been or will take some time to consider their goals, and work towards them. Also, make your goals known, so people don’t make assumptions that may change their perspective of you and your actions.

I am seeing a fair number of companies cutting staff that probably don’t need to. They are reporting record earnings, or at worst nominal drops in revenue, and yet they are cutting upwards of thirty percent of their staff. What is going on? Why are they making such aggressive cuts in their staff if the money is still rolling in?

The ME TOO Mindset

I was recently talking to a colleague of mine, and it was said that watching the news go around about all the cuts and the horrible economy most definitely pushes out the feeling that companies should make cuts because others are. When you put massive amounts of people together, you’ll notice quite often there is a tendency to follow a leader, even if it is in the wrong direction.

Are many companies letting go of hard working people just because they have seen the news that their competitors have let go of staff? Do they see this as a way to remain competitive and bolster their revenue figures? Is this just a great excuse, so that those that do the firings don’t have to feel bad?

Again, I am not saying that there isn’t a reason to downsize, if your revenues are going south, or your cash burn rate is too high to be sustained over the long haul, but to do it without any other provocation other than your competition cutting back is ridiculous.

Companies expect their staff to work hard for them, and be loyal, and then there is a hiccup in the economy and people are being downsized like there is no tomorrow.

I really think that if most companies took a moment to pause, really analyze the situation, and take preventative measures that don’t require a loss of talent and staff, they would be able to ride out this economic storm without contributing to the negativity that is currently hanging over the new media / Internet and technology related industries.

What do you think, were all of these firings really necessary?

While it can be hard to find the time to post on other people’s blogs, no matter the reason you have behind doing it, you’ll see rewards that far outweigh the time constraints. Sometimes, it can be twice as effective to write guest posts versus writing posts that will be published on your own blog.

So, instead of trying to write an extra post in your day to make time for guest posting, I would advocate taking the time away from your own posting and dedicate it towards writing an amazing guest post.

Even if the blog isn’t bigger than yours in traffic, RSS readers, or listings in search engines, it can still provide huge benefit from being highly focused, or giving your blog the variety of links it needs to be highly recognized from search engines like Google.

Guest posting continues to be one of the ways we advance the marketing of College Crunch.