Revenue Journal®

Working with CEOs and entrepreneurs, I identify and eliminate barriers to revenue and turn stalled or slowing companies into revenue-growth machines. I have become a revenue engineer. I am an industry of one, and happy to be here.

I'm bringing this up to talk about self-reinvention, a skill that all of us must master in this age of fast-moving markets. As you learn more and become more experienced, and apply those lessons and that experience to your next job, you need to know what you are good at, what you can provide, and what you should call it.

I'm also writing this to address the challenge posed some time ago by one of the reviewers of my last book, who said he'd "like to know how she and her husband changed the focus of their own consulting business. I'd pay double for Kristin to write, 'Exactly what I did when the money stopped flowing.'"

Actually, what's really important about re-inventing yourself is to do it before the money stops flowing. That's exactly what we did when we shifted from a high-tech ad/PR agency to a consulting firm helping in-house marketing efforts, back in 1991. I started to make the change in the middle of our most profitable year ever. My husband and I, working together and with vendors (no employees), were billing what agencies with four times as many people billed, thanks in no small part to our relentless and continual pursuit of optimum efficiency. We were at the top of our game.

But my habit of keeping my ear to the ground made it easy to foresee the changes in store for the agency business. Clients were buying Macs, hiring graphic designers and marcom people, and bringing much of the agency bread-and-butter work in-house. I could have resisted. Many other agencies did, and are fighting over unprofitable scraps to this day. Instead, I decided to help companies take their marketing in-house, and succeed at it.

So this is Lesson #1: You have to be willing to walk away even when you are at the top of your current game.

It doesn't sound difficult, but in real life, it's gut-wrenching. Your income is sure to drop. Meanwhile, your expenses won't - they will even increase as you start out in a new direction. (That's why you should sock away 20% of your gross income every time a check comes in.)

You won't know what you should be doing when you get up in the morning. You won't have any guidelines from others, because you'll be setting out into new territory. The ground is fertile, but it's also full of boulders, brambles, and snakes. But, keep listening - the voice of the customer will guide you through the undergrowth.

Lesson #2: Money comes from needs.

What should guide you to your next role is "need." You must know precisely what other people need. If you work on meeting other peoples' needs, all the time, you will find plenty of opportunities for your own advancement.

For example, what do employers need now? They need people who can take legacy applications - PC or even mainframe-based - and turn them into Web-based applications. They need people who can create digital advertising that can run on a variety of media, including cellphones. They need people who are good at the backend of web applications.

They especially need non-technical people who understand technology well enough to make decent decisions. (I am currently discouraged by the number of people working in business now who have not bothered to learn the basics of IT - and yet, without IT, there is no business.)

These are serious, must-be-satisfied needs. What is required for someone to meet these needs? Some learning, mostly. Which brings us to. . .

Lesson #3: Study. All the time. Be a sponge, or be left behind.

I don't care what you do for a living. If you're not spending a significant amount of time learning new things, things that are job-enhancing, you are falling behind . . . and you will become irrelevant. You must study all the time, keep asking questions, keep up with the latest technology, keep moving ahead. That way, when a new need presents itself, you will have the tools to recognize it and meet it.

Lesson #4: Be humble, because you will fail before you will succeed.

As you find your way through the new forest, you will stumble. Your knees will get dirty. You will have to ask for directions, from people who look down on you because your knees are dirty. This will be very difficult to take when you've just come from a "higher position."

Don't worry about what they think. You're on a quest to get better at something, and you will. Stay humble, and you will be open to advice, which means you will learn, and you will ultimately succeed.

Lesson #5: Keep going, but be willing to change direction.

When you reinvent yourself, you start out with a vision. But as you learn more, you will have to modify that vision. Be flexible. Let the environment teach you lessons. Incorporate them, and keep moving.

Lesson #6: Figure out how to talk about what you do.

When people asked me what I do for a living, I used to say, "I'm a revenue coach. I help CEOs and entrepreneurs make more money." But, as I developed fail-safe systems for increasing revenue, and those systems proved to work in a number of industries, it has become time for me to upgrade and repackage myself from a "coach" to an "engineer." I still coach CEOs and entrepreneurs - helping them improve their personal management methods, mostly - but the work I do for their companies is very engineering-like. I have developed systems for detecting and evaluating revenue barriers and opportunities, and for fixing those barriers and capitalizing on opportunities. I also do a lot of training and writing of training materials as part of creating revenue-generation systems. Now I answer, "I am a revenue engineer. I help CEOs and entrepreneurs make more money." It's a subtle change, but it's accurate.

You need a sentence that describes what you do. It leads to new business. I have met CEOs in casual settings. When asked, I have said what I do, and I suddenly have their full attention. This is what "getting attention" in marketing really means - the person who should be interested is suddenly very interested.

Lesson #7: Don't get "old."

Being "old" is a state of mind. It's not like being "wise," which is good. Being "old" means that you have stopped searching, stopped learning, stopped challenging yourself. You've let gravity get the better of you. You've decided that [whatever] is too hard and too complicated. Trust me, I know that it is easier to sit back. But the older I get the more determined I am to do just the opposite. I want to see how far I can get, how much I can learn, before I keel over.

Everything I've just written applies to companies as well as individuals. The saddest thing is a company that is desperately clinging to the past, to the "way we've always done it." There is no there there, only memories of previous glory. The real prizes lie in new areas.

The most successful companies - and entrepreneurs - reinvent themselves continually.