How To Fame: Stand Out/Get Ahead/That Simple [Part 2]

By guest author Richard Laermer

[Yesterday Richard introduced his newest project, “How To Fame,” a way to for people to change how the world sees them in order to achieve professional and personal goals. Today he concludes with a real-life example of how HTF works and a link to more ideas on faming.]

Meet Frank

Frank is 42, and has been married to his lovely wife for 17 years. They have two daughters, ages 15 and 9. The family lives in a comfortable three-bedroom home in suburban, not-so-affluent New Jersey.

Frank is in the textiles game. Specifically, he is in middle management at one of the largest textile manufacturers in the United States. His coworkers think of him as a hard worker, and a generally nice, dependable guy.

In this case, nice is a bad word.

Frank is happy, he guesses, but cannot understand why his younger, inexperienced peers routinely get promoted, while he watches. Frank knows he would be best for all available jobs up the ladder and thinks the situation is hopeless because the powers that see him only as Frank, Lifetime Middle Manager. Frank asked us to help.

Clothing

Frank’s favored attire starred company-logoed golf shirts provided by the Marketing Department. Great for a trade show, but not for everyday at the office. Continuing to wear them and expecting to be taken seriously are mutually exclusive.

This was an easy fix that didn’t cost much. Taking Frank down to Macy’s, we upgraded him to a long-sleeved shirt in a complimentary cut and color. Fit matters.

Office

We bought Frank a filing cabinet to hold all of the papers that were stacked on his desk. Our team got him some snazzy (read fun to gaze) pictures. We got Frank a low-maintenance plant and a watering can. Now someone walking into his office for the first time thinks, Gee whiz, this guy has his crap together!

Email

Frank’s office, like most, uses email for inter- and intra-office communications. Unfortunately, the majority of email is rubbish. When we get substantive, helpful emails, we are pleasantly surprised.

The easiest way to get emails taken seriously is fill them with substance. We pushed Frank to commit to resisting the urge to send out three word emails and emails with spelling errors. Frank waited three extra seconds before pushing Send.

Now when people receive something from Frank they know it has quality information. He is an authority. People know they can count on his communications to be timely, professional, and informative. Frank is authoritative.

What next, Frank?

Business fame is pragmatic renown where pragmatism is an air of being an authority—in this case, Frank’s a manager. The point was to make the world (his business colleagues and adversaries) see Frank as the indispensable authority on everything related to the business he excels in. Now, coworkers, reports, and managers all see that he is the go-to Frank on everything in his purview.

Now that nothing is holding Frank back—not his now-glorious appearance, nor his formerly lax communication habits—there’s no reason he can’t get what he wants from his job. Some fame is here.

Got to love this guy!

The successes of Frank and other people in “How to Fame” are a blueprint for helping you get to fame. It isn’t who you are, it is what you provide. You can’t know everything but you sure as heck can be a resolute authority on what people expect you to be authoritative about.

Choose to fame. Today. This minute. And with that, travel on over to howtofame.com/details and join the private list. Get in on the activity now and you’ll get, direct from the printing press, “10 Tips to Faming” that you need before the new decade gets going. It’s a fantastic list. I know. I wrote it.

[2011: Trendspotting author Laermer is CEO of RLM PR, and you can follow his useful (but intentionally funny) Twitter feed @laermer]

This segment is a part in the series : How To Fame