Regardless of the micro entrepreneurial pathway you may have chosen, the knowledge conveyed in this, and future articles is universal. You will learn more about my focus on Identity Leadership and the Nine Step Plan for Success which is the focus of my many books, speeches, lectures, and courses that I have authored and developed over many years.  

In this article, I want to take the opportunity to explain clearly why Identity Leadership is where all leadership starts. Here are highlights:

I have found that Identity development changes your thinking about what is possible. I love to ask the question: Who are you?

A lot of people go through life without ever discovering who they truly are? They just fall into a pattern, a routine, a job, probably a series of jobs, and they do all of this more or less on autopilot, like a leaf floating downstream, going whichever way the current takes it. They don’t think to ask themselves who they are, perhaps in part because they have no idea how to go about answering the question. Some people don’t want to know who they are, because they have low self-esteem and are afraid to uncover their true selves.

This is what I say to people who either think the question is too difficult to answer or who don’t want to know the answer: Finding out who you are at your core level is always – always – worth the effort.

Who you are has to do with your talents, your abilities, your dreams, and your aspirations. No matter what your current situation is, no matter whether you are a blue collar or white collar, no matter your neighborhood or race or religion or anything else, you have talents and abilities that give you innate pleasure when you use them – and by using them, you begin to show the world who you really are.

It is when we are fully operating in the gifts that we have been given that we are most fulfilled. . And when we operate in those gifts, we come upon more opportunities, because the world opens up to us when it sees our full potential.

It is our obligation, then,  to explore and understand what those gifts are. And when we know them, when we understand what we are really motivated and energized to do and what gives us pleasure and happiness, when we are doing the thing we love and doing it with the abilities that we exceed at, then we are poised to live our full potential.

I will now introduce to you the Nine Step Plan for Success Process. Each step is designed to provide you with the tools you need to navigate your life-work journey. In future articles, we will navigate the entire process. I just covered the significance of the first step in the process.

1. Check Your I.D. Before deciding what to do in life, you must first understand who you are…
2. Create Your Vision. Your vision is your life’s destination…
3. Develop Your Travel Plan. You must create your plan of action…
4. Master The Rules of the Road. Guidelines keep you on track…
5. Step into the Outer Limits. To grow you have to leave your comfort zone…
6. Pilot the Seasons of Change. If you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting the same results…
7. Build Your Dream Team. No one makes it alone. Learn to build supportive relationships…
8. Win by a Decision. Who you are in the world is largely a result of the decisions you have made…
9. Commit to Your Vision. When you consistently devote time and energy to the pursuit of your goals and vision, you discover that commitment is a nonnegotiable trait that, when renewed daily, propels you…