Knowledge is the most important aspect in life, intelligence can get you to certain points, but to get further and above your peers, you need to turn that intelligence into a wealth of knowledge and experience which will leave you one cut above the rest.

Defining the Facts

Intelligence – The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

Knowledge – Information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

Explaining the Facts

Knowledge and intelligence can be the greatest mixture in the world, if you have the knowhow and the intelligence to put that knowhow into practice then you are clearly a person who can achieve anything which they want to, given that you are in the correct market. Having the intelligence, yet no practical engagement of it will leave you behind, as we often see with the people who excel at school and university and then can’t put any of it into practice when they come out the other side of the system.

Having the knowledge and no intelligence will get you a long way, but then when it comes to quickly having to pick up information, it will be harder. Of course intelligence is something which is a lot harder to gain when growing older in this world, with many saying you can’t get more intelligent. I like to think we can – but we shall leave the theory behind the matter to the people with that sort of knowledge – so in many ways it may be a dead end for some, never let your glass half empty approach let you believe your aren’t clever enough though!

Therefore from all of this, we can see that the only way to truly beat your opposition and achieve your goals is to have the willingness to learn and then put this into practice by always making sure you are gaining new knowledge.

How to Gain New Knowledge

We could now go through all the different ways to gain knowledge, but let’s keep this short and then include sub categories.
There are two types of learning… Looking and listening.

Just think of crossing the road, the only information you can learn is; if there is a car coming, how fast it is approaching, and which direction it is coming. You can see and/or hear all of these.

Time now to go over the ways I learn all day long, remember do give yourself breaks or you will have knowledge going in one side and out the other side.

Ways to Learn Through Looking

• Watch peers in what they do, even if it is watching something you know how to do, you will often find a better more efficient way of carrying out the task.
• Watch TV/Films. Many seem to think this is entertainment and therefore doesn’t count, but watching even the basic of television programmes will allow you to see what other people do, how other people think and, well, there are always snippets of information which you may not know yet.
• Watch people who are under you. They could be doing something differently which you may not be, or most importantly you can see how others use knowledge, then use that knowledge better than them to delegate and use them (in the nicest way possible, may I add)
• Watch what you do and do it better.
• Read. Whether it is books, blogs, newspapers or general scribble on a toilet door, all this information is

Ways to Learn Through Listening

• Podcasts. There are so many great podcasts out there, and the bets bit is that you can listen to these whenever you want. I listen to mine whilst at the desk at work, meaning that I am learning and doing productive things on screen, but and taking in even more knowledge off-screen.
• Music. I gain knowledge from music as the words inspire me quite a lot.
• Peers. Once again, listen to peers and people around you to get all the knowledge you need.

I try and gain knowledge from about 8am to 10pm each day, it wears me out sometimes, but it is important I get it now so I can concentrate on the doing later on.

Please leave your knowledge gaining tips and tricks below.

Another week has passed, more opportunities have been taken as per usual I once again have too many ideas going around in my head.

In all the week went well, I started the first couple of days meeting my schedule and getting everything done on time and to a standard I wanted. Unfortunately Wednesday came around and I had a meeting after work, meaning the scheduled plans went out the window, although nothing was lost as I was still learning. The rest of the week I did mostly everything apart from correspondence.

Therefore I am doing the scheduling I mentioning I was starting last week again this week, but now it is printed and put on my wall as well! Can’t escape if I can see it all the time.

This week I’m also listing down the main targets for the week though, I can have these times scheduled but I need to get what I want to get done within that time. So this week’s main bits and bobs;

• Plan out the post series I will be creating.
• Start a blog to post some of the writing I have been doing.
• Carrying on from and including the task above, I need to organise all my domains as I have about 10 now and only 3 are being used. They need to be used if I want to reach my longer term targets.

Only a short one today, stay around for the next post on Tuesday.

I often talk about how brand image affects your business on Profit Duck. This post delves into this topic again, but unlike other posts, we are today focusing on how you interact with your clients, what you do for them, and how this will affect your business.

About a year ago I had a small project on the go; I was making a website for a small charity which is based in my local area. This was my first ‘proper’ web design job and so I was a little bit nervous. As I went on about in a recent article about confidence though, I didn’t let this get to me and instead of having it as a disadvantage I took it on-board and made sure that it improved my work and improved the client’s opinion of me.

Talk to Your Clients

When I was first introduced to the person I was making the website for, I made sure that I found out everything about the charity. Although it was local, I haven’t previously heard of it and this meant I needed to get my knowledge up to scratch. Asking these questions made the client know that I was interested in the project, interested in the charity itself and that I was interested in her. Therefore I was able to create a first impression which not only gave her confidence in me, but it improved my overall image, my brand image.

Throughout the process of making the website I also made sure that after making any significant changes, I contacted my client through email to make sure that it was still in-line with what she wanted and that it looked good enough to continue. Doing this showed her that I was determined to make the website something she would like and in turn this again gave her more confidence in me.

Get the Job Done Quickly

As it was my first web design job I was learning at the same time as making the website, this meant that I spent about 12 hours doing it each day. However, because I spent this much time each day I was able to complete it in 3 days and then hand it over to my client. My client had no idea that I would do it this quickly and because of this she was very impressed. Not only had a scored some extra brownie points, but I now had a couple of days to sit back and relax. For me doing more work in one day to have a rest the next day is that way I work, so for me finishing quickly benefited my client and I.

As well as this, getting it finished quicker means you get paid quicker; in turn this means that you have the money in your bank sooner so in the long run you are benefiting from more interest.

Why You Should Impress Your Clients

When I asked for my payment I received on email in response saying that it was slightly over what they thought it would costs. Despite this I still received the full amount because they also said they were very pleased with how quickly I had got it done and also how helpful I was in explaining how to update and maintain the website. Getting more money isn’t the only reason to please clients though. This is where we move back into brand image; pleasing your clients will also give you a better reputation for the future. It will give her more reason to recommend you to friends and family. Please one client and you will have two.

Image - God Put a Smile on Your Face by Sara* Eloise*’s

(I wrote this post after the last Profit Duck redesign and have decided to post it to show some design inconsistencies of my own, you will realise from the first paragraph – The main lesson, always carry through with your own teachings)

Profit Duck recently reopened its doors. With this re-launch I decided that a new look was in order; therefore I created the simple, yet effective title image at the top and the one that can be seen on my Twitter profile. When doing the new look I had to make sure that I had covered all the angles. It wasn’t a simple fact of changing the header image, I needed to completely change my brand image and make sure that no stone was left unturned.

Why Was This?

When you have a brand, you need it to be recognisable from wherever people may see it; therefore you need your brand to be the same in all of those areas. Before I created this ‘brand’ for Profit Duck, I had many different images and styles which represented the website. This meant that there were many things which people matched with the websites, causing people to take less notice of the main points of interest.

So A Single Brand Image?

The single brand image means that there is only one focal point, one area which people need to remember about the brand, in turn this should make my brand, and your brand if you follow these tips, more recognisable and more memorable, and of course this is very important. We have discussed brand image many times on this website and one of the points that comes up is that brand image is one of the most important aspects of business. Not only does it offer marketing, the amount dependant on how good the branding is, but it also provides us with an aspect of the business which people can relate to and when customers start seeing the brand a lot, they can feel that they are a part of that brand.

How Can I Make My Brand Image Consistent?

Making a brand image consistent is sometimes a lot easier said than done. In my case, for this website, it is quite simple due to me only have to create a couple of images. However, if you are starting or running a medium or large business, then making a brand image stay consistent can be very difficult. This can especially be the case if you are selling many products or services, because you need to make your brand the same on each part of the business, even if it differs. For example, if you sell a burger and you also sell chips, you need to make the packaging on both similar to your overall brand, but because they are different packaging types, it may be hard to keep them consistent. In this situation you need to make them original, to make the product more distinct, but you need to keep the basics the same; colour, text, text style, text colour, patterns. We could go on, but I think the idea is explained enough in the previous examples.

The main point I am trying to illustrate is that you need to think before you take action. Brand image is important, and getting it right can lead to massive rewards. Getting it wrong can lead to a lot of cash being wasted. Think when you are doing it, make it amazing and then make it consistent.

Image: My Identity by KatB Photography

Whilst I was spending the week away from work on a training course, I spent the time trying to decide where I want to go in life, where I wanted to end up, what legend I wanted to leave behind. It came to me straight away, after all I did just use the word ‘legend’. I want to leave behind something I can be proud off and others can show off why they knew, but that is the egotistical part. In all, all I want to do achieve my life goals, they may not all be down on paper yet, but they are spinning around my head each day.

So going back to the main point. I have spent this week planning, jotting down and thinking about where I am going to be going. Instead of writing down my goals for this week I have decided to write out a simple schedule which I will be keeping to as best I can, then tweaking and tweaking some more until I have a schedule which I can consistently keeping to.

The Schedule

I have decided to go about this week’s goals differently as I felt my old way wasn’t working as well as I would have liked it to, I have not completed all the goals I have set out for myself each week yet, so a system which would allow me to set out each day and go through it one step at a time seemed like the logical way to go.

Before we go into the schedule I have made though…

Let’s Look at Last Week’s Goals

1. Press Images – I need to develop some wallpapers, business cards and general advertisement images for Profit Duck, mainly just so I have them, but hopefully they will come in useful!
2. Come up with 10 new ideas of how to run Profit Duck and how to expand the brand.
3. Plan out my book – This is nothing to do with Profit Duck, I would love to write a book, even if it is terrible, I think the dedication of writing something 250+ pages long is amazing and I would love to feel that sense of achievement.
4. Comment, comment and comment some more – building traffic can always be hard, but commenting is the best way to build a relationship and get some well-earned traffic.
5. Plan out one of my others site ideas – I have the domain, I have the basic idea, but for 3 months I haven’t done anything to it. It starts with a plan and that plan starts this week.
6. Learn – I am putting this here as it is very important to me that I am always learning new information and ways to do things.

• Goal 1 – I have started doing some wallpapers and the business cards are going to come from those, so I am well on my way to getting these completed.
• Goal 2 – I sat down on Friday and went through all things Profit Duck, ultimately coming up with an in-depth plan to allow me to produce 10 different selling points which in turn will turn this duck into a Profit Duck.
• Goal 3 – I have written the first couple of pages and have a basic plan set out. The problem is this book doesn’t really involve a structure which I have decided upon yet, I know what I want to talk about but I want it to flow in a way which seems like I have written it whilst passing through life.
• Goal 4 – Comments have been made steadily through the week, but nowhere at the rate would I like them to be.
• Goal 5 – Goals have been set for my other website and it is all coming together. Expect an announcement on the 1st October.
• Goal 6 – Doing, listening and functioning is learning. Expanding my horizons is doing so too. It is all going on!

Back to the Schedule

The new way of achieving my goals is basically a general overview of my week, I then have dates to achieve certain bits by which I keep secretly locked away, mainly as certain projects aren’t fir for public eyes at the moment. Take a look below at how I plan, I will be adding to this post next Sunday.