Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter achieved a successful career marketing campaign because voters’ needs were understood, emphasized, reinforced and fulfilled. Jimmy Carter overcame a voter-perceived liability of being a Southerner and Farmer by getting on a tractor, wearing blue jeans, and making sure people saw his boots were mud-filled from walking fields. His Marketing-with-Intent effort dramatically and effectively linked need for voters for a leader that understood their issues to credibility of being “one of people.”

Hot career tip: Want to transfer your skills into a better career and perhaps even a different industry and do so more quickly? Stop viewing and marketing yourself exclusively by what you’ve done. Tunnel vision severely underestimates your career options and income potential.

Here are seven tips to ensure you’re marketing with intent and expedition won’t be futile:

•Know job market

•Know your functional and industry options, or employer’s needs in these areas

•Recognize your marketing skills, where you are most marketable, and all you have to offer

•Develop a marketing plan of action to generate multiple, simultaneous interviews

•Shore up your writing skills to create kind of highly effective resumes and letter that make system work •Allow time to run a complete job search coherently, independently, and productively

•Gain sufficient exposure (access) to ample numbers of decision-makers

Marketing-with-Intent is a breakthrough market segmentation strategy that more definitively steers your career campaign by giving you back control of wheel. However, this groundbreaking tactic consistently requires you to use right tools to be effective:

•Positioning (posture yourself as a problem solver)

•Exposure (detect indications of hiring patterns and necessity for solutions)

•Marketing (create demand for your talents by communicating your benefit)

When you identify employer needs through subterranean market research and then develop a personalized solution and communication initiative that aligns with those needs, you’ll flawlessly yield a positive outcome.

Never drive your job search blindfolded and certainly don’t let hindsight be your tour guide. Zoom, Zoom.

Frank Peretti’s story is a great example of following your true passions in life. There’s a quote that says “Do what you truly love in life and money will eventually follow”. Yes, money may not come right away, but if you stick with it, eventually you can make a living doing it. Frank followed his passion in his spare time, and probably had no idea that he would one day become a millionaire doing what he truly loves! The beauty is that all of us have a passion much like Frank, whether it’s writing, art, music, carpentry, landscaping, or just helping others in some form. The question is “what are you doing today that will make those passions a reality down road?”

We have all daydreamed a time or two at work about what we would really love to be doing. Why not begin doing something today to make that dream a reality? If you have always wanted to run your own business, why not start it in your spare time? If you want to change career fields, invest extra time in additional education if needed. Make most of those extra hours working towards your goals.

Life is too short not to be fun. Our best work usually takes place when we truly enjoy it. Spend time this week, thinking about something that you would gladly do even if you were paid absolutely nothing. Then create a plan to turn it into reality.