Archive for September, 2008

Dean and I had the honor Saturday of presenting to Job Connections, a wonderful group that supports unemployed Bay Area professionals. I lead the group through an exercise intended to bring their ideal career vision to the surface. Afterwards I asked what obstacles get in the way of pursuing that vision. The first reply was one I hear every time: MONEY.

There is no doubt that those of us who are not independently wealthy are more concerned with making enough money than nearly anything else. Yet most of us lose sight of how much control we do have over the money we make. Think about it this way. You are like a store that offers your skills and talents in exchange for money.

The amount of money you make is driven by:

1. The marketability of your skills and talents
2. How well you get the message out about the value of what you have to offer.
   

This holds true whether you want to maximize your earning potential working for a company or working for yourself.

If you are someone who has been a victim of a layoff, acknowledging your power over your paycheck may seem like positive thinking propaganda, but it’s not. You may be temporarily without a paycheck, yet you’re not without opportunities to increase your marketability and get the word out about what you have to offer.

In our quest to support individuals to create the careers they desire, Dean and I have recognized the real need to help people get beyond the fear of money. We have decided that we can do this better by expanding our training to more fully educate you in the hard skills that are necessary to be successful in today’s business world. For example:

• Learning how to be a more effective networker will enable you to exert your power to get the word out about what you have to offer.
• Learning how to blog will enable you to better promote your expertise to potential hiring managers or potential customers.
• Learning how to customize an inexpensive web publishing platform will give you the power to build and change your storefront without paying someone else to do it for you.

We’re in the process of adding this training to our event schedule. We are very excited about our mission to inspire you to reach for your dreams while educating you on how to use Web 2.0 technology to make your dreams reality. We’d love your suggestions on what kind of training would inspire you to take steps forward towards your vision.

So many of us fail to chase our dreams because we don’t believe we have the background, the resources or the connections to be successful. So we settle on a sure bet or what feels like a piece of security. Yet when we look at others who have built empires out of nothing, we might ask ourself, “Why can’t I use this person as an example of what is possible for me?”

Louise Hay sits at the top of my personal list of examples. In 1976, Louise Hay wrote a small pamphlet which grew into a book she self-published in 1984. With more than 35 million copies in print in over 30 languages, this book, You Can Heal Your Life, now a movie, launched Hay House, the publisher for over 130 authors, including Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer.

Louise was born to a poor family, dropped out of high school at age 15, got pregnant at 16 and gave her baby up for adoption. Louise learned much of the principles about the power of your thoughts that she is famous for while recovering from the devastation of her husband of 14 years leaving her for another woman.

Clearly Louise Hay is an example of a self-made success that has contributed greatly to our world. Whether or not you think of yourself as self-help enthusiast, a woman who has overcome hardship to build an empire has insights we can all learn from. I heartily recommend you invest the five minutes to watch this video and receive the wisdom of a legacy.

Our vision is to continue to produce more videos in our commitment to expand our work onto other media platforms. Subscribing to our feed will assure that you don’t miss any of our soon-to-be released videos.

What Do You Want to Do with Your Career?

Whether you are currently unemployed or thinking about your next career step, learn the questions you need to be asking about your career before it is too late.

Web 2.0 represents one of the most amazing times in history with global connectivity to a worldwide conversation, citizen journalism through blogging threatening the global dominance of mass media, and a level of transparency rarely imagined. We are at the tipping point between connectivity and mass global shrinkage where your neighbor in Katmandu will know more about you than the guy next door.

What’s In It For You?

The opportunity to monetize your skills and passions in ways you never dreamed possible.

• Mass Media no longer owns the license to print headlines or advertising dollars.
• Bloggers have the upper hand in breaking news, providing support and feeding the flow of information and reaping SEO juice.
• Branding “You”: Everyday someone new, with a new idea, a new angle, or a new source of information becomes a superstar without the mass media’s help. People are moving away from branding their employers and towards branding themselves.
• Social Media/Niche Media: The aggregation of information will eventually interconnect all of the social media sites so that your message can be pushed out in one location to an infinite number of sites within the worldwide social media culture. Photos, blogs, crowdsourcing, community sites, hobby niches, and everything in between will be connected on a global scale.

The ride is just beginning. Take a look at how it may support your wildest dreams.

LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, WordPress, and Twitter are just a few examples of how technology offers you an ever-changing environment from which to promote what you want to achieve, create or become. Unfortunately, so many of us view technology as an obstacle rather than an asset. We can be quick to make assumptions about our ability to embrace the latest and greatest in technology tools.

For instance:

• I don’t have enough time to learn about the latest business technology. I barely have enough time to focus on my work.
• I’m not smart enough to use technology. Most of it just goes over my head.
• I’m too old to learn the latest in technology.
• I don’t want to embrace technology. It’s not for me.
• I don’t know where to go to learn.

Can you see that all of these statements are simply ideas that you have accepted as true? Yet are they really?

Today’s world is driven by technology. If you want to be among the winners, you need to embrace technology in your career:

1. Make the commitment. Put aside a short period of time each day to research and learn. Take this time away from activities that don’t benefit you.
2. Believe in your ability to learn. Today’s greatest technology tools are written for dummies.
3. Don’t use age as an excuse to give up on anything. Youth is just as much attitude as it is a number. It’s the attitude that keeps you marketable.
4. Acknowledge technology as your ladder to success. Can you really afford to do without it?
5. Recognize that help is available when you ask for it. From Google to your own network of contacts, you are always just keystrokes away from finding help.

Our newly designed website is an example of my efforts at embracing technology. It’s an integration of our static web pages and blog posts orchestrated with a $75 WordPress theme called WP Remix. Feel free to email me if you want to explore what it takes to do this yourself. Why pay someone else a lot more money that what you will spend learning to do it yourself?