Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

By Guest Blogger, Gina Blitstein

This will be my last entry on True Professions about my career reinvention. The time has come to wrap up my coaching sessions with Ellen and review my progress. The end of the coaching process, however, in no way means that my career makeover has come to an end. This merely signifies the end of this initial phase of my reinvention. This is a comfortable and logical place to step off and forge ahead using the skills I’ve learned working with Ellen these past few months.

I have learned so much in my sessions with Ellen! My career coaching has taken place strictly over phone and email. I’ve never met Ellen in person - in fact we are geographically separated by nearly 1000 miles. But through each of our meetings, Ellen’s encouraging words have come shining across the miles!

Ellen helped me overcome obstacles to my career reinvention by assigning me exercises to combat these issues:

• Identity - Ellen encouraged me to write a pitch, describing my business and what makes it unique.
  
• Shyness - She wouldn’t take “No” for an answer when I explained how uncomfortable I was doing in-person networking!
  
• Self-doubt - Ellen had me make post-it notes describing aspects about my professional qualities.
  
• Isolation - She gave me the assignment to make arrangements to call and speak with three freelance writers in order to begin growing my professional network.
  
  

Each assignment taught me something valuable. To be honest, some were uncomfortable and difficult while others proved easier. But each one helped me discover resources and abilities I never knew I possessed. I have at least tried some new techniques and I will continue to hone my abilities as my career progresses.

Her encouragement and professionalism have served as a steady heartbeat to the sometimes challenging situations I’ve encountered as I’ve stretched myself to grow and develop new skills. That is exactly what I needed to discover the courage and strength within myself to think about things in a new way and willingly put myself in vulnerable situations for the sake of my new career.

You can read back over the past posts to discover exactly what I wanted to gain from career coaching with Ellen - and you’ll see that I did indeed achieve those goals. And you can even read that I have outlined my next set of career goals. But I’ve reached a point at which I want to explore a longer-range vision of myself - the me I want to grow toward, now that I am empowered by my successes. I want to explore the future me because now, thanks to the skills I’ve developed working with Ellen, I’m not afraid to imagine the possibilities and most importantly, I’m not afraid to try.

A long-range goal is something I’ve never even considered until recently. In my former career as a daycare provider, that was it - there was no place to go, no dream to work toward. Now that I have successfully changed gears completely - I find that my new career possibilities are wide-open. What type of writing do I want to focus on? What kind of clients do I want to work with? When do I want to work? Where do I want to work? How far do I want to reach to attain the status in my career that I desire? All these choices are available to me for the first time. I can customize my work life to fit what I am good at and what I am passionate about. What unbelievable freedom I am now blessed with!

It’s just like Ellen says - when your work fits your interests and your personality, you experience maximum satisfaction in both arenas! Simply stated, I know I will live a more fulfilling life because I am doing work that I love.

Thanks to Ellen’s coaching, I know how to assess my level of satisfaction, imagine different possibilities and paths and do the work necessary to make - and keep - my career my passion. It can be - and will be - a lifelong endeavor. I know I’m up to the challenge because I have this recent success as living proof.

Thank you, Ellen, for helping me to find my own sense of comfort, identity and direction in my new career!

Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

The thing that speaks the loudest to me in Gina's last post is: confidence. Clearly, Gina has moved from a place of uncertainty and self-doubt to a place with much greater clarity - and with much firmer footing. Gina uses words like "conviction"..."poise"..."confidence"..."satisfying"... and "valuable". To use Gina's descriptor, it is exactly like a metamorphosis: she has evolved from a woman who was forced to shutter her day care business to a woman who decided to follow her life's passion.

And it worked.

Everything Gina shares about meeting her goals, from making the same amount of money as she did with her day care business to finding her voice and marketing her new business with confidence, are all indicators of how much she is enjoying personal and professional success. In addition, she feels much more at ease when discussing her business with others, and talks about being a writer as no longer an aspiration or a dream....but a reality.

What I particularly liked about Gina's self-discoveries is the fact that she seized upon an important point: working on our careers and enjoying optimum career satisfaction is something we are never really done with. This is the fun of working on your career: the paths and opportunities for reinvention are endless, if you learn the methods and apply the tools that make a career journey successful.

Gina also learned that career reinvention is a continuous process of growth. Changing careers is no doubt a tough road. Much uncertainty lies ahead for those who contemplate it, and even more so for those who forge ahead and try it. Will I like my new career? Will I get any clients to buy my product or service? Will I fail? All of these questions come into play and make us question our ability to take a step toward enjoying a more satisfying career, and life.

But I guarantee that if you at least try, you are never a failure, no matter what the outcome. What lies on the other side of taking a risk, taking a chance on YOU, is full of surprises. Some may be good while others fall short, but either way, I promise you will learn so much about yourself and you will feel the greatest sense of accomplishment...just for trying. Just look at Gina!

Want to catch up on Gina's story? Start here! http://trueprofessions.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html)

Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

By Guest Blogger Gina Blitstein

There have been changes happening within my “professional self” lately. I see it as a metamorphosis - a coming into my self as a professional freelance writer. These changes are happening almost imperceptibly as I follow the steps Ellen and I have laid out for me as I reinvent my career. Each assignment, whether it was to network in person, create my pitch, call fellow freelance writers or make post-it reminders of important elements about myself, has taught me something important. At the time I was completing each assignment I might not have seen its value, or it may have been scary or frustrating, but it always opened a door for me to walk through to get to the next level of my career development.

When I’ve been on the journey, I have been focused on the steps and how they make me feel, but I didn't always see the progress. When I look at the bigger picture, however, I see it very clearly. Now I am beginning to see how far I have come in my career reinvention. It no longer feels like I’m telling people, “I want to be a ballerina when I grow up!” when I tell them what I do. I now own what I do and I say it with conviction, not as an aspiration, but as a fact.

I recently had the opportunity to network with some folks at a professional dinner. I was invited as a guest so I was not necessarily expected to “pitch” my own business. The subject inevitably came up, of course, and when it did I felt I had valuable and interesting things to say to people about it. In fact, I found it particularly easy to talk about my profession with poise and confidence.

Those two words would never have been used to describe me a few years ago. I was as introverted and socially awkward as they come. How did I grow past that? It took a lot of diligent work on my part to focus on my strengths and remove myself from situations that made me feel inferior. Once I did that, it became clearer every day that I was intelligent, clever, interesting and enjoyable to be around. And once that seed of self-confidence was planted, it thrived in my new supportive environment of loving, caring people. I was comfortable being fully myself and when that was favorably received, well, my self-worth grew by leaps and bounds. The moral of the story is that no one - and no career - can thrive in an environment of negativity and self-doubt.

That’s what Ellen has helped me overcome - that initial stage of self-doubt that is part and parcel of any major life change. Those questions of, “Am I good enough?” “Can I do this?” are completely natural. Natural or not, however, I am glad to be moving past them. The great news is that I have succeeded at my first three goals for my career reinvention. To review, they were to:

1. Make a living at writing

2. Become comfortable marketing myself & my business

3. Realize my career makeover as a personal reinvention, complete with new skills and goals

AND I have accomplished those things. Here’s how:

1. I am actually earning as much at this point as I was as a daycare provider. That was an initial goal but as a next step I plan to establish some earning goals for myself.

2. As mentioned above, I am gaining confidence with marketing myself and my business. It came down to the same elements as in my personal metamorphosis - gaining confidence and experience in a supportive environment.

3. As a writer, there’s a lot of me in my work. I knew my career reinvention was going to take a lot of personal growth to get to where I wanted to be. How have I grown? I have developed confidence in myself and my abilities. Once those were in place, it was surprisingly easy to demonstrate that to others.

So from here it’s onward and upward! I have made two new goals for my business and they are:

1. To gain more control over the work I take on and the clients for whom I work. I feel that now that I know I can get clients - and keep them by providing quality work - I can take the opportunity to be a bit more selective as to the what and who. This is not to say that I’m inundated with work, but I do have choices and it is empowering to be able to say, “No, this is not right for me.”

2. To create my ideal writing gig for myself. This is based on the “If you build it they will come” theory. I have topics about which I am passionate and I am not going to let the fact that I haven’t been hired to write about them yet keep me from writing about them. I intend to write about that which I am passionate, in the belief that when I do, it will be appreciated and respected for what it is. It will provide the ultimate portfolio of the work that is nearest to my heart. While it won’t provide immediate income, it will be an investment in my future and provide satisfaction to me today.

I’m proud of my new goals. They show me that I need never be “done” with my career reinvention - that it is a continuous process of growth. It is an amazingly satisfying feeling to look back and see the progress I’ve made, and to look ahead knowing that there are more goals waiting for me to achieve.

Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

Love it. Love it. LOVE it!

Gina is starting to talk to other people in her profession (helloooo, networking) and is enjoying a positive response, not to mention building a supportive community that will pay dividends as she continues to fine tune her business. Also huge is the fact that Gina put down, on paper, where she can see it, a list of what she is good at. If you haven’t tried it, this truly is an amazing exercise, especially when stuck at a crossroads in your career, in life, or in Gina’s case, starting a new business.

Worries? Low confidence? Doubts? Thoughts of “Am I really cut out to do this?” All of these thoughts are totally, TOTALLY normal during times of change. However, the trick is to not dwell on what you might NOT accomplish, what bad things MIGHT happen, and what failures COULD lie ahead.

Instead, the trick is to change your thinking.

A great way to start is with the post-it note exercise: putting down on paper what you are good at, why you are valuable, what makes you unique, what you CAN do, etc. etc. Keeping this in front of you on a daily basis is even more powerful, for as your brain absorbs those words day after day….lo and behold you start changing how you act- and changing what travels through your brain.

Now that Gina has sampled different types of client projects (and different types of clients) and has gathered more information from professionals who have built careers in her desired field, Gina and I have begun preliminary conversations about the type of work she wants to focus on in order to fulfill an even greater goal when it comes to her new business: following her passion and writing about the subject matter she cares about most.

As an example, Gina was recently nominated as a Role Model and Virtual Mentor for Women and Girls from the Hot Mommas Project (www.hotmammasproject.org). Interestingly, Gina’s research on a client project led her to interviewing the "Chief Hot Momma" of this project, Kathy Korman Frey, at which point Kathy began following Gina on Twitter. When Kathy read about Gina’s career reinvention on www.trueprofessions.blogspot.com, she nominated Gina!

What was Gina’s response? Well, let’s use her exact words “Let me tell you, Ellen, when you ask what I want my career to look like, this is exactly it - to inspire others through the things I have learned and am doing. It is thrilling to me that I get the chance to do this!”

Wow- what can be better than that?

Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

By Guest Blogger Gina Blitstein

Well, from reading Ellen’s last blog entry about me, I guess I have made more progress than I thought I had when it comes to networking. Ellen encouraged me to reach out to other writers to find a network in which I could gain knowledge and support in my new endeavor. It was actually rather fun thinking about who I have already come across in my travels in cyberspace who would be interesting to talk to about professional writing. For some reason, I didn’t feel nervous about this kind of networking. It was actually kind of empowering to go at this from the standpoint that, although I am new at the game, I am also nonetheless a writer.

I did phone a writer who I identified as having the type of career I visualize for myself. She was remarkable to talk to! She proved to be everything I hoped she’d be: honest, forthcoming and an incredible source of information and guidance! That was definitely the type of experience I had hoped for - and I sure got it! The result of that interaction for me is that I know there’s help out there should I need it. I don’t have to work in a vacuum. When I need some advice, I can get it without feeling like I am asking for the “secrets of the universe” from people - it’s just what my writers’ community does for one another. I like that sense of “community.” Support is a powerful thing.

Talking with an experienced writer also set me to thinking about my career in “bigger” terms. I’ve been thinking about what I have already accomplished, what I am on my way to accomplishing and what I someday dream of accomplishing. My new writer friend is living her dreams, so why can’t I, right?

Ellen gave me another assignment which was to write myself self-affirming and inspirational “post-it” notes for myself to use as a means to remember my strengths and aspirations. This exercise really took me by surprise! Once I sat down to write them, they just came pouring out of my fingers - 19 in all! Here they are:

1. I do great work
2. I am organized and professional
3. People are pleased with the fruits of my labor
4. I am intelligent
5. I am a talented writer
6. My work has value to others
7. I am hard-working
8. I am easy to talk to and a good listener
9. I can help people achieve their goals
10. People enjoy reading what I write
11. Writing is my life's work
12. I can earn a great income by writing
13. I will work on my own terms
14. I will write biographies of inspirational people
15. Shy is not me
16. I have interesting things to say
17. The real me is not only good enough - she's great!
18. I am proud to be a writer
19. I have valuable insights

I told Ellen that writing these has helped me to clarify and condense my thoughts about being a writer - and about being the writer I want to someday be. Collectively they are my “mission statement.”

What a great week on the career reinvention front - I found both a supportive community and a mission statement! I feel so empowered!

Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

Ok. Let’s start with this statement in Gina’s last post: “I am not particularly comfortable with the prospect of in-person networking - or any networking at all. Because of that fact, I have naturally gravitated toward online marketing. It seemed a logical fit for me, since I am more an introverted writer-type than a hand-shaking networker. Ellen assures me that face-to-face networking is a vital skill for me to develop and I know that she is correct.”

Ahhhh…networking. Most people dislike networking. In my experience, people who heavily dislike networking do so because they have a determined view that they “are not good at it.” What does this mean? In my experience, this attitude is accompanied by certain behaviors: avoidance, procrastination, stalling...all leading to “analysis paralysis.” In other words, if you really dislike networking, you tend to do nothing.

I have a friend who often asks me for job hunting advice so he can not only escape a job he has outgrown, but also leave an industry he is tiring of, and perhaps enter a new career altogether. Our conversations go something like this:

“How can I get out of my job quickly?” asks friend.
“Networking” I respond.
“I think I have finally figured it out: I want to leverage my skills and enter a new career altogether that I find exciting and rewarding – how do I go about doing that?” asks friend.
“Networking” I say.

Did I mention my friend dreads networking? Dreads the thought of reaching out to people to ask for help…dreads bothering people who haven’t heard from him in months or even years….dreads not knowing what to say and fearing he will owe them something in return for their trouble.

So, why do people dread networking, in particular the friend I am describing? Because it is unfamiliar territory, a behavior that is not practiced, and asking for help feels extremely awkward when you feel like that is all you are doing, since you don’t fully grasp that networking is a give and take situation.

Back to Gina. Interestingly, Gina IS a good in-person networker, no matter what she claims. Perhaps not as comfortable as she is with the online method she gravitates to so easily and naturally as a way of building her business, however, her day care business of 20 years demanded she interact with people on a daily basis who were either using her services, or interested in buying them. Gina had to speak with people face to face from the very inception of her business since without people entrusting their children to her care, she would have had no clients, no pipeline of clients, no referrals, and well, no 20 year business.

The fact that Gina has discovered a whole new world where she can meet hundreds, if not thousands, of people with a mere click of a button who might be potential clients or serve as resources to building her business is great. However, as her coach, I am still challenging her to mix the old with the new.

Hence, the latest “action item” assigned by me involved challenging Gina to reach out to 3 professionals within her field and schedule phone calls (these people are perfect strangers but she has identified them via the Internet). Instead of just “chatting” with them virtually, I wanted to “raise the bar” in terms of her networking behaviors and challenge her to have a voice to voice exchange to see what she might learn.

Gina has already completed one meeting, and what made the meeting so successful were the networking behaviors she employed. Gina successfully:

1. Identified individuals on the web who might share their learning experiences as professional writers and perhaps even have some work to pass along to her.
2. Acted as a resource for this individual, sharing her growing wealth of knowledge and expertise in the social media arena, helping this person become more familiar with Twitter in particular.
3. Gained vital information from someone in her field who has been making a living as a writer for years, thus gathering information that will help Gina make her own business more successful.

Networking, while it may never be wholly comfortable for someone like Gina (and it certainly might be something my friend forever avoids) is so critical to your career that if you don’t have a network you better get one, because you’re gonna need it.

In fact, networking can actually be fun, whether you enjoy the enormity of working your way around the world wide web or you feel more at ease establishing valuable, face-to-face relationships.

Check back for more tips on networking and if you want to learn more about the value of networking online and how it can help you meet your career goals, check out Gina’s latest article on Twitter: http://womeninbiz.sbresources.com/blog/blogpost.cfm?threadid=91&catid=12

And get to WORK! :)

Career Toolkit: The Resume

Step 1: Send resume to employer.
Step 2: Hear back from employer.
Step 3: Get interview.
Step 4: Get job offer.

If only it were this simple! While the resume is the universal calling card to finding a job, when it comes to job hunting (and I say this over and over again to my clients!) it is just ONE tool you utilize to get a job or change careers. What are the most important things a resume should have? In one word: results.

Capturing the results of your good work demonstrates that you have contributed not only to your own professional development, but you have contributed to making your employers successful. This is what potential employers want to see on paper, and hear from you during interviews. In other words, they want to hear what you can do for them.

If you shrink from your resume, wonder what it says about you, or have a suspicion that your resume could do a much better job of representing you, you are not alone. I encourage you to take the first step and shake the dust off your resume and take a good hard look. Need help?

We have special pricing for a one time coaching session through August 31st where you can get professional guidance on your resume! Contact us at info@traversesolutions.com for more details!