From Design to Start-up

From Design to Start-up Success Story > From: Freelance To: Startup From Design to Start-up “I spent the week after I found out I was expecting my first child working till 1 a.m. every day on a pitch that went nowhere.” * From Design to Start-up Enelia Faithful felt underpaid and unappreciated, but it wasn't until work stopped her enjoying a precious life event that she realised something had to change. Now, she's created a career where she calls the shots, knows her own value, and has the balance she craved. Here's how she did it. Enelia Faithful felt underpaid and unappreciated, but it wasn't until work stopped her enjoying a precious life event that she realised something had to change. Now, she's created a career where she calls the shots, knows her own value, and has the balance she craved. Here's how she did it. What work were you doing previously? I was working as a designer at a digital advertising agency. What are you doing now? Running my own branding and digital strategy studio, Abacus Finch. Why did you change? I'd been freelancing since I started my career. I was tired of the long hours, low pay, and my work being unappreciated. When was the moment you decided to make the change? I spent the week after I found out I was expecting my first child working till 1 a.m. every day on a pitch that went nowhere. That was when I decided that something had to change. Are you happy with the change? Absolutely. I will never regret being able to spend more time with my child, husband, and dog. What do you miss and what don't you miss? I miss having other people to wrangle the clients and manage the projects. I don't miss the inherent BS that comes with the advertising territory. How did you go about making the shift? I had several projects lined up that would cover my expenses for several months. I quit when I was seven months pregnant in order to be able to work on those projects and get into the groove of my business before giving birth. I emailed everyone on my contact list letting them know I was available to work on projects, and the work hasn't stopped coming in in the last two years. What didn't go well? What 'wrong turns' did you take? I miscalculated just how much effort caring for a baby and trying to run your own business takes. I also failed to land a particular project because I did not present my skills with confidence. That one still stings since I came highly recommended to them by one of my current clients. How did you handle your finances to make your change possible? Our family's spending habits didn't really change since we were already very frugal. However, we did pay off our car with some of our savings to eliminate that monthly payment. What was the most difficult thing about changing? The loneliness of being a mother working from home. Mothers who stay at home with their children usually have the opportunity to go out and meet others. I used the time that I would have spent connecting with other people working instead. What help did you get? I've had interns to help with small tasks and we have a person come to help clean the house every now and then. What have you learnt in the process? I had to learn to set myself apart from the competition by showing my true value. Sometimes this might turn off certain clients because they don’t want to pay my prices, but that's okay. If they don’t think I'm worth it after seeing how I've differentiated myself, and what I can do, then they aren't the clients I want to work with. What do you wish you'd done differently? I wish I were better at selling myself and my services. I'm a work in progress, and trying to get better at it every day. What would you advise others to do in the same situation? I would say to take every rejection as a learning opportunity. Assess the situation, determine what went wrong, and fix it for next time. What resources would you recommend to others? I recommend the book ReWork: Change The Way You Work Forever (by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, founders of 37signals) to all my friends who run their own businesses. It really helped me change my views on the typical 9â€"5 schedule. To find out more about Enelia's business, visit www.abacusfinch.com What lessons could you take from Enelia's story to use in your own career change? Let us know in the comments below.

Shut Up! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Shut Up! - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career I wish there were a better way to say this, but you have got to stop talking all the time. You know who you are. You’re the one who can answer a three word question like, “How are you?” with an essay longer than the Gettysburg address. You’re the one who takes the floor in a meeting and wipes it clean with the rest of us because you suck all the oxygen out of the room. It’s you â€" the person who is supposed to give your expert input on one aspect of the topic and you proceed to insert yourself into every other item on the agenda. Take a breath for goodness sake. Have you been practicing underwater? You must have the world record! You put everything good about your personal brand at risk, when you run off at the mouth. Sound bites, please First of all: we can only take in 30 seconds of information at one time. After that our brains explode with chemicals, trying to fasten all your incoming bits onto what’s already stored. Give us time to associate, store and refresh the screen, will ya? Second: what if you are wrong? It’s one thing to weigh in with bad information. We forgive you. It’s another thing when you’re a wave machine of misunderstanding, mistaken judgments, and malodorous opinions. You present us with a “now what?” problem, because in order to go on and be productive â€" we have to point out that you are wrong. Awkward. Third: this is a conversation. A meeting. A phone call. That means more than one person is supposed to be speaking. If you want to deliver monologues, get yourself a one-person show and take it off Broadway (or at least off the premises). Why the useless chatter? Why the recitation of minute detail? Why the deep dive into arcane facts and endless asides like you’re a tour guide and we’re seeing the Titanic for the first time? The feeling of drowning or at least being set adrift in a sea of words is deadly to your reputation, relationships and career. Even if you are the smartest person in the room, consider its a hostile act to dominate others with your words. Of late, something has happened with live interactions. I go to more and more meetings with people who have stored up and spew forth all the words they can’t fit into their tweets. Or is it the reality television effect, where we see boring people who lead meaningless lives being given the spotlight? Lamar Odom’s biggest complaint about Khloe Kardashian is that she never stops talking â€" and she got a show! So, think before you speak. Spare us the detail. Cut to the chase. Give us the headlines. Wait to see if you get the “tell me more” signals before you tell us more. And, I don’t really mean you â€" not only you. We are all guilty of this from time to time. And, like bad breath, it’s really hard for other people to tell us were offensive. So, consider this a public service message. Now think how easy it will be to hit the “Like” or one of the “share” buttons, and put someone on notice that you’d love to say: shut up! Author: Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers. Read more at NanceRosenBlog. Twitter name: nancerosen

25 Easy Blog Ideas - Classy Career Girl

25 Easy Blog Ideas We have now been writing on this very site you are reading for 6 years and we have over 1,200 articles! We are growing like crazy so  I wanted to answer a question I get a lot about how I come up with blog ideas.  We are currently publishing three articles per day (and that will be increasing even more shortly) so I have learned A LOT when it comes to brainstorming and what types of content to put on this site. Heres What I Have Learned About Blogging What I have learned is that the very best blog ideas are when  I share something from the heart. Something that truly helps others in their career, business or life.  One of the most important keys is to not worry so much about if people will like the article or if it fits in your scope of content. We have  all sorts of content here and each article adds a little piece to our history. There is no right or wrong article. Once article will fit one person and another will fit the next. We have a handy search box on our homepage and on the sidebar so anyone can search for exactly the type of content you want.  This is so important because it held me back for years. I finally got over it over the last year. You see I was scared to write about certain topics because half of my market wouldnt be interested.  For example, I was scared to write about growing a business because half of my market was job searching. I was scared to write about becoming a working mom because half of my market didnt have kids. But, you know what.not everyone will read every article every single day anyways. Writing about all sorts of topics over the last few months has allowed me to see what types of content works and what doesnt. What gets the most page views and what is a major flop.  Its allowed me to push the publish button on multiple articles and not worry about whether or not just one will do OK. My Blogging Advice To You So, heres my advice to you. Look at what does the best in google analytics  but stop thinking about what you should write about so much and just start writing it. Done is better than perfect. Dont waste your time. We have been going back to our previous blog posts from 2010 lately and updating them. They arent very pretty and there are a ton of spelling and grammar mistakes. But you know what, if I never started writing my first post in March 2010, I would be able to write this post in Feb 2016. If you think so hard about what article you should write for an entire week, you could have written at least 7 daily articles instead. Publish now. Start now. Hitting the publish button now even if it isnt perfect will help someone. Dont you want the possibility of your blog article helping someone TODAY rather than sitting in your drafts? People are waiting for you to publish! Dont know what to write about? Here are 25 easy blog ideas: Blog Title Templates 1. Five things you didnt know about _____. 2. 10 quick tips for _____ 3. If I had known then what I know now about ______. 4. Five best sites on _____. 5. The difference between _____ and _____. 6. A review of _____. 7. An interview with___. 8. Five must read books on___. 9. Seven ways to make your _____ better. 10. Four steps to a perfect____. [RELATED: Start a Blog in 5 Easy Steps] Types of Blog Content: 11. Video 12. Audio 13. Interview 14. A collection of resources or links 15. Advice 16. List post 17. Answer a reader’s question 18. Take a news article and write your opinion 19. Call your readers to action â€" voting, donating, buying or writing a comment. 20. A review of something you purchased or were given. Solve Problems 21.  Solve your own problems. People love hearing about your experiences. Challenge yourself to something and ask your readers to hold you accountable. 22.    Ask readers for questions or look for problems and questions on other sites and on Google. 23.  Ask people social media to gather questions. 24.  Give a survey and ask for their issues and frustrations. Then, answer them on the blog. 25.    Ask friends or family what they are struggling with. Give yourself permission to blog. Theres no right or wrong topic so generate as many blog ideas as possible. Theres no rules for how much or little you should blog. Just do what is best for you.

The Art and Science of the Face-to-Face Interview - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

The Art and Science of the Face-to-Face Interview - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Consider yourself very lucky for being considered for a face-to-face interview. It just means that you survived the first phase of the competition; your résumé projected you as someone deserving of further exploration; and you outshone the vast majority of your competition. The most critical test, however, is still ahead of you. You are at this point electrified, thrilled, and exuberant, but if you don’t convince the interviewer(s) that you’re the ideal candidate, then the offer goes to someone else and you’ll feel defeated, deflated, and depressed. That’s why an understanding of the dynamics that get played out during the interview could potentially tilt the decision in your favor. So, what is it that drives the interviewâ€"from the interviewer’s perspective? A large survey that was conducted among hiring managers, human resources people, and recruiters shockingly revealed that 100 percent of interviewers are looking for “fit with their culture,” and about 82 percent are looking for “passion and excitement.” All the rest of the questions scored below the 40th percentile. So, from that survey, we’ve learned decisively how interview decisions are being made. And now you can prepare because no longer is the interview a pure guessing game. Of course, it’s impossible to predict the interviewer’s questions, but it’s reasonable to expect that the conversation will focus on job duties and responsibilities as well as the pertinent skills, experience level, and personality traits preferred for the job. So, then, how do we correlate that focus on “fit with their culture”? The answer comes from (1) the candidate’s ability to sleuth into the company via internal connections, which can be acquired via LinkedIn connections, and (2) by thoroughly researching the company not only for hard facts but also for information in articles about the company or communications written by insiders. Another subjective side of the “fit” factor involves things you’ll never find in print. For example, does this company embrace diversity? Is age discrimination evident? For example, many start-ups hire primarily young people, expecting to pay them less than they’d have to pay very experienced people. Is gender discrimination evident? Certain industries hire primarily women, and others, primarily menâ€"for example, firefighters and airline pilots. As mentioned earlier, “passion and excitement” are critical. The interviewee must see himself as an actor onstage. I know this is difficult for some, especially when they’re tense and under pressure. A good way to show the passion and excitement interviewers seek is in your answer to the question, Why do you want to work for us? If your body language does not show the appropriate level of excitement, then your words by themselves will not be convincing. In this particular case, as well as in the general preparation for an interview, practice is a must: that is, lots of practice, and preferably with someone who can critique you honestly and guide you toward excellence in interview skills.

Assistant Resume: The Basic Ideas

Assistant Resume: The Basic IdeasAn assistant resume will help you in preparing your professional as well as personal applications. The assistant resume is very similar to a cover letter, but it has more to do with it. It helps in preparing your applications. So, if you are planning to get an assistant job then it will be very beneficial for you.In order to prepare an assistant resume for a professional career, you need to learn the basic ideas and principles of preparing a cover letter and a resume. You also need to know the process of filing and the writing and format of these letters. There are also many other ways of preparing such resumes and they are simple and easy to do. We will discuss these ideas below.Before you start the process of preparing an assistant resume for a professional career, you need to have some knowledge about these topics. For the process of preparation, it is important to know all the details about the work that you are going to apply for. The application form of a professional career can be done by filling up the appropriate forms.These forms are for different kinds of applications. They help to determine the essential information about the job application. In order to prepare an assistant resume for a professional career, you need to know the type of application. This includes the role that is needed, how much time the applicant is required to spend in order to prepare the applications and any other information.If you want to prepare an assistant resume for a professional career, you need to know the basics of the application form. This can be done through the internet or through the official websites of various companies. The applicants have to fill up the forms according to the needs of the company. The application forms can be very difficult to process, but you can use the online tools to help you.The basic principles of preparing a professional resume can be seen on the official websites of the companies. In fact, they provide online templates which will be very helpful in getting the job of assistant resume. These templates can be very useful for preparing an assistant resume.Once you know the basic ideas about these applications, then it is necessary to start preparing an assistant resume for a professional career. The assistant resume can be easily used to get the career of a professional. You just need to understand the basic concepts about the application forms and you can use these forms to prepare an assistant resume. This is the basic idea of preparing a professional resume.These are some of the basic ideas on how to prepare an assistant resume for a professional career. Nowadays, there are many professionals who are not aware of these ideas. They simply ignore these ideas and plan to do their tasks without using any resources.

3 tips that help when juggling and struggling - Hire Imaging

3 tips that help when juggling and struggling - Hire Imaging I know multitasking’s been considered one of the most desirable talents in the past. I’m not sure I agree, but that’s another blog post. I have to admit I was surprised to read in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that the number of goals a person typically juggles at once is 15! That can’t be good. As I said, I won’t touch the pros and cons with a 10-foot pole right now. I did find some interesting things about dealing with the stress or mental clutter that comes with daily multitasking and demands. Whether you’ve got job-search balls in the air, or just day-to-day juggling, perhaps these tips will help when you want to scream, “Enough!” I have learned a lot from my clients. I’m still learning. These discoveries came from three of them; names changed of course. And research backs up their stories. How cool is that? Surprise perks with helping others Did you know that if your husband has a stressful day looking for work, doing his job work or doing whatever else he was doing that day, offering support can calm both him and you? Tanya shared this one with me. It was actually something she and her colleagues discovered in neuroscience research at a leading national university. They found that women who held their significant others arm as he got painful electrical shocks experienced a surge of activity in the brain’s pleasure center â€" and reduced activity in the brain area that governs fear. Fascinating! “And a bonus,” she told me, “was that providing support made the women feel closer to their partner.” Peer advice power Todd had an upcoming interview for a job he wanted badly. “This is the one,” he told me. He prepared through coaching and research. He was as ready as he could be. In fact, he was obsessed and ran the risk of over preparing. So, he was pleasantly surprised and delighted when he found an additional and valuable preparation: a strategy to ease his jitters. What? He chatted with a good friend who had just been through a similar interview situation. After Todd shared how much it helped, I was intrigued. I did a little digging and found that researchers at Harvard University found that subjects who were preparing for interviews or peer evaluations of some type, cut errors in predicting their own emotional responses to the event by 63% after hearing how a friend or someone in their social network did. It seems that getting a friend’s insights can help you foresee curveballs, so you’re better prepared when problems do come up. Quick cure for mind mess Brenda was working in a toxic environment where people did not know who was next on the chopping block, or who would offend the decision-makers who quite frankly, were not very nice folks. One day, Brenda was trying to facilitate a leadership meeting, field questions and give a presentation. At one point, the COO made a rude remark to Brenda that made her want to go through the roof. To quit right then and there. Here’s what she did instead. She quietly excused herself, and walked into the next room, a quiet unoccupied office. In about five minutes, she was able to gather her thoughts, compose herself, and return to the original meeting with the COO and others. Again, interesting science base. Researchers at Notre Dame discovered that walking through a doorway made subjects three times less likely to recall memories formed in the room they’d just left. An entryway serves as an event boundary that separates episodes of activity and files them away. They call it the “doorway effe ct”. It gives you a fresh start. We all juggle. What to make for dinner. Car needs fixing. A test. Quality time with family. Work demands. Dirty house. To-dos being pushed to the back burner for too long. It’s good to know that there are things we can catalog away in our brains (or computer / notebook if you have a memory like mine) that can really, truly help us move through whatever life is throwing at us! Photo: nimbu

Limited Shelf life - Is Your Job About to Expire - CareerAlley

Limited Shelf life - Is Your Job About to Expire - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. Have you ever watched someones job unravel and they dont even know they are in trouble? I just watched this happen to someone that works in my company. This particular person started off okay, with good annual reviews. Then his boss left and in a matter of a year or so, he went from having an okay reputation to someone who was viewed as on his way out. Im not sure if his old boss was covering for him or maybe his new boss just did not like him. The really sad part was that he had no clue that every day the front door was one step closer. Not that there was some type of official notice about this guy, you just got the feeling watching from a distance. Long story short, he was shown the front door yesterday. The guy was shocked (as most anyone would be if they had no clue take a look at I lost my job, now what?) and, of course, not prepared. So what are the warning signs? How do you know if you are about to lose your job? I would argue that in most cases (except for down-sizings), the clues are there if you look close enough. What can you do? Suggested Reading:Reset: How to Beat the Job-Loss Blues and Get Ready for Your Next Act How do you know: (but dont be paranoid) Learn The Warning Signs Of Potential Job Loss What are some of the warning signs? This article, posted on Insideoffice.com, provides 7 warning signs that your job is at risk. Some of these you will know (like youre getting negative feedback) and others you might not have thought about (like you resist change). In any event, take a read of these warning signs to see how many apply to you. Most of these are correctable with the right focus. Five signs you may be on the layoff list This article was posted on MarketWatch.com and provides 5 warning signs. Some are obvious and some are not. And some are correctable. The article also includes some tips on keeping your job (like making your self irreplaceable). Each of the warning signs provides a few paragraphs explaining the specific content. How to Keep Your Job: Ten tips that will help you keep your job Okay, so what can you do to keep your job? Lots of things. This article, posted on MSNBC.msn.com, provides ten tips to help you keep your job. I would not have thought of some of them (such as the importance of cubicle etiquette) while other should be common knowledge (like dont take credit for others work). In all, these tips are worth a read and they will help you extend your job shelf life. 57 Ways to Keep Your Job and Excel at the Workplace Okay, maybe ten is not enough. In these competitive times, maybe you need 57 ways to keep your job. If that is the case, this job is for you.This article was posted on Millionaire Money Habits (mmhabits.com) apparently, even millionaires worry about their jobs! This is a really good list of tips and there are too many I really like to point out my favorites. Depending on your individual circumstances, not all of them will be practical for you, but most of them should. Too Late, Ive Lost my Job: Under the best of circumstances, now matter how many tips you may have tried, you still may lose your job. So what do you do next? 15 Things to Do If You Lose Your Job This basic steps in getting yourself on track for finding a new job if you lose your job. The first tip is the most important (Dont Panic). The other tips are also worth a read. Once youve gone over these basic steps, you need to really get down to work (no pun intended), and that work is to look for a new job (which is your new job until you find a paying job). While you are on the site, take a look at the Career Connection tab at the top of the page. There are links for Interviewing, Job Search Tips and Resume Writing. We are always eager to hear from our readers. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions regarding CareerAlley content. Good luck in your search,Joey Google+ Visit Joeys profile on Pinterest Job Search job title, keywords, company, location jobs by What's next? Ready to take action? Choose the right tools to help you build your career. Looking for related topics? Find out how to identify and land your dream job. Subscribe and make meaningful progress on your career. It’s about time you focused on your career. Get Educated Contact Us Advertise Copyright 2020 CareerAlley. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy + Disclosure home popular resources subscribe search