Remember Your Strengths

Hi ladies,

I hope you had a good week and weekend.

I've been trying to take advantage of my transition time to pick up some new skills and in forcing myself to sit through some digital marketing classes, had an epipheny.

Yes, it's good to have a broad skillset and learning is always an advantage, but we need to remember that everyone can't be good at everything. Knowing more is good but knowing what your strengths are, and where your contribution will be most effective, is even more important. And it's critical that as we transition and have our moments of despair, we not forget this.

I was reading Megyn Kelly's book Settle More. (You can read my brief review here.) I of course knew who she was, but hadn't realized that she was a successful attorney before she gave it up and started over as a journalist. And she was not born into money so she did this all on her own merits and through lots of hard work and perseverance.

Megyn realized that her law experience could translate to her dream—journalism—and that the strengths that allowed her to excel in one would help her succeed in the second.

This is inspiring for two reasons:
  1. It is possible to transition mid career or higher and make a success of it and there are so many more women who have done this than we realize.
  2. All the time and effort you put into your original career or job are not lost, but can be useful in your new career and its success.
And this all brings us back to spending the mental time in figuring out what our strengths are and what we really want in our new career.

More food for thought for next week's discussion and I look forward to seeing you all there.

Until next time.

How to Figure Out What's Next

Hi ladies,

I hope you all had a good week.

I had originally planned on writing about a different topic, but then something serendipitous happened. Since I hadn't finished the business book I had started, I didn't have a new post for my other blog and therefore had to access the few drafts I had previously written and not posted. Funny enough, the oldest one was about figuring out how to figure out what was next during your career transition. You can read it in its entirety here.

Regardless of when I originally wrote this and why, it speaks to me a lot more now then it did then. In rereading this post, which I hadn't touched since November of last year, three things jumped out at me:
  1. Looking back to what you enjoyed as a way to figure out your path forward.
  2. Considering the things friends and family naturally come to you for as indication of what your purpose is.
  3. And really digging into your essence even if the package may not be practical.
Since we're all transitioning, I think these questions—and perhaps this book—are things worth considering. And don't we all aspire to do the thing we enjoy and are naturally good at? 

What other questions do you ask yourself to help you forward during this time? 

Please share your thoughts either here or in our Facebook group and I look forward to discussing all this during our next meetup.

Until next time.

Your One Word as Transition Guide

Happy Sunday, ladies,

My aim is to try and blog once a week and I figured Sunday evening is practical for several reasons, and one is because it's a good time to look back at the previous week and look forward and plan the coming week.

One of the great wins this past week was finishing reading Evan Carmichael's Your One Word: The Powerful Secret to Creating a Business and Life That Matter. The reason this was a win, besides that I finished another book, is what it taught me: that my one word is #Build.

You can read more about what that means to me and how I got to that conclusion at my other blog, but I wanted to bring it up here since figuring out my one word was an especially valuable experience because I'm in transition. Knowing that my value is #Build means that any job offer or opportunity that does not allow me to #Build—whether solutions, connections, or opportunity—is one I should walk away from.

That is the strength of knowing your one word: it is your core value, both what you consider important and what you have to offer, and is your compass. It can help guide you in making tough decisions in life, and especially when going through a transition as we all are.

I recommend you all pick up his book, if you can, but if you can't, I'm sharing the key questions below that Evan offers to help get to your one word.
  1. What makes you happy? 
  2. What connects your happiness? 
  3. What trait do you hate? 
  4. What's your constant? 
  5. Is this really who you are? 
For those who will be attending our February meetup, I'll be discussing this further at that time. For those who can't, please post your thoughts and one words as you discover them, either here or in our Facebook group.

Until next time!

Takeaways from our first Women Career Changers meetup

Hi ladies,

First of all, thank you to those who joined us for our first meetup last night. And thank you to Ellen Afromsky for hosting us and Susan Danziger for being such a great and motivating guest speaker.

For those who couldn't join us, and to help those who did remember the key takeaways, below is a summary of the lessons Susan shared:
  1. Life is always about change so don't wait to be out of work to be open to new people and ideas.
  2. Make it a habit to connect to new people every day. Susan connects to 30 new people a day, but whatever number you choose, make this a priority and break it down between morning, afternoon, and evening. "Connects" can be responses to previous emails, a new message/email, or everyone you spoke to or invited to an event. This will make sure that you're always meeting new people and open to new ideas (see lesson 1).
  3. Have an online brand and include content you generate as part of this. Whether this is a blog or tweets, you want someone to be able to find you—and relevant and professional things about you—when they Google you.
  4. Know what you're worth and say no to the clients or offers that don't respect that.
  5. Don't chase the clients/jobs that don't get what you have to offer; wait for the ones who do.
  6. And if you need a new experience to get the next job/client/opportunity, don't wait or ask for permission: just do it. Either start your own project to demonstrate you've got the required skills or volunteer with an existing company to get them.
For those who attended, did I miss a key takeaway? And please share how you apply any of these. 

Until next time!

Welcome

Hello, ladies, and welcome.

Kat and I are thrilled to have all of you join us and we look forward to meeting you at upcoming events and both learning from and helping each other along our career changing journey.

If you haven't already joined our meetup group please do so since that's where all events will be posted.

Enjoy your weekend and stay warm,
Karina and Kat