Tips from Our Expert Panel

Happy Sunday, ladies,

I hope you've all remembered to set your clocks one hour forward, although ironically our weather is feeling anything but spring-like.

And it was great seeing those of you who could make it to our Wednesday expert panel. I've messaged everyone our panelists' contact info and also posted it on the meetup page and our Facebook group.

They were kind enough to share three tips for those of you who could not join us, and I've also shared one memorable takeaway per panelist (see below).

Avery's Tips

• Give yourself room to unplug from your previous job, get quiet, and begin to listen to what you really want.
• Work with a coach for structure, accountability, a conclusive direction, and to accelerate your journey.
• See this process as part of your growth and cherish it. You are moving toward the best version of yourself. Believe that what you desire is possible and take small steps every day, and you will soon see results. 

Patty's Tips

• Fear is there to protect you. It doesn't care if you have a meaningful life. When you feel it, ask "What are you protecting me from? Are you helping me in my mission?"
• Don't make stuff up to worry about. Life is too short to have imaginary, vicarious, outdated or irrelevant fears. Let them go.
• Question your gut. If it sounds like my Chinese mother, it's fear talking, not your true self. Thank your fear, then put yourself in charge.

Kelly's Tips

• Life is short. Always remember you can be, do and have whatever it is that you want in life, if you are willing to work hard, be dedicated, be patient and persistent.
• Your mindset is powerful, every situation is not happening to you it is happening FOR you. Ask yourself what is the opportunity in this moment and/or situation? What can I learn from this?
• If you don't ask the answer is always "NO." Always ask for what you want because there is a 50% chance you will get what you are asking for, and keep trying until you get a YES!

My Takeaways

• From Avery: first "flare" to capture all the possibilities than focus based on your north star and values and give yourself time to decide on change.
• From Patty: determine whether you're dealing with fear (real), anxiety (imagination of future), or stress (feeling overwhelmed). Deal with the fear, prioritize to deal with stress, and settle your imagination to deal with anxiety.
• From Kelly: find balance with a power hour that's all about you and keep believing.

Lot's of great food for thought and for those who attended, would love to hear what resonated with you.

Until next time,
Karina

Network with Purpose

Happy Sunday ladies,

I hope you all got to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend.

Today I want to touch on a topic we know is super important but may also be super intimidating to many of us: networking. As we spoke of at our last meetup, attending our group is many of your first step to networking more, since you know how important it is. And to be honest, that's in part why Kat and I started the group too: to make it easier for us to network with others going through what we are.

I had the opportunity to listen to Kelly Hoey, author of Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships in a Hyper-Connected World, speak at a Women's Media Group event. (You can read my brief review of her book here.)

Kelly started out as a lawyer, then moved over to the training/development side of the business, where she had to become a networking guru to reconnect with alumni of her company. She became involved with a women's networking group that was then called 85Broads (it's now called Ellevate), ended up becoming their president, and then moved on from there to becoming a startup investor and accelerator founder. Each of her moves was done with the help of her network and via targeted outreach.

The six major takeaways I took from Kelly's talk and book are:

1. Networking should be targeted to be effective—know why you are attending any event and/or reaching out to any person so you can help them help you;
2. Every interaction we do is networking—all our social media, our email signature, our voice mail message, and any time we connect or respond to someone;
3. If you don't have a personal email signature (which I didn't until after listening to her speak), then create one now;
4. Always follow-through on any new connection you make, and this does not mean just the day after, but a few week's later too so that you're top of mind;
5. It's no longer about who you know but who knows what you know, so make sure you get content and ideas out there;
6. Don't wait until you need a job to network—always be connecting and paying forward.

Kelly was really inspirational, as was her book, and her lessons are really timely given our career change journeys. So let's think of ways we can be more thoughtful in our networking and targeted in our outreach, and how we can help each other as well.

Until next time,

Karina

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!