Are you creative?

I’m working on a business plan.  I know what I want to do, and I have a pretty good idea of how I want to do it.  I don’t know what I want to call it.

My goal is to help moms understand where the food they buy for their families comes from.

I want to help address some misconceptions in agriculture.  I want to help busy moms understand how food gets from the farms to their families.  I want to explain the procedures used in raising animals and crops for our food.  I want to talk about why things are done the way they are – with both the emotion and the science behind it.

What would you call this business?

Chime in with your suggestions.  I’ve got a Starbucks gift card to give away to my favorite name!

I’ll take suggestions until Sunday (November 14) at 10:00pm Central time.  I’ll pick my favorite, and post the gift card winner at 8:00pm Central time on Monday.

Give me as many options as you want…  No limits!

Miller Mondays: Nontraditional Work

Welcome back to Miller Mondays!  In this, the last section of 48 Days to the Work You Love, Dan talks about going into “nontraditional work” – not being a “regular” employee, but rather finding something creative to do with your time and your life, while still making an income!!

Our take home points today are:

1.  There are mountains of choices in the work environment today.  Sometimes the best options are just a small shift from what you are already doing.

2.  Focus on results, not time – this will open up new opportunities!

3.  You don’t have to change who you are to start your own business.  Incorporate your skills and abilities, personality traits, and values, dreams and passions into your new creative endeavor!

There are some basic questions to ask yourself to see if you have “what it takes” to do something on your own.  Dan goes into more details on all these in the book, but here’s the quick-and-dirty questions.  The more questions you can answer “yes” to, the better suited you are to running your own enterprise. 

1. Are you a self-starter?
2. Do you get along with different kinds of people?
3. Do you have a positive outlook?
4. Are you able to make decisions?
5. Are you able to accept responsibility?
6. Do you enjoy competition?
7. Do you have willpower and self-discipline?
8. Do you plan ahead?
9. Can you take advice from others?
10. Are you adaptable to changing conditions?
11. Can you stick with it?
12. Do you have a high level of confidence and belief in what you are doing?
13. Do you enjoy what you are going to do?
14. Can you sell yourself and your ideas?
15. Are you prepared to work long hours?
16. Do you have the physical and emotional energy to run a business?
17. Do you have the support of your family and/or spouse?
18. Are you willing to risk your money in this venture?

Dan tells us that about 60% of American homes are operating a home-based business.  On average, in 2003, home-based businesses generated around $52,000 in income!

Do you have to be so creative that you develop the newer, bigger, better mouse trap?  Absolutely not!
The trick here is to find something you are passionate about, and start running with it.  You don’t have to be completely original – often all you need to do is be 10% better than everyone else who is already doing the same thing!

Take Domino’s pizza for example.  They didn’t come into the pizza market with a better tasting pizza, a better sauce, a cheaper pizza.  All they did was add delivery to an already popular food choice.  Ta da!  How successful have they been?

Do you have an idea for an improvement on an already popular product or service?  Do you have an idea you have been thinking about “maybe doing something with sometime in the future?”  Make your future now! 

Ready, set, go!

Having said that, Dan does recommend what he calls “soft transitions.”  Don’t quit your job today with the thought that tomorrow you will start a webpage and on Wednesday you will be replicating your previous income with your new venture.  Recognize that it may take some time to get the ball rolling here.  Work on your new business idea in your spare time, in the evenings, or on weekends, while still in your “regular” job. 

Set some goals for yourself, and project a timeline.  Set a deadline for yourself – for example, “When my home-based business is creating 50% of my regular income, I will quit my day job and focus full time on my home-based job.”  Then go for it!

Be creative, be insightful.  Good luck, and most importantly, enjoy yourself!

Miller Mondays: Nuts and Bolts, Part 1

Welcome back to Miller Mondays!  We have been discussing material from the book 48 Days to the Work You Love, byDan Miller.

The next section, Nuts and Bolts, deals with writing your resume, identifying the companies you would like to work for, getting and performing on the interview, and negotiating salary.  This section gets into lots of details, so I thought I would break it up into two parts.  This week we'll go over resume writing and a company search.

The main points for this week are:

1.  Having a clear personal understanding and focus is 85% of the process.

2.  The resume is a sales tool for where you are going.

3.  The creative job search strategy is your most powerful tool to get the job you want.

A resume should not be the tool that gets you the job.  Your resume should be the tool that makes the company want to interview you.  The resume is selling you, but is only giving enough information that people want to learn more about you.  The way you structure your resume and the information you choose to include will position you for landing the interviews you want.

This 85% number keeps coming up.  Remember when we said that 85% of the reasons for success were due to personal characteristics and skills?  Remember last week when we worked on identifying these skills?  Now is one of the times when they come into play.

Most resumes only get 30-40 seconds of time.  You need to use yours to make an impression.  A generic objective statement at the top of the page is not the way to do this.  Consider starting your resume with a skills summary.  Transferable skills are the basic units of whatever career you choose.  Transferable skills are learned in one job/career, in one context, but can easily be transferred to another context and even career.  Good with organization?  Have some computer skills?  Learn how to do accounting?  Have you been a teacher or a trainer?  Use these skills to market yourself into the position you want next.
Don't particularly like the careers you have had in the past?  Looking for a change?  What transferable skills have you developed in your previous jobs that can carry over to other career paths?  Be creative here - there is lots of room for change!

Many jobs are never advertised at all.  Any job that is advertised is seen by hundreds of people (possibly tens of thousands if it's posted on the internet).  How can you compete with these numbers?  Did you know that the best jobs often aren't advertised at all?  So how can you go about finding the 87% of jobs that are never advertised?

First, identify 30-40 target companies that you would like to work with.  Use your own criteria.  Close to home, size of company, lots of travel, type of business, etc.

Once you have these companies identified, send a letter of introduction.  This letter should be addressed to a specific person, not just to the Human Resources Department.  Most receptionists will give out the names of the people who do hiring; many times this information can be found on the internet.  Use this letter to introduce yourself and start name recognition.  Tell them that you will be sending a resume in the next few days.

Send a cover letter and resume, addressed to the same person.  Do not end your letter with a generic phrase like, "I am looking forward to hearing from you regarding an opportunity with your company."  Instead, give them a specific date when you will call for a follow-up discussion (4-5 days after sending the resume).  This takes the need for initiative off the company, and places it on you.

Then, don't forget to call!  Call on the day you said you would call.  Remind them that you sent a resume a few days ago.  Tell them that you are very interested in what their company does, and you feel your skills would be an asset.  Ask when you can come in to speak to them.  This step builds on the name recognition we started with the introductory letter, and gives you top-of-mind positioning, compared to the people who simply sent resumes with no follow-up phone call.

According to Dan, if you only send cover letters and resumes, you will need to send out 254 resumes to gave a statistical chance of getting any job offer.  If you add a follow-up phone call to the cover letter and resume, you only need to send 15 resumes to get a job offer.  Remember, your resume is a tool to sell you; the goal of the resume is to get you the interview, not to land you the job.

Next week - preparing for the interview and negotiating salary.

Miller Mondays: Planning my work around the life I want!

Today, our main points are:

1.  The more we know about ourselves, the more confidence we can have about proper direction.

2.  The only way we can handle change is to know what is changeless about ourselves.

3.  A personality profile is important.  Personality profiles look at your behavior, not at your abilities.

Remember when we said in the first Miller Monday section that 85% of the reasons people are considered for advancements and opportunities is because of their personal skills?  85% of the process of having the confidence to find proper direction in your life and work is also because of these personal skills.  Well, now it's time to figure out what those skills are.

Dan begins this section with a series of questions such as:

In what kind of settings are you most comfortable?

How do you respond to management?  How would you manage other people?

Are you better working with people, things, or ideas?

Your answers to these, and other similar questions will help you define the kinds of work that you are best suited for.  Remember, you need to incorporate your skills and abilities, personality tendencies, and values, dreams and passions into the work that fits your life.

While skills and abilities are necessary components to work you love, just because you have the skills to do a particular job, that does not mean that job is the best fit for you.  Skills and abilities can be developed in new areas!

Your personality tendencies should speak louder than your skills and abilities.  Recognizing how you work best (regardless of the task), the environments you are most comfortable in, and how you relate to other people will help you to narrow down your search for the best working situation.  Dan includes a short version of the DISC personality profile to work through.  You choose from lists of personality characteristics that best describe you.  Based on the number of characteristics you choose from each category, you can be fit into one of four primary categories:  Dominance, Influencing, Steadiness, and Compliance.  (I have 13 Dominance characteristics, and 10 Compliance characteristics - these are seemingly opposite styles, so I am not sure what to make of this just yet.)

Finally, review your values, dreams, and passions.  What is enjoyable to you?  If money was not an issue, what would you do for "work?"  When do you find time flying by?  What do you enjoy doing, but have been told that it is impractical for a career?  We are often under the impression that "growing up" means taking a job that pays the bills, but that we don't enjoy.  Dan challenges this paradigm.  What if your dreams and passions could be turned into income?  What do you want people to remember about you when you are gone?

Make lists of your skills and abilities, personality tendencies, and your values, dreams, and passions.  How do they fit together?  Can you see a pattern?  Is there work that comes to mind that would fit all these lists?  Think outside of the box!

Next week, Section 4:  Nuts & Bolts.

Miller Mondays: Is All Change Good?

This has been another frustrating week for me.  I am making progress on my research, but the stuff I'm working on right now is slow, and not a little tedious.  It's difficult to keep in mind that I am actually going forward, just at what feels like a snail's pace.  I sort of feel like I should enjoy this, because I suspect June is going to fly by in no time at all.

Anyway...  Miller Mondays are just what I need to get keep me focused on what I am doing, and to find what I am moving towards.  So, with no further ado...

First and foremost, Dan Miller wrote 48 Days to the Work You Love for people who are not satisfied with their current work situation, whether they do not love what they are currently doing, or recently lost their job and are trying to figure out what they really want to do.  This book is written with the underlying assumption that you already have, or are getting ready to, go through some major changes.

The first section of 48 Days to the Work You Love is focused on helping you identify your strengths, and how you react to change.  The three main points are:

1.  We will all face changes, we have no choice about that.  We do have a choice in how we respond to these changes.

2.  Change will be challenging, whether you expect it to happen or not.  Instead of focusing on what is not the same, look for the new opportunities that have been presented in the change.

3.  We all have obstacles in our lives.  Instead of focusing on your liabilities, focus on your assets, and use these to respond positively to change.

Dan highlights the changing work environment around us.  Up until around the 1980s, the goal of most people was to get a "real" job with a large company, one that included company cars, insurance packages, and 401(k)s.  Now, this is not the case.  In 2005, only 2.6% of the companies in Nashville, Tennessee had more than 99 employees.  Over all, this country is seeing a huge shift from the large company to the small business.  This should also change the way we look to find, and love, our employment.

For many people, the thought of "work" means growing up after playing in college, and entering the "real world."  Dan challenges this view, and wants you to try to find something you truly enjoy doing in life - then structure your work around that.  This thing you enjoy can often be turned into your career - and then aren't we all having fun all the time!

Dan stresses that you need to do some introspection to decide what kind of life you want, and then plan your work around this life.  More time invested in a job does not necessarily equate to more money or more success on that career path.  Rather, if you are doing something you love, you are much more likely to be successful in all areas of your life, including money and career.  Imagine waking up every day and getting to go do something you love, while making money at it!  How many of us have that thought?

Why did you choose your current career/job?  Is it something you really wanted to do, or were you pressured by family, friends, or other circumstances?  At the end of the day, if your career/job does not align with your personal characteristics and beliefs, it is not a good fit for you or for your life.

Dan says (this is one of my favorite things from this section) that "not all change is positive growth, but all positive growth does require change."  He talks about setting "positive goals," and how this often requires that you stop doing something you are already doing, rather than just starting a new behavior.  This was a big one for me.

In general, the reason people are considered for advancements and promotions is 85% attributable to their personal skills (attitude, enthusiasm, communication, etc).  Technical skills and credentials only account for 15%!  What are your characteristics that fall into that 85%, and what can you do to develop them?  Any change should force you to reevaluate what your best options are.  What about your 85% characteristics can you leverage into something favorable from change (positive growth)?

Thinking about what you love, your positive goals, and your 85% characteristics, what can you do today to start on your new beginning?

Next week, Section 2:  What do I want to be when I grow up?