Business On A Shoestring, Part One

When I started Metier Career Coaching, I did so with zero external funding and a few dollars in my pocket that I was willing to risk on this venture. I'm not really a born entrepreneur, if there is such a thing; just a guy who wanted to start a coaching practice and didn't know how to go about doing so. Taking big risks isn't my cup of tea, but I also know that no risk = no payoff, so I've had to become comfortable with a small level of risk. Recently, I've realized there's a term for this approach to entrepreneurship: bootstrapping. Turns out I'm not the only one who's taken this approach, and there's a lot of articles out there on the internet to help bootstrappers. There are books on bootstrapping, networking sites for bootstrappers, blogs on bootstrapping, and resources for bootstrappers out there. Just google "entepreneur bootstrapper" to see what's out there. Gee, wish I'd known about this a year ago! Here are eleven inspirational stories of bootstrappers who made it from Bootstrapme.com to get your creative juices flowing.

In the next entry in this series, I'll do some googling myself and let you know what I found.

Entrepreneurship and Balance

Jeff Cornwall posted an excellent article on his blog "The Entrepreneurial Mind" on the need for a balanced life, and the risk faced by the entrepreneur who gives his/her all to a new business venture. He writes: "...If we are to become all that we were put on this Earth to do, we have to temper the temptation to become consumed by our work..."

Good advice. That's why in coaching client careers I focus on finding balance, and why we'll talk about all areas of your life. A person who knows only one note but plays it well will have a hard time finding harmony in his/her life. You can read Jeff's post by clicking this link.

Vasily

Thanksgiving Day

Here in the Midwestern USA, it's Thanksgiving Day. The first few flakes of snow drifted by my window this morning, the days are getting shorter, and convincing myself that winter is a long way away is becoming increasingly difficult. This is a day of reflection for many of us, to count the blessings in our lives and share time with family or friends.

I'm having dinner in a few hours with several friends. The menu will be Southern USA, Turkey Roulades, Gumbo, Hominy Casserole, Sweet Potato & Rutabaga Casserole, Cabbage Pudding, Bread Pudding with brandy sauce for dessert. I was born in Virginia, and have always had a spiritual connection with the South. This is the time of year when I start feeling homesick for the South, for (as a friend of mine once wrote) "magnolias bleeding their bright seeds into the snow".

I'm grateful for many things: health, meaningful work, the love of friends. Although we celebrate thanskgiving in this country in a special way on this day, for many years I've tried to start my day on awaking with a prayer of gratitude - that I have been given another day, that I be given the grace to Get It Right this time.

May you have a thoughtful and grateful day, whether or not Thanksgiving is part of your traditions!

Baby Boomers & Retirement

I've often said I'm not interested in retirement in the "classic" sense. I have too many plans to think about lazy days of fishing, golf, and volunteer activities. At some point over the past decade I've become enthusiastic about continuing meaningful work well past employment. I still haven't written the Great American Novel or developed my Legacy, and I sure don't want to spend my Golden Years living on Social Security. Plus, I plan on living long enough to start a whole new career ... or two. Here's a great article from Small Business Trends with some great advice for those of us who are approaching "retirement" age.

Facing Up to Failure

There are a number of lists of famous "failures" on the internet, folks in various disciplines who stuck with something until they succeeded. Here's one from the Division of Educational Studies at Emory, University. Back when I was doing a lot of software engineering work, I remember reading that at the time something like 40% of all software projects fail. Improvement in software engineering disciplines has reportedly reduced that failure rate to 15% in recent years, but that still means that more than one project out of every ten software projects started will fail. And some studies continue to report high failure rates for IT projects. In fact, more than one software project out of every ten should fail.

Being able to recognize failure for what it is and accept our own failures means we can learn from our mistakes and oversights, and reduce the chance of their happening in the future. I've sometimes had people who were considering great life changes ask me, "but what if I fail?" One might ask them, what if you don't and you continue down a fruitless path without learning anything or growing from your mistakes? What if you never try and come to regret your fear later in life?

There's a time to be optimistic about our prospects for failure, and a time to be pessimistic. Martin Seligman has pointed out that we don't want the person piloting our airplane to tell herself, "I can have a couple of drinks before I fly ... the likelihood of something bad happening is low." When the cost of failure is high, we want to be careful with the optimism. Two key questions to ask ourselves when making an important life decision (career related or otherwise) are: what would be the cost if I fail? and what will be my regret if I never try?

I suppose another way of putting it would be: take risks, but take them wisely.

The Search For Meaning

In Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl wrote: "Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life." Later, he writes that meaning in life can be discovered in three different ways:

1. Creating something of value or doing something worthwhile (our legacy)
2. Experiencing goodness, truth, beauty etc. or experiencing love for a person
3. Seeing unavoidable suffering as ennobling rather than degrading

This is strong stuff. I first read Frankl in graduate school, and my encounter with him was transformative. His little book was inspired by his experiences in the concentration camp, and the many barbaric and seemingly random experiences he had there. Where, he had to ask himself, is God in all of this? Where is the meaning of it all?

Some of you might be wondering: what does this have to do with one's career? A career can be congruent with our deepest selves, with our identity as human beings and our sense of being called to do something with our lives that makes a difference. Or, it can be something we do just because it's there, or because we've drifted into it.

I've known many people who have said to me that when they go to work it's to make money for the time when they're not at work, or to put money away so they can retire early and do the things they really want to do. They have claimed that their careers don't have to have meaning: making a decent salary in a comfortable environment is enough. Is it?

Suppose one starts work after college at the age of 22, and retires at the age of 66, with three weeks off each year. That's 44 years times 49 weeks per year times 40 hours per week. This person will spend 86,240 hours on the job over the course of his/her career; with overtime, that's over 10 years of his/her life. And it's a substantial fraction of a life to be spent in the hope of better things after the need to work for one's daily bread is done.

Frankl would say, I suspect, that one needs work that meets one or more of the criteria above so that our lives will be filled with meaning. Essayist Frederick Buechner wrote that we're called to the place where our joy and the world's need meet. Finding a career that fills us with joy and creates meaning for ourselves and others is more than a career goal: it's essential to our being human.

Trapped!

Before I changed careers, I spent years feeling trapped by my circumstances. Friends told me: you have a great career, make a lot of money, why the #$*&!! are you thinking of changing careers? My former wife advised me that I needed to be thinking about retirement rather than thinking about starting a new career, and at my age, yet.

The prospect of changing careers was scary: what if I didn't make it? What if I was making a big mistake? I was comfortable, my career was a known quantity, and I was making a comfortable living at it. I felt my expertise was known and respected by my clients. Why rock the boat, and start out new in a career when I could stay where I was and have a warm and fuzzy comfortable life?

Because of passion: I wanted to make a difference in peoples' lives. I wanted to look back at my life from my deathbed and know that what I had done transformed others and helped them find their passion, too. So I did it: quit my job, went back to grad school, got an MA in clinical psych and began work at a counseling agency. It was exciting and terrifying at the same time. The day I sold the house I loved was an important one: it felt like there was no turning back.

Now, I'm working on building my coaching practice. I have a long way to go. But I'm happy: I feel like I'm following my heart, that my work speaks to my authentic self. And that's what really makes a job into a vocation.

Mindfulness and joy

I have been thinking a lot about mindfulness recently: the awareness of now, of the current moment. Most of the time, we sleepwalk through life. How many times have I seen a glorious October go by like the one just past and thought, "My God, when did the leaves fall off the trees?" We're so wrapped up in resenting the past and fearing the future that we forget that this moment - right now - is all we really have: the past is a ghost, and the future a fantasy whether it be fearful or full of promise.

Kids get this, I think. Most of them lack sufficient past experiences to regret them, and anything past the next minute or two is in the far future. I believe the key to true happiness is savoring and appreciating the present moment, and being fully in it. But how, one might ask, does one plan for the future if one is living in the moment? How does one learn from the past?

It's fairly simple in concept, much more difficult in the execution: we learn from the past without being attached to its pain, we plan for the future without being attached to outcomes, whether good or bad. This fills the present moment with the possibility of true joy because the human being who has nothing to lose gains everything.

When you leave the house or work today, look around at the day: there is beauty in the worst weather, and a brightness in the darkest night. Wake in gratitude in the morning, knowing that you've been given a great gift: another day on this great planet, another day to live in its fullness, another opportunity for joy.

WSJ Tips for Online Job Hunting

Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal site posted an article with several good tips for those who are submitting resumes online:

1. Use keywords in your resume. Look for job-related words in the job description that are used two or more times.
2. Position yourself in your resume for future promotions. Include skills that will help you move up the ladder.
3. Catch their attention quickly; if you don't grab them in 30 seconds, your resume will likely be deep sixed.
4. Think career portfolio when you do and post things online; recruiters may google for your name.
5. Improve your chances by contacting and (if possible) getting to know someone in the organization.
6. Holiday lulls are great for job searches; recruiters and employers will have more time for your resume.
7. Be persistent - "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" as the saying goes.

Nothing earth shattering in the article, but some pretty good and solid suggestions.

Get this blog on your cellular phone!

You can now get the Metier Blog on your cell phone - click on the icon in the sidebar and enter your cell phone number. Alternatively, you can enter this URL in your phone's browser:

http://feedm8.com/metiercoaching

Path 101 and the Resume Genome Project

A new startup that's attempting to create a resource that will integrate resume data crawled from around the web with information about the user (personality, etc) with information about the career paths of the people who wrote the resumes (what jobs did they actually hold). They're going to provide APIs (Application Programmer Interfaces) and encourage other sites to link to them. How exactly this will work is rather confusing and unclear at this point to me, but hey, they're a startup.

They're also live blogging their startup efforts in a sort of blog reality show, so whether they succeed or fail at their entrepreneurial efforts, the results will be out there for all to see. I wish them well, and look forward to following their efforts over the coming months.

You can check out their blog here.

Career Forum

I've added a Career Forum to the Metier site; click on the link named "Metier Forum" to visit it. To return back to the Metier home page, click the button labeled "METIER HOME" on the forum page. Feel free to read the messages there, and post a comment or question (you have to create a login to post - this will hopefully reduce the amount of spam I have to deal with).

Free e-book Now Available!

I've completed my e-book - it's a Guide to career transitions for the career changer: new careerist, mid-life changer, and retiree. I originally developed it for a career transition group at a church, and decided to turn it into an "official" Metier e-book. It's absolutely free; download it now by clicking on the Downloads link in the menu!

(note - I ask that you not redistribute this document - if you know someone else who would benefit from this e-book, please refer them to the Metier site)

Careers, Teens, and Young Adults

The Self-Directed Search (see earlier posting) is ideal for the adult career seeker or career changer. For the younger person just entering the job market, or the high school student who is considering college majors, career coaches often use the Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (JVIS). If you are in high school or college or new to the job market, you may want to check out the JVIS web site here. You can take it online and get immediate results for only 14.95USD.

Hottest Careers Through 2014

If you're looking at starting a career or changing to another one, knowing which careers are expected to grow the fastest over the next few years can help you focus your plans for career change. An article on the ten hottest careers at CollegeBoard.com provides some interesting data from government economist; the ten fastest growing careers for college graduates includes several medical and computer-related careers, which is no suprise; but forensic science technician is also on the list. Occupations projected to create the most new jobs in the next seven years are also listed for college grads as well as grads with associate and vocational educations.

Flexible Optimism

A correspondent was intrigued by my statement that Martin Seligman's research suggests that the self-esteem movement is one of the root causes of the drop in the age of onset of depression in industrialized nations that we see today. So I thought I'd expand on this a bit. Seligman attributes the drop to three causes:

1. We worship individualism today, but our grandparents were connected to community, extended families, God. He comments, "Our children have threadbare spiritual furniture to sit on." I believe this leaves younger people with little reserve to rely on when life deals them (as it always will) a major loss or setback.

2. When I was a child, one of my favorite books was "The Little Engine Who Could." Today, teachers and books tell children they should feel good about themselves no matter what. In Authentic Happiness, he comments that children need to fail, to feel sad, anxious and angry: when we build up their self esteem to lessen the blow of their failures, we hinder their ability to develop mastery; and without mastery, they will fail to develop real self esteem which is grounded in a realistic view of their own abilities and limitations.

3. Everyone blames others or society or "fate" for their situations. We are breeding a nation of victims. The negative side of this is a failure to take responsibility for one's own choices and for determining our own outcomes.

Seligman suggests that the pessimist tends to see setbacks as permanent, pervasive, and due to external circumstances rather than one's own choices. The optimist, on the other hand, tends to see setbacks as temporary, localized, and due to their own choices. Pessimists are twice as likely to become depressed, and are more likely to have health and relationship problems. Seligman suggests using the pessimistic viewpoint only when the cost of failure is high, and using the optimistic viewpoint when the cost of failure is low (he calls this Flexible Optimism). That is, whether we avoid connecting with something larger than ourselves, view our abilities and limitations realistically, and take responsibility for our own choices (and hence our own success or failure), is up to us.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? If you'd like to explore your own optimism, you can take an assessment at Martin Seligman's web site (look for "Optimism Test" in the list of questionnaires).

Métier Squidoo Career Change Lens!

I've created a Squidoo lens for Métier; it includes links to recommended books on Amazon, career blog articles from various sources, and other items. It's rather redundant with this site at present, but it's a start. I plan on adding additional book recommendations and other content over time.

The Self-Directed Search

The SDS is a career interest inventory developed by Dr. John Holland, whose career theory is widely used by career counselors and coaches around the world for working with clients who are pursuing career changes. People can be categorized with respect to six career types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. These types are often represented as the vertices of a hexagon, and the theory says that most people have a strength in one of these areas, with secondary strengths in adjoining vertices on the hexagon. For example, I'm an IAS. The data collected from the SDS over the years suggests that people with a certain SDS three-letter code are more likely to be happy working in certain careers than in others. Your SDS report will suggest careers that you may want to consider. Note that the SDS doesn't indicate a natural aptitude for a certain career, or the possession of the skills needed to be successful in the career; it will however tell you whether a person like yourself is likely to be happy with the career in question.

You can take the SDS at this web site for only 9.95USD; the website also has a sample report so you can see what you're getting into before you pay for the report. Once you've identified careers you're interested in, you can investigate them further at the O*Net website at this link. Good luck with your search!

Too Old For A Career Change?

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks!"

We've heard many messages in our lives that can make change difficult in the second halves of our lives. I've known people in their 30s who were already planning for retirement, which for many means endless rounds of golf, and a couple of cocktails before hitting the Early Bird Special at the local restaurant. Retirement becomes a kind of second adolescence: no kids, no job, no responsibilities. And yet, plenty of people choose to start a new career relatively late in life. Personally, I have a lot of energy, and the thought of "classical" retirement holds little appeal. I want to do meaningful work until I drop. When my paternal grandfather retired from his job as a machinist, he spent the last years of his life parked in front of the television. No hobbies, no meaningful activities. Sorry, that's not my cup of tea.

So, you're 50, or maybe 60, and for whatever reason you decide to start a second (or third) career. How do you keep going knowing that you probably have fewer years of life left in you than you've already lived? I don't know how it works for others but for me, I find it useful to live each day of my life as though it were the last ... and paradoxically, to also live as though I had all the time in the world ahead of me! I might drop dead tomorrow, but so what? The 25 year old next to me at work might die suddenly tonight, and I might outlive him!

Years ago, my sister was dying and my family was trying to avoid talking about the inevitable. One day, she looked up at me and asked if I thought she was dying. To comfort her, I told her that each day was a gift, and none of us knew how many days we had left. I could get hit by a car on my way out of the hospital and she could outlive me. So we need to appreciate each day we are given on its own terms. Since them, I've come to understand that this is among other things true, and that the life lived in fear is not worth living.

Do you look forward to each day as though it were a great gift, and truly enjoy it for what it is rather than for what it isn't?

The Depression Epidemic

Martin Seligman's research suggests depression is ten times more prevalent than it was for our grandparents, and the average age for onset of depression in developed nations has droppped from 29.5 to 14 years old. He attributes this to our individualism and lack of connection to real community, the self-esteem movement, and a growing sense of individualism in modern culture.

At a farewell party for a faculty member at the University of Virginia years ago, the wife of the departing professor broke down in tears and said, "I'm tired of moving from one place to another every few years, and having to make another set of friends." I've often heard people since speak of their weak social networks, their sense of isolation, and the difficulty they had connecting with other people.

And yet, our isolation is by choice: it sometimes seems we value our careers and our "advancement" more than we do our connections with other people. In the 1830s, Alexis de Toqueville commented in "Democracy in America" that people in the New World would finish building a house, then immediately start looking for the next place they were going to move. Rugged individualism has always been an important part of who we are in the USA. But I have to wonder what kind of price we've paid for this aspect of our modern lives.

Seligman's research suggests to me that the antidote for the depression that is so prevalent today must include a reconnection to real community and taking responsibility for our own successes and failures. I truly believe that there is an opportunity for us in every setback we face, and that a joyful life is possible for anyone if he/she chooses to pursue it ... even in the face of failure and loss.

Creating a Goal-Oriented Life

Over 20 years ago, i was drifting in my career, dissatisfied but I wasn't really sure where I wanted to go ... or what I needed to do to get there. I knew I wanted a change, but when I considered making that change, the scope and difficulty seemed overwhelming. Sometimes it's easier to measure our lives out in coffee spoons, as T. S. Eliot once wrote. A counselor I was seeing at the time suggested I set goals for myself for the next six months, the next year year, and the next five years, and periodically review and update my goals.

I decided to write out my goals. Most of my dissatisfaction centered around my current job, but there were other areas of my life that needed balancing: Spirituality, health, and relationships in particular. So I wrote down goals for those areas of my life, too. I found it easiest to think about five years from now, and develop long term goals in these life areas; then, I asked myself, what is doable in the next year? In the next six months? I placed the sheet with my goals in a back section of my DayTimer, and added a weekly "tickler" to work toward my short term goals. Each week, I determined I would do a little work toward the six month goals, and review my goal list every six months. Over the years, this simple discipline has helped me navigate several major life changes, including a radical career change.

It's worked reasonably well for me ... accountability has been a problem, however; if career coaching had been available at the time, engaging a career coach would have helped me stay focused on my goals and provided a framework of accountability to keep me motivated to do the work I needed to do to achieve my goals.

If you use DayTimer or DayRunner products, they come with suggestions for using these products in an optimal way to manage your time and your goals. Why not start work on your goals for the next year today?

The Roots of True Happiness

We sometimes say to ourselves or to those close to us, "If only X would happen, I'd be happy." But often X arrives, leaving us disappointed when true happiness continues to elude us. Positive psychologist Martin Seligman has been studying the sources of authentic happiness for years. His studies have shown that many of the aspects of life traditionally associated with happiness really have little long term impact on life satisfaction and true happiness; for example, climate, education, money, age, health, and negative events have little impact on happiness. Marriage, spiritual practices, and social life have a somewhat greater impact.

It turns out that our happiness is shaped primarily by the following three factors in our lives:
-- Satisfaction with the past, as shown by gratitude and forgiveness
-- Optimism about the future and hope about future outcomes
-- Contentedness in the present, experiencing meaning and purpose in life

These findings suggest that if we desire true happiness, we will seek to make peace with the past and appreciate what we have been given; work at looking forward to what is coming with excitement and hope rather than dread; and find contentedness and purpose in our present lives through the pursuit of meaning and purpose. A tall order? Perhaps ... but I think it's a journey worth pursuing.