Tag: networking

How to Emulate Successful Entrepreneurs

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Do you ever wonder how an entrepreneur gets so successful? How did they do it? What do they do on an average day? These and other questions can leave you thinking if you’re doing anything right or wrong with your own business. While there may be some mysteries as to how successful entrepreneurs do their work and how they spend their day, there are small ways that you can emulate these successful entrepreneurs. Here are some great tips that successful entrepreneurs do that you can imitate themselves!

Setting realistic goals

Any successful business owner knows that whatever goals that they set for themselves and their business have to be obtainable. Smart and successful owners accept their current position and will go about taking small steps to achieve great things. Maintaining this major focus while going about it slowly is the best way to make your goals far more achievable. Also making small phases for goals such as weekly or quarterly is another great way to create easy and realistic goals that can have a major impact on your business.

Love what you do

Successful entrepreneurs love what they do, their work is their passion. Their work is their passion not because they’re a workaholic, but because they truly enjoy what they’re doing and want to continue moving forward doing it. This element of passion is what sets a person apart. Loving what you do and having a passion for it is going to make your work seem far more excellent and you’ll be less likely to feel any negative feelings such as dread. But having this passion for all of the work that you do will also prevent distractions, so you won’t become side-tracked.

Staying focused

Having a clear vision and staying focused on it is going to be one of the key components to how an entrepreneur gets successful and how they stay so successful. They keep connected to their visions whether it be through writing it down, having a vision board, daily reminders, or possibly other ways to keep connected to how they want their destiny to be. They also know helpful tips to keep their business and private life separate. It’s important to try to avoid any distractions and to keep your eyes on the prize.

Networking with like minded people

You don’t need to try to attempt to network with millionaires or owners of Fortune 500 companies. You instead just need to network and be around like-minded people who want to learn, who aim to be successful, or are staying focused. Networking with like-minded people will help in finding inspiration and accountability. There are plenty of networking events where you can find like-minded people.

Always being open to learning

There’s always time to keep on learning. The passion of always wanting to grow and learn is going to be a major aspect of how your business will expand. This is something that entrepreneurs constantly keep paying attention to. They read through books, attend courses, workshops, go to summits, hire a coach, do a program, visit seminars, or anything else as long as it allows them to further their education. Being open to growing and developing is going to have a major impact on your and your business in the long run. Doing things such as this is going to allow you to give your small business a big presence.

Why Knowledge Is Power AND Money

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People will often tell you that knowledge is power. But that’s only part of the story. It also turns out that it’s money too. 

Just look at how people get wealthy. Usually, it’s because they know something that somebody else doesn’t, and they’re willing to take a punt on it. 

Knowledge is a powerful tool you can use to improve your personal finances and get on the road to success. The more you know, the better you will do – in general. 

Just take a look at how the captains of industry spend their time. Bill Gates is famous for spending upwards of six hours every day just educating himself and getting a feel for a subject. Warren Buffett – a kind of mentor to Gates – will spend over eight hours per day reading through company accounts, trying to figure out whether they offer value. 

You don’t have to take things to those extremes – especially if you have a full-time job. But it can pay off to pay close attention to what these guys are doing. The more you can learn from their approach, the better off you’ll be. 

Consult With Experts

Whether it is selecting winning DFS MLB baseball picks or buying stocks, you should always consult with experts – people who really know what they’re talking about in any given field. Doing this provides you with a kind of shortcut to knowledge that would otherwise take you many months or years. You get sensible answers immediately, without having to spend hours consulting the source material. 

Choosing the right people is also much easier than you might imagine. Just look for individuals with a long and consistent track record of success. That’s usually a good indicator of what they’re capable of achieving in the long-term. 

Read The Undergraduate Textbooks

If you really want to get your head around a subject quickly, don’t fire up Google Scholar and start reading scientific papers. Instead, buy the standard undergraduate textbook on the subject and work from there. Authors will usually arrange topics intuitively so that they make sense to the reader. That way, you can accelerate your learning and achieve competence faster. 

When it comes to money, practically any type of knowledge can create it. You can read about anything, from the optimal way to invest your savings to how to build a rocket ship business. Once you understand the basics, you can use that as a springboard to the next stage. 

Network In The Areas That Interest You

Studying quietly in your office is an excellent way to get your head around abstract ideas. But if it is market insight you’re after, there is no better way of gaining this than networking. Colleagues will be able to tell you what’s hot and what’s not, letting you direct your financial resources more sensibly. Get their view on the way things are heading and how they’d invest their money if they had the capital to do so. Ask them to tell you stories about how they see things unfolding.

Reliable Ways To Find New Work

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When you are on the lookout for work, it can often be a challenging and somewhat stressful time. You need to get hold of a job fast and you don’t quite know where to turn: what can you do? Although this is a tricky situation to be in, many people before you have been in it too, and it is something that you can easily get through as long as you know what to do and how to approach it. In this post, we are going to look at some of the most reliable ways to find new work which you will want to consider trying out. Any of these are likely to help.

Search Job Markets

One of the best ways is to take a look at specific job markets for the kind of industry that you are looking to find work in. These sites work best if you already have a strong idea as to what you hope to do for work. Somewhere like Top Craft Market is always going to be helpful in that regard, and it is worth bookmarking sites like that and going back to them routinely to check whether you can use them for any opportunities. That is something that can make the whole issue of job hunting considerably easier and simpler.

Networking

Although many people baulk at the word, networking is actually a very simple and straightforward thing, and something which you are going to need to do to some degree in your life anyway. In essence, networking is simply the act of meeting as many new people as possible and speaking to them regularly. Then, when you are looking for a new opportunity, you have a lot of people to ask, and they already have a good relationship with you and consider you to be worth taking a risk on. This really does help you in the long run, so it’s a good idea to start networking as soon as possible if you have not already.

Referrals

Probably one of the most exciting ways to get new work is through referrals, which is where someone seeks you out and asks to hire you, and they get a fee for doing so. This is somewhat rare, but when it happens it is very exciting, and it is something that you should make yourself open to. One of the best ways to do that is to put your resume on websites online which act for this purpose, and make it searchable and open to the public. That way, you can make sure that you are more likely to get head-hunted, and that can be an amazing opportunity when it finally comes around.

Any of these are going to be great ways to find work, so make sure that you are considering all of them. As long as you persist, there is no reason why you won’t be able to find new work as and when you need to.

Great Ideas That You Can Bring to the Workplace

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Standing out at work can be a bit of a tough ask for a lot of people. On a previous post on the blog, we talked about ’20 Strengths and Struggles for Introverts in the Workplace’. Workplaces are composed of different types of people, and not everyone can be gregarious or good at networking. However, just because the American workplace might test the strengths of introverts doesn’t mean that introverts can’t be a valuable part of the team.

The great thing about working with different people is that you don’t have to be a ball of energy all the time. In fact, Psychology Today has listed different ways that introverts can excel in the workplace, including sharing knowledge and generating ideas. What matters is what you bring to the table, not how. Here are a few things you can bring up at your next meeting that might make all the difference.

New Ways of Connecting

Introverts are known for finding networking difficult, and in many ways that might be true. Networking can feel transactional, and the pressure of having to make connections with people you may not know or even like could put anyone off. But as an introvert, you can use your experience to bring a new perspective on networking to the table.

Tech executive Karen Wickre, who also self-describes as an introvert, has some tips on how to do just that. Simply shifting your perspective — keeping in “loose touch” with your connections and acting as a “giver,” not a “taker” — can help you feel more comfortable when forging connections. Small interactions over the span of your acquaintance can help you keep your relationship going, while not pushing your energy levels to the limit. And the plus side is, this advice can work for anyone dealing with a large network of people — not just introverts.

New Marketing Strategies

Introverts are creative, which means that they can suggest new ways of approaching the same strategies. Take marketing, for example. Marketing is most effective when it’s about forging close, personal bonds with your customers without overwhelming them — something that introverts know all too well. Each interaction with your customers has to feel unique and meaningful, and the more meaningful the interaction the more effective your campaign.

Take direct mail marketing, as an example. It’s not a constant barrage of mass emails or ads like most digital marketing efforts often turn out to be. Instead, it’s highly personal and an individual campaign that can bring in great returns if you know how to play your cards right. Marketing solutions company Triadex outlines that direct mail marketing is effective because of five reasons: among other things, it’s personal, it’s targeted, and it’s accountable — things introverts are very familiar with.

New Avenues for Communication

Introverts aren’t well known for being comfortable in groups; in fact, the exact opposite is true. Constant meetings and personal check-ins can get grating fast, and might not even be as effective as other people think they are. According to Entrepreneur, there are several ways for an introvert to thrive in a workplace, and all it requires is a little bit of creativity.

Take communication channels, for example. The corporate standard is the meeting, whether one-on-one or with a team. But as introverts know, these meetings can get crowded and confusing, and can take away precious work time. Making use of asynchronous communication methods like Slack and emails can actually help employees work more efficiently, as you can check in without interrupting your work. As working environments change and work-from-home policies become more widespread, these channels might even turn out to be the new norm.

New Plans for the Workplace

As an introvert, you may find that you don’t seem to “fit in” with standard office culture, and that’s fine. Rather than seeing this as a drawback or a flaw, you can actually turn it to your advantage. Having a differing perspective allows you to see the weaknesses of a system that others might be taking for granted.

The Huffington Post claims that open plan offices, one of the biggest fads in workplaces across the world, might not be all that they’re cut out to be. The lack of privacy and constant barrage of noise can make getting work done more difficult than it needs to be. Funnily enough, that’s something every introvert is well acquainted with, and might be a helpful thing to mention at your next office-wide meeting.

Challenging Ways You Could Get Ahead in Your Career

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If you want to get ahead in your career, there are various approaches that you might want to take. When you have a desire to get ahead, you can’t expect that things will be easy. You will often need to push yourself if you want to prove that you’re capable of doing more and going further.

Taking on New Responsibilities

Taking on new responsibilities at work can be a great way of showing that you’re capable of doing more. It could be what you need to do to demonstrate that you’re ready for a promotion or might be how you get yourself noticed, although it won’t necessarily mean being paid more.

Get in with the Right People

Networking with the right people is often essential if you want to get noticed at work. If you’re in the background and no one knows your name, you’re not going to get the attention of the right people. You should spend your time getting to know key people.

Work Overtime

Putting in a couple of extra hours is a good way to get yourself noticed. If you’re paid hourly, it could also mean some handy overtime pay too. However, make sure that any extra hours that you’re putting in aren’t disrupting your life too much.

Working the Night Shift

Working the night shift can also be useful if you want to get ahead at work. It can show that you’re willing to do what it takes to advance your career. It also often means less competition with coworkers.


Infographic Design By Bradley University

Take The Leap! How To Successfully Change Careers

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Stuck in an unfulfilling and uninspiring job? Are you ready to take the leap into a new career journey but don’t know where to start? We’ve compiled a list to help you take some of the anxiety out of starting a-fresh and get you well on the way to successfully changing your career.

Fine-tune your CV

Cover letters are a necessary evil. While they can be tedious and time-consuming to do, they really are the best way for you to showcase your skill-set and sell yourself to your employer. Although it may be tempting to send out a standard blanket text CV, it is something recruiters really dislike and may see your resume heading straight into the recycling bin. Use your professional profile as a way to familiarize yourself with the job description and what the company is looking for in a candidate, then use this information to clearly demonstrate why you have the correct skills and expertise that makes you the best fit for the position.

Back To School.

Heading back to class may be the right decision if you are thinking of making the move into a new industry. While it may seem daunting – especially if you graduated years ago, putting the time in and investing in your career is bound to pay off. It gives the green light to employers, signaling that you have been willing to gain the industry-specific knowledge that you need and that you are taking your transition seriously. Thinking of getting a diploma in Costume Design or itching to tackle an IT apprenticeship? There’s a wide array of choices to be found online and you can choose a course that best suits your lifestyle.

Get Out There And Network

When you’re looking to transition into a new role, it’s sometimes useful to reach out and meet people face-to-face. Networking can seem daunting, but with many of today’s vacancies being exclusively recruited from inside the company first, it may be worthwhile if someone within your industry can put a face to the name. This is also a great opportunity to meet some key-players and schedule informational interviews. These informal interviews are a less-pressurized way to meet those within your industry, learn valuable tidbits and glean some helpful advice from those who are already where you want to be.

Gain Some Experience

Volunteering in your chosen field can be a brilliant way for you to determine if the new career path you’ve chosen is actually right for you. While everything may look good on paper, there’s nothing better than experiencing what a typical day in your new career will look like, in real life. It’s also an organic way to build relationships with other people within your industry circle and make a name for yourself before applying for a full-time job.

Which Career Skills Do You Want To Master?

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When it comes to your career, you’re always going to want to make sure that you’re in control and on the right path. But that’s often so much easier said than done. Because we all often find ourselves just falling onto a life path. You’ll do what others want you to do, you’ll move to where others want you to do, you’ll put others’ needs above your own. And that’s just natural. But, at some point, when you realize that you want to be happy, you know that you need to make your own choices. And this is always the case when it comes to your career. Because it is YOUR career and you deserve to be happy in it! To do that you may want to start working on yourself and the key skills you have to be able to get to where you want to be. But what are they?

Self-Believe & Confidence

So first of all, you may just need confidence. Maybe you have no self-belief? Maybe you feel like an imposter? Then, you need to start believing in yourself. These tips on The Luxurialist may help you to build more confidence in your career. This could be to be able to push yourself and grow in your current career, or to be able to believe that you can change paths and have the career that you’ve always dreamt of.

Writing

When it comes to skills that can help you to develop in your career, writing is a popular skill that many want to work on. Because most jobs require a ton of writing. From emails and reports to analysis and even things like blog posts or social content – there’s a lot of writing that you may do on a daily basis. So, maybe you want to be more eloquent, or be able to develop your written communication methods to strengthen your career prospects.

Public Speaking

From here, you’ve then got public speaking. And we all know that public speaking is one of the aspects of life that most of us hate. Yet you may need to do it in your job at some point. So maybe you want to improve your public speaking skills now, so that you can make use of them later? Because overcoming this issue can help you to progress in your career.

Networking & Communications

Then, you’ve got the idea of getting better at your networking and communication skills. Maybe you want to do trade shows, with Steelhead Productions sets, so that you can grow your business? But you need the skills to actually get the most out of those experiences? Then you need to start talking to people in your industry, and just get comfortable with communicating.

Financial & Analytical

And then there’s the idea of improving your skills and knowledge with money and numbers. This is something that can be largely beneficial to almost anyone – no matter what industry or role you’re in. Because you’re going to deal with numbers at some point. Being able to analyze in the workplace is also so important. Here, teaching yourself about different analytical software is so important. But you could also look to take a course in financials to get a little stronger in this area.

3 Ways To Slay Your Next Interview

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Resumes don’t get you hired, interviews do.

A solid resume is like having a driver’s license. It doesn’t mean you’re a good driver, but it qualifies you to be on the road.

As the traditional resume fades out, the need for strong interview skills becomes even more important.

Here are 3 ways to prepare for your next interview:

1. Do Your Research – This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s not. Viewing the company website, about us page and mission statement is a good place to start, but not enough. Search LinkedIn for current employees from the company, connect and ask them about their experience. While you’re there locate the recruiter posting the position and request a connection to increase your chances of your application being seen. Do informational interviews with workers in similar roles. Look on Glassdoor for company reviews, both pros and cons. Browse their social media presence to observe the culture and what current issues are being discussed. There’s too much public information out there to go into an interview blindly. Finding a role that fits today is as much about the cultural fit as it is about being your “dream job.”

2. Improve Self-Awareness – One question you’re guaranteed to be asked is “Tell me about your strengths” or “What is your greatest weakness?” (sometimes both) This comes down to how well you really know yourself. If you have a hard time answering either of these questions you clearly didn’t do your homework. No matter what role you’re applying for your strengths and weaknesses shouldn’t change. In fact, if you truly want to be remembered illustrate your strengths in a past example then spin your weakness into a strength. If you’re having trouble articulating what you do well take the StrengthsFinder assessment. It will give you 5 things you excel at and their belief is there is no such thing as weaknesses, just overdone strengths. The most successful leaders in any industry are self-aware. Let that marinate in your mind for a second.

3. Lengthen the Conversation – Want to know when your chances of landing the role decrease the most? When your interview ends quickly. The dynamic of a strong interview can be dictated by you the interviewee IF facilitated right. Most applicants focus on answering the questions right, but once you realize it’s a conversation it becomes more about engagement than sheer information. There’s usually a point where the interviewer asks if you have any questions. This is your time to shine. Questions such as, “How did you find this company? What does a successful candidate look like in this role? What’s a great cultural fit here?” takes the focus off you and reveals what they’re truly looking for in a fit. The last position I got hired for included 4 interviews, the first 3 being fairly short (thought I was out of the running), but the final one lasted 90 minutes in which I was offered a contract on the spot. Treat your interviews like grabbing coffee with a friend. The more you have to talk about the less it is about what you say, but how you say it that people remember. Let’s be honest, if the interviewer(s) don’t like you, even if you’re a strong candidate, there’s no way you’re getting hired. Being likable won’t land you a job, but it also can give you a leg up on the competition.

Interviews can be tough, but your mental preparation can make the greatest difference. Like most things in life, practice may not result in perfect, but it sure makes for better. Remember confidence is built over time. Follow the steps above before your next interview and expect the best outcome to happen!

Turning The Page Forward On A New Chapter In Life

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If you were part of a 4 x 100 relay team which leg would you run?

I’d be first out of the gates. I love the start.

When running a relay it’s common sense to not look back or you risk getting passed up.

But how often do we look back on our lives and dwell on mistakes, misfortunes and plain ol’ bad luck?

At a certain point, asking “why” something happened is the wrong question to ask.

Instead turn the page and focus on what’s in front of you.

One of the reasons I chose coaching as a career was because I hired one earlier in life. I loved how my coach worked on my agenda, goals and pace. Experiencing that from the client’s seat made me want to switch chairs so I eventually did.

Coaching is about the future, finding solutions and asking “how.”

Any time making a career transition it’s going to be tough starting over from scratch, but your mentality towards that change will make or break you.

Did you know it takes 200 applications to land a job on average, but only 10 connections via networking to find something new?

That means you have 20x better chance networking than job hunting to start your new career! #stopapplyingstartnetworking

There’s always fear of the unknown, but it’s more invigorating to chase after that shiny object than chase your tail.

Imagine driving on the freeway. How much time is spent looking ahead vs. in the rear view mirror (mostly for cops)? That analogy works for life.

Don’t waste your time looking back when you can be moving forward.

Starting a new chapter in life is about attitude. It’s what you can control 100%.

How Bad Examples Fuel Change

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Every moment is a learning opportunity, even the bad ones..

When I started as an entrepreneur I knew networking was crucial to success so without hesitation I joined my local Chamber of Commerce. The first event I attended was in the patio of a local eatery dressed with free food and drinks.

There were two types of people there: veteran members who stood on the sidelines talking to each and newbies like me introducing myself to anyone who wasn’t in conversation. Reciting an elevator pitch, handing out business cards and trying to sell myself was my approach. I remember it being quite loud there so 50 business cards later I left forgetting who was who and quite hoarse from the night’s interactions. After I got home, decompressed and evaluated the event I questioned the purpose of it.

A month later I figured maybe I just had a bad experience and went to the next event in an office space. Less food, quieter ambiance and more intimate. But the results were the same. As I introduced myself to members, I felt judged. Did I need to earn their respect immediately by telling a recent conquest? It seemed like it would take a while to penetrate the walls of folded arms, so I decided to leave.

I said to myself, “If this is what networking is, I don’t want to do it anymore!”

A few years later I was in a slow season of business and knew I had to drum up some new contacts, but didn’t know how. As someone who loves to organize events, I knew what components both needed to be present and absent for actual “connecting” to happen. I met with a friend and shared my vision for this new type of networking event and he encouraged me to try it…so I did.

Career Synergy was a 90-minute, monthly networking event hosted at a local coffee shop after hours on the first Tuesday of the month geared towards young professionals. How did I decide on these details? Surveys and market research.

What I wanted: speakers rich with life experiences they wanted to share, scheduled small groups times during the meeting and a dedicated informal “connecting” time after the event (not before).

What I didn’t want: loud music, free food/drinks and unstructured networking before the event.

How I measured success: 25 events total ranging from 10 – 45 people. 90% of attendees stayed 30 minutes after the events to mingle with each other. I made friends and partnered together in events to this day.

The shift for me happened when I stopped complaining about past examples and created my own solution.

Once networking became a lifestyle instead of an “event” the quality and quantity of my connections increased.

To this day I set a goal to connect with at least one person a week over the phone or in-person (that’s with a full-time job, plus email is too easy of an option).

Your career is more about who you know than what you know, but if you focus on improving bad experiences there might actually be a business idea waiting to be launched!

Bad examples will occur, but the question is: will it sour you or fuel you to change?