Career Pivot – Building a fan club

One of the first things I did when I decided to pursue a new career as a high school math teacher was put together a distribution list of all of my past colleagues and friends.  I wanted to keep them informed of what I was doing.  I knew I would not have much of a life during my first year of teaching. This turned out to be the most critical factor to my success.

I built a fan club.  Peter Arnell wrote about fan clubs in his book Shift: How to Reinvent Your Business, Your Career, and Your Personal Brand. From this book I learned about the importance of fan clubs to any Career Pivot. These are the people who care about you and want you to succeed. These are the people who will cheer you on and you will lean on when you are the most discouraged.  My fan club got me through my first year of teaching.

I started by sending out an e-mail to just under 100 people every three weeks of my journey. I started this process when I had landed a position in August of 2004.  These e-mails were often forwarded hundreds of times.  They circled around many times.

I wrote about my experiences, my kids (yes they were MY kids), and my frustrations. During my first year, I wrote about Julio ( not his real name) in just about every e-mail.  Julio was a 14 year old male, gang member, probably had lead poisoning at some point because he processed new information very slowly, came from a family where no one had ever graduated from high school, and his role model was his brother who was in his early 20s, high school dropout, a roofer, with 3 kids. I was attracted to Julio because he had a work ethic that set him apart.  He was my project in my first year of teaching and when I failed to send out an e-mail on time, I got e-mails from my list asking how Julio was doing. It was only then did I realize how important the work I was doing.

These people were my support group.  I got encouragement to stick through some very frustrating times.  I got advice from relatives and friends of the people on the list.  My e-mails were forwarded to the entire math textbook department of a major publisher (80+ people).  I learned first hand how textbook adoption committees worked (or did not work) and how textbooks were designed to meet different state standards. I unintentionally built a fan club.

My mistake was not starting sooner.  I learned so much from my fan club. If I had started when I first started even thinking about teaching I could have possibly avoided most of the mistakes I made.  It is all about letting your network know what you want!  You will be surprised that when you state clearly and precisely what you want, your network or tribe will come forward to help.  You just need to let people know!

Do you have a fan club?  I bet you do and just do not know it.

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I am in the process of launching a new brand – “Career Pivot”. The Career Pivot FaceBook Fan page is now available. If you “like” the page you will receive a free copy of the Baby Boomer Fact sheet with 24 must know facts about the issues Baby Boomers now face. You will see more on this brand in the coming months.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist