Repurpose Your Career – Forbes, US News and UT Webinar

Whether you are a baby boomer, generation x’er or millennial, retirement like your parents had is no longer a possibility for most. Everyone will have to go through career changes or Career Pivots. At some point of time you will likely Repurpose Your Career!

Step 1: Know Thyself. It may sound trite but if you do not know what you want then…. What kind of boss do you want? What kind of team..
Step 2: Build your tribe. We live in a referral economy. Your network is critical to any career move.
Step 3: Act on facts, not assumptions. Have you talked with employees at your target company? Have you talked with former employees? How the heck to do you whether you want to work there?
Step 4: Learn how to network strategically. Learn the strategy of asking for A-I-R. Advise, Incites and Recommendations. When you ask for advice no on turns you down. Well…. if they do turn you down they are a jerk and you do not want to talk with them anyway!
Step 5: Learn to ask for help. If you are going to make a Career Pivot, you likely will no longer be the expert. You just have to suck it up and ask for help. I understand. I am a guy. I do not like asking for directions no matter how lost I am! Read the Forbes post by Career Pivot — The Key to a Successful Career Shift: Asking for Help

Where can you learn more. Read the post by Miriam Salpeter in US News Career section called  6 Tips for Making a Successful Career Change where Marc Miller aka Career Pivot is quoted.

Plus, the University of Texas McCombs School of Business Alumni Association will be hosting Career Pivot for a free career webinar called Repurpose Your Career – 5 Steps to Your Next Career Pivot.  This webinar is Free and Open to the Public. To RSVP click here.

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Check out my new book!

“If you’re deciding what to do for act two of your career, read this book.” ~ Miriam Salpeter, Keppie Careers

Available on Amazon.com

You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Time to Reflect

I work with my clients to take the time to reflect back every 6 to 12 months on what they have accomplished.

The Career Pivot brand and website was launched on February 12th of last year. It was a team effort to get everything launched.

• Melinda Taylor of Weborization built this beautiful website
• Ginny Murphy of Rapport Branding designed the logo
• Susan Lahey wrote Don’t Retire Even if You Can – A Baby Boomer Manifesto

Along with my coach, Sherry Lowry, I had a team. I had a team that I could depend on.

With the help of Joey McGirr and others I established my brand in the social media space in Austin. So much so that I am on the panel next week at Social Media Breakfast for the topic How Different Generations Use Social Media.

Cure for Career Insanity

I developed a webinar series called the Cure for Career Insanity. I ran two pilots sessions and the feedback was great. The challenge is developing a marketing plan. My current plan is to launch the series later in the year along with a book by the same title.

Repurpose Your Career – A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers

What I have learned about self publishing in the last year! None of it is really hard or difficult. There are a lot of steps. I owe a debt of gratitude to Gudjon Bergmann, who guided my team through this process. This is everything from determining the title, chapters to the book layout.

I get lots of complements on the book cover. The cover design was done my Mami Serwaa who worked for Trish Lee and Book Elves Publishing. Mami put me through a branding process and gave me a choice of three designs. I then crowdsourced the design to my “tribe” and selected a design. Mami then went about selecting pictures and again I crowdsourced to my “tribe”.

Repurpose Your Career – Practical Guide for Baby Boomers was published on Amazon January 1, 2013 in Paperback and Kindle editions.

Austin Business Owners Meetup

I continued to partner with Caroline Valentine of Valentine HR to host the Austin Business Owners Meetup. By the way, we have a great program this month 10 Proposal Sins that Cost You Time, Money, and Sleep.

Public Relations

I worked and worked at PR all year. Dave Manzer of PR over Coffee has been a real mentor. Nothing much had happened until last week. BOOM!

• PBS Next Avenue – The Key to a Successful Career Shift: Asking for Help. This was an article written by my co-author Susan Lahey.
• Forbes then picked up the article from PBS Next Avenue and has been one of the most popular pieces for 3 days.  At the moment of writing this post, the article had been viewed 3,500 times and had been shared on Social Media close to 1,000 times.
• There are two more in the pipeline!

Launch Pad Job Club and Leadership Austin

I continued to serve on the board of directors of Launch Pad Job Club and I was selected to be part of the Leadership Austin Essential Class of 2013, the best class ever! What an honor!!

What did not work?

I launched a series of LinkedIn workshops that targeted small business. Even though I had great feedback, small business people do not like to part with their money! I am still working on how to promote these LinkedIn workshops.

Why am I doing this?

I am writing this post for me. It is incredibly rewarding for me to see how much I have accomplished in the last year.

It also a way of saying Thank You! Thank you to everyone who helped me in the last twelve months.

Have you reflected back on the last 12 months? Is time to reflect back on your accomplishments?

What have you learned?

What have you accomplished?

Have you said Thank You?

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You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

What are your “Barriers to Change”?

What is stopping you? Think about it!

We all have them! What is stopping you from making a career pivot?

3 Barriers to Change

Fear

• Fear of failure
• Fear of financial ruin
• Fear of loss of prestige

Fear is a powerful emotion.

I remember riding a roller coaster with my son for the very first time. When we came to the end I asked him how was the experience. He said with a huge smile on his face:

That was scary! He had a huge smile on his face.

I asked him, if he wanted to do it again? He responded

NO WAY!

Our fears protect us. They can also paralyze us. Often our fears are based on experiences but they can be totally made up, based on what we have been told by our parents, society, friends,…….

What fears do you have that are barriers to change?

Having to Ask for Help

I am a guy! I hate to ask for help! I do not like to ask for directions! There, I admitted it!

When making a change you will have to ask for help! When I went off to teach high school math after living through a near fatal bicycle accident, I was humbled! I had to learn to ask for help and it was not easy!

I was no longer the expert. I was teaching Algebra II to a room full of poor minority teenagers. I did not know their world and how to properly teach them in a way they could absorb the material! I had spent nearly 4 years training engineers in China and teaching these teenagers made that experience feel like a walk in the park.

I humbled myself and asked a teacher, who I was old enough to be her father, for help.

Are you ready to be humble and ask for help?  Is this one of your barriers to change?

Finances

When making a career pivot you will almost always end up making less money for a period of time. That is why you need to look at your entire life circumstances and possibly repack your bags. I wrote a blog post recently called Baby Boomers Repack Your Bags of Life.

I have made multiple career pivots where I went from making a nice six figure salary to making less that $40K per year. Each time I made the conscious decision and made lifestyle adjustments.

You need to ask yourself is it the money or your happiness?

What other barriers to change are there for you?

These are great things to ponder over during the holiday break. Take some time to write down your barriers to change.

If you would not mind share them below.

This is one of the major items discussed in my new book Repurpose Your Career – A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers. I just sent out 60 review copies to readers of this blog. If you want to be contacted when the book goes on sale or when there are specials please register here.

I wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season!! Curated career content will continue to be posted to the Career Pivot Twitter , Facebook and RebelMouse pages through out the holiday season!

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You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Moment of Clarity

We live our lives looking at the world through filters but when something dramatic happens the filters come down.  One of these dramatic moments can be called a moment of clarity.

The idea that prompted this post was a post on the LinkedIn blog called The Compliment That Almost Made Me Quit.

These moments are brought on when we experience major shifts in our lives. This could be getting married or divorced, births, deaths, job changes, or in the case of the LinkedIn blog post the author reached a point of exhaustion and needed to ask for advice.

Twenty years ago this month I had a major moment of clarity.

Earlier in my career I gotten in a very typical cycle:

1. Take on new tasks
2. Never give up old tasks
3. work hard
4. Eventually break. This was usually back spasms.
5. Take time and take care of myself.
6. Heal
7. Go to step 1

The cycle would repeat itself but each time the cycle would shorten in duration.

My Moment of Clarity

During the Christmas holidays of 1992, my L4/L5 disc in my back ruptured. My chiropractor was the only doctor who would see me during the holiday. She had an MRI performed and confirmed the diagnosis. She made an appointment for me with a neurosurgeon after the new year. Chiropractors do not dispense medication. I was forced to go the county hospital emergency room to get pain killers. I have lots of stories from that experience. Go to the county hospital emergency room on new years eve in the middle of a cocaine epidemic!!

The neurosurgeon looked at my MRI and gave me two choices:

1. Have surgery
2. Bed rest

He said the disk would probably heal given enough time. He gave me a cortisone shot and told me to see him in a week.

To make a long story short, I spent the next three months in bed and/or rehab.  I do not like doctors with sharp implements!

Everything was taken away. I felt pretty good!

I broke the cycle.  I saw what was important to me. The filters came down.

I look at that painful recovery as a positive experience. I learned so much about myself.

I came back to work as team lead of a worldwide technical training group in April of 1993. IBM was in chaos. They had come within two weeks of declaring bankruptcy. My boss was gone and replace by a totally inexperienced replacement. I had friends who were being told to retire. They were emotionally and financially ill prepared.

I could have easily been caught up into the situation but my mind was clear. It was a true moment of clarity.

I made the decision to leave the organization and make a career pivot. I went to an elite customer briefing center. They wanted me for my technical and presentations skills. I had zero sales experience. I had half the skills required but personal relationships with numerous people in the new group.

My mind was clear. It was a true moment of clarity.

I dedicate a whole chapter to the concept of “Moment of Clarity” in my new book Repurpose Your Career – A Practical Guide for Baby Boomers due out in January.

When have you had a Moment of Clarity?

Admit it, you have had at least one! What did you learn?

Will you have one in 2013?

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Like what you read? Click here to subscribe to this blog! Better yet share it with your friends using the buttons below.

I am getting ready to launch the Cure for Career Insanity series.  Please register to receive updates!

You can also download my whitepaper “Don’t Retire Even If you Can and What to do Instead – A Baby Boomer Manifesto”

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist