A couple of articles have caught my attention recently. I read this article the other day, and it reminded me of this great article I’d read a while back. I’m running into more articles that seem to echo the same idea: a diverse group of people coming together in a focused group for brainstorming, networking, and problem solving.
It’s becoming more apparent that if we truly want to broaden our opportunities for creativity, we also need to broaden the circles we run in. Where we would tend to see something with our background and training, someone else would be able to look at a situation from their own background and training and offer a new outlook on it. It’s a great idea that works in so many venues. It’s also easy to work into a chaotic schedule if you can set up something like a monthly lunch or a weekend project afternoon.
Posted by Rebecca as Creativity, inspiration, and motivation at 11:15 AM EDT
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I’m on vacation this week in Seattle, Washington. In two days, I’ve managed to see most of the city by driving (or by being driven, as the case has been). If you have never been to Seattle, I’d highly recommend it. After two days, I’m starting to think about researching Washington’s laws for starting a small business and researching how grassroots business launches fare here.
Anyway, on today’s tour, I saw two businesses that deserved to be added to the name collection. The first is a consignment shop not too terribly far from Juanita Beach named “Fashion Cents”. I like it. It manages in two words to capture the charm and allure of a consignment store.
The second is a nice play on words. It’s a tire store right off one of the highways named “Pacific Rim Center”. The joke here is the reference to both a tire rim and the Pacific Rim, which Seatlle is located on.
Thumbs up to both clever business owners!
Posted by Rebecca as Naming at 10:10 AM EDT
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I’m thinking about starting a collection of names, both creative and ill-considered. Today’s offering comes from a two-year-old ad from Fire Mountain Gems. The ad shows a collection of watches with gemstone bands. The line is called “Fubar Fashion Watches”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really feel comfortable owning a watch that is “fouled up beyond all recognition”.
It should be noted that FMG no longer carries this line. Coincidence?
I am still working toward setting a name and logo for this business. Actually, this week I’m working to get some things ready for sale on eBay so that when I return from my vacation I can put everything up. I’m also working on some more designs for the CafePress store. The plan is now to have everything running and actively advertised by July 1.
In preparation for this launch, I am looking at redoing this blog. It’s becoming an intereting juggle trying to keep everything balanced in one blog, but I think it will serve each of my interests better if I create an individual blog for each interest, thereby allowing me to focus on and develop each area to its potential. There will be plenty of warning before I do it so anyone who might be reading a feed or have this blog linked anywhere. (To those of you who do either read this as a feed or visit frequently, thank you so much. It’s your support that has helped encourage me in my endeavors.)
Watch here for developments!
Posted by Rebecca as Naming at 10:07 AM EDT
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I’ve had quite a day. First, I resigned from a job that has in nine months caused me more physical problems than all of my past jobs and graduate school put together. Then, I discovered that I have been accepted as a probationary tutor with an online tutoring firm. I never even got the chance to wonder what I would do when I left my job.
Actually, I never would have had that chance anyway. For the past two weeks, I have been setting up various income opportunities for myself or planning them out. In the tradition of Barbara Winter, I have decided to embrace the “multiple profit center” lifestyle. It started two weeks ago when I applied for that tutoring position. Then, I set up a domain. Hopefully, I’ll even get the web site finished and running tonight or tomorrow. Then, I set up a CafePress shop. It only has logo items, but I have plans to expand my offerings. Finally, I set up an eBay store. As soon as my mother’s modem is fixed, I’ll be scanning some of my jewelry pieces and selling them.
I was very quiet about my plans until today. My father looks at me and asks me to light candles for him to have my luck. I nearly laughed. While I may have had a bit of favorable timing today, I worked to make that happen. I took initiative, made plans, and acted on them. Now, I appear very fortunate because I am leaving a stable job with little fear of not having another “real job” to go on to. It wasn’t luck. It was work.
So often, we look at more fortunate people and curse them for their luck. In every case, though, if we look closely, I’m sure we’ll discover that the person has worked to make plans fall into line. It appears lucky because we don’t see exactly what steps the person took to put their plan into motion. I have wondered many times this evening if it would do any good to explain this to my father, but I suspect it would fall on deaf ears as he sits there amazed by my supposed good fortune.
It’s something to keep in mind as we’re making our daily decisions- do I want to appear lucky, or do I want to be the one who envies another’s luck?
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 1:39 PM EDT
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Although there are many of us who may not realize this, naming something is a great undertaking. When you name something, you embue it with power. Many cultures believe that the name controls the direction of the spirit, and much thought is given before naming ceremonies. In some of these cultures, it is even forbidden to speak your own name, the theory being that giving away your own name is also giving away part of your spirit.
In our culture, the act of naming has taken on an interesting life. Babies are named, not after ancestors or very dear family friends, but after food, places, and celebrities. Musical groups are named with a double meaning in mind. Even businesses have fallen prey to this farcical approach toward naming. My favorite local example is the consignment store Oops! I’ll Sell it Again. While they may draw the teenagers with their fad name, they will certainly never draw my business. What happenes when Ms. Spears goes out of favor? This business is stuck with a passe name, and a very costly change if they decide they need something more lasting.
There is a serious thought process that should be entered when naming anything, be it your child, your pet, or your business. It’s fine to want to break out of the mold and have something interesting. For example, up until very recently, my jewelry business was called Eleventh Midnight, which was based on an inside joke with a friend. I thought it was a great name for someone making and selling nontraditional jewelry designs. Apparently, the public thought differently. Not all unusual naming ventures go this poorly, but a great many of them fall out of fashion fairly quickly.
When naming something that you intend to keep for a long time, you should consider whether or not that name will be able to compete down the road. You wouldn’t want to subject a child to going through school with a name like Ima Hogg, nor would you want to subject your prospective customers ten years from now to a completely irrelevant name, like the aforementioned consignment store. Will Rockin’ Rolls continue to bring in the business ten years from now better than Bill’s Fine Furniture? Will Divine Inspirations draw a more desired crowd than Mystical Teas? These are all valid questions you should consider when naming your business.
In conclusion, choose a name that will last. Choose a name that is the most likely to draw the prospective client base you want. Don’t be afraid to be cute or humorous, just check it against the first criterion.
And if you’re curious, yes, I have given up Eleventh Midnight and hope in the next month or so to unveil my new DBA!
Posted by Rebecca as Naming at 1:35 PM EDT
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As I draw closer to making some changes in my life, I find myself drawn to certain web sites and topics. It occured to me last night that I seem to be subconsciously obsessed with following links on certain topics and investigating anything that looks remotely interesting.
It also occurred to me why I am drawn to such sites and topics. I’m moving toward a dream of working for myself, and the sites I find myself returning to involve entrepreneurial topics or moving away from the daily grind to something you love. Some of these sites are also focused on topics that I’m trying to include in some way in my new venture.
In short, these web sites inspire me. I find encouragement in others’ work. I keep up on trends and learn about serious topics to be mindful of. Just this morning, I read a great article on checking into a client’s background before becoming seriously involved with them.
I thought I’d share my current list of favorite sites, in the hopes that someone else may find them and be inspired by them, or be inspired to search for their own set of inspiring sites.
1. Occupational Adventure- This gentleman used to be in marketing, but gave it up to become a self-named Passion Catalyst. This blog is full of brief, inspirational articles on various topics and links to other great web sites. Sometimes, I find this blog to be more of an occupational therapy session, but I always walk away refreshed and inspired, or contemplating.
2. Business Opportunities Weblog- This is a new find that I actually found in Curt’s blog. I love reading these posts. There are all kinds of topics covered here, but they’re all related to being an entrepreneur, and many of them link to other interesting sites. I’ve lost a lot of time this weekend following links from this blog.
3. SitePoint- This is a web site for web developers. There are articles, reviews, and tutorials here covering the relevant topics to web design and development. What I really like about this site is that the articles and tutorials are written in such a way that a newcomer to the field can understand the presented material, while simultaneously not talking down to the experienced professional. That’s a hard balance, but the guys at SitePoint really do it beautifully. SitePoint also provides articles on business sense, allowing the web designer or web developer to become a totally self-reliant business person.
One more link for the batch that you may or not find ineresting, but I need it somewhere mobile where I won’t lose it: ManyWorlds. Eventually, I am going to get a blog roll and recommended sites list going, and then these things will be kept in a blog-appropriate fashion.
Go forth! Become inspired! If you would like, you are invited to share your inspiring links!
Posted by Rebecca as Creativity, inspiration, and motivation, Entrepreneurship at 1:21 PM EDT
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As usual, major change abounds in my life right now, which is why my postings are few and far between. It may get thinner before I get to a place where I can settle into a regular routine. Change is a normal part of the human experience, so I am unafraid to share my own journey through the current changes in my life in the hopes it may inspire or bring some form of relief to anyone who happens upon this place in its current state.
One of the changes going on currently involves my professional life. I am starting to take matters into my own hands, rediscovering the brave little girl who loved to charge into the unknown, just to see what was there. In this case, the unknown is becoming more and more known as more people are venturing into it I’ve seen a number of names for it, but my favorite to date is “multipational”, or the idea that we all have multiple occupations. I first encountered this term in an article written by a professor who was looking to switch careers and was trying to figure out how to make his current skills translate to another field.
I have been working on various exercises to do the same thing with my own skills set, only to discover that I have many varied skills sets. I realized I had truly gone insane when i started looking at these skills sets and started thinking, What if I could find a way to make all of these my profession? It was one of those “Aha!” moments that coaches are so fond of. I found myself looking over the list and grouping the items on it into bundles. What I came up with was the potential for a three-armed business with my favorite and strongest skill serving as an umbrella for them.
This all actually took place in February. Over the past three months, I have contemplated courses of action, taken courses, run away from the whole idea. However, as my current job deteriorated further and further, I found myself becoming more serious about considering this. Then, I got a job as a jewelry teacher at a local craft store, and it suddenly hit me that now was the appropriate time to seriously think about the multi-disciplinary business.
Realizing that one of my biggest obstacles has been the fact that I have been telling myself that I can do everything while being miserable at my current job. Anybody else see a problem with this idea? I certainly did. I am making plans to leave my job and take on other random jobs while I work toward stabilizing my business since these random jobs will actually be tied to my business. I have always worked better without a net anyway.
I think we often get it set in our minds that we have to be one thing, which is never possible because we all leave that job to become someone else. In one week in my current life, I am an editor, a graphic designer, a daughter, and a volunteer. Who are you in the course of your normal week, and are you happy being that person? If you aren’t, why not consider your skills set and consider becoming professionally multipational?
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 1:20 PM EDT
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Some things have been happening recently with the staff of a website that I volunteer with, in a department I used to volunteer for until The Real World ™ swallowed me alive. This site has a few paid staff and numerous volunteers working together to keep the site running. In fact, recently they have been hiring on more staff to help the volunteers, and they’re from within the volunteers so they pretty much know how everything works. However, the choices made in hiring have been interesting. The volunteers are spread all over the world with the administrators for this one department at one point spread all over the world as well.
One of these administrators lives a state away from the home base, though. This particular volunteer has been working actively for this site for two or three years, and maintains several areas of the site. If she walked away from the site, they’d have fun training up new volunteers to take her place, and actually her workload would have to be distributed among many volunteers. This woman has treated her volunteer job like a real full-time job in the hopes she would be noticed and hired on. So, imagine her surprise when she found herself being passed over for a paid position. Now she’s debating whether it was worth it or not to put in so much time for so long with the site. It’s rather understandable.
The real problem here, though, is that as she’s looking over the past couple of years, she’s looking at it with a mindset that the time spent was a waste. However, over the past few years, she has learned and honed skills that could translate to a real career away from this website. Her management style is firm, and the fact that she’s 21 with an incredible managerial background doesn’t even begin to impress her. She’s learned a lot about technology. Her business writing is simply elegant. She’d be incredible out in the business world if she could see her skills learned and perfected at this volunteer job are worthwhile and transferable.
Several years her elder, I feel her pain. I spent seven or eight years of my life volunteering in the field I most want to step into. I have a volunteer career as a museum educator that many directors wish they had. I was first approached for the directorship of an education department when I was 23 because of the previous five years’ worth of volunteer experience. I am routinely chastised for not including my volunteer experiences on my resume, because they really paint a better picture of who I am professionally than the random jobs I have had. The lesson I have had to learn is that skills gained through volunteering efforts are just as valuable as skills gained through paid positions.
Volunteering, in and of itself, is a worthwhile activity to pursue, regardless of the work. You are freely giving of your time and your energy. In cases where you volunteer with a cause you feel strongly about, you might also be bringing knowledge and skills with you. Many of us look at our volunteer work and think about how much we have brought to the organization simply by being there. What many of us fail to think about is how volunteering with that company has also benefitted us. It’s really a two-way street.
Take my case, for example. I have volunteered with two planetariums, an aquarium, and three museums. In addition to being able to practice my teaching skills in these settings, I also have learned to run an office, to put together shows, to create dazzling effects. I have also learned how to promote something, to manage volunteers with very diverse needs, and how to interact with people of varying temperaments. I’ve honed my lesson planning skills to the point where I can turn out a complete, viable lesson in a few hours if I have to. I have also been given the chance to organize special events. My resume, both the chronological one and the functional one, is two pages long on my volunteer work alone, and because of the autonomy and opportunities I’ve had, I feel confident enough to work toward striking out on my own as a freelancer.
Volunteering also has a nice side effect. It can help you shape your own career path. Don’t know what you want to do? Try volunteering with a cause you like. Don’t be surprised if you find a new career that you truly enjoy just by giving a volunteer organization a few hours a week of your own time.
Posted by Rebecca as Skill building at 10:58 AM EDT
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I am trying to work on adding some resources to the blog tonight, and I came across this article about the “free agent worker”. It occurs to me that what I am doing isn’t much different. I’m presenting some of my best developed, most marketable skills forward in the hopes someone will think I’m worth investing in.
The principles in this article are a lot like what I’ve been going through for the past few months. Sorting out my own skills and trying to make myself aware of and available to opportunities. I think that’s important for anyone trying to step out on their own. To remain open and aware to our surroundings. Of course, this also requires something that I am not doing enough of: getting out and getting known. I believe the article calls this “staying mobile”. I am gaining more visibility in one aspect: this new job of teaching jewelry should actually make me quite visible to a sector of the community. (This assumes that as people have more warning, they will actually attend the classes.) However, I am not gaining much visibility in other areas. This has become painfully obvious to me in the past few weeks at work. I spent half of my time for a few months dropping everything to help people with various software issues, not only by my team but by others as well. They have started naming “super users” for these software programs, and I’m nowhere in the list. I’m very quiet about my activities and really cannot expect to be noticed.
In fact, right now, as I’m trying to lay my groundwork to launch this business, I’m probably meeting a portion of this list. It’s a good list of good things to think about as I, and anyone else who might happen upon this article, move toward being on my own.
Posted by Rebecca as Freelancing at 10:57 AM EDT
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Recently, I’ve noticed some of my behaviors regarding my work and my work space. When I was a child, I assumed that I would do the normal thing when I grew up and work at some desk job in some office. I wasn’t interested in desk jockey jobs, but somehow I always managed to picture my work environment this way. Looking back, it’s rather funny that I thought this was normal. Mom worked in a lab and then various restaurant settings, neither of which is a desk setting. Even today, she doesn’t work in a desk-friendly environment. My father spent part of his week behind a desk, and the other part out visiting parishoners and holding services. Again, not exactly the standard image of a desk job.
I remember being completely excited when I got my first “desk job”. I finally felt grown up. I was twenty and a long-term temporary with a call center. I never really fit well in the job, for many reasons. My next desk job was as an administrative assistant at a university when I was 24. That was particularly fun because the walls of my cubicle were low so everybody could come talk to me. I was essentially the departmental secretary. Then I quit that job to move back to Texas for grad school and had the distinction of being the only student assistant with her own office. Let me describe this place for you: a bare desk with a very old Mac in a room full of astronomy books, videos, and old show files. I think I spent all of ten hours in it, but it was mine! Now, I’m in a desk job that started as a table job, where anybody and everybody could and did watch me. I spent those four months remembering why I never became a professional entertainer.
This has jumped my intended track a bit, but it’s part of what I’ve been thinking about for the past week or so. I look at my perceived need for a desk to make a job real, but why? I spent most of my school time sitting on the floor or bed to do my homework. One of my volunteering positions is centered around my computer. The computer sits on my makeshift desk and faces my bed, and I sit there on my bed working. In my personal life, I seem to avoid this desk concept. It’s an interesting dichotomy.
I then started noticing certain other things. I am a poor fit in my current job. I’m technically able to do it, but just can’t seem to do it well or be happy at doing it. I recently applied for a second job: teaching at a local craft store. Although my first class meeting had no students (we didn’t give people enough warning), I am doing well at the demo side of it. I’m uncomfortable sitting in an open area designing pieces, but I enjoy sitting there talking to people about what I’m doing and expaining how to do different techniques. Actually, it was during a demo last weekend that all of this started churning in my head. I don’t mesh well with my primary job. I really like my second job. I started looking at what made those two so different, and why I react so differently to them both.
It was kind of an aha! moment. My primary job is very detail-oriented, which I enjoy. It’s also very high stakes and high pressure. I have a strong history of not doing well in high stakes/high stress jobs. It triggers my rebellious tendencies, usually at the wrong time and in the wrong manner. The job also very dictated. I have three style guides that must be followed to the letter at all times. The method of doing my work really has no room for any variation. I’m an automaton, something else I have a strong history for not doing well. My second job is very people-oriented, which I also enjoy. It’s fairly laid-back. I have to create a syllabus and some promotional materials, as well as the brief paperwork associated with teaching the class. I have artistic freedom. In fact, I’m encouraged to create and design and have fun. I can choose what medium to create in. I can combine mediums. There is a huge amount of freedom and flexibility. When I look over my past, I can clearly see that the jobs and volunteer positions I have flourished in have been the ones where I had freedom and flexibility and the ability to create and implement my creations.
It also made me realize that when they say an interview is a two-way street, it really is. You’re looking for a workplace you can flourish in as much as the hiring manager is looking for someone who can technically fill the job. So it’s worth your time to sit down and figure out what type of work environment allows you to function at or beyond your capacity and potential. As I am having to do this for the first time for myself, I will be working while I’m writing this.
I envision this activity being much like the Skills Sheet exercise, which starts by listing all of your job responsibilities. Don’t forget to include your volunteering experiences. Instead of listing responsibilities, though, I’m going to list characteristics of every job I’ve had. Did I have an omnipresent supervisor? Was I allowed to manage myself or others? Was it a desk job? Where was the focus- people, products, services? Was it full time or part time? Was I allowed to be creative, or was everything done by mandated procedure? There are so many different ways to characterize aspects of a job. Once my list is done, I’ll combine everything into a master list, dropping out any duplicates.
Once I have my master list, I’ll go over each item and decide if it was a chore or something I enjoyed. Every “chore” gets crossed off. This leaves me with a list of characteristics I enjoyed. Perhaps these are common to several of my past jobs. Perhaps I just had the chance to experience one of them for the first time. It doesn’t matter. I now know what I can work well in. Again, because I love to organize (which does happen to show up on my original list a few times), I organize these into job traits and workspace traits, and my list is finished!
The nice thing about making this list, much like the benefit of making the Skills Sheet list, is that I now have something to help me analyze every help wanted ad I think I want to answer. It also helps me in an interview. I know what I’m looking for, and I can answer (and question) an interviewer intelligently. I’m that much more prepared.
Exercise Breakdown:
1. List every paid or volunteer position you’ve had. For every position, list charactersitcs about both the position and the workspace.
2. Create a master list, dropping duplicates from the origianl list.
3. Delete any characteristic that you either didn’t like or didn’t work well with.
4. If you would like, you can break the new list into two categories: job traits and workspace traits.
Recommended Reading:
I’ll try to find some articles on this.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers at 8:57 AM EDT
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