U-Turn Ahead

Coryan Update: Listonga.com Homepage Mockup

In my first update, I mentioned a website that I am developing, Listonga.com. The concept is for a website that gathers a vast variety of lists on nearly every topic and makes them available all on one site. Eventually visitors will be able to leave comments about lists, add lists, and maybe even discuss topics from the lists on a bulletin board. I want the site to be a place for learning, fun, and research. Topics will include everything from sports to self-help. The site will be supported by advertising revenue.

I recently started work on the Listonga website and it’s starting to take shape. I began by developing a mockup of the homepage using Microsoft Publisher. I saved the file as a JPEG which allowed me to use it as a template while creating the page in Abobe Dreamweaver. I still have a lot to learn about web development and the studying at Lynda.com continues. I have also applied at a local community college where I hope to take a class or two in web development.

I’ve decided to let the UTurnAhead blog readers follow my site creation process, but I am not promoting the site until it is fully functional. If you’d like to follow the progress, simply go to www.listonga.com and see the site in progress. As you will notice, there is a lot of work to be done. The logo is complete and the site is beginning to take shape. The goal is to have it ready for promotion on January 1, 2008. I also have a goal of having 100 lists on the site by that date. By the way, if you have a list idea or a comment on the site, feel free to leave a comment.

I hope that you will drop by Listonga.com every week or so to see my progress. It could be interesting to have a first hand glimpse of a website in development.

Posted in Coryan Updates, Self-Employment | No Comments »

Career Change and the Support of My Wife

Changing your career may bring excitement and anticipation, but does it do the same for your spouse? What does he or she think about the idea of you leaving your current employment to step out into an untested career? What about the risk of lost income, new work pressures and your family’s security.

I am blessed to have a spouse who supports my career change. But she doesn’t do it without consideration of all of the above factors. She wants me to be happy in my career and supports my desire to do something different. She also recognizes the challenges that will come with making this change and has stated her willingness to endure.

So what is the key to this support? Well, selecting the right partner has a lot to do with it. But we also communicate openly and honestly about our lives, goals and desires. We are, in fact, partners in our “family corporation”. And as partners, we must value the leadership, knowledge and skills that each of us bring to the family. So she understands what I need in a career and supports those changes with the understanding that I must also maintain a minimum income and my new career must benefit the family relationships, and not distract from them.

The support of a spouse is critical to any career change. Without that support, you are battling more than just the market. You are putting relationships and family at risk. With the support of your spouse, you have a partner and an investor in your success. Someone who can help you reach your goals and, someday, celebrate that new career with you.

Posted in Career Planning, Midlife | No Comments »

CEO or Employee Series: Part Three

Using Online Self-Employment Assessment Tools

A few posts back, I talked about pros and cons of employment versus self-employment. Changing careers can be moving to another company or starting your own company. Starting your own business is not for everyone. Too often is it touted as the “American Dream”, but working at a fulfilling job can also be the answer to a dream.

So, how do you know if you are the type of person that has the entrepreneurial drive?Can you be happy working for someone else, or would you be most satisfied creating your own company? Well, it may not be the perfect answer, but there are some assessment tools that examine your potential as a future business owner.

Monster.com has a 16 question quiz on whether or not you are ready to be self-employed. The quiz, Is Self-Employment for You?, examines your attitudes as well as some practical considerations. Simply check yes to each of the sixteen statements that apply to you. After the five minutes or so that it takes you to complete the assessment, you will receive some advice on your suitability and readiness for self-employment. This test was designed by Pat Boer, a career counselor who has extensive experience in the area of midlife career changes.

Another tool that I particularly like is the Entrepreneurial Self Assessment found on the Business Development Bank ofCanada website. This assessment tool will take about fifteen minutes to complete. There are fifty questions about you and how you like to work. This is followed by four demographic questions. After completing the test, your answers are compared to those of Canadian entrepreneurs from a variety of businesses. Unlike the Monster.com tool, you will not find advice at this site. Instead, you get an idea if you have the same motivations, attitudes and perceptions as the typical Canadian entrepreneurs (who I don’t believe is all that different than U.S. entrepreneurs). This test is a more scientific assessment of your self-employment match.

If you try either of these tools, I would love to hear about your experience. Please leave a comment. I am curious what others think of tools that assess one’s readiness to work for themselves.

Posted in Career Planning, Employment, Self-Employment | No Comments »

Coryan Update: Researching Web Ideas

Well, Thanksgiving is over, and I am truly stuffed. I had two of the most amazing meals in the past couple days. And while enjoying the break, I’ve decided to add regular updates about my own career change journey that I will call Coryan Updates.

About a month ago I decided to begin the steps to changing my career. As I’ve explained in other posts, I decided to go the moonlighting path to starting a business of my own. I’ve choosen to create some websites that will earn revenue through advertising, memberships and possibly product sales.

I first generated a list of about 10-12 website ideas. I then went right to the Internet to search for available domain names. This turned out to be more of a challenge that I had expected. I used GoDaddy.com to research specific domain names and NameBoy.com to help generate new name ideas. After about three hours of work, I had a list of 20 available names that had (in my opinion) some potential for the website ideas I had generated. I then narrowed the list down and purchased six of the domains.

I then started this blog and another called Listonga. [Editor’s Note: The blog is no longer active, so the link is now to the Listonga website.] The blogs were to help me develop two of my website ideas and to learn about web design and advertising. I also signed up at Lynda.com, an amazing website with video tutorials covering more than 100 software titles. I have been learning to use PhotoShop and DreamWeaver (web design software) by watching the videos. It’s been a lot to learn, but it’s enjoyable and necessary.

So now I have to put these new skills to use. I will talk more about that in my next update. Keep an eye out for Coryan Updates in the future. They will occur on occasion between the regular articles and information.

Posted in Coryan Updates | No Comments »

Resumes: A Key Self-Marketing Tool

I was recently asked for a copy of my resume for a conference presentation I will be doing. I hadn’t updated my resume for a couple years and it got me thinking. What value, if any, is a resume if you aren’t actually looking for another employer.

Well, after reading the opinion of others and thinking this through, I have come to the conclusion that a resume is VERY important. This, I believe, is true whether you are self-employed for working for someone else. Think about it. A resume is a summary document of your skills and talents as an income producer. The fact is, a resume is probably your most important marketing material in print.

When job seeking, your resume is almost always the first contact you will have with the potential employer. The key to the resume is to get you the interview. That is where you can make the real sale of your knowledge and abilities. Douglas B. Richardson wrote an excellent article describing how an employer actually reads a resume. See his article, Skeptical Resume Reader Tells How He Really Thinks at CareerJournal.com (a Wall Street Journal publication).

Even when working for yourself, your resume can help sell your services to others. If you start a service business, your customers will want to know why you are the best person for the job. Your resume speaks to your ability to perform, even if the work is not identical. Even if your business sells things, your resume describes your business acumen and experience. This can be key when selling wholesale to a company that needs to know you can meet your obligations.

To learn more about writing and updating your resume, check out the information at Monster.com.

Posted in Career Planning, Professional Development | No Comments »

Coryan: My Personal Career Change Plan

I made the decision about three months ago to make a change, but I didn’t have a definite plan for what I wanted to do. As a matter of fact, I still don’t have a clear plan. But I have a strategy!First, I’ve decided that I could not make the big jump from employment to self-employment. I didn’t have the cash reserve or a plan that would produce a sustainable income. So my choice has been to start earning income through business projects while remaining employed. I call that being a jobreprenuer.

This website (and others I am working on) are the beginning of my journey. I am working to design a handful of income producing websites. Some will be total failures, and those will be dropped. I expect some will produce a financial return. Slowly at first, but with time and hard work, I expect to realize a meaningful income.

I am starting with this site to share information (and my story) on midlife career changes. I will support the website through advertising. I am also developing a blog for nonprofit leaders, a self-improvement site, and a trivia website. These may have membership features in addition to advertising revenue. That has not yet been determined.

I also expect that this journey could lead me down paths I have not anticipated. I am actually expecting this. I am ready to go with where this journey takes me. In the meantime, I will keep my current job and continue this work at night and on weekends.

Posted in Career Planning, Coryan Updates, Employment, Jobreprenuer, Self-Employment | No Comments »

CEO or Employee Series: Part Two

The Disadvantages of Being an Employee or the CEO

Okay, we’ve looked at the advantages of being an employee and being the boss. Now let’s look at the disadvantages of employment and self-employment. Of course, since you are reading this article, you probably already have a mental list of disadvantages for being employed. Let’s see how your list compares to these downsides of employment.

Employee Cons

• Your work assignments, and ultimately your employment, are determined by someone else.

• In differences of opinion, your boss, not you, gets to have the final say.

• Your work environment is determined by the company.

• Your wages and benefits are determined by the company.

• The company’s profits are not yours.

With that list, it seems that no independent thinking individual would ever want to work for someone else. And when your run the company, you make the decisions and earn all the profit (minus taxes, of course). So why not work for yourself? Are there problems with self-employment. Of course, and here are just some of them.

CEO Cons

• You have no paid vacations, holidays or sick days.

• You are directly responsible to your customers.

• You must do any work you can’t afford to hire someone to do.

• Your income is fully dependent on success of company, and less than half of new businesses survive four years.

• You are responsible for every aspect of the business.

Basically, when you own the business, everything is on your shoulders. You can hire others to do work for you, but their performance is still your responsibility. There is no passing the buck when you are the CEO.

The decision to work for yourself or someone else is about the type of person you are. Do you take risks? How do you handle failure/success? In what work environment are you most happy? In a few days we will look at some assessment tools for helping determine the answer to some of these questions.

Posted in Career Planning, Employment, Self-Employment | 1 Comment »

CEO or Employee Series: Part One

The Advantages of Being an Employee or the CEO

If you are like me (and most other people), you have spent the majority of your present career working for someone else. But the option of working for yourself is one worth considering. But you have to be realistic and consider all the pros and cons. In this article we will look at some of the advantages of being the boss and for remaining an employee.

In many ways society has glamorized self-employment. Nearly everyone has romanticized about being our own boss; blazing our own trail. But there are definitely advantages to working for someone else.

Advantages to Being an Employee:

• Steady income that is independent of company success (in most cases)
• Only responsible for your scope of work
• Usually comes with benefits such as health care and paid vacations
• You are not responsible for the cost of equipment/materials to do your work
• Company Picnics (or is that a disadvantage?)

Hmm, maybe working for the Man is not so bad. So let’s take a look at the benefits of working for yourself.

Advantages to Being Self Employed:

• Determine what the company does
• Decide who you work with
• No conflicts with your boss
• You can’t be fired (but you can fail)
• Income possibilities are limited only by the success of the company

A lot has to with these two factors: Security vs. Risk and Independence vs. Dependence. We will look closer at these issues in a later article. And tomorrow, we will list some of the disadvantages of being self-employed and working for someone else.

Posted in Career Planning, Employment, Self-Employment | 1 Comment »

Career Change the Safe Way

Sometimes I think it’s that I am simply scared, but I have decided to take the safe route to making the career shift. I am moonlighting at other things while continuing employment at my “safe” job. I call this jobrepreneuing.  Of course, there are at least two problems with this: 1) I am tempted to focus on my moonlighting activities and not enough on my main job, and 2) I am not able to fully devote myself to my career change.

Starting this blog (and a couple others) is the first step to me moving away from my current work. I am unsure of the career path that I will be following, but it will have something to do with information sharing. It could be in the form of writing, teaching, speaking or all of the above. But for today, I need to remember to do a great job for those who employ me.

Remember, if you take the safe route, don’t give less than your best to your FIRST employer!

Posted in Career Planning, Coryan Updates, Employment, Jobreprenuer, Self-Employment | No Comments »

When is it Time for a Career Change?

For some, a midlife career change is a choice. For others, it is a necessity. Today, many individuals face a significant career change resulting from a layoff, termination, a physical accident or other external circumstances. In his article about how to prepare for a career change, Mike Bellah refers to the study by a Harvard economist that show that today’s “middle-aged men are twice as likely to lose their jobs in a permanent layoff as they were 13 years ago.” Sometimes life determines for you when the career change is necessary.

Well then, with the exception of external circumstances, when would you want to consider a career change? A common answer is when you want (or need) to make more money. I mean, that’s why you have the job in the first place, right? Okay, that’s one way to look at it. But money is only one of the benefits of working. What about enjoying what you do, making a difference and having new and exciting experiences?

Needing to make more money is not the only reason to consider a career change. Other reasons can include: your career no longer excites you, your work is too stressful, or your work is in conflict with other aspects of your life. When you find yourself dreading work, it’s time to consider a change. I don’t mean the occasional, “I don’t want to go to work today.” I mean the everyday wish that you were doing something different.

Is there an ideal time to make a career change? According to the advice at AllBusiness.com, “the best time to consider a career change is when you are safely ensconced in your existing one. A steady paycheck can relieve a lot of pressure.” This allows you to examine your talents, explore career options and even test the waters of various careers without the fear of how bills will be paid.

So, if you find yourself unhappy at work, but still employed with a steady paycheck, you might want to do as I am doing and consider a career change. Take control now when it is your choice. Do something today to start that change. Just one step. The possibilities are vast and the next great career might be just around the corner.

Posted in Career Planning, Employment, Midlife | 4 Comments »