Your Career à Your Business
by
Tom Sheppard
“Individuals must manage their careers as a one-person business in an
ever-changing environment.”
Dr.
Edward Wakin
You cannot count on someone else looking out for
your career. Not your boss, not your
spouse, not your parents, or your priest.
You are responsible for you. And,
if your career is going to the dogs, then it is up to you to put it back on
track. If your career is going fine, it
is up to you to make sure it stays that way.
Any way you slice it, you must take charge of your career and make it
move the direction you want it to go.
With the accelerating pace of mergers, layoffs,
and technological change, it is increasingly important that you develop a
comprehensive plan to keep your self and your career on track. Without a plan, you will be like a ship on
the sea without a map or a compass.
Likely to run aground on countless reefs and sandbars.
Thinking of yourself as running a one-person
business is a great way to easily apply the lessons of the small business to
your career. Like you, small businesses
must learn to survive and thrive in a fiercely competitive world. This book will teach you how to apply some of
the most powerful tools for successful small businesses to your own career.
Empowerment is a big buzzword these days, and has
been for several years now. Many people
think it means making people do more work for the same or less pay. What empowerment really means is working like
you own the business.
In the age of empowerment, no one can safely hide
behind the platitude, “it’s not my job.”
Everyone must do whatever it takes to get the job done, regardless of
who is officially responsible.
Start managing your career like you would your own small business.
When you own a small business, you do whatever it
takes to keep it running. If the floor
needs sweeping, you do it. If the books
need keeping, you do it.
If you don't know anything about running a small business, you can either learn about it from the owner of a small business, or you can go to a local business incubator and let them teach you. Many community colleges have business incubators. They are often stocked with information and training as well as connections to mentors.
With just a little bit of effort, you can learn to apply nearly all small business management and marketing techniques to your career.
Develop your own business plan for your career.
What are the basic
elements of a business plan? Most experts agree there are four basic parts to
a business plan.
- Your Product
- Your Market (your customers)
- Your Competition
- Your Environment
Your Product
Define Your Product, Your Company, and its
Advantages. To do this, you must define what you can do for
an employer, what kind of person you are, and what makes you stand out from the
crowd.
We will break this into three parts: Your
Product, You, and Your Uniqueness.
Your Product - What is it
that you do for your employers? What
accomplishments can you point to? Make a
list, and be sure to list all accomplishments for all employers, no matter how
long ago or for how short a period you worked for them. You probably should include accomplishments
outside of work also.
It may take you a few days to put together this
list. You may have to sort through your
old files and memories and even renew some old acquaintances. List each
accomplishment in as much detail as you can.
Try to answer the following question for each accomplishment you list:
- How many people were affected?
- How much time was saved by how many people?
- How much money was saved per year?
- How much revenue was generated?
- What recognition was received?
- What skills, knowledge, and abilities did you have to use to accomplish this?
Learn how to use this information to insure your career security
by
Tom Sheppard
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If you cannot remember any or all of the answers
to these questions, that is fine, list the accomplishment anyway. When you start talking with your old chums
from the company where you achieved it, they may be able to refresh your
memory. If all else fails, make a best
guess estimate.
These accomplishments are your output, your
product. What goes into these is you.
Defining You - You are your company. To define you, requires a thorough
self-knowledge. You must be able to take
an honest inventory of both your strengths and your weaknesses. The following paragraphs will help you do
this.
Take a good look at all the skills, knowledge and
abilities which you have used to achieve all the results you have already
listed. Make a list of all of these
skills, knowledge and abilities. These
are your strengths.
Now, take a moment and think about projects or
efforts you attempted which did not turn out as well as you would have
liked. Identify what skills, knowledge
and abilities would have helped you to meet your expectations on those other
efforts. List each of these as an area
for further development.
If your areas for further development
significantly outnumber your strengths, then you have just identified another
area of development - the way you talk to yourself. I am not suggesting that we should lie to
ourselves about our weaknesses. What I
am suggesting is that most of us are trained from a very young age to recognize
and acknowledge our faults. But, we are
taught that to recognize our strengths is prideful and arrogant.
It is as important to honestly recognize our
strengths as it is to honestly recognize our weaknesses. If we inflate either one, we are deceiving
ourselves and damaging our chances for success in living the abundant life.
When we have an accurate assessment of both our
strengths and our weaknesses, we know our limitations and are more prepared to
succeed in everything do.
Your Uniqueness - Knowing your accomplishments,
your abilities, and your limitations you can now clearly define what value you
can deliver to your current or prospective employer.
You can look at job listings and sit in
interviews and respond with confidence that you are the best person for the
job. Then, you can proceed to list your
accomplishments, knowledge, and skills which clearly show that you can deliver
on your promises.
Your Market
Determine what is your market -
- What kind of jobs are you qualified for?
- What industries suit your interests and abilities?
- Where are these jobs and companies located? Where are you willing to go, and what are you willing to do?
- How much do they pay people in these jobs and how does that break out in terms of levels of experience?
- What is the typical career path for this type of work? Does it dead end or continue to allow for advancement into higher levels?
Identify your customer - Your customer is the
company (or companies) or client that might pay someone to do what you know you
can deliver. Identify who is the leading
source of work and their market share.
Investigate each potential employer like you were planning to buy the
company as an investment, because if you go to work there, you will be
investing a significant part of yourself in that company. You will be investing your skills, abilities,
knowledge, and most importantly, your time.
Make sure the investment meets your criteria for potential returns. You won’t be able to retrieve your time and
efforts once you have put them into that company.
One of the other big things to consider in this section is how long will companies need this kind of work? But that starts moving us into the Environment.
Your Competition
Identify your competition - What kind of people
are you competing against for the work you do?
They are your competition.
Perhaps you know some of them by name.
More likely, you have an idea of what kind of qualifications they have.
Help wanted advertisements can often give an idea
of what qualifications the employer wants.
But all too often they don’t really demonstrate the qualifications
needed to get the job.
Why not?
Just thinking about the process the boss goes through to post a job
reveals the answer.
Jane has worked in her position for five years
when she moved on to another job. During
that time she has become a master of every task required. That is why she moved on. Her abilities exceeded what her boss could,
or would, pay her for. So, she found a
better paying job and moved on.
Now, her boss sits at his desk filling out the
job listing to post her job. He thinks
of Jane and all her talents and knowledge.
He lists all her abilities and skills and writes them into an impressive
list of qualifications which the job candidate will see in the
ad. The boss sends this to
the printer without ever considering that anyone who has all of Jane’s skills
will be moving into a better paying job, just like Jane did. They won’t settle for the pay he has budgeted
when they have such an impressive skill set.
As the search for a replacement goes on, the boss
realizes that his ideal candidate is Jane and he can’t afford anyone with her
qualifications. So, he settles for a
strong candidate who has demonstrated that they can do some of what is needed,
and is able to learn to do everything else that must be done.
Keeping your Career Insurance policy in force
ensures that you are that person (for a full explanation of Career Insurance
see the A+ Results book “Career Insurance: Learning to Stay Employed in Today’s
World of
Find out what the competition looks like by
following up with some of your potential customers. Ask them about what qualifications the
current people in the job have. Ask them
about minimum skill sets and knowledge.
Go to someone who currently employs people in your market (especially if
they don’t have any openings at present), and enlist their aid.
Tell them that you are wanting to move into that
market and you want to know what it takes.
If you make it clear that you are there for information, not a job
interview, they will usually be happy to spill their guts to you. They will list, in detail, the key things
they look for in a potential employee.
You may be surprised that these key things are more often attitude than
knowledge or specific degrees or achievements.
Now that you have used informational interviews
and gained a clear idea of who and what the competition is, you can compare
yourself against them. Are there key
areas you need to become stronger? Are
there areas where you leave them in your dust?
Start working on closing the gap wherever you are
weaker. And, when you go to an
interview, focus attention on your strengths.
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Learn how to use this information to insure your career security
by
Tom Sheppard
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Environment
The last piece of your business/career plan it to consider what skills and knowledge are going to be needed both today and tomorrow.
With the rapidly changing pace
of the world today, you can learn what is needed tomorrow to do the work of
your dreams and get ahead of the competition.
What are the trends in society that either decrease or strengthen the need for businesses to employ people with your skills? Are those trends likely to continue or are they changing? Are more companies going to need what you do, or is the need for what you do shrinking into just a few companies or industries?
Are there legal trends, lawsuits, emerging legislation or technology that could strengthen, reduce or redirect the need for what you do? Will those factors require additional knowledge and skills for you to successfully continue to provide your product?
Looking at these different factors, you stand a good chance of figuring out what changes you need to make and how to position yourself so you can meet the emerging needs of employers almost before they realize they need what you can do for them. This is one of the best things you can do to keep your products desirable to your customers.
Your Financial Plan
Identify your revenue (and lifestyle) goals, when you will
achieve them and how.
To do this with any degree of realism, you need to have answered many of the questions posed above. If you are wanting to make $100,000 per year, but the average pay for what you do is $40,000 per year, then you either need to do something else, or figure out a way to convince your market that the value you can deliver to them far exceeds $100,000 per year and they are getting a bargain by hiring you. Of course, you also have to help them see that they won't get that value by hiring two or three other people with your skill set for $30,000 each.
My Experience
|
I have seen a number of
people go into business for themselves thinking that if they just charge $25
per hour they can earn $52,000 per year and do great! If you are currently earning about $25,000
per year or less, then things will be fine.
However, if you are earning more than $25,000 per year, things are not
going to be so peachy.
What most people forget
is that benefits such as paid vacation, sick leave, holidays, health and life
insurance, and retirement plans are all a part of a person’s total
compensation package, and are not free.
In contracting, a common rule of thumb is to use $100,000 to estimate
the full cost of having one professional work for a full year. This figure only allows for the
professional to be paid approximately $50,000 in wages during that year. The rest goes into paying for benefits and
other costs of doing business (For more information on this see the A+
Results book, “Have Fun and Save Money: Start Your Own Business).
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Write down specific dollar figures that you want
to be earning by certain points in your life. Don’t forget to include what benefits and
retirement options you want to have available, or how much more you must earn
to pay for them yourself. The trade off between wages and benefits is very real, and you ignore it at your peril (for a
full discussion of goal setting see the A+ Results book “Come Out On Top: Goals
To Live By”).
Set realistic, attainable, and desirable goals
for your future. Remember, the only way
you are going to get paid $500,000 per year for emptying trash cans is if you
own the company. So, be prepared to do
what it takes to make your goals come true.
This is the business plan which the entrepreneur
uses to get people to invest money in their company. For you, this will be your plan for attaining
and enjoying the abundant life you want.
It will be your career plan.
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Put it all in writing. Ink it, don’t just think it.
Learn how to use this information to insure your career security
by
Tom Sheppard
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