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Review of Career Transition: Make the Shift
Nov 20th
Author Deborah Shane knows something about career transitions. She’s been a singer, Latin dancer, high school teacher, and a songwriter. And those are just a few of her past jobs. She spent a number of years in radio sales. After the radio business changed so dramatically in the first part of millennium, she started her own sales training business, Train with Shane.
Fast forward to today. Deborah, someone I am proud to call a friend (and one of the Experts here at Small Business Trends), has had diverse careers. And like many of us, she keeps reinventing herself.
In her latest career iteration, she is “just” Deborah Shane … an entrepreneur, speaker, author and consultant. Deborah (pictured right) is one of those people where the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” What she has to offer others is greater than the sum of of her career experiences. I’ll explain why in a moment.
Her book “Career Transition: Make the Shift” is about the steps to successfully reinvent your career. If you find yourself like Deborah — needing to make a career switch after years, even decades, in business — this book is for you.
Career Transition offers a roadmap to re-invent, re-brand and re-birth yourself in business. It forces you to be introspective, to understand yourself, and to spot potential you may not have realized you have.
This is a compact book of 165 pages. The first 20% of the book is about Deborah and her life. In a way it’s part memoir, including photographs of Deborah in nightclub dancer costume and as a singer with her band. Those early experiences show you the diversity of her career.
Identify Your Transferable Skills
Deborah’s experiences illustrate how seemingly unrelated skills can contribute to the next stage of your career. If you think you’ve held many jobs and are not sure what good they will do you now, you may just need to think more broadly. Those experiences are what make you unique. And in ways you may not realize, you draw on those experiences. For instance, Deborah writes about the concept of “transferable skills,” noting that your past jobs give skills you can transfer to other roles:
“Everything I have done in my life translates to my skills, experiences, wisdom, and intangibles. All of them count. All of them have contributed to who I am today. From delivering dental work during high school, flipping omelets and tending bar during college, working in a dry cleaners after college, to teaching school, performing on stage, singing in recording studios, and working in broadcast radio … they all have added to my transferable and personal skills. The ability to uncover your transferable skills is the most important part of successful career transition.”
Transferable skills you can use in other careers include speaking, writing, negotiating, analyzing, coaching, selling — and more. Deborah goes on to tie in how owning her own musical band in her early years, translated into a later career of speaking, consulting and holding workshops. She was able to make such shifts because of the transferable skills she developed along the way.
You can reinvent yourself to become indispensable to others (translation: others will want to hire you or buy your services). She writes:
I have reinvented myself to become what Seth Godin calls a ‘linchpin,’ someone who lives his life as art, and who keeps working on making himself indispensable, by creating and producing interactions that people care deeply about. I have always lived this way. I just didn’t know then how to describe it, or what name to put on it.”
The book is not just about Deborah (@DeborahShane on Twitter). There are numerous case studies about others who have successfully re-birthed their careers. One is Joyce Bone, founder of MillionaireMom.com, who says that what motivated her to become an entrepreneur was “…I needed more money and knew I deserved it, but I realized nobody was going to pay me what I’m worth except me.”
Career Transition also includes exercises sprinkled throughout the book, to help you re-invent yourself in your next career phase. The exercises are summarized at the end of the book. They are also separately compiled into a Career Action Book (workbook) that you can request on Deborah’s website.
Who this Book is For
Career Transition is ideal for Baby Boomers or those who already have a few diverse career experiences under their belts, who want to move on to something more rewarding. If you find yourself at a crossroads, struggling to know where to head next, or how to apply your past experiences to the future, Career Transition can help you make that shift.
You will be motivated by Deborah’s experiences and the case studies of others who have successfully made career shifts. You too can do it!
Review of Career Transition: Make the Shift
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Become a Provider of Choice: Shift Your Focus to Customer Experiences
Oct 14th
Griffin Hospital earns customer loyalty, and accolades, by creating customer experiences. Griffin Hospital’s efforts to understand the lives of patients and their families has earned them extreme customer loyalty. Their goal was to imagine what it would be like to be the patient so they could improve the experience for both patients and their families. But Griffin Hospital hadn’t always received this type of accolade.
Back in 1982, Griffin Hospital was very far from enjoying extreme loyalty. At that time, one-third of the local community named Griffin as the hospital they would avoid if they could. That rude awakening pushed them to rethink their purpose and literally everything they did. The hospital wanted to create an experience to remember.
Music in the Parking Lot and a Piano in the Lobby
Being told that it was avoided whenever possible pushed Griffin to rethink the purpose for their hospital, physicians, and caregivers. Their goal was to become the hospital of choice in the community. Griffin knew that if “choice” was the goal, then they had to readjust their purpose; they needed to move from being healthcare providers to being service providers.
Griffin had to stop executing required tasks and determine what experience they would deliver, what patient and family emotions were involved. They found that the emotional journey of going to the hospital begins in the parking lot. So Griffin provides free valet parking and concierge services. Music in the parking lot and lobby welcomes visitors and takes away the sterile “hospital” feeling.
Says Bill Powanda, Griffin Hospital vice president:
“It doesn’t matter if you have the shortest emergency room wait times around and deliver the greatest care in the nation; if parking is a nightmare, your patients won’t be completely satisfied.”
Griffin Hospital Enjoys a 99 Percent Recommendation Rate
Understanding the customer emotions involved in “coming and going” from a hospital visit prompted actions that made Griffin stand out. Those bookend experiences are part of the magnet that pulls people back to Griffin. No longer considered the “black sheep” hospital of the community, Griffin grows through customer referrals. Inpatient admissions grew 28 percent from 1997 to 2009, compared with a state average growth rate of 10 percent. And outpatient services grew 92 percent from 1998 to 2009.
Griffin Hospital has become the hospital of choice not only for their community, but for surrounding communities as well. One-third of Griffin Hospital’s customers come from outside of the community where it’s located. Ten percent of administrators of U.S. hospitals want to visit Griffin Hospital to learn from them.
Do you think about how you punctuate your moments of connection with customers? First impressions last the longest. Is yours purposeful? Does it create the ideal first opinion of your business?
What Are Your Customer Experience Bookends?
Griffin Hospital decided to eliminate the fear of hospital visits with music in their parking lots and a concierge in their lobby. The memory of these “experience bookends” bonds visitors to them. Ask yourself:
- Do you have a purposeful beginning and ending to moments of customer contact?
- Are you creating memories or just executing tasks?
- How would you rate your intent and ability to create purposeful moments of customer contact?
- How would your customers say you are doing?
- Do customers rave about a memorable experience?
- What are the marquee moments in your customers’ experiences with you?
- Do your decisions for creating memorable bookends earn you “beloved” status today?
Become a Provider of Choice: Shift Your Focus to Customer Experiences
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
When the Economy Forces You to Shift Gears
Sep 29th
Hard economic times force even the savviest business owner to reconsider whether he or she is in the right field. When unemployment reaches record levels, people aren’t buying luxury items. Or real estate. Or organic foods. So what do you do when the business you’ve been developing falls flat in financially frustrating times?
Do what Chris Luna did: Switch gears. Luna was in real estate finance when things got bad, and decided to go back to school. In the meantime, he needed work. After scratching 9-to-5 work, modeling and physical labor off of his list of possibilities, he turned to his experiences. He had a lot of experience in dating, so he thought, Why not start a dating coach service?
“I had started off shy and awkward with women and learned not to be. For men beginning that same journey, what I had learned had economic value, assuming I could communicate these lessons in a way that allowed them to be more successful. I thought that I could.”
He formed Craft of Charisma, and began offering dating and relationship coaching services in New York City.
Look Before You Dive
Luna tested out Google AdWords campaigns to see if there was a demand for dating coach services in New York City. This cost him a minimal amount, compared to what it would have cost to launch full-on into business without really knowing if the market was there. In a recession, none of us can afford to dive without looking.
Fred Vallaeys, Google AdWords Evangelist, says that online advertising can be an affordable way to dip your toes into a business idea without a time and money investment that you can’t afford. His advice:
- Know your website numbers
- Drive traffic
- Monitor your brand online
- Engage with consumers online
- Be an expert
- Improve your website design
Luna stresses the importance of entrepreneurs asking themselves questions before jumping into a new business or field: “Think about your next entrepreneurship venture in terms of solving a series of problems.”
He says you have to ask yourself why you want to change fields. The answer should be strong enough to motivate you when you encounter challenges (and you will). Once you’re sure making a change is right for you, ask yourself:
- What will I sell?
- Who will I sell it to?
- How will I reach them?
And look to affordable resources, such as online advertising and social media, as a way to do research to find out if there’s a market for your new business idea.
Image from tommistock/Shutterstock
When the Economy Forces You to Shift Gears
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Paradigm Shift Trading System – Changing How You Trade Stock & Options
Jul 6th
I Will Show You How To Make Money Regardless Of Whether The Market Goes Up, Down or Sideways! Forget What You Think You Know About The Market. Better Than Forex, Penny Stocks, Day Trading, And Swing Trading The Stock Market. Over 24 Hours Of Video!
Paradigm Shift Trading System – Changing How You Trade Stock & Options
Understanding the Most Fundamental Shift in Marketing
Apr 21st
Understanding the Most Fundamental Shift in Marketing
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing Hourglass explained by John Jantsch (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
When I want to make marketing extremely easy to understand, I sit small business owners down in front of the above graphic and have them fill in some process, touchpoint, campaign, product of service in each of the seven blanks. The idea behind this graphic I call the Marketing Hourglass is that marketing is no longer a hunt and close business, it’s a be found, build trust, nurture, wow and refer business.
The most fundamental shift of all in marketing is the need to logically and systematically move prospects along the path of know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer – this is the entire game these days. Now, what tools and tactics you bring to this game will certainly differ, but the end game is still the same.
I wrote last week that the Most Powerful Form of Lead Generation is a Happy Customer and the hourglass model put the focus squarely on that idea. While most businesses use a marketing model that tends to lean heavy on the desire to go from know us to buy from us, any business that fills each of these seven touchpoints will be well on their way to finding and keeping customers that become part of the lead generation and conversion team.
I explain a bit more of my thinking on this tool in this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast.
You can listen to the show by subscribing the feed in iTunes or a variety of other free services such as Google Listen (Use this RSS feed) or you can buy the Duct Tape Marketing iPhone app. (iTunes link – Cost is $2.99) or
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Read SHiFT: Magically See When Your Prospect Is Ready to Choose You
Jan 15th
There’s a quote that goes something like this: “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” In the new book SHiFT: Harness the Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers, Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto will show you how to focus on your timing when you prepare to sell. This is not a new concept – but it has never been presented in such a way that a sales professional or business owner can grasp and implement almost immediately.
How I Got to This Book
Maybe the best way to explain how SHiFT will teach you to use “timing” to get to your prospect at the precise moment that they’re about to buy what you’re selling, is to tell you how I came to know Craig Elias and get this book.
I was in a conversation about strategic ways to use LinkedIn that people hadn’t quite caught on to yet when I heard about Craig Elias and his books SHiFT. I immediately went to Google and typed in the words “Trigger Events” and “Craig Elias” and came upon a LinkedIn Group. I’d say no more than 15 minutes after I clicked on the LinkedIn Group, my phone rang. It was Craig Elias! Talk about timing.
When I asked him how it was that he called at that very moment, he mentioned that he had received a ping about my joining the group. He quickly reviewed my LinkedIn profile and decided that I was worth contacting directly. That is the power of trigger events at work.
What’s a Trigger Event, and How Can It Help You Be the Ideal Choice?
A trigger event is the moment when you are no longer just thinking or wishing or searching for a solution. It’s the precise moment when you are motivated to find and purchase a solution to your problem. Imagine wanting to upgrade your computer, but not doing anything, and then having it crash so you have to buy a new one. Of course, most trigger events aren’t that obvious or immediate. But they are just as powerful. Understanding what triggers a prospect to buy, who they choose to buy from and why is what you’ll learn in SHiFT.
A Magical Map to When Your Prospects Need You Most
The book starts with understanding the sales and marketing process from the buyer’s perspective instead of your own. Here’s a closer look:
- The Status Quo: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Your prospects live in this space most of the time. They might have thought about making a change, but any proposed benefit clearly isn’t worth the effort or the risk.
- Window of Dissatisfaction: Suddenly, the status quo isn’t quite good enough. ”The Window of Dissatisfaction occurs AFTER the prospect has experienced a trigger event, and decides that what he or she currently has is no longer good enough, but before they’ve decided to actually do anything about it.” This is the sweet spot for any seller, because it’s at this perfect point that the buyer is most likely to put a higher value on your offer if it shows up on time.
- The Status Quo:If no one has approached the buyer during the window of satisfaction, they go on the hunt for an alternative–and their perception of value suddenly shifts into judging mode. That means that it’s just about too late to woo them to your offer.
SHiFT: Your Portable Trigger Event Coach
SHiFT is not a complicated book. The buying cycle I described above is all there is to learn. This concept is introduced in the beginning; then each chapter gives you tools and insights to help you create your own sales and marketing system that grabs prospects at the very moment they are ready to choose you.
The beginning of each chapter starts with the heading, “If you don’t read this chapter you will miss out on the following,” and each chapter ends with a summary and a series of action steps for you to take. I could tell that it was written by sales experts because it took into account the fact that most of us want to get to the point and put it into action.
SHiFT Will Increase Your Bottom Line
If getting and keeping customers is part of your marketing plan, than SHiFT is the book for you. SHiFT will make you look like a mind reader because you’ll learn how to track and identify the trigger events that cause your ideal customer to start looking for new solutions. And that’s when you will appear with the perfect solution.
You can get read the SHiFT Selling Blog for more information and follow Craig Elias on Twitter @CraigElias.
Read SHiFT: Magically See When Your Prospect Is Ready to Choose You
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
The Shift From The Traditional Media Of Marketing To The Internet Media Of Marketing
Sep 9th
| It is quite possible that the shift from the traditional media of marketing to the fast catching up online or internet marketing… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
The $700 Million Travel Search Deal And Google’s Shift In Strategy
Jul 4th
| After months of hard work we are proud to introduce a Web app that combines all-in-one: A smart twitter reader, A personalized discovery engine & A… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Cheryl Perkins column: All generations now making shift to social media | Postcrescent.com | Appleton Post-Crescent
Oct 25th
| If you haven’t seen the newest edition of the Shift Happens videos, you might want to Google ‘Did You Know 4.0′ and see how the future of technology… |
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