I was especially looking forward to listening to Valerie’s interview as I have been a subscriber to her Changing Course newsletter for a couple of months. I’ve always found her newsletters to be insightful and inspiring.
Valerie Young is an expert on “Outside the Job Box Careers” and the founder and Dreamer in Residence at ChangingCourse.com, a company designed to provide resources, tools, perspective, and inspiration to help discover and follow your dreams of a more fulfilling life, working at what you love. Valerie’s first book is due out later this year and is on the Imposter Syndrome.
The main points I took from her webinar were:
- Just because you are good at something doesn’t mean you have to do a job that uses those skills. Instead look at what you are passionate about; you can always acquire more skills but it’s a lot harder to acquire a new passion.
- How can you find your passions? This is going to involve asking yourself some questions What did you love to do as a child? Did you play school – were you the teacher or the student? There will always be parts of your passion that you won’t enjoy; don’t give up at the first hurdle or when it gets hard.
- What do you want your life to look like? Nothing will happen overnight but there are enough examples of people living a different/inspiring life to know that it’s possible. If they can do it why can’t you? Somebody is going to get that cool job why can’t it be you?
- You don’t need one big idea to replace your income; it’s a lot easier to come up with different profit centers to combine together.
- Starting out with a new business is always a balance of money, time and fear. You can have all the time and money that you need but not be able to get out of your own way due to fear. You need to invest in your business; decide on how much you will spend on marketing and education.
- If you don’t write your blog/book then you won’t be able to share your information. People are waiting. This was a useful break through for Valerie when writing her book and helpful for me when writing for this blog.
- How do you overcome any marketing blocks that you might have? Match your personality to a marketing technique e.g. if you are introverted you could donate your services as part of a silent auction. Think about how you are going to help people to find you.
- Start doing something. What you start out doing will very probably change so you end up with a different business as you learn and discover. It’s by the doing that you have your “Ah ha” moments rather than sitting and watching TV.
- What is a tip for getting your first client? Valerie started out selling a subscriber newsletter and information products while contracting to her current employer doing her old work as a form of income. Now she does workshops (including one in Ecuador!) and retreats on how to profit from your passion.
- Be curious. When you are at your local coffee store look around you e.g. who supplies the cakes? How do they get them there? Who wants what I have? Who is going after your same market that you could get endorsements or support from? Valerie partnered with a local bank to support women entrepreneurs with a series of talks. Be creative in your marketing. Start looking for businesses that are exciting to you – what can you learn from other people, what could you model?
- Focus on what you love to do. Valerie does the ideas part of people profiting from their passion so she concentrates on the front end brainstorming rather than ongoing coaching. What part of your business do you like? What part of business drains your energy? Do more of what excites you. This was a good reminder to me that reinventing your life is all about choices and you need to constantly remind yourself that you have choices.
If you want to subscribe to Valerie’s newsletter then contact her at Changingcourse.com. I can highly recommend her newsletter for you.
The next speaker in this series of Happiness at Work is Alexander Kjerulf, Chief Happiness Officer. His title alone was enough to make me want to listen!
