Mindset Monday: What Does Work-Life Balance Mean to You?

Welcome to Mindset Mondays! To support your success, for the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing mindset tips with you each Monday. Today’s tips are to help you with your work/life balance — something a lot of us struggle with (me included!).

Before you can dream about creating work/life balance, you first must define what exactly it means to you. The main thing to understand is that work/life balance does not mean that you spend equal time on everything you want and need to do.

Instead, it more than likely means that you can spend the time needed in each area of your life even if you can’t spend all the time you want. Discover your personal work/life balance with the following suggestions.

• List the things you need to do and the things you want to do. For most people, it’s helpful to put all the things they want to do and need to do in a calendar with a realistic schedule. That way, you know if you have time or not.

• Set your priorities. Your priority might be different from someone else’s and that’s fine. Your personal life is yours to live, as you see fit and you can prioritize what you want to. Try to remember that there is a difference between wants and needs as you move forward. You may want to sleep until 10 a.m. every day, but your limited time to get things done might make that unrealistic. 

• Be consistent. Like most things, you’ll get better results when you are consistent for the long term. It works with almost everything you want to do, from finishing a certification to losing weight to running a six-figure career services business. 

• Track your results. Don’t assume that a step you took resulted in a specific impact until you track and measure your results. You don’t really know which actions you took that worked until you prove it. For example, if you’re working on saving money, you look your savings account and see your account balance. Do the same when you’re trying to save time, build a closer relationship with someone, and so forth. 

• Surround yourself with people who value you. When you do this, there is no pressure to be something you’re not. Just be yourself and do what you feel comfortable doing. However, you still need to grow and learn new things. 

“Time Freedom” is one of my personal values. Having the flexibility to work when I want to work (even if that means working late one night so I can have an afternoon off to pick up my niece and nephews from school the next day) is a core value to me.

What does work-life balance mean for you? What are your core values? Are your values in alignment with how you’ve structured your business? Leave a comment below!

Solving a Problem: Getting Organized in Your Job Search (Creator Spotlight)

 

One common problem jobseekers face in their job search is getting — and staying — organized.

Alison King has created a course — Get Organized to Get Hired: Organize Your Job Search, Reduce Overwhelm, and Get Hired – Quicker! — full of actionable tips and techniques to help jobseekers organize all the documents, communications, and appointments throughout the job search process. “The course is especially targeted to jobseekers who plan to apply to 10+ jobs and need help keeping all the administrative details straight!”

The course is designed for anyone (“any industry, job title, or experience level,” King says) who is preparing for — or in the very early stages of — their job search, whether they are looking to move up in their current industry or switch to a new career. 

King recognized the need for a course after conducting her own job search and realizing it was confusing trying to track all the details for multiple job applications. “It’s especially challenging for people like me who are not super-organized by nature,” she noted. “During my own job search, I got organized by necessity — not because I love organization — so I wanted it to be accessible to people like me.”

The course is quick — “about an hour to get through it,” King says — and offers low- and no-cost solutions so jobseekers can apply the tips immediately and feel confident and organized as they start their job search process. It includes templates for LinkedIn networking, tips for digital file organization for different versions of resumes and cover letters, and a spreadsheet to use to track all the jobs they apply for.

“This was the course I wish I had when I started my own full-time librarian-to-copyeditor job search in April 2022,” King says. “It had been a few years since I’d done a job search, and I had NEVER done one where I applied to more than five jobs.”

“The admin work got overwhelming so quickly, and I felt like my head was spinning all the time with emails, interview scheduling, and networking,” she adds. “Although I had seen some career pros allude to certain aspects of job search organization, I couldn’t find all that information in one place. When my job search ended four months later (and not a moment too soon, because otherwise I’d be going back to my school librarian job in September!), I knew I had to share the systems I developed with other jobseekers. My search was stressful, but these systems made the admin part far more manageable!”

The course is $49 and is self-paced so students can go through it at their own pace. Use promo code RWD10 to save $10 off the course price for a limited time. (Enter the promo code on the checkout page.)

For career colleagues considering creating their first — or next — course, King offers a peek into her course development process.

“My challenge is that I get really inspired to write a course, (so I) write a ton of it at once, and then leave it unfinished for too long. I lost momentum for months … or maybe a year? Seriously, I have multiple docs on my (hard) drive of potential course content in various states of ‘done-ness,’” King says. “There was some imposter syndrome mixed in there too, since I’ve only been writing resumes for about three years.”

When creating the “Get Organized to Get Hired” course, “I think I finally just set a date that I needed to release it — for my own sanity,” she added.

King also says the “Career Colleague Teachable Tribe” (CCTT) courses offered by BeAResumeWriter.com were helpful.

“I was part of both CCTT sessions Bridget offered. The sales page template was a life-saver. I had never written a sales page before, so that was a big block to launching.”

King is already working on her next course. “With my most recent course about cover letters — which I started writing ages ago during the first CCTT — I got motivated to finally finish while at the NRWA conference. I’d go back to the hotel at night to write and while touring Colorado after the conference. I told myself I needed to finish it before I landed back home in Philadelphia because otherwise, I was likely to let it linger again.”

She reports she did finish writing the cover letter course on the plane ride home and is launching the course soon.

“With the cover letter course, I actually used ChatGPT to help fill in the blanks where I was getting writer’s block. It took a lot of adjusting the prompt (“make it shorter” and “make it less formal”), but that was enough to work with as a base before making it my own tips and voice,” she said.

King also said she used some of the Pass-Along Materials content from Bronze membership in BeAResumeWriter.com to fill in the blanks in the content and help with creation of the downloadable files she created for students.

“Ultimately, I need to remind myself that ‘Done is better than perfect’ and that I can always go back and adjust things later … so just launch the darn thing!” 

For more information about Alison King and her courses, visit:

Royal Career Academy  

King Career Services 

Alison King on LinkedIn 

Day 3 at INBOUND: Two Words – Reese Witherspoon

 

“If you want to change the stories, you need to change the storytellers.” 

— Reese Witherspoon

When we decided not to attend INBOUND 2023 in person, one of my biggest disappointments came when I learned that Reese Witherspoon would be one of the Main Stage speakers.

I love Reese Witherspoon. I saw the original “Legally Blonde” in the movie theatre like half a dozen times. (I was a paid tester for the precursor to “MoviePass,” so we saw it a LOT.) We also drove to Des Moines to see “Legally Blonde: The Musical” and then saw it again when it came to Omaha. “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde” wasn’t as good as the original, but I’ve been anxiously awaiting a rumored third sequel. I also loved this pandemic skit that Laura Bell Bundy did in character as Elle Woods.

But anyway, knowing we weren’t going to Boston this year, and hearing about Reese Witherspoon being a speaker, I was bummed. So I was thrilled when HubSpot announced that the Main Stage speakers would be live-streamed — including Reese!

But before Reese, there were sessions on Brand Building (with Beyoncé’s publicist), “How to Build a $100M Community,” a panel session on “The Future of Media,” an interview with the founders of HubSpot on how they built the company, and then a session on the growth of the Angel City Football Club (I missed most of this one because I was on a client call).

One change from the first two days of INBOUND (read about them here: Day 1 and Day 2) was that it was 10:06 a.m. Central time (more than two hours in) before the first mention of artificial intelligence. (The first two days were AI intensive!)

And then it was time for Reese Witherspoon! 

Her session was titled, “Lessons on Innovation, Leadership, and Navigating Change.” The one disappointing part was that the 2023 Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike meant that she wouldn’t be talking about her past, present, or future work, as the interviewer, Zinhle Essamuah, anchor of NBC News Daily (NBC), mentioned in her introduction of the actress, producer, and entrepreneur.

Still, there was plenty to talk about. 

Witherspoon described how she wasn’t seeing a lot of scripts with female leads, so she decided to fill that gap. “I can’t expect to make change by staying in the same circle,” she said. “I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.” So she started the first iteration of her production/media company, Hello Sunshine.

She self-funded the company. “It was high risk,” she noted. “Being famous does not equate to having business acumen.” She said she didn’t know how to be an executive, but she did know “critical life skills,” — for example: “Show up, do what you say you’re going to do, return emails, and if you tell someone you’re going to read their script, do it.”

Her experience acting helped prepare her to work collaboratively. She laughed when she noted, “10 percent of (her) job is acting; the other 90 percent is helping people get along.”

But it wasn’t easy. Witherspoon said that the award nominations flowed in, but the money did not. She said she had the proof she could create important work, but “I wasn’t paid appropriately for what I was bringing to the table.” So she retooled. She raised capital and got the company on solid financial footing. Persistence was key.

“Nobody believes as much in my dream as I do. I would wake up and do something to further my dream forward,“ she added.

Earlier in the week before INBOUND, the news broke that Witherspoon had sold a majority stake in a clothing line she had started, Draper James. It was a completely different growth path than Hello Sunshine. “Retail is hard. It’s really difficult.” But, she noted, she finally found the “right partners” and said she was excited for the company’s future growth. She will keep a seat on the board of directors, and has several family members involved in the brand’s retail presence in Nashville.

Essamuah asked Witherspoon her advice to people looking to maximize their bottom line. She responded, “It doesn’t matter where you get to in a business, you always have to be adapting.” She noted that her business has changed “again and again.” One thing that is consistent: “It’s so important that the audience is understood, spoken to correctly, and they feel seen and heard. That’s all storytelling is. That’s all media is. That’s all the relationship with your customer is,” she said. “Do you see me? Do you hear me? How do you make me feel? Do I see myself reflected in the stories you tell?”

For us as career industry professionals, this is an important message. Whether we’re telling our client’s story (in the resume) or our own story (in our own marketing), understanding our audience is critical. 

After spending three days “attending” the virtual Main Stage sessions at INBOUND, that was an important reminder. Artificial intelligence is here to stay, but AI can’t replace personal connections and relationships. 

Witherspoon ended by answering a question about the best advice she had ever received. She mentioned an Ava DuVernay quote she loves: “If your dream is only about you, it’s too small.” 

“Every single person in this room as the ability to change another person’s life, and I think you’re going to go out and do it,” Witherspoon said.

Did you miss yesterday’s blog post? Read it here:

Day 2 at INBOUND: I Took 24 Pages of Notes (and Someday, AI Will Take Those Notes For Me

Day 2 at INBOUND: I Took 24 Pages of Notes (and Someday, AI Will Take Those Notes For Me)

 

What was the big takeaway from today (Day 2) at INBOUND 23?

That someday (probably today, actually), I won’t have to type furiously to capture everything I want to remember from a day’s worth of conference sessions. 

Mentioned prominently by several speakers today was how generative AI can eliminate the drudgery of work, allowing creative professionals to focus on the work that matters.

We already know that AI can transcribe videos pretty accurately — Teachable added that functionality to its course platform recently — so the fact that I spent most of my day watching sessions and virtually transcribing the speakers as they talked about how AI could take notes for us in the future and even — with “digital twins” — represent us in meetings … well, let’s just say the irony wasn’t lost on me.

But I’ve learned over the years that I learn best when I’m typing the information myself. So I’m not sure how that will work in the future, but for today, I got a LOT out of the sessions by watching the videos myself and doing the transcribing personally.

There were three sessions today that I found particularly impactful. I’ll try to give you a couple of key takeaways from each.

The Captain’s Playbook: Strategies for Success

The second day of INBOUND started an hour earlier than yesterday, but I didn’t want to miss this session, so I was up early. One of the neat things about INBOUND is the Spotlight sessions that bring in some big names to speak. In 2019, we got to hear from Jennifer Garner. Last year, former President Obama did the closing keynote.

This morning, Derek Jeter was the first speaker. Jeter isn’t just a former baseball player (and a good one, at that!). He’s a businessman, founder of a nonprofit, and father. His talk wove in elements of each of these. One of his key messages was about failure — and the resiliency required to survive it. “I played a sport where, if you fail for long enough, you go to the Hall of Fame. Baseball and the weatherman are the only two jobs where you can fail that much and still have a job,” Jeter said. “You have to get used to failure and try to find a positive in anytime you’ve done something wrong.”

He talked about creating a “winning culture.” He said, “You always hear people say they want ‘Everyone on the same page.’’ He said you need enough people on the same page, pulling in the same direction. “You have to make people feel they are part of the same team, that they are valuable.”

Listening to him made me want to watch his documentary, “The Captain” (which Jon looked up and it’s on ESPN+. We’ll definitely be checking it out.

Getting Candid: Lessons in Workplace Culture and Feedback

I had never heard of the concept of “Radical Candor” before this session, but I learned a lot about it — including that I want to try it in real life.

“Radical Candor is about caring and changing. It helps organizations become more collaborative,” says the book’s author, Kim Scott. Scott told the origin story of the concept. She and her dog were out for a walk and the dog was almost hit by a car. A man nearby said, “I can tell you really love that dog.” But, he added, you’re going to kill that dog if you don’t get her to sit. He pointed to the ground said “SIT” and the dog sat. He added, “It’s not mean, it’s clear.”

I like that: It’s not mean, it’s clear.

I got a sense of the Radical Candor framework from Scott’s presentation, but I’m looking forward to reading the book. 

One of the most important pieces of the concept was “It’s difficult to change personality vs. behavior.” Focus on what you observe.

Scott noted that “Some people have used Radical Candor to be obnoxious.” Someone told her, “It’s not a superpower if it can’t be used for evil.”

Preparing for the AI Boom: The Perspective of a Futurist

I’ve been in sessions with futurists before, but never one talking about the future of AI. This one was interesting. Sinead Bovell, the founder of Waye, first took us back to 1993. “The World Wide Web has just dropped. People are talking about it. They don’t fully understand it. We don’t know the industries that will be invented,” she said. “Explain to people from then how we live today: social media, apps, the creator economy. Imagine what has yet to be invented in a world where we co-exist with smart machines.”

With that in mind, where we are today with AI makes more sense. Bovell says we really haven’t seen anything yet when it comes to AI. She said right now, people are treating AI as a gadget. But, she adds, we haven’t invented the things that will exist on top of AI. She said it’s like the camera has been invented, but movies haven’t.

When it comes to the workforce, Bovell says employers are asking the wrong questions. They are asking “What roles can I replace with AI? Where can I leverage this for the bottom line?” She said they should be thinking about, “How can I add value with these systems?” She encourages attendees to be thinking “3, 5, 10 years down the road. If you’re only thinking 3-5 years down the road, things will look very different. If you were completely caught off guard by the breakthroughs in AI this year, you’re not looking far enough ahead.”

Bovell provided several “use cases” for how AI might impact us in the future. She talked about a chatbot as a part of a team — you can converse with it and it can answer your questions, create A/B tests, and execute a project. It’s still up to you to make the decision about how to move forward, but AI can add value and transform your team.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s Day 1 blog post, “change” and “artificial intelligence” are the two themes of this year’s conference. Today’s sessions really focused on both.

I can’t wait for day 3. Two words: “Reese Witherspoon.”

Did you miss yesterday’s blog post? Read it here:

Insights From Day 1 of INBOUND 23: An AI Drinking Game and How Technology Let Me Down

Read Day 3’s blog post here:

Day 3 at INBOUND: Two Words – Reese Witherspoon