Monica O'Brien is the author of the book Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It. Social Pollination provides a strategic blueprint that helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth! For a limited time, purchase Social Pollination and get a free membership to Monica's private coaching forum.

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How to Find Passion in Your Career

By Monica O'Brien | October 13th in Uncategorized

6 comments

Should you be an entrepreneur? In most instances, people mistake becoming an entrepreneur for finding what they are passionate about. The two are sometimes related, but they are different concepts. Finding your passion could mean you are happy working for other people, while entrepreneurship is about building a company, plain and simple.

You don’t have to build a company to find your passion. I repeat, you don’t have to build a company to find your passion. Here is how to find your passion, whether you want to be an entrepreneur or not:

Look to your childhood

I spent most of my free time as a child with my nose in a book. I also spent countless hours documenting my life (yeah, not a good read from the perspective of an 10 year old) and writing short stories. In fact, my dad recently sent me a copy of a published short story I wrote when I was 8. It’s awful. But it reminded me that I have always been passionate about reading and writing. Always. So passionate about writing that when people ask me how I keep writing on my blog, or how I can write a book, I have no advice, because I always write.

You are probably passionate about many things, but you will find your strengths by remembering what inspired you when you were young. What did you care about then? Ask your parents or siblings if you are stuck.

Reexamine your hobbies

One of the best sources for finding your passion is stuff you already do for free. And don’t stop at things you do – also keep in mind subjects you are constantly reading about, ideas you’ve dabbled with on a blog, and magazines you are subscribed to. But be careful – sometimes turning a hobby into a job doesn’t work out.

Find the good in your current job

Compartmentalize your job. Even if you hate your current job, there must be at least one thing you like about it. Maybe it’s something unrelated, like you work with your friends, or it’s only 15 minutes away, or you get free bagels and orange juice for breakfast – but that’s still something you should know about yourself.

When I completed my analysis, I learned that I love to be near home. I think about the jobs I’ve quit and it was mostly due to the commute. So now I know to never take a job unless I plan to move within 15 minutes of it.

Do this with all your jobs, and look for patterns. You could find some skill set that you’ve overlooked. At the least, you will better understand your priorities in life.

Volunteer

You can find your passion by process of elimination. So volunteer whenever you can – for unusual projects at your current job, with a local organization or charity, at your church, wherever. Internships and apprenticeships, and shadowing are also good ways to eliminate options.

Throw out the BS

It’s so easy to tell yourself you are not good enough to do something as a career. Question those negative thoughts. Why can’t you? I recently watched something on TV where this guy who weighed over 600 pounds lost all his weight and became a fitness trainer. Can you imagine?

Pump yourself up, do whatever you need to do to boost your self-esteem, and above all, don’t rule anything out because you don’t have the education, the skills, the know-how, the degree, the talent, or the look. Skills can be learned, attitude can’t; so having the right attitude probably counts more in whatever field you want to enter.

This is not to say you should never stop pursuing an impossible dream, but don’t rule it out before you even begin.

Research

Learn about careers you think you could be interested in. Ask around. Sometimes your friends can help you see yourself differently – the people close to you may see a great career path that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own.

Take an assessment

I don’t have all the answers for you. It’s impossible for me or anyone else to look into a crystal ball and tell you exactly what your passion is. But luckily, there are a few people I can recommend who can also help you find your passion. Two passion tests I really love are:

Find Your Career Path by JT O’Donnell

Find Your Career Path is about getting a career and work environment that is compatable with your strengths. The workbook is divided into four sections using the G.L.O.W. Method:

Part I: Gaining Perspective – a series of unique personality assessments to give you a better perspective of your strengths
Part II: Luminating Your Goal – a guide to determining a best fit career and workplace environment
Part III: Owning Your Actions – information on creating your resume, developing a career story, and taking the steps necessary to get your dream job
Part IV: Working It Daily – a worksheet that will help you stay committed to reaching your goals

Get the book here. Or you can learn how this book literally changed my life (umm, yeah, I don’t say that often, so you know I mean it) by reading my entire review.

Passion + Profits Test by Jonathan Mead

ppt-preview I love this test. Jonathan first takes you through what getting paid to exist means in a video presentation. Then he has you brainstorm potential passion businesses, and gives you a 25 question quiz to evaluate the validity of your potential business.

Get the Passion + Profits Test here (short email sign-up required).

Business Networking for Entrepreneurs

By Monica O'Brien | October 5th in Entrepreneurship

7 comments

Over 70% of people get a job from networking. As a entrepreneur, you technically already have a job; but you will inevitably go to informational/networking meetings to sell an idea, convince clients to hire you, or secure funding. Here’s how to get started:

Action Item #1: Land the meeting

It’s not easy, but I get meetings with many CEOs and other executives in the Chicago area. When people ask me how, I tell them it’s a fairly basic process – I email people and convince them to meet with me. If I’m trying to reach the CEO, I sometimes schedule a call with one of his direct reports first. I sometimes send a couple of follow-up emails. I sometimes ask other people in my network for referrals.

Be persistent. There are many ways to ask for something, but the key to getting it is almost always persistence. Everyone calls once, some call twice, but the people who land the meetings are the ones who called for as long as it took.

Action Item #2: Ace the meeting

It is not as difficult as you would think to research a company or a person thanks to Google. I research all sorts of things, from industry statistics, to competitors, to website statistics, to hobbies of the person I’m meeting. I also read through press releases and media coverage (all found on the internet) to understand the history of the company, the pain points, and what the management team cares about. If you do your research beforehand, you can make a good impression at the meeting.

Based on your research, you should know how much you can actually contribute to the networking meeting, and how much information you will have to ask for. This will help you set expectations for yourself and the person you are meeting with.

It’s essential to set expectations for a networking meeting so you don’t waste someone’s time. I have gone to meetings where a CEO just wants to chat over beers, and I’ve gone to meetings where the CEO wants a PowerPoint deck of my ideas and how to implement them. If you set expectations well, you can avoid being under-prepared and making a bad impression.

Also, don’t forget to articulate your interest and your value. There are two things people want to see in a networking meeting: enthusiasm or passion, and what you bring to the table. Make sure that you incorporate both these answers into your story about your history and your goals.

Use language that ties both of your interest and your value to the company, the person you’re meeting with, and yourself. It’s a tough balance, so practicing beforehand helps!

Action Item #3: Follow up

Often, you will not get an immediate offer from a networking meeting. That doesn’t mean it was a waste. Instead, you’ve gotten a contact, information, or a referral. Or you found a way to help the person with one of these three things. Be open to what someone can help you with, and good things will come.

Because networking meetings are not for closing deals, you have to follow-up and check in on the person within a reasonable time frame. This reminds the person of what you discussed, what you want, and what value you have to them. I generally follow up with a thank you email to begin with, and then follow up once more within a month.

What’s your most outrageous networking story?

Entrepreneurship is about changing the game

By Monica O'Brien | October 2nd in Entrepreneurship

5 comments

One of the most famous dot com failures was a company called Kozmo. Kozmo entered the market in major cities with dense populations. If you wanted a small purchase, say a pack of Jolly Ranchers, you could get on the internet and enter your order at Kozmo.com. Kozmo would deliver your purchase by bike messenger within an hour, at a slightly marked up rate from what the item(s) would normally cost.

The company raised $250 million, entered 18 locations, and had over 1000 employees. The company thought that it could keep costs low by delivering only in areas with a high concentration of internet users. Though it seemed like a smart idea in theory, the company lost money on most of the sales it made, due to expensive city warehouses, inability to stock a large variety of items at wholesale rates, and the high cost of delivering small items in a short time window. The company went bankrupt in 2001.

The company suffered from a problem that most dot com companies suffered from – the internet was simply not a game changer for this type of business. There was a reason no one had entered the business earlier, using phones as the point of order instead of the internet. It was an expensive delivery business, and the business model was broken.

I did a call with the HR manager of a huge industrial supplies company in Chicago about using social media to recruit candidates. We talked for 30 minutes, and my conclusion at the end of the call was that social media was not a game changer for his company.

The company does not brand itself for strategic reasons, and its main method of recruiting is finding passive job candidates through data mining and calling them to see if they are interested in interviewing. The problem is that the company currently looks for smart people based on a resume, and by the time they find a good candidate it might be three months after the person applied.

I told him, “Social media is perfect for data mining, and with blogs and LinkedIn, the data is much more dynamic than a resume. The most you might want to do is add another step in your process – email or Twitter candidates as a first point of contact rather than call to qualify them and save time.”

It begs the question – is the internet and social media really a game changer for the company you want to start? The revolution you want to lead at work? It’s worth thinking it through:

Action Item #1: Identify the most important aspects of the business you want to get into.

When I wanted to get into the publishing business, I thought about what publishers truly do for first-time authors. I came up with three major things: give authors credibility, help with product design/marketing, and handle distribution. What matters for the industry you are trying to enter?

Action Item #2: Figure out how people typically do it.

Credibility in the book industry is not something a small press gains overnight, so instead I read everything I could about the marketing and distribution processes for books. This is an essential step for any business you start – how are people already doing it? The tried and true is that way for a reason – you can’t revolutionize the industry without understanding it first.

Action Item #3: Identify the real game changers.

The internet in itself is not a game changer. Social media is not a game changer for every industry. The question I had to ask myself was whether the internet and social media were game changers in the book industry.

For the book industry, the game changers are in the marketing and distribution of the book. Marketing can be done online and through direct mailings rather than through expensive traditional advertising, and online distribution is much easier to break into than bookstores. Furthermore, some credibility can be gained through consumers who purchase products online and care more about customer reviews than a brand name.

When you are looking at game changers, remember that it’s very difficult to change behavior. If you have to sell someone on the switch in behavior first – before they’ll even try your product – you have an uphill battle, not a game changer.

What are your thoughts on game changers? Share your action items on your blog or in the comments section. If you have additional thoughts about entrepreneurship, send me the link and I’ll share it on my blog.

How to be an entrepreneur despite your personality type

By Monica O'Brien | October 1st in Entrepreneurship

9 comments

This past month, I’ve been editing and putting the final touches on my upcoming book. (I’ll be talking about it soon, but here’s a primer.) Having gone through the experience once now, there are many things I will be doing differently for my next book.

For example, I am not comfortable writing in a vacuum. I love getting feedback on my ideas, and the thought of publishing my first book with very little community feedback is making me a little crazy. So for my next book, I’m going to get some online feedback early.

60 Days to Entrepreneurial Freedom – The Not-yet-a-Book Experiment

I wanted to re-kick off this blog (after a short hiatus) with a series about something I write about often – entrepreneurship. I’m calling the series 60 Days to Entrepreneurial Freedom, and every day for sixty days I plan to write about some topic in entrepreneurship, with 3 actionable items to help you succeed as an entrepreneur. At the end of the 60 days, I might take some of the material, edit it, restructure it, add to it, clarify it, and turn it into a book. Or I might not. I’m simply using this blog as a playground to test ideas about (and my understanding of) entrepreneurship.

If this sounds completely vague, it is. But if you are interested in starting a business, hang out here every day for the next two months and let’s just see what happens.

Which brings me to…

Action Item #1: Discover your personality type.

Many people would not be okay with starting a 60 day series on their blogs without knowing what they were going to talk about, but I am. That’s because I’m an ENTP, and we’re comfortable with blueprints and improvisation.

I strongly recommend that everyone understand their personality type before trying to start a business. You need to know what your strengths and weaknesses are, and if your company ever starts expanding, you will need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your coworkers.

There is also strong evidence that small companies take on the personalities of their founders, and that the founders’ personalities become embedded in company culture long after the company passes out of the startup phase. One example is Steve Jobs and Apple – another example is Walt Disney from Disney.

So if you are serious about building a company, you better know yourself. Take an online Myer-Briggs test here.

Action Item #2: Learn as much as you can about weaknesses of your personality type.

I read tons of descriptions of my personality type so I know where I’m going to fail, and so I can hopefully circumvent the process. Here are some things I struggle with:

Finishing Projects

I am a classic “P” – I like to start things, but I have trouble finishing them. While I am capable of managing projects well, I have trouble when I must both manage and execute the project. Not only that, but I start way more projects that I can finish, keeping me slightly more busy than physically possible most of the time.

Taking Risks

I have a tendency to dream big and as such, rarely take the traditional route. While I try to take calculated risks, some of my ideas are really out there. This is typical of entrepreneurs, but knowing when to not pursue something or when to quit something is valuable. Sometimes I have trouble seeing that.

Abandoning Relationships

I like relationships that help me grow, and I am quick to end relationships that don’t. This can come across as harsh or unkind to some people, when I’m really just trying to manage my time better. I don’t take emotions into account often enough in my business dealings.

Action Item #3: Plan an attack on your weaknesses.

To give yourself a better chance at whatever entrepreneurial pursuits you undertake, it makes sense to figure out how you are going to compensate for your weaknesses. I’ve come up with three ideas, one for each weakness I’ve uncovered:

Finishing Projects Solution

Hire or find someone to manage you. For my upcoming book, I hired an editor who is also an excellent project manager. He not only edits my book, but helps me keep the entire book on schedule just by talking me through deadlines. If you can get a spouse or coworker to manage your creativity, even passively, you will accomplish much more than you can on your own.

Taking Risks Solution

I stay grounded thanks to my husband. He’s happy to give me a reality check, so I run all my ideas by him and talk it out with him. Find a confidant who has an opposite personality type – he can balance the extreme aspects of your personality.

Abandoning Relationships Solution

I try to relax at least a few times a week with people I don’t feel pressured to “optimize” – like my spouse, friends, and extended family. I remind myself to just have fun with people, and to not make everything about business. I try to convert business partnerships to friendships when I enjoy talking or hanging out with the person, so that the relationship doesn’t end when the partnership does.

Notice that with each of the solutions, I don’t necessarily try to change any of my weaknesses. For the most part, you can’t. What you can do is make a small improvement on your weaknesses and find someone else with those strengths to help you balance.

What’s your personality type, what are three weaknesses you have that could impair you in entrepreneurship, and how can you combat them? Feel free to respond to the action items in a comment, or share your results on your own blog.

If you have an idea for future topics, I obviously could use some. Feel free to email me at m@twentyset.com.

I look forward to hearing about your path to entrepreneurial freedom!

What Women Really Want In a Man

By Monica O'Brien | March 5th in Careers

Comments on this entry are closed

Lance asked me to contribute my thoughts to his topic about how to make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex, because he was inspired by my post, here. Lance is a pretty funny guy, and his website is pretty entertaining, and I had trouble resisting his charm.

So here is a lighthearted post about three things I think young women want from men; or maybe these are just things I want . Please feel free to add your own thoughts about this topic in the comments section; and at the bottom of the post you can read some of the other participants’ posts, which I’m sure will be more racy than mine!

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A man who makes her feel special. Buy me flowers and I’ll ask for a vase. Buy me chocolates and I’ll gain two pounds. But write me a letter telling me how you feel about me? I would probably frame it. Making a woman feel special takes effort, but it goes much further than a corny, meaningless, hallmark-packaged “gesture” would.

A man who challenges her. Nice guys finish last, right? The truth is women are too independent for overly “nice guys” these days. I dated guys who treated me like a princess – very agreeable, always attentive. Then I met a guy who wasn’t afraid to tell me I was wrong and didn’t give me whatever I wanted - my husband. This isn’t to say be a jerk, but don’t fall over backwards either.

A man who knows how to “man up.” The term is confusing, because women still want guys who share their emotions and groom themselves properly. But women don’t think it’s manly to act overly macho anymore; they would prefer you have goals and learn responsibility. I could care less if you choose a career or a family to man up – the important thing is you actually choose to do so!

Further Reading: