Question 1:  What would you do if you had no excuses?

Answer:  [Your answer goes here.]

That’s it, quiz over.

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One of my favorite sites is Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog. Click here for other things I’ve written about Steve.

Although I find Steve sometimes goes over the top, he’ll provoke you into thinking long and hard about yourself, your life, and the choices you make.

Strongly recommend his blog.

One of his recent posts had to do with Setting Your Primary Focus as it relates to New Year’s Resolutions.

If you’re like I am, you make lists (either written or mental) about areas of your life that you’d like to improve, and maybe you even go so far as to spell out specific resolutions for a new year or new time in your life. Perhaps you want to lose 15 pounds this year, learn to play the piano, be a better partner in ways that only you could describe, or get a certificate in something from your local community college.

Pavlina suggests that we’d all be better off in focusing on one goal for the coming year instead of making a list of a few things that we’ll probably not accomplish.

This got me to thinking about you and your career or your dream job.

What if you make 2007 the year that you get settled into and really doing the job you’ve been craving?

Forget everything else and focus on the dream job.

Keep a diary of everything you’re doing to pursue that job.

Then, do something every day that takes you closer to that job.  Create a better resume, take a course related to your passion, read the best book in the field you can find, or talk to a pro or two already doing what you want to do.
Each week review what you’ve done that week to get you closer; then, plan what you’ll do in the following week.

I’ll bet you that, if you focus on getting your dream job in 2007, you can do it.

I like that idea, Mr. Pavlina.

What job do you want, Dream Jobber, and can you commit to doing something every day to get you one step closer to it?

Write and let me know what your dream job is, and let’s see if we can work together to take some steps to get you one wee bit closer.

Over to you!

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Seth Godin is just so good.  He is simply so right on most of the time, that it’s just hard to ignore what he has to say.

So, please, don’t ignore the below.

(Click here for a recent review I did of his book, Small is the New Big.)

Seth recently wrote about the best time to start something.  Here’s what he said:

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The best time to start is when you’ve got enough money in the bank to support all contingencies.

The best time to start is when the competition is far behind in technology, sophistication and market acceptance.

The best time to start is when the competition isn’t too far behind, because then you’ll spend too long educating the market.

The best time to start is when everything at home is stable and you can really focus.

The best time to start is when you’re out of debt.

The best time to start is when no one is already working on your idea.

The best time to start is when your patent comes through.

The best time to start is after you’ve got all your VC funding.

 

The best time to start is when the political environment is more friendly than it is now.

The best time to start is after you’ve got your degree.

The best time to start is after you’ve worked all the kinks out of your plan.

The best time to start is when you’re sure it’s going to work.

The best time to start is after you’ve hired the key marketing person for the new division.

The best time to start was last year. The best opportunities are already gone.

The best time to start is before some pundit declares your segment passé. Too late.

The best time to start is when the new generation of processors is shipping.

The best time to start is when the geopolitical environment settles down.

Actually, as you’ve probably guessed, the best time to start was last year. The second best time to start is right now.

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 See . . . told ya’ the guy can nail ‘em, huh?

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Earlier I wrote about how important it is to learn to go along with your internal senses . . . trusting your gut.  Click here for that short post.

Now, for those in business or thinking about same . . .

Everybody thinks that being successful in developing and running their own business is all about having enough start-up and working capital, or the proper image that fits your market, or the right employees.

Yup, being successful in running your own show does require a significant dose of all of those things.

But, what I see missing most of all – and it just jumps out at me when I see people, either in their own businesses or as employees – is a willingness by that person to be themselves,  and to trust their own instincts.

I fight with this constantly in my own businesses, and indirectly with my own employees.

They want themselves – and our company, by extension – to be something else.

And, this just absolutely drives me nuts-o.

We have whatever success we do by being who we are, not by trying to be something or someone else.

I have one employee, Brad (real guy, name changed), who’s always trying to portray us as bigger – much bigger – than we are.  “Well, Michael,” he’ll tell me, “I just want to make sure that the customer takes us seriously.”

Hey, Brads of the world.  The customer already does take us seriously – they buy products and services from us. They do that because they like who we are, how we act, and how we look.

We are who we are and, if we’re any good – and in the case of the real-world Brad I’m talking about, we’re damned good; been in business over 23 years, lots of growth spurts, plenty of industry innovations along the way – we don’t need to make up anything about ourselves.  They like us, they really do like us.

The corollary to this is a feeling by lots of people that “well, we better do it that way because that’s how Microsoft [substitute your own name here] does it.”

Well, poop. We’re not Microsoft, we don’t wanna be Microsoft (really), and if we were really trying to be more like Microsoft, they’d eat our lunch before we even got past breakfast.

Be yourself, trust your gut.  After all, what in the hell are you doing here if you can’t be yourself?

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One of my old pals, and the President and business partner in my longest-running organization, InfoSource, Inc., Thomas W. Warrner, follows a set of internal operating principles to run a business.

One of these is something he calls WBT, or the Working Backwards Technique.

While what I’ll describe to you may seem quite simple — and it is — but it’s not always easy to implement in practice.

You see, most of us get all balled up in the details in many situations and we lose sight of our objectives, if indeed we even had any to begin with.

So, work it backwards, as TWW would tell you.

I’ve seen Tom use this technique while dealing with our managers and employees at InfoSource.  And, it works — every time.

So . . .

Define your end result first.  Don’t do anything until you’ve done that, and preferably have written it down.

In the case of your dream job quest, you need to define, first, what the ideal situation is for you.  (Of course, it helps if you can describe success even before that, but that’s for another topic and another day.)

Then, write it down — your dream job.  For an idea of how some others have done this, click here.  No need to get fancy, just describe the job as simply as possible.

For example, say your dream job is to run a charter-fishing business in the Caribbean.

Write that down.

Then, thinking about the end result (charter fishing in the Caribbean), describe the events, actions, or qualifications that will lead up to your objective.

Just list them out . . . at this point the order doesn’t matter.

So, in the case of your charter fishing business, you’ll need to have (probably, I’m not a charter-fishing pro) a suitable boat, a captain’s license, a business license, an advertising campaign, and a host of other things.

And, of course, if you don’t know how to run a boat in open water, you’ll want to add the necessary schooling to your list.

Then, put all those things in order, from beginning to end.

After that, start doing them.  One at a time.

We often fall short in shooting for our dreams because they seem so out of reach.  There’s so much to do to get to the end that we either never try or we give up too soon.

So, follow Warrner’s WBT and chunk up the action items, and pick ‘em off one at a time.

Let me know if you’ve used this technique sometime in your past and how it worked for you.

And, a tip-o-the-hat to Mr. Warrner.

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Well, I came into the Big Mouth syndrome a few weeks back, when I offered to help folks reading this blog find their dream jobs.

Click here for that post.

Bit off more than I could chew, you see.

I got into a tad bit of trouble — as the number of responses overwhelmed me.

But, I’m fortunate to have friends in the right places, and a few responded to my plea which you can see by clicking here.

With that said, I’m very pleased to announce that Dr. Traci Vujicich, author of the Life Coach book in the Dream Jobs To Go Series, has volunteered to help two dream job seekers.

Traci will work with them offline and then report back to us from time to time as things develop. Should be a fun process to watch.

Traci has been a life coach and writer for 15 years. She has conducted more than 7,000 one-on-one coaching sessions, helping clients achieve goals in their personal and professional lives. Dr. Traci is also known as The Writing Doctor, as she dedicates herself to curing the world of boring writing.

If you’d like to volunteer to be a mentor, please see this page for a brief application.

If you’re still looking for your dream job, please send me a detailed email at blog@dreamjobsdialog.com and I’ll try match you up with a mentor.

Thanks, Traci!
 

 

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In prior posts (click here for details), I’ve talked about how both travel and volunteering can help you unlock your creative juices that may lead to finding your dream job.

One of the often overlooked sources of mental fuel is an international volunteer assignment, which can last anywhere from a week to months or even years.

Not only will the activity be rewarding, but you’ll likely learn a lot about yourself and those that you’re trying to help.

To top it off, international volunteering is one helluva way to travel on the cheap; you can find 1-2 week assignments abroad for as little as $1,000.

Here are some places that offer volunteer opportunities:

Cross-Cultural Solutions

Explorations in Travel

Global Crossroad

Global Service Corps.

Global Vision International

Global Volunteer Network

Global Volunteers

Grown Up Camps

Institute for Field Research Expeditions

i-to-i

Mondo Challenge

Projects Abroad

United Planet

Volunteer Abroad

Volunteer Adventures

In addition to these individual organizations, there are other groups that provide more general information about volunteering abroad.  Some of the below are also associations of travel and volunteer organizations.

Association of Language Travel Organizations

Federation of International Youth Organizations

International Volunteer Programs Associations

UCI International Opportunities Program

UN Volunteers

Check ‘em out.

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I have a friend, Eldon Sarte, who’s crazy for golf.

He lives it, breathes it, reads about it, studies it, watches it, photographs it, and whenever he can . . . he plays it.

But, there are two catches in the perfect story about Eldon and his love for golf.

First off, he’s not really all that good (sorry Eldon, hope you’re not reading this).  He won’t make the pro circuit and he doesn’t have the patience to be a teacher.

Secondly, he’s married, has a mortgage, and needs to buy groceries from time to time.

So, what’s a golf addict to do?

Build a website and a blog, of course!

You can find Eldon’s at Human Golf.

There you’ll discover a growing collection of golf tips, articles, ebooks and many other resources on just about every aspect of the game, all geared, of course, to helping you improve and do better at it.  Don’t ask me if they work . . . I’m happy I gave up the game years ago!

Eldon has a number of web properties, and he makes his money by charging advertisers for space on his sites, but his most promising is HumanGolf.

So, maybe it will work for Eldon — making enough money from HumanGolf so that he can get his own human out on the golf course full time.

Popularity: 15% [?]

If any part of your work or business involves the online world, and I guess it does else you probably wouldn’t be reading this, it’s virtually impossible to stay current with what others are doing.

So, rather than settling for endless web surfing and hit-or-miss tactics, I try to refer to the experts first.  Just as I narrow down my reading list from the thousands of new books published every week by reading reviews and asking friends, I take my online and marketing information clues from The Marketing Sherpa.

Each year Marketing Sherpa, a leader in marketing research, publishes its list of Readers’ Choice Awards for the best marketing blogs.  You can find them for 2006 by clicking here.

So, spend hours or days searching for those who can help, or go to those who track this stuff and get instant resources.

And, just as the Sherpa does for marketing, there are field overviewers who do this for just about every industry and every type of dream job category.

So, wanna find your dream job?  Find those who write about it.

Popularity: 14% [?]