The BlueSteps Executive Search Blog

Managing Midlife Career Change
Can You Manage a Midlife Career Change? Making a midlife career change is a big decision. If you are happy with life there is no need for change, but if you are not then remember: “If you do what you’ve always done you will get what you’ve always gotten” Nothing will change unless you do something different. The good news with Network Marketing is you don’t have to burn your bridges, give up your day job – and a permanent income, or take a big risk. The financial risk is really very small when you consider you are aiming to achieve financial freedom.

But the great thing is that you don’t have to change direction if you do already like what you do – you can carry on doing it! You just need to change your thinking about Network Marketing to realise it can be an enhancement rather than a hindrance…

It Is Not An EITHER/OR Choice. If you get intrinsic value, ie you feel good about what you do, but it just doesn’t pay well enough, then you can use Network Marketing to supplement your income. It does not have to be a whole change of vocation.

You would actually be diversifying your risk by developing multiple streams of income. How many jobs today are actually permanent? Have you made provision in case your primary job disappears, which it can do in the modern world, especially in the current climate.

Your WHY needs to be inspiring enough to motivate you to make changes in your thinking and lifestyle, and motivate you into overcoming fear.

Fear of what? You might ask!

Change. Failure. Success (!) Being different. Admitting you are unhappy, or at least unfulfilled, where you are….

You Have To Admit It Before You Can Do Anything About It! A midlife career change is an admission that to some extent you’ve got it wrong so far. Or that you have not got as far as you would have liked!. That is not an easy thing to own up to. To yourself or to other people. If you decide on a new direction it can raise eyebrows amongst those close to you. We are usually in our teens or early twenties when we are trying to choose the right career path, and with the benefit of hindsight we often have to make that very important choice at a young age without really knowing what we want.

You set career objectives and set off on the path, only to find, sometimes many years later, that it has not led you where you want to be. Your job may not pay for the lifestyle you would like to have, or if it does you may have to work long hours and lose out on leisure or sacrifice your family time. There could be many factors that make you re-assess. So you start to look elsewhere and search for new ideas and seriously consider a midlife career change.

Escape From The Treadmill If you are looking for a new lifestyle and an escape from corporate life then you may start to consider home-based work. So you explore how to build wealth from home, attend wealth seminars and look at how to generate a supplemental income. Pre-conceptions about “pyramid schemes” may put you off the Network Marketing idea, as well the hype about mad money and the enticements to make quick cash. The way forward for homebased businesses is surely using the internet, and the dream of having a classy online business is very appealing. How can Network Marketing fit into that?

“I just don’t have the time”

Traditional MLM methods are very time consuming. It is “sold” as flexible and something you can do part-time, but it is difficult to do when you come in from a full day’s work.

INTERNETwork Marketing combines the power of the internet with the leverage of MLM. But also understanding the business and being able to explain it simply are the keys to being effective, and effiicient in leveraging your time.

Drive and determination is still needed and you still need to be able to communicate effectively and follow up with your prospects, wherever they are… But instead of spending time travelling to meetings or to presentation appointments you can genuinely earn money at home disseminating information and pointing people to presentations on the net. Instead of facing negative experiences that drain your energy and motivation you actually spend that time learning and adjusting. – using the tools and resources available to you. If you are considering a midlife career change then INTERNETwork Marketing can provide the way to take a Network Marketing business forward.

* It has a very low outlay to start a home business
* It is flexible and can be done part-time
* You do not need to leave your day-job
* You do not need to pester friends and family.

You don’t need to involve or even tell them about it until you are ready and they have noticed the changes.

By then they will be asking you about it…

Choosing a Career Guide

Choosing a career seems like an easy decision, doesn’t it?  For some people it is.  But for others, they need more of a definitive career guide when it comes to choosing a career path they want to travel down.  Almost all of us have dreamed of what we wanted to be when we grew up.  Many don’t get to realize those childhood dreams.  At the very least, they put them aside because they need to earn a paycheck.  You see, not everyone gets to realize their childhood dreams.  However, there’s really no reason why we have to give up on them.

That’s where a career guide can be especially helpful.  A career planning guide can tell you everything you need to know about your dream career. That includes what schooling you will need, any special training that is required, and what to look for when trying to find a job in your chosen career field.  Choosing a career guide is really a simple process, but it is also one that is very important when you are looking for your dream job.

Many career guides can be found online, but be wary when you are choosing which one you want to follow.  Make sure that the people or company that has written the career guide is qualified to give advice when it comes to career paths.  You don’t want to base you career decisions on a guide that is written by someone who has no experience or education in guiding someone down the right career path.

Choosing a good career guide depends on finding one that will give you objective information.  That includes the bad and the good of any particular career.  If a career guide you are reading says nothing but positive about a job, you will want to pass on that one and move on to another.  After all, we know that every single job has its ups and downs – its positives and negatives, if you will.  Any career guide that glorifies all jobs as God’s answer to the perfect career is one that isn’t credible.

We all need advice when it comes to choosing the right career path.  Who couldn’t use a guide along that career path to make sure that we don’t take a wrong turn?  Just take care when choosing a career guide and then take the advice that is offered to heart.  Then you just might find yourself living your childhood dream working in a job that you always wanted.

Career Goals Made Easy

Setting career goals is linked directly to better performance and subsequently, better pay and better rewards.

Do you have a clear plan for your career goals? In other words, do you have a good idea of where you want to be 5, 10, 25 years from now?

The fact is, when we set clear career goals for ourselves we achieve at a much higher level, refuse to waste our time on tasks that do not contribute directly to succeeding with our career goals, and most importantly, earn more recoginition, both financially and from our peers and superiors.

In this quick guide I am going to show you how you can use the power of goal setting to get control of your career goals, and also at the end I will talk a little about a goal setting tool that you can use to set, plan and virtually place your career goals in auto-pilot in less than 20 minutes.

But first, here are some general tips to help you before you start writing out your career goals:

Don’t Limit Yourself to Promotion Goals. In other words, make goals to enrich yourself, no matter your position on the totem pole presently.

Focus on What You Are Most Passionate About. It’s no accident that the most successful people in the world are passionate about what they do. Because of their passion and interest in their career goals they will follow them to the ends of the earth.

Get Feedback from Loved Ones and Colleagues. Sometimes we are not even aware of our greatest strengths. Get a variety of counsel from people whose opinion you value.

Make Sure You Do Your Due Diligence. Don’t base your career goals on a job that looks sexy or fun without looking under the hood. It’s anawful exercise in waste to spend years developing your skills and abilities only to not like the job you end up in.

Remember That the You of Tomorrow is Not Going to Feel the Same as the You of Today. People change, often drastically, over the time it takes to build the capabilities to be truly successful in a line of work. This means avoid career goals that are fads, or the neatest thing going today.

1. SET YOUR CAREER GOALS.

This is the fun, no-holds barred part of having career goals, so let’s run with it. Let your imagination run loose. No barriers, no restrictions. What have you always wanted to do as a career? It doesn’t matter if it sounds silly to the pragmatist in you, allow your brain to go with it.

If you could have your pick of any job in the universe, what would it be? Perhaps this job doesn’t even exist or have a name yet.

This is your life, and you have every right to dream and choose precisely how you would like to achieve it.

Don’t limit yourself here,  there will be plenty of time for reality later.

“I would like to be___________”

2. PLAN YOUR CAREER GOALS

Now we are going to take that dream and mould it into a workable goal. Here is where you are going to try and make your career goals more specific, and to give them a time-frame.

Before giving your goal a definitive time-frame, ask yourself what you career goals will require from you to be achieved. Think of all the resources you will require in terms of education, skills, abilities, the people you will need.

What is stopping you from achieving your career goals right now? List them all out.

Whether it’s work experience, connections, anything at all that you think is keeping you from your goals. Take this list and hold on to it, because in the next step we are going to create a plan to methodically destroy every single one of those impediments.

Now that you have this list of tasks, write out your career goals in the following format:

“I would like to be a _________ by ___________”

3. CREATE A PLAN OF ACTION

Now that you have a list of actions that need to be accomplished, it is time to put it all together in your own personal action plan. Inside this document you will create a road map for your career goals.

This plan will be a flexible document. As time passes and things change you should adapt your plan accordingly. Life is often unpredictable, and you should never throw your plan away simply because it throws you a curveball.

Adapt, adjust, and perservere.

4. FOLLOW THROUGH

Ultimately, this is where most people will stumble or outright fail. Many will have their beautiful goal plan and place it up on the shelf, waiting for the right day to put it to use. Others, intimidated or fearful of the work required will procrastinate, allowing their career goals to wither to dust.

Do not be this person. Act now, act tomorrow, and every day after that. As cliche as it is, there truly is nothing standing between you achieving your career goals besides yourself.