My wife recently posted a tweet that got me thinking: “I keep waiting for life to get back to normal. Today I realized “normal” is stuck at 5 years ago.” I have been feeling the same thing and longing to get back to a sense of things I had 5 years ago.
What was it about 5 years ago that made that seem normal? And what is it about the last 5 years that has caused us to long for the sense of where we were back then? These questions actually kept me up all night. I came up with my theses, but I had to actually face the actual truth to get to the bottom of how I was feeling.
5 years ago, we lived with a sense of promise, a sense of optimism that we are struggling to rediscover now. A large part of it was both personal and financial growth we were experiencing. My employer was an integrated part of our lives; I was moving up the ladder and had a great boss. We had a predictable pattern to our day, the week. We had a sense that we could plan and forecast our lives to look out two or more years. We developed a sense that we were on a path to both success and enjoying the stability we felt in things.
The last year has been a bumpy road for me. In an effort to makes sense of all the things that have happened, I have tried to map lessons I learned from getting through the rough spots. Specifically, my career life has been very rocky. Both the economy and the psychology of my last company has delivered as many lessons as it did hard times.
But in the end, I am stronger for it and also a better professional. The question I have is should I be open about lessons learned? Should I blog about the experiences I had with my last employer? Sharing my experiences is personally cathartic, but it would also help others who might be in similar situations. Sharing personal experiences can be a dangerous thing, but is a greater good served to the community by sharing the good, bad and really bad?
Let me know your thoughts.
~DK
Starting a e-commerce business is easier than ever with cloud e-commerce platforms out there like Shopify and OrderCup. I am doing some technical consulting with a local product start-up, Sockwa. While getting product into stores is the ultimate goal, the e-commerce strategy is key to the success of the business and lucky for Sockwa, affordable and powerful e-commerce platforms are readily available in the cloud.
At Sockwa, getting the product out on the web was a snap. Shopify offers amazing features for the price and it has tight integration with order fulfillment and CRM tools readily available in Ordercup. Both platforms do a great job exchanging data keeping up with inventory, shipping and customers is ridiculously easy.
The big hurdle is overcoming having your data stored locally. It was a bit of a stretch initially, but in the end, the freedom that comes with having all your data in the cloud and the maintenance of the application being in the hands of the SaaS providers keep Sockwa focused on the core mission, creating a revolution in footwear.
I’m really excited for Sockwa’s future and having the e-commerce strategy dialed in with cloud services makes the future even brighter.
~DK
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How often do you feel your talent is wasted where you are? Or how do you know someone who flourished upon a job change?
Recently, I visited a few colleagues of mine at their new place of employment. We all worked together in the past and I was struck by what I noticed and what I observed in my meeting with them. I have a deep admiration for all three folks to whom I am referring. They are rock stars at what they do. They are highly engaged, proactive professionals who amaze me constantly and they are simply great and kind people. But, when we all worked together in the past, it seemed that something was holding them back. They did their jobs well, had great attitudes…great employees. The difference became clear to me when I saw them together in this new place…a new job.
Like many of you, I have received notifications that my credit limits have been cut on my credit cards. While this may seem to have little to no impact on me financially, I have learned there is an inherent credit score impact with these credit card company credit cuts.
Let’s take a look at how this is effecting small businesses negatively and how it hurts the consumer. I also have some ideas on how to deal with this by pushing business to smaller, more local institutions that may alleviate your pain and also the pain that these banks created and continue to create in our economy.
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The buzz around social networking seems to have slowed a bit, but the ubiquity of discussion about social media is still very much alive. As major media outlets like cable news, network television, radio and producers of goods and service find social networks invaluable sources to keep in contact with their audiences, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Bebo continue to find ways to monetize their traffic and network data. Will there ever be a solid financial model that will support the continuation of free, ad supported social networks?
Believe it or not, being unemployed for an extended period of time may make you less employable. I recently was speaking with a colleague of mine about a hiring manager who was less likely to consider a candidate for a position if he/she had been unemployed for an extended period of time. Both my colleague and I thought this state if mind was short sided and actually flat out wrong. Why would a hiring manager eliminate a candidate from the interview pool because he/she was unemployed for an extended period? Is this simply recession think?
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Were you laid off months ago and still cannot find a job? You are not alone and your efforts to figure our how to succeed might not be what is needed to re-enter the employment market. Things are different, but we are not sure exactly what changed, so adjusting is more a guessing game of trial and error until you get a result of some kind.
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This job market is brutal. If you were a casualty of the recession and was laid off from an executive position–it is even tougher to find work at the same level. There are a lot of us out there in the market. I know, I am one of you. Of course, like me, you might see this as your break from the corporate ladder and move back into a more functional role. You might like the idea of taking a less political job where you can enjoy your work again. But guess what… you are deemed over qualified. The door hits you in the face because you have too many skills and too much experience.
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