Career Advice

This is an email exchange from earlier today I thought others might find useful:

Just started to follow you on twitter and found your background / experiences very compelling. So a question I have for you revolves around taking my career to the next level. I am looking to go from in-house digital expert to a more vocal role with in the tech / online community – any suggestions?

Couple of options.

One: go your own way. If you have the connections, drive, and ability to sustain yourself through lean times, there’s no better way to establish yourself as a leader than simply by leading. This is hard, takes tons of time and energy, can tax your family and friendships, and certainly isn’t for everyone.

The other: find a company that could benefit from advocacy and evangelism and align yourself with them. Devour every bit of news, media and information you can about a specific topic related to that business and start speaking about what you learn. Participate significantly in online social communities, and equally important, in the real world communities around you. Make friends, help them as much as you can, stay focused on what you’re doing, and share your passion and drive with others.

[Where you work now] is a good platform. See if there are opportunities to grow within the company – lay out a plan, set goals, set a timeline, and communicate those to your boss or someone else in the organization with whom you’d like to ally. Even if you feel like things have plateaued there for whatever reason, it’s often quite possible to break through any perceived barriers by first changing the way you think then telling others you’ve changed and showing them through performance and results.

Good luck!

Category: Entrepreneurship || Tags: advice, Entrepreneurship, twitter ||