I retired the Personal Branding Award series a few months ago and said I was going to start a new series…. well, this is it.  I want to interview people who are doing something DIFFERENT.

There is an irony I live with every day.  Some people think I am hear to help you land your next gig… to find your dream job.

You see, I personally don’t think a dream job exists… not in the way it did a few decades ago.  Even if you find the dream job you might not have it after 6 months or 6 years.

You are always in transition, always a job seeker, and thus, always CEO of Me, Inc.

Part of that, as I’ve mentioned before, is to figure out personal income security.

That’s what this series is about – thinking outside the box of “I’m getting my dream job soon!” to “I think there are other ways to crack this (income security) nut!”

Welcome the first person in the series – Gary Vaynerchuk (aka, GaryVee).

Gary is beyond a rockstar, although he’ll deny it.  His energy makes me think all I’m suited for is a government job… but he claims it  is not the craziness or energy that makes you WIN.  No, not win, that makes you CRUSH IT! Crush it is the name of his new book, which should start shipping today.

I interviewed Gary for about 45 minutes, you can listen on the BlogTalkRadio channel.  Lots of gems to apply to your own career here.

And check out his book Crush It - it’s less than $15 at Amazon.  I’ve got mine in the mail and I’m anxious to get into it!

Sometime during the last year of my employment at my last job I swiped a book from my mom while she was visiting my family.  How To Become A Rainmaker had me 1,000% captivated.  Every chapter is 2 – 5 pages, the book is small (although not a “pamphlet”), and the stuff in there was just amazing.

I’m not a salesperson, and I wasn’t at the time, but reading Jeffrey Fox’s book on becoming a rainmaker, and the strategy and tactics involved, won me over.

As CEO of Me, Inc. I think it’s critical that we understand our role of sales and marketing.  I don’t know of any better training, whether it’s beginner training or advanced training, to help us understand what goes into becoming an effective salesperson.

Salesperson = Communicator

Salesperson = Influencer

There is no reason to not be a more efficient communicator or influencer, I don’t care if you are unemployed, a super-geeky programmer (no offense intended :p), or a work-alone-on-the-moon astronaut.

You need this book.

It is about $14 on Amazon.  Or you might be able to get it at Costco (I’ve seen a bunch of Fox’s books at my Costco).  Or you can check your local library.

I don’t care how you get this book, but get it.  And read it with your “CEO of Me, Inc.” hat on.

A few days ago I wrote Time Magazine on Labor Day, Unemployment and Stress and Teena Rose asked a really interesting question in the comments:

I have a question for you Jason … and if anyone can answer, you can, seeing as how you have an IT background. Do you know how long it took for the IT industry to realign when that bubble burst? I’m sure there wasn’t 15 million IT professionals (was there?) unemployed back then, but …

Very interesting!  I remember the time well but I was in a secluded little town with a nice stable job… I could essentially watch from the sidelines and be glad I didn’t pursue my original dream of heading straight to Austin, Texas to work at Dell or something like that (I heard there were a ton of unemployed IT people in Austin during that time).

I asked my friend Heather Gardner, who is a recruiting professional in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area – she gets a terrific perspective of what’s going on in the job search world from that perspective.  Here’s what she had to say:

I’m not sure what the “right” answer is to Teena’s question, but here’s what I would say if we were having a chat. First, there has never been such economic downsizing since I became a recruiter…. Even the dot.com bust does not compare with what we are currently experiencing.

Unemployment is high, job losses are growing with more to come and what’s not being reported but has an effect on the economy is the companies cutting back on people’s hours (furloughs) not only in State & local government but the private sector.  This drastically affects a household on the financial edge to begin with….. regardless of what happened with the dot.com bust, this is much different.

Okay, now for the good news.  Just because it’s bad out there doesn’t mean it’s impossible to find a job. There ARE people getting jobs, finding multiple opportunities for employment and entrepreneurs who are thriving in this market, yep, thriving.

What I see working for job hunters who are successful is that they think outside of the box, understand that they are in a sales role now and they don’t give up.  If something’s not working they make changing, they qualify openings to make sure they can position themselves as the “right” candidate and they are stealth networkers.  The IT Manager who just got laid off, he/she needs to have several versions of his/her resume:

1. A resume to position himself/herself as the perfect candidate for another IT Manager position
2. Another resume to position himself as a software developer – something he/she has experience in and can do again.  This resume now downplays the management background so that he/she can easily be considered for another completely different role.
3. A resume that might be geared towards IT project management.  He/She many have done it in their IT Manager role, but not necessarily had the title.

Now this IT Manager can open up doors for a variety of different career roles.  The good news now is that this IT Manager that just got laid off has increased his/her chances of landing a role that they are perfectly qualified to do.

I think the best approach to this job market is NOT to compare to anything we’ve experienced before, but rather think outside the box. The more resourceful you are the better your odds are of landing that perfect role, even in this down economy.

I know people getting jobs right now…. I know companies that are hiring…. It’s possible!

Isn’t Heather Gardner a breath of fresh air?  You can follow her blog here or follow her on Twitter here.

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Amy Franko, a business coach out of Ohio.  We had a very nice interview where we talked about a number of things – you can get a download of the interview (as well as a transcription) from this page (I’m #4).

Some of the stuff we talk about (her audience is not job seekers, it’s entrepreneurs):

• thoughts on being an entrepreneur,
• stuff about my book and how I’ve used it as a marketing tool,
• the name of a movie that had a major impact on me as an entrepreneur (I saw it on my way to a speaking gig in Turkey),
• and a number of thoughts on using LinkedIn.

If you have a few minutes and any entrepreneurial inclination, check it out

One of my LinkedIn contacts, Marianna Fichtenholtz, asked me a question on LinkedIn that I’ve thought about for the last week:

If you were a job seeker, how would you answer the following question:

What is your primary motivation to seek new employment?

My first thought was “to make money again.“  When I was a job seeker it was not by choice, and my funds were drying up.

But all week I’ve batted this around, and come up with a few other ideas:

• To make MORE money. Some companies or titles or jobs or career paths or industries might offer me more money if I switch.
• Because I’m done here. An executive might have accomplished what he/she came to do, or in my case, there wasn’t anything more to learn (which was the reason I transitioned out of one of my first jobs).  If you’ve reached “the end,” and you’ll know it before you get there, then perhaps it’s time to look.
• To find something more secure. JibberJobber users are pretty savvy – they realize nothing is totally “secure,” but some things can be more secure that what they have now.
• To find something more aligned with your values. Whether your values are aligned with tree huggers, liberals, conservatives, ultra-conservatives… if the company you work for isn’t congruent or tolerant or conducive to your values, you might find it taxing to go to work each day.
• To escape HELL. Been there.  Done that.  It’s better to move on than stay.
• To do something with a purpose. In one company I did cool stuff but the company wasn’t necessarily doing anything life-changing in the world.  I didn’t think I’d care, but when I started JibberJobber and really started affecting individuals lives, WOW, I’m hooked on having a job that has a purpose.

Let me through this out to you – what is (or has been) YOUR primary motivation to seek new employment?

I was on a radio show last week where I thought we were going to talk about LinkedIn (for the umpteenth time)… but Liz asked some great questions and the conversation went in a totally different direction.  We spent more time on Career Management than I normally get to… this was a fun interview – spend 30 or so minutes and listen to it here

Liz is a pretty awesome person with a lot of networking advice… you can learn more about her here.

I got a lot of positive comments about this 63 minute webinar… here it is in it’s entirety. (there is link in the bottom right corner of the image below, with 4 arrows… if you click on that you can see this in full-screen)

I did get one negative comment, about how we were just focusing on the negative.  I understand the email I got, but hope that after you watch this you can see the opportunities you can focus on.

View on Vimeo.

Again, huge thanks to Mark for sharing his stuff with us!  We’ll do something like this again – any suggestions for topics?

This weekend the U.S. celebrated our national independence holiday.  We appreciate the freedom to choose, be, think, live, etc.

It is quite a contrast from my last job, where I wasn’t free at all.

If you don’t feel free, whether you have a job now, or you are looking for a job that will not allow you to be free, then perhaps you shouldn’t have a job.  Perhaps you should own your own gig.

That’s the choice I made about three years ago – to stop my job search and move forward with JibberJobber… and it has been such a ride!  I can’t imagine having a job now, although I work harder now for my new boss (me) than I did when I was the general manager of a software company a few years ago.

This freedom is not easy, and not without consequenses.  If you have any thoughts of choosing this route, let me recommend one book to buy TODAY (buy a highlighter and red pen, also, as you should be marking up every page of this book):

I’ve known Pamela Slim virtually for a few years now… I really admire her work and her popular blog (Escape from Cubible Nation).  She is relentless in sharing her message and vision, and helping people see an alternative to the cube life.

Not that escaping is for everyone… and her book points that out.  What I’ve found in her book is a practical reality-check to help you understand what you are getting into … she compaires the rush you get from being an entrepreneur to the rush you get from a crack pipe, she interviews the Grammar Girl and learns that she is bogged down with administration (as opposed to focusing on her passion: grammar), and gives the low-down on health insurance and business structures.

It’s not a “hip-hip-hurray, screw Corporate America while I go get rich with my own ideas,” rather it’s an excellent guide you need to read if you *think* this is the direction you want to go.

On Amazon the price listed is $17.13… not a bad investment at all considering how much is packed into this 300+ page book.

On Friday’s I had been sharing each of my ten revenue streams. I took a break for a while because I wasn’t quite ready to share the last three (there are now two left). I’m big on diversifying personal income, whether you are an entrepreneur or an employee. My intention with this series is to inspire or encourage you with your own diverse revenue streams. Below this post you’ll see links to the previous posts, or you can click on the Multiple Streams of Income category on the left.

Mitchell Levy, the publisher at Happy About, asked me over a year ago if I was interested in being the Executive Editor of the Now What??? series.  I had written I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? and didn’t know that it was a series yet!

My response was “no way.”  I did not want to worry about making sure that other people’s books would fit within my brand, that the quality would be good enough, and coddle authors along (aka, babysit people).  I know there was a fair amount of coddling me when I was doing my books, and I couldn’t imagine having to do that with others while I was trying to build my JibberJobber business.

The first few ideas he pitched at me for Now What??? books seemed to be completely out of my brand, and it just made sense to focus on what I was doing.

And then, one day, I got a royalty check.

You may have heard that there is no money in writing a book.  I kind of somewhat believed that, until I got that one royalty check.  I thought ” geesh, if I can get this from one book… what could I get from more?”

I called Mitchell and told him that I was ready to talk about what it meant to be the Executive Editor of the Now What??? series.  And then I started to think what my vision for the Now What??? series was:

What if the Now What??? series had 100 titles, and because of the value/power of the series, they could all help one another sell?  What if they could be branded to some fraction of the Dummies or Idiots books, and companies or career centers would love to have them in stock?  What if we could sell… say… 1,000 of each title each year?

There would be benefits: financial and brand awareness (for JibberJobber) might be two of the biggest benefits.

I approached a number of people who had knowledge or expertise in a certain area and have started down the road with a number books (about 20 titles).  I am not ready to announce any of them yet, but am excited to see this stream move forward and mature.

Who’d-a-thunk: Me, and executive editor.

Has this series been helpful to you, as you figure out your other revenue streams?

Here is a breakdown of the revenue streams I’ve shared so far:

• Revenue Stream 1: JibberJobber User Upgrades
• Revenue Stream 2: JibberJobber Partnership Program
• Revenue Stream 3: Books I write
• Revenue Stream 4: Now What??? Executive Editor
  
• Revenue Stream 5: Professional Speaking
• Revenue Stream 6: Consulting
• Revenue Stream 7: (not announced yet)
• Revenue Stream 8: (not announced yet)
• Revenue Stream 9: Information Products
• Revenue Stream 10: Miscellaneous

Yesterday I asked Is There An Expert In The House?  I said I’d share an idea to claim your expert status.

Perhaps you can start a blog on your area of expertise.  After all, that’s what I’ve been recognizing in my personal branding “You Get It” award, right?

Perhaps you can write articles and submit them to newsletters and magazines.  Being published helps define you as an expert, doesn’t it?

Perhaps you can speak at industry conferences, or on teleseminars or webinars, right?

Yeah, all of these help define you as an expert.  I’ve done all of them, not to be able to say I’m an expert, rather to help get exposure and branding for my company.  Being called an expert because people see my blog, articles or presentations is just a side benefit.

But I think these are all akin to “flash in the pan” hits.  In other words, one article isn’t going to cut it.  And one presentation can easily be forgotten.  Even one blog can get lost in a sea of blogs (there are over 100 million blogs, I think).

Here’s something I’ve done, and seen, that creates expert status like nothing else: WRITE A BOOK.

I know two things about many of you (because you’ve told me):

1. You have wanted to write a book for years.  You have even started to write stuff down… you have a book in you and you know it!
2. You don’t know how to move forward, … the writing process, or the publishing process, or even if it is worth the time to do it.

I think some people who write a book get a lot more value out of their book than others.  Let me suggest two resources for you:

First, my publisher has a book he recently published titled 42 Rules for Driving Success with Books.  I honestly thought it would be rather boring (sorry Mitchell), but a few days ago I started reading it.  I’m totally consumed with the two-page stories of other authors (my two page story is in there), and how they have driven success with their books.

These stories are so inspiring me I’m anxious to start my THIRD book.  If you are wondering if it’s worth the time to write a book, pick up this book (16.96 for the paperback, or 11.95 for the ebook).  I love stories like these, and I give this book a 5-star rating for inspiration.

Second, I did a webinar a year ago called Write Your Book.  I share some of my experiences, and ideas on three different publishing options.  When I gave the webinar i had two people on the call – one has since published her book and the other is in the process of writing his book.  The webinar is $49.95 and available for download once we receive payment.  You can get the Write Your Book webinar here.

How do you claim your expert status?  Unlike the other ideas at the beginning of this post, your BOOK will last a lot longer than a flash in the pan.

A few months ago I started working on the LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD.  Check out this post for an update (it’s exciting!), and some information you may not have known about my distribution team!