Lessons

Lesson Info

Create a Career Goal Plan

Career goal planning so a lot of questions have come in on I want to find a job that allows me to work remotely. Where do I go? Where do I look? Um, the first place I would start is if you like your job, it might be able to be a remote job, and I would say that pretty much any job that doesn't involve manufacturing her hands on working in an operating room or that kind of thing where you physically have to be there there's potential that you could turn that into a remote role that is foreign away. The easiest way to find a remote job, very few jobs or posted that say, yeah, we'll take remote workers mostly because they're snapped up long before the need is there to post them online. So where you at now? You know, is it a situation where you can talk with your manager, generate some goals and say let's, figure out a way to make this transition may be the best remote role for you is just keeping doing what you're doing but doing it from a space that you like. My first office job I commut...

ed in hours a day, sat in front of a laptop for eight hours and then left, and it didn't take long before I thought. It really doesn't matter where this laptop is I can still do exactly what I was doing and so if you're anything like that where you just get to work and you stare at a screen all day that's a sign that you might be able to turn that into a remote role and if you don't hate your job if you like where you're at you like the people you work with that's going to be your best bet switching careers entirely just to go remote unless you really need to advance or you really don't like where you're at I'd say that you're better off sticking where you are and see if you can make it work and only then if you can't we'll talk about some of the other career options that are good for a remote and distributed teams so if you're in an environment where you're working remotely, the rest of your team is back in the office these are a few things I recommend weekly update e mails or calls with your team make sure you're not a burden on them but make sure that you are open and available and you're conversing with them on a regular basis to make sure you know what they're up to they know what you're up to and you feel like you're part of the team utilise reminders air callin during software google calendar is phenomenal it sends reminders to you on any platform evernote is my app of choice for keeping notes together thoughts together random web clippings together it's a fantastic platform for just cataloging everything that you might hear see it work and you want to put it in on centralized location where you can search archive and that kind of thing quarterly jut good check with yourself I saw a reminder with these questions every quarter and this thing pops up and it hits me right in the face of my inbox and it's really hard to ignore and that's good that's what you want because again no one from the office is going to keep you accountable you have to or you maintaining the connections with your manager and your colleagues are you reaching out exceeding your word goals? Are you to a point where you could request even more time away? So this third one is for people that maybe you're on a trial run you know maybe you just work fridays from home is it going well or you to a place where you can say about monday's and friday maybe every other day let's see how far we can get um once you get an extra day it's really hard to go back so it's going to be worth your while once you get a taste of it you want as much time as possible there so ask yourself are you to a place where you could get there so let's, talk nuts and bolts on where you can go if you're ready to change gears, ready to change careers and jump into a workplace where remote working is tolerated from the outset, editorial is my top recommendation. Blogging, riding, corporate copyrighting these air things that require a word processor, a really smart brain appear, and an internet connection. If you have all three of those, you can do, you can do editorial, so I'm going to break this down a little bit of for for eight years, I worked at engadget, which is a global technology publication, that's on lee, published online, and we had millions and millions of viewers, and there are lots of publications just like that, all over the web that need really great writers. Becoming a strong writer is obviously a prerequisite, as is understanding the tenants of journalism and being an expert in at least one field. So if you want to write on a cycling blawg, make sure you're an expert in cycling, but a branch off to that is something that's, newer is corporate copyrighting. So a lot of corporations now are hiring really good writers, really smart thinkers to come in and create content for their website for their blogged for their internal distributions. They just need people that are really great writers, and people that try toe to fit that role inside of a corporation that already have something else to do oftentimes don't do a great job of that. So what is happening is internally corporations or getting requests come we hire a dedicated copywriter can we hire a dedicated blogger? We need someone in here that's thinking about this full time I can't just do this as a side job that's great news for remote workers because this is the perfect type of opportunity and this goes back to if you're in an organization, you don't really see an avenue for a remote role in that organization ask if they have a block, maybe they need an email newsletter maybe they need some help on the marketing front all of that can be done remotely and if you're already familiar with the organization all the better the second is code this has taken off in a big way lately programming aps enterprise services building software learning a coding language is akin to learning ah foreign spoken language it's incredibly difficult to do, but if you do it, you're incredibly valuable it's literally like knowing another language on especially in silicon valley and in the digital world that we all live in being able to speak the language of the internet and aps very, very valuable right now the upside here is you don't really have to go at it alone there are new boot camps that will teach you how to code and learn programming languages in an incredibly short amount of time. One is called the iron yard. Be sure to look into that they have twelve to sixteen week course is where you show up, ready to learn coding to dedicate full time to it for a very short amount of time. And when you're done with it, they have people that help place you in companies that need coders, coders and programmers are one of the most sought after people and sex of people. Right now, there is an incredible need for programmers, great programmers because there's incredible demand for abs and services. So if you want to switch gears completely and you're willing to learn a new language, it's an amazing avenue and thankfully, there are a lot of schools that will teach you in a very short amount of time. It's a very worthwhile endeavor, marketing. So any sort of agency life, pr, advertising, consulting all of these things generally have clients that are remote, so even a new york based advertising agency could have a client based in st louis and all the creative stuff happens on there in and then they ship it over to the client through email is digitally distributed to broadcasters it shows up online. None of that requires any in person interaction whatsoever with collaborative tools like google documents, people are able to build and showcase work in real time, share creative ideas without actually having to be there so agencies won't oftentimes market new roles as remote. You'll find a lot of pr and advertising firms in major cities dallas, new york, san francisco and most of them will say in the job description, you have to move here, but if you're really talented in this field or you know someone that works in one of them, have the conversation apply for the job anyway, if you make a great impression in the in the interview section, you could always bring it up like I'm not in a place to relocate. Would we consider working remotely? I think you'd be surprised how many will say sure, we'll give it a shot, especially if they've been trying to fill a role for months, and you're the perfect candidate good talents, hard to find they'd rather have you remote than none at all your own business. If you're if you're just tired of working for the man it's, time to step out and do something, this is obviously it's risky is challenging its hair raising and all of that, but if you just are really drawn to a location and you really want to start a photography business just to it you know if you especially if you're in a situation where you have a spouse or significant other they can help finance you at least in the beginning it's a great opportunity and also if you're able to work part time at your current job scaled back a bit while you build up your own business it's another smart way to sort of slide into a remote role of your own choosing while keeping some of the stability from the full time job education creative life it's ah it's an amazing example of being able to do something from here there everywhere but in broader terms online degrees are not what they used to be there used to be quite a bit of negative stigma on online degrees and now increasingly a lot of enrollees want online degrees because they recognize the freedom they have when studying on their own terms. And so with that demand comes a need for more instructors they're able to communicate and connect with people in a remote environment so here's one from my years truly every minute you're at work is a minute you aren't at leisure if this doesn't motivate you to become maximally efficient nothing well so this goes back to the time saving thing if you really think about this every minute you're at work is a minute you're your own at leisure wow I mean do you want to get done with work as fast as possible, while still keeping quality as high as possible. You know, this is something I look at on a post it note. Every single day is, if you ever think about getting lazy, you're only costing yourself when you're in an office. If you want to get lazy it's like, well, I'm sticking it to the man. I'm browsing facebook on the man's hours, you know, no big deal when you're at home, and you're browsing facebook instead of working that's on you. And so you're wasting your own time. It takes on a very different face when it's, when it's your time, not the man's time. So keep that in mind that I'll keep you dry driven.