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career pivot

10 tips for happy self-employment – part 1 of 4

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Self employment is on the rise. This is a 4 part article series sharing 40 tips for happy self-employment.

1.  A key decision is whether you want to have your own business or be an associate of someone else’s business, or a mixture – time, money, control and self-marketing considerations of these choices

2.  Use your career heritage as a springboard/foundation for change 

3.  Research thoroughly to ensure a robust decision

4.  Have a coach, mentor and/or personal Board

5.  Do things ‘just in time’ in response to client interest/trends, rather than having everything in place – let go of perfectionism 

6.  Make time to plan, reflect and review regularly

7.  Pre-network before becoming self-employed

8.  Have a clear niche/specialism that you love

9.  Choose the right not wrong associates – do due diligence re referrers – many have established referrer relationships already – don’t waste your time with the wrong ones

10.               Think ‘out of the box’ with your marketing and networking. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money 

How can we help you? Get in touch:

https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/portfolio/connect/

Supporting our network

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We’ve been writing an article a day on LinkedIn as well as sharing an inspiring quote to support our network. Here are a selection:

Insight mining

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/insight-mining-rachel-brushfield-the-talent-liberator/

Saying yes more to saying ‘no’

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/saying-yes-more-rachel-brushfield-the-talent-liberator/

Successful difficult conversations https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/successful-difficult-conversations-the-talent-liberator/

What creates trust?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-creates-trust-rachel-brushfield-the-talent-liberator/

For the latest articles, check our postings on our LinkedIn profile. https://www.linkedin.com/in/energiseliberateyourtalent/

If you have any specific topics that you would like us to write about, please e mail us: https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/portfolio/connect/

Emotional resilience

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The dictionary defines emotion as ‘any feeling that disturbs or excites the mind.’

Some people are naturally more emotional than others with more highs and lows than people who are more logical and analytical. Likewise, some people are more positive and see the glass as half full, whereas others see the glass as half empty. Life and work can present us with situations and people that we find challenging and sometimes threatening.

The good news is that how we react to these situations is within our control. Nelson Mandela and how he handled his confinement is an example of being in a hugely difficult situation, and coming up trumps.  Emotions are often created by thoughts so having self-awareness of your values, motivations and insecurities can help you to have emotional resilience.

Unless we are very lucky, we don’t get taught how to be emotionally resilient, but learn it as we go along and using shopping, alcohol, drugs and busyness can be an easy way to anaesthetise difficult emotions.

We can learn to be more resilient and challenging situations have a lot of gifts, even if we don’t see them at the time, e.g. opportunity to be more creative, assertive etc 

What situations test our emotional resilience?

Coping well in one area and struggling in another is normal. 

  • The Coronavirus period
  • Redundancy and unemployment
  • Mergers over which we have no choice
  • No pay rises over a period of time
  • People pulling rank
  • Lack of planning by others affecting us
  • Unreasonable behaviour and bullying
  • Bosses and employers with values different to our own
  • Trauma and crisis e.g. end of a relationship, death of someone we are close to
  • Financial pressure and hardship
  • Covert undermining behaviour e.g. passive aggressive

5 FREE tips to maximise your emotional resilience

  1. What’s the worse thing that can happen and what is the likelihood of it happening?
  2. Ask yourself ‘What are the positives of my challenging situation?’
  3. Ask yourself what qualities and resources you have to help you to deal with the challenge you face
  4. Focus on what you can influence not what you can’t
  5. Map out vicious circles of the thoughts and emotions and work out how you can create virtuous circles 

Self-reflective question

“When have I been most emotionally resilient and what enabled me to do this?”

More

A portfolio career is a resilient career. Why? Because it is made up of different components, so you can change direction or ‘pivot’ as external trends change or your own circumstances change.

Contact us to receive your free report ‘Discover Portfolio Careers’: https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/portfolio/connect/

Christina Blacklaws’ guest blog about her portfolio career part 1

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This is a 2-part blog for Energise – The Talent Liberation Company by Christina Blacklaws. This is part 1.

Biog

Christina studied Jurisprudence at Oxford and qualified as a solicitor in 1991.  She now runs her own consultancy business advising domestic and international law firms and legal businesses, speaking globally and holding a number of non-executive directorships. She holds a range of public appointments including chairing both the LawTech Delivery Panel for the Ministry of Justice and Innovate UK’s Next Generation Services Advisory Board and sits on the Ministry of Justice’s Legal Support Advisory Group. She is an advisory board member for Elevate, 20-First and Thompson Reuter’s Women in Leadership in Law programme.

Christina is the Simon Professional and Industrial Fellow at the Alliance Manchester Business School. Christina was President of the Law Society of England and Wales until July 2019 and continues to represent the Women Lawyers Division on Council and the UK on the International Bar Association Council.

She is passionate about diversity and inclusion, technology and access to justice and uses every opportunity to advocate and progress positive change in these areas. Christina is a multi-award-winning published author, lecturer and frequent media commentator.

The rest of this guest blog is in Christina’s own words.

What are the components of your portfolio career e.g. study, paid freelance work, part time job, volunteering etc.?

I have a wide variety of roles, many voluntary, including a lot of engagement with universities, speaking at events, my Law Society and government roles.

My paid roles include 4 non-executive directorships with 3 law firms and one LawTech business. In addition, I undertake paid speaking events globally and provide ad hoc advice and training to law firms and legal businesses around the world.

How did your portfolio career come about?

When I finished as President of the Law Society in July 2019, I decided I wanted to maintain my independence and the wonderful variety of different things I had become involved in, during my presidency, so a portfolio career seemed an obvious choice!

When people ask you ‘what do you do?’ – what do you reply?

Lots of different things! I am a NED, chair, speaker, campaigner and thinker.

To what extent did your portfolio career happen by chance/luck and to what extent was it planned?

It’s rare, in my experience, to know when your job will finish from the moment you start it (the presidency of the Law Society is for 1 year), and this was the case with the Law Society. It gave me plenty of opportunity and time to think about what I wanted to do next, so I did plan the shape of my current career.

Having said that, I am fortunate in that interesting and unsought opportunities come my way on a regular basis so there is also a good degree of ‘happenstance’.

Watch out for part 2 of Christina Blacklaws’ guest blog about her portfolio career, including 5 tips for aspiring portfolio careerists.

More

Christina’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinablacklaws/

Our book for the Law Society ‘Career management for lawyers. Practical strategies to plan your next chapter’ is available now in the on-line book shop: https://bookshop.lawsociety.org.uk/p/career-management-for-lawyers-practi-paperback/

Interested in a portfolio career for yourself?

E mail us to arrange your free 20-minute consultation about whether a portfolio career is right for you: https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/portfolio/connect/