Lot of professionals & budding Entrepreneurs & Intrapreneurs would have faced situation at some point in their life when folks around you would like to leverage your expertise in a particular function/industry to gain benefit &/or expand their knowledge base.
I faced this situation when I was working for an automotive & financial services conglomerate. Although I have worked in corporate finance & strategy for 15 donkey years, I always had this inclination towards doing something on career coaching & advising front. As a stepping stone towards my passion, I built a robust LinkedIn profile & resume. Sooner, professionals folks & job seekers in my network started approaching me to help them structure their resume & LinkedIn profile. I never realized I was giving free career advice to them. After advising close to 50 job seekers, it was astonishing to imagine that I was giving hundreds of dollars advice & career services for free just for the purpose of building my personal brand of LinkedIn.
This self revelation made me evaluate how I was wasting my skills in my correct employment & how I can build a career out of my passion.
The hardest step in raising to a new level is to wake up & evaluate how your fear has been holding you back for so long. A client of mine who worked in investment banking field for almost 20 years was in between jobs & was working on a remote 6 months contract assignment. She was approached by CFO of a leading pharma company who had dealt with her on a deal in the past. He was seeking some advice on a proposed acquisition deal. Ultimately, my client discussed this situation with me & she was clever enough to realize that she was selling herself short.
If you are or have faced a similar situation in the past, you should target to rebrand yourself as an independent investment banker/startup consultant/marketing consultant. If CFO of any leading company in pharma or CXO any other sector or any startup founder wants to get in touch with you for some business advice, you should be happy to meet them in exchange for a consulting /advisory fee. Your services are not available for free.
Initial meeting with client will enable you to evaluate if your client is facing a problem & how badly problem is hurting your business. If the pain point is impacting their bottom line, they will hire you to solve their problem since you won’t associate with them for free.
In order to improve our personal brand & visibility, we need to keep building on our skills & competencies & adding more skills. I am sure you would not acquire new skills by working as a full time employee-even if you are an executive /CXO level. Essentially you will stop playing a part of door mat & take charge of your own path, income & career.
When you set some guidelines & stipulations around your availability & skills, folks around you may get pissed off since they have till now assumed that they can buzz you anytime & get your advice for free. You will be shocked to learn how your formal business associate would change their professional behavior with you.
Its time you should stop using your skills to make others rich. Its the right moment for you to take charge. It all takes courage & power to step out of your comfort zone & take step towards making your passion your career.
