Do you feel like you are the captain of your career, or more like a galley slave—chained to a job that you don’t like, or perhaps one that pays slave wages? In this meeting, professional recruiter and STC Fellow Jack Molisani will discuss short-term tactics and long-term strategies for increasing your corporate value—and thus your standard of living. “My career has had its highs, its lows, and everything in between. I learned from each win and each challenge, and I’ll share my life- and career-changing realizations with you in this entertaining and informative session. As a mentor once told me: ‘Learn from the success and failures of others—it’s faster than making them yourself!’” Do you want a better job? To make more money? To work fewer hours? Be the Captain of your Career

1. Be The Captain of Your Career!
Jack Molisani
Twitter: @JackMolisani

2. About the Speaker
• President, ProSpring Technical Staffing
• Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference on
Content Strategy and User Experience
• Author, Be The Captain of Your Career:
A New Approach to Career Planning and
Advancement

3. In this Session
• Advancing your Career Using
Branding and Positioning
• Five Steps to Financial Stress
Reduction

4. • I recently went to a conference where
attendees’ name tags included the
phrase, “Ask me about… [then an
answer we provided when registering].”
• From this came a major career
realization:
Introduction

5. The whole concept of personal branding
can be summarized by that simple
phrase, “Ask me about…”
Introduction

6. • Before we look at some examples,
let’s define some terms.
Introduction

7. Branding vs. Positioning
• A brand is: “a unique design, sign, symbol,
words, or a combination of these,
employed in creating an image that
identifies a product and differentiates it
from its competitors.” BusinessDictionary.com

8. Branding vs. Positioning
• Companies spend billions of dollars
advertising and building brand
recognition.
• Why?
• So people will remember and buy their
products.

9. Branding vs. Positioning
• Often a name-brand product and a
no-name (or store brand) generic product
are the same product produced by the
same manufacture

10. Branding vs. Positioning
• What matters is that consumers perceive
that a brand is better and therefore buy it
(usually at a higher price than a non-
branded generic equivalent)

11. Positioning
• Positioning: to communicate about a
product or service by comparing it to a
better-known product or service
• “Stronger than steel,” “Faster than FedEx,”
“Cheaper than Walmart”
• Each phase above identifies what makes the
product different (quality, speed, price) and
then a better-known product (or company)
against which the item is positioned

12. Personal Branding
• Branding and positioning obviously
apply to selling shoes or laundry soap,
but what do they have to do with you,
the technical communicator?
• That’s where personal branding comes in.

13. Personal Branding
Just as a company creates a brand and
promotes why people should buy the
product or service, so should you create a
personal brand and promote why people
should buy your product or service.

14. Personal Branding
In Tech Comm 2.0: Reinventing Our
Relevance in the 2000s (Intercom, Feb 2012)
I asserted that technical communicators are
in danger of becoming a commodity, a
product or service to be acquired for the
lowest possible price given an acceptable
level of quality.

15. Personal Branding
• Why?
• Because many companies do not
perceive the value that individual
technical communicators bring to their
organizations
• And why not?
• Lack of personal branding!

16. Personal Branding
• Personal branding and proper positioning
communicate why companies should buy
your services and pay the rate or salary you
want to be paid.

17. Personal Branding
• Example:
• STC fellow Andrea Ames, when asked
what she does for a living, answers,
“I solve business problems.”
• Not, “I’m a technical writer.”
• Not, “I write release notes.”

18. Personal Branding
• While she may actually do those things
as part of her job, they’re not the way she
approaches her job, and they’re certainly
not how she defines her corporate mission.
• “I solve business problems.”
• What a great personal brand! It instantly
communicates what she does and why she
is valuable!

19. Responding to Market Changes
• In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits
of Visionary Companies, James Collins and
Jerry Porras state that of the visionary
companies they studied, all had a history of
responding to market changes while staying
true to their core values.
• Content Strategist Sharon Burton’s
rebranding story illustrates this beautifully.

20. Responding to Market Changes
• “The whole reason I got into tech comm was not
because I loved to write, it was because I loved
being at the crossroads of people and technology
and I could make a difference. That’s why I do
what I do.
• When the recession hit and I got laid off, it forced
me to reexamine what drives me in this field, what
excites me. I realized what was true when I started
is just as true today: I love being at the
intersection of people and technology.

21. Responding to Market Changes
• Unfortunately, writing online help topics just
doesn’t excite me anymore. But helping
companies adopt a content strategy that gives
people the information they need so they can
go out and change the world?
• That excites me!

22. Responding to Market Changes
• Our industry is changing. We’re in a content
development revolution. Companies don’t
need just user manuals anymore, they need
social media and webinars, YouTube videos
and multi-channel publishing.
• These are the areas on which companies
are spending money, and they need help to
do it right.

23. Responding to Market Changes
• So the process of rebranding wasn’t just
calling myself by a new title, it included
reeducating myself and repositioning myself
so I could effectively offer the services that
companies need as the very ground beneath
them changes.”

24. Responding to Market Changes
• Alvin Toffler, an American writer known for
his works discussing the digital revolution,
takes the concept of reeducation a step
further:
“The illiterate of the twenty-first century
will not be those who cannot read and
write, but those who cannot learn,
unlearn and relearn.”

25. Ask Me About…
• How can you respond to market changes
while staying true to your core values?
• What can you do well that you can
promote as a specialized service for which
you should be handsomely paid?

26. Ask Me About…
• Are you expert in content management
systems? A specialist in Simplified
English? A wiz at creating cascading style
sheets?
• Or perhaps you make software easier to
use through embedded user assistance, or
increase sales though better marketing
collateral?

27. Ask Me About…
• What should people ask you about?”

28. Five Steps to Financial Stress Reduction
• Chellie Campbell in her book The Wealthy Spirit
says there are five step to achieving financial
stress reduction:
– Think positive
– Send out ships
– Count your money
– Survive the storms
– Seek balance and enlightenment

29. • Mind over matter
• Do daily positive money affirmations:
– “People love to give me money!”
– “I win often, and I win big!”
– “Money flows to me like water from a faucet!”
• I believe you don’t only choose the path you
walk in life, you create the path you walk
Think Positive

30. Send Out Ships
• Most people have heard the phrase,
“When my ship comes in”
• Do you know where that term originated?
• Back in the 19th
century, merchants in Europe
would mortgage everything they owned to
build clipper ships and send them off to the
New World.

31. • When (if) they returned loaded with rum
and furs and spices, and the owner would
become rich beyond their imagination.
• But there were no ship-to-shore radios in the
19th
century, so merchants would never know
exactly when their ship would return.
• They were literally waiting for their ship to
come in.
Send Out Ships

32. • I know plenty of people who are waiting for
their ship to come in.
• The problem is, they’re not sending out any
ships!
• You have to send out ships!
Send Out Ships

33. • Create a ships log
• Run basic financial reports, create graphs
• In the game Making Money, that’s how you
keep score
Count Your Money

34. • There will be ups and downs in the economy
• Companies are bought and sold and people
get laid off
• Put money away so you can survive the lean
times
Survive the Storms

35. • All work and no play is no way to live
• Neither is having no money to pay the rent
• Seek a balance
– Work vs. family time
– Saving money vs. splurging a little
– Don’t neglect your physical, mental or spiritual
health
Seek Balance and Enlightenment

36. • Think positive
• Send out ships
• Count your money
• Survive the storms
• Seek balance and enlightenment
Recap

37. Recommended Reading

38. Reach the Speaker
– JackMolisani@ProspringStaffing.com
– Twitter: JackMolisani
– The LavaCon Conference: www.lavacon.org