Is self-employment right for you?

DEFINITION OF SELF-EMPLOYMENT: An individual who operates a business or profession as a sole proprietor, partner in a partnership, independent contractor, or consultant.

Of course, it seems like there are a lot of benefits to being self-employed–no boss to report to, you can set your own hours, the credit for your hard work belongs to you and so does all of the money that you earn.

Let’s take a further look at the advantages of self-employment.

1. Capacity to set your own hours so the rush hour traffic commutes may not be a part of your life anymore.
2. Freedom to take vacation time or sick time.
3. No boss or supervisor to answer to. You get to set the rules.
4. Freedom to create your own work environment.
5. You choose the projects to work on.
6. Ability to directly determine the value of your own work.
7. As a self-employed person, other than freelancers looking for clients, you don’t have to worry about searching for a job. You already have one!
8. With the exception of face-to-face interactions with clients and customers, you can work in your pajamas if feel like it.

But here is a flip side to self-employment that many people aren’t aware of.

1. When you chose to become self-employed, you are taking a substantial financial risk and you assume ALL the liabilities.
2. You lose the safety net of a guaranteed paycheck and benefits such as health insurance.
3. If you need start up capital, you may need collateral such as your home.
4. If you are used to living “large,” you’d better be prepared to change your spending habits.
5. If you are not working, you are not making money. If you are working by yourself there is zero money coming in when you take vacation or sick days.
6. You have the freedom to set your own hours but it is almost certain that your work hours will increase, possibly dramatically.
7. Because you’re working for yourself, you’re going to have to take care of everything yourself!
8. If anything goes awry, it’s your complete responsibility. The buck stops with you!

So what is the bottom line? Discipline and Commitment!

If you are disciplined enough to work long hours, able to tolerate risk, cope with the stress, handle the potential of failure, work well alone and figure out all of it on your own, then self-employment may be right for you.

©2009 – 2010 Cultivating Careers

~ If not, then maybe you should keep your current job or continue your search to work for someone else.

Cell Phone Etiquette

Realizing that this should be self evident, I also realize that it is not to some and I’m guilty of breaking a few rules of common courtesy.

Be aware of your voice level. People tend to talk louder on cell phones. My older son pointed this one out to me. I have a tendency to talk louder if I can’t hear the other person! How much sense does that make to raise the level of your voice when you can’t hear the other person? It doesn’t make your phone reception any better.

Keep private matters private. Certain subjects are completely inappropriate to discuss in public and I’m not just speaking about conversations with friends. Business calls and the conducting thereof should not be a subject that you want the entire world to hear.

Set your phone to silent. I have not turned my phone off in 7 years and I’m not likely to start now but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be courteous to others by silencing the phone. It is beyond rude to have your cell phone ringing at the movies, the theatre, restaurants, meetings, and etcetera. With the prices of movie tickets, how selfish is it for you to disturb others who are trying to enjoy an evening out? As for meetings, if you’re interviewing how impressive do you think it is to the interviewer to have your cell ring? It’s disruptive and sends a message to the interviewer that you do not respect their time.

Don’t interrupt face-to-face conversations to take a phone call. This is one of the most rude and disrespectful actions that people do. Barring an emergency, the person in front of you deserves your undivided attention. If you must take the call, apologize and keep it brief.

Be careful which cell phone ring you choose. I know about this from personal experience. At one point I had “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns-N-Roses as my ring tone. Imagine how well that went over when I was in a meeting negotiating a deal! Err on the side of caution and choose a standard ring tone, save your self-expression for other venues.

Create a professional voicemail message. Understandably, not everyone is comfortable with a voicemail message stating their name and that is acceptable but at minimum, let the caller know what number they’ve reached.

©2010 Cultivating Careers

Conflict Resolution

Conflict within an office or group-type setting is inevitable and usually occurs when an individual is not obtaining what they want and are seeking to fulfill their own self-interest. Although inevitable, conflict can be minimized, diverted and/or resolved. Keeping these thoughts in mind is the first step towards conflict management and resolution.

It’s important to recognize the signs that are the beginnings of conflict: A few of which are, reduced communication, disagreements (regardless of issue), stealthily seeking power, subtle public statements, airing disagreements through media or public venues, increasing lack of respect, lack of discretion with sensitive organizational issues.

Searching for the causes of conflict is essential to be successful in resolving the conflict. Possible causes of conflict include conflict with self needs or wants that are not being met, personal values are being tested, perceptions are being questioned, assumptions are being made, knowledge is minimal, expectations are too high/too low, personality, race, or gender differences are present.

Obviously conflict is destructive when it takes attention away from other important activities. Conflict is harmful when it begins to undermine morale or self-concept, polarizes people and groups, leads to reduced cooperation or increases and sharpens differences. Conflict can occasionally lead to irresponsible or harmful behaviors such as attempts of defamation towards other’s character or qualifications.

Not all conflict is negative, however. Conflict is constructive when it results in clarification of important problems and issues, involves people in resolving issues that are important to them, brings about authentic communication, or helps release emotion, anxiety, and stress. Conflict can build cooperation among people through learning more about each other. When a group or team joins together in resolving the conflict it helps individuals develop understanding of their environment as a whole.

It is best to meet conflict head on. Be honest about concerns and agree to disagree. Understand that a healthy disagreement will build better decisions. Get rid of individual ego and let your team create - people will support what they help create. Discuss differences in values openly by communicating honestly - avoid playing "gotcha" type games. Groups often collaborate closely in order to reach consensus or agreement. The ability to use collaboration requires the recognition of and respect for everyone's ideas, opinions, and suggestions. Attempt to follow a few guidelines for reaching consensus such as avoid arguing over individual ranking or position. Present a position as logically as possible. Avoid "win-lose" statements. Discard the notion that someone must lose in order for all to win.

©2009-2010 Cultivating Careers

Taking Charge Of Your Career

Unless you’ve been living on a deserted island, you know that we are in an economic crises and the job market has been affected.

News Flash! The steps to taking charge of your career haven’t changed.

The first thing that you need to realize is that YOU are responsible for your career. It is all up to you to consider your objective, develop a plan and then follow through. In order to successfully reach your career goals, you have to take charge over them. Start to think of your career as your own private company and see yourself as the boss. As the boss, you make all of the decisions. On the route to building your “company” hopefully you will seek out the advice of people who have knowledge and experience. But, bottom-line, the decision and responsibility towards achieving your career goals is yours alone.

Right about now, you might be asking, “Where do I start?” (Unless my writing has bored you to sleep.) The answer is actually really simple. You start to begin creating a plan.

Take some time to think about your ultimate goal. At this stage, the most important thing that you need to realize is where you want to land. It may seem backwards but you can’t get to where you want to be until you know where that is. What do you want to achieve with your career? The answer to that question becomes your objective.

With your objective, you have now started your long-term plan. Take a pen to paper and write down your objective. Think about strategies towards achieving this goal. Do you need to overhaul your resume? Who do you know that is already established? Will you need to further your education? Incorporate those answers into your strategy. At this point you have your goal and direction towards it. Begin to set the priorities within your plan. As you move towards your goal, set time aside to review your plan. Review it regularly and prioritize your strategies.

Taking charge of your career is a job in itself. You have your plan to keep you on track but that alone isn’t going to get you to your objective. Remain informed of changes in your chosen career; maintain your professional self-presentation and network!

©2009 – 2010 Cultivating Careers

Are you a Victim or a Survivor?

Like most people, your life has changed in some way during the past months. Maybe, you lost your job, your savings has dwindle or you’ve been forced to cut back on leisure activities… perhaps even to the barest necessities. It seems unfair that the financial health of most of us is currently at risk due to the actions of others. Most of us are feeling stressed because is seems as though there is nothing that we can do to “fix it.” In times of stress people tend to rely upon familiar behaviors and ways of thinking. We tend to respond like victims or survivors.

How are you reacting to your current situation? Are you thinking of yourself as a victim of circumstance or as a survivor who will weather the storm?

The victim views a crisis situation as a threat. As a result, he or she becomes entrenched in feelings of fearfulness, helplessness, and hopelessness. Fearfulness, because they don’t know what lies ahead but they are convinced it isn’t good; helplessness, because they have lost control over the situation and don’t see any way of regaining control; and hopelessness, because to them the future looks pretty bleak, and there’s no light on the horizon. It’s difficult for a person who feels victimized to look forward to any source of pleasure or joy. He or she is paralyzed by their victim’s stance.

On the other hand, the survivor views the same situation as a crisis, but is able to move through their initial alarm to a state of mind that enables them to consider their options. They engage in the process that unfolds throughout the days, weeks and months. While fearfulness and helplessness may be elements of the process, they aren’t all of what he or she feels. The survivor’s stance is colored by hope. As they consider their options, their fearfulness diminishes because they realize that all is not lost. The survivor also realizes that they haven’t completely lost control over their situation, because if they’ve put their mind to it, they can begin to form a plan. This goes to the core of what it means to be a survivor, and is the main difference between the survivor and the victim.

The victims are wringing their hands and crying, “Woe is me!” The survivors are discovering that they have choices, both individually, and as part of a nation and a world. These choices can improve our situation. Victims are attempting to hold on to life, as they knew it before the crisis. Survivors are seeking to use their creativity to re-create their lives in very basic ways.

It’s not always easy to create new goals, to develop strategies for meeting those goals, and to stay focused enough to achieve desired changes. Sometimes we need someone to hold us accountable for the progress we say we want to make. Seek out the help of friends, family or even a mentor!

It is your choice whether you feel like a victim or a survivor. Allow yourself time to feel saddened by the loss of what you may have had, but let it be a survivor’s sadness. Don’t let it paralyze you and prevent you from seeking new opportunities!

Again, it is your choice!

©2009 – YP Mazzulo

Have You Ever Searched Your Name In Cyberspace?

I have several blogs and contribute to a few others. When I log into my blogs, stats pop up and I’m always curious to see how people find my blog amongst the abyss of blogs. The stats list search terms that have been used. What caught my attention with this was finding that my name was in the search terms. Honestly, I’m not that interesting but this left me wondering why would anyone bother and what is out in cyberspace about the infamous me?

So I hit one of my favorite places online…Google! It’s very easy to google your name just make sure that you put your name in the search like this, “Your Name”. Amazing the amount of information that you will find. Every tweet, petition, online associations, almost everything that you have done online is there. You can research even further. Go to Pipl and the information that you’ll find there is just plain creepy. I found a list of items that I had purchased on Amazon.com., an old Ebay account and even a website that I’d built 9 years ago.

Cyberspace is continuous as are your activities and most people don’t have the time to continuously search themselves. Google offers a free service called Google Alerts. It’s very easy to set up, you can choose the terms to search for and the amount of times you want to have alerts emailed to you.

What can you do if you find something online about yourself that is erroneous or more then you’d like the world to read? You can write to the source, request that the information be removed and hope for the best. If you are really done with the cyber world and wish to make an exit, there is a service called Wed 2.0 Suicide Machine that eradicates your online existence.

Ultimately its probably best to just monitor yourself by using commonsense online.

©2010 YP Mazzulo

ICT Global Collaboration - The answer to fix the US economy?

John T. Chambers, Chairman & CEO, Cisco, USA states “Broadband access literally transforms the way we live, work, play and learn by providing unprecedented opportunities for people to communicate, access information, improve education and healthcare, enter new markets and expand the reach of businesses,” as part of his point of view toward The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009. I think that Johnny states the obvious.

Now here come the boring stats. The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009 from WEF ranks the U.S. in 3^rd place, up from 4^th in 2007-2008, on the Networked Readiness Index. The U.S. has ranked in the Top 10 on the NRI since 2001, and placed 1st three times during the past eight years. Based upon those stats, it’s probably safe to say that the U.S. holds a strong presence with Information and Commutations Technologies on the Global platform.

If we recognize that ICT plays a dominant role within the global community equating to global economy, it stands to reason that collaboration is necessary. The U.S. entered into a global economy long ago. Is it possible that the U.S. has had such tunnel vision that we’ve overlooked an approach to change the U.S. economy?

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 will take place January 27-31 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. This humble Global citizen is curious to see the US ranking for 2010 but more interested in the ranking for 2011. Will the powers that be humble themselves and get the United States back on track?

©2009-2010 YP Mazzulo

Dealing with Negative People

When is the last time you had to deal with a negative person?

How did you handle it?

Did you attack back or navigate through the situation with grace?

Taking a moment to review a negative situation, while we’re calm, allows us to think about productive avenues for handling future negative people and situations. (Seriously reviewing any past situation allows us to think of better alternatives for the future.)

You may ask, why bother to have any forethought about our responses? The answer is simple; We damage ourselves by feeding into other people’s cycle of negativity!

Wherever we go, we are inevitably going to face people who are negative, people who oppose our ideas, people who piss us off or people who simply don’t like us. That’s the way life is, we are all, thankfully different. Our differences are not the cause of conflict but they do trigger our emotions. Our emotions are what drive us back to our basic survival instinct of React and Attack. But, we have the ability to keep our emotions in check and control our responses.

Have you ever noticed that negativity spreads? I’ve found that if I’m around a negative minded person, their negativity starts to affect my thoughts and judgments. I’ve learned that when people initiate negativity, it is a direct reflection of their obvious self-dissatisfaction. People are often so bored and unhappy with their own lives that they want to bring others down too. Reacting to someone who is negative will only trigger anger and additional negative responses from that person. If we do respond, we have wasted our energy upon the unproductive. Energy wasted on negative people is energy that could have been spent on a million other, far more important issues.

Some people may have a less than articulate way of expressing themselves, it may even be offensive, but they are still entitled to do so. They have the right to express their own opinions and we have the right and will power to choose our responses.

“If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.” ~ Alex Noble

© 2009 YP Mazzulo

Thoughts On Resumes

Everyone seems to debate over a particular format of resume. Each debate never ends with a clear answer.

Attempting to take a logical approach and looking at the facts:

1. There are more people then jobs.


2. Hiring Managers get inundated with resumes.


3. There average time spent scanning a resume is 2 minutes.


4. Hiring Managers scan for key words.

(Keep those 4 things in mind.)

You, the unemployed person, is spinning your wheels by sending the same information (no matter the format of resume) to 100 different employers.

How about researching each and every company for their style? It might lead to a clearer perspective of what key words the Hiring Manager is seeking.

Yep, you’re going to invest time into a bit of research. During that time spent on research, you may find out that you don’t want to work for a particular employer or you lack what the employer is seeking. Maybe that’s a better investment into your job search versus killing trees on wasted paper.

©2009 – 2010 YP Mazzulo