Transition Employment Resource Guide Transition Planning: Fill & Download for Free

Hi There!Starting a business can be very exciting.However, simply having $30k you can stand to lose and wanting desperately to quit your day-job isn't exactly a what makes a successful entreprenuer.Successful entrepreneurs are very intentional and focused in their pursuits.They may not always know exactly how to get to where they are going, but they have a pretty good idea of what it will look like when they get there.Having this initial vision helps entrepreneurs work backwards, piecing together all of the steps necessary to reach their final destination.While we hear a lot about people finding career fulfillment through entrepreneurship, becoming an entrepreneur isn't the answer for everyone.However, this concept of reverse engineering, so common among entrepreneurs, is something that anyone can use to free themselves of a miserable work-life.Successful career change doesn't always result in the birth of a business. I suggest asking yourself the questions below before deciding to start a business.In the end, if you still feel compelled to start a business, but don't know what to sell, I suggest you read Joe Pulizzi's Content, Inc. and consider building an audience before attempting to develop any products.Questions to Ask Yourself Before Changing Careers:#1. What do I want out of my new career? What don’t I want?Knowing what you want and what you don’t want are important components to finding work that fulfills you on a daily basis. Without knowing where you stand on certain things you are likely to bounce from job to job without ever finding a career you can stick with.Things like making more money, avoiding micro managers, or contributing to a particular social cause can make a big difference in properly matching you to a career or particular job.It is helpful to be clear on what you want out of your career. Writing a career mission statement can help you establish this kind of clarity by giving you a thought model to refer to when faced with career decisions. With a carefully written career mission statement at your disposal, making decisions on whether to change jobs or transition to a new career entirely can become almost effortless.If you're interested, I've created a step-by-step guide to writing your own career mission statement that can be downloaded for free. [Click Here to Download]#2. Do I need a new career or just a new job?For some people the idea of a new career is very exciting. If they have hit a wall developmentally in their current line of work, or they’ve become cynical of the industry as a whole, changing careers may be a good decision.Of course, there is also a possibility that the cynicism and developmental barriers are being self-inflicted. When this is the case, simply changing jobs or changing fields of work may not do much to help them feel more fulfilled or happy with their work.In the case of an unreasonable boss, or a position that no longer compliments your position in life, simply changing jobs rather than career paths may be all that is needed.For the friends of Mona Patel, it was the dawn of a new season in life that made it hard for them to find jobs they liked.Patel’s friends were all well educated women and accomplished professionals that had briefly left the workforce to raise their young children. With the children now grown to ages that allowed these mothers to work, the women didn’t want to neglect their children by working full-time.This limited availability proved to be a barrier for these women in finding work similar to the positions they had left only a few years prior.To overcome this or similar circumstances, Patel suggests reframing the way you think about your job hunt by asking “what if?”As she describes more thoroughly in her new book, Reframe: Shift the Way You Work, Innovate, and Think, Patel insist that thinking creatively – or thinking like a designer – can help job hunters overcome any limitation the marketplace presents them with.In an article for BusinessCollective.com Patel talks about outlining your own dream job. In doing so, she explains that you’d want to make use of your current skills – maybe in a new way – so that even with a limitation like availability, you could be of value to an employer.The purpose of this exercise is to help you weed through the countless number of job postings, but also to help you seek out the companies that want the benefit of hiring you to do a job that complements your life and current expertise in an industry.This kind of reframing isn’t just something people returning to the workforce can make use of. Creative thinking can be a solution that helps all working professionals to find work-life balance and/or career fulfillment.On the other hand, lost passions for a line of work can be hard to resurrect, and sometimes they are quickly replaced with a passion for something new. There are also people who simply fell into a profession that doesn’t suite them. In these scenarios, transitioning to a new career may be justified.Of course, career change isn’t always self-initiated. There are all kinds of reasons for wage stagnations and lay-offs that inspire folks to choose new career paths.#3. What’s my career transition plan?If you’re going to change careers it is important to have a plan.Most career changes require new skills or adapting old skills to fulfill new needs. Sometimes landing a job is simply a matter of showing that skills you already have can be successfully applied in a new arena.The more dramatic your career change, the steeper your learning curve is going to be. It can also be much more challenging to demonstrate how competent you are if you don’t already have experience in an industry.Tim Ferris’ 8 Steps to Getting What You Want… Without Formal Credentials is an excellent guide for helping people overcome learning curves and demonstrate their qualifications for a newly chosen career or in a new industry.Tim Ferris’ 8 Steps to Getting What You Want… Without Formal Credentials:Choose Your New Field of LearningShowcase Your LearningLearn the Basics of Good NetworkingWithin Your Budding Social Economy, Start Working for FreeDevelop Case Studies of Your WorkDevelop Relationships With MentorsLearn SalesSell and Deliver Your Services Within Your Social EconomyFerris’ 8 Steps for Getting What You Want boils down to self-education and then selling an employer/client on your newly established value.For a more seasoned professional, a career transition may not require starting entirely from scratch. Instead, repositioning the value of existing skill-sets in service of a new employer or client base may suffice. Even so, learning how to communicate your value to this new kind of employer or client is something you’ll have to learn.Rather than winging it, deciding on a course of action is the best way to ensure you’ll learn what needs to be learned and transition as quickly and effortlessly as possible.Your plan might include allocating time to decide on a new career path, conducting adequate research in which to make your decision, and goals associated with these early phases of career transition as well as the actual accomplishment of landing a your dream job.To simplify the process of setting actionable SMART goals and measures of personal accountability, I've created a Career Goals & Action Plan Worksheet that can be downloaded for free. Whether you’re trying to transition to a new career or reach higher levels of success in your current job, this free worksheet will help you do it in record time. [Click Here to Download] #4. How might this career change impact my financial security?In changing careers you’ll also want to plan for how a job change would impact your ability to pay the bills.We often think of how our careers help fulfill the highest levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but if we forget the importance of our jobs to satisfying the foundational levels of the hierarchy we set ourselves up for failure.Even when a career move is motivated entirely by increasing a person’s earning potential, the days of higher income seldom follow immediately after a job change.If you don’t already have a lot of directly transferable skills to the career path you chose, leaving your current job for one in another industry may come with an initial pay cut.The simple solution to a decrease in pay is to adjust how much you spend, but for some people there isn’t a great deal of margin between their current income and the cost of living.In a situation like this, leaving your current job may not be an option in the near future. It may be a wise to supplement your current income with a side-hustle that allows you to dabble in the work that excites you.Incorporating a side-hustle into your plan for career change is a win-win-win. Not only can you increase your fulfillment by doing work you love, but you can build up a work history to demonstrate your skills to future employers/clients, all while increasing your take-home pay.With increased income from your side-hustle you might be able to meet your financial obligations more easily. You could also use that new income to invest in courses or other programs that might help you to develop more rapidly as a professional.If adding a side-hustle is an option you’re considering I suggest Nick Loper’s Side Hustle Nation as a great resource on how to get started.As you grow into your new profession there may come a time when your current career becomes the side-hustle, and what started as a side-hustle become your full-time vocation, before earning you enough to complete your transition into the new career.[This answer was adapted from the blog post, Successful Career Change]

There are always going to be arguments for and against staying where you are and for moving on to a new organization or project.When it comes to making a decision to change the direction of your career, the correct decision will be completely dependent on the circumstances around each of your perspective opportunities.How would each opportunity serve your personal quest for work-life fulfillment?Similar to your situation the founder of Pencils Of Promise, Adam Braun, was looking at impressive career prospects and offers to make a mid-to-high 6-figure income on Wall Street upon graduating from college. Ultimately he decided to start a non-profit instead.What helped him make his decision was thinking about the material impact his life's work would have on the world.Whether he decided to lead a successful non-profit or work on Wall Street his material needs would be met by an income in excess of 6-figures. Working in either industry he'd own a comfortable house, his kids' college educations would be paid for, and he'd never want for anything.For Braun the win for a career on Wall Street would be owning a few more cars and breaking the 7-figure barrier, but the win for a career in the non-profit world mean building hundreds of schools and changing the lives of millions of children in undeveloped parts of the world.You can learn more about Adam Braun's story by listening to his interview with Geoff Woods. [CLICK HERE]I always suggest asking the following question before attempting to change careers:#1. What do I want out of my new career? What don’t I want?Knowing what you want and what you don’t want are important components to finding work that fulfills you on a daily basis. Without knowing where you stand on certain things you are likely to bounce from job to job without ever finding a career you can stick with.Things like making more money, avoiding micro managers, or contributing to a particular social cause can make a big difference in properly matching you to a career or particular job.It is helpful to be clear on what you want out of your career. Writing a career mission statement can help you establish this kind of clarity by giving you a thought model to refer to when faced with career decisions. With a carefully written career mission statement at your disposal, making decisions on whether to change jobs or transition to a new career entirely can become almost effortless.[FREE WORKSHEET] Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Your Own Career Mission Statement#.2 Do I need a new career or just a new job?For some people the idea of a new career is very exciting. If they have hit a developmental barrier in their current line of work or if they’ve become cynical of the industry as a whole, changing careers may be a good decision.Of course, there is also a possibility that the cynicism and developmental barriers are being self-inflicted. When this is the case, simply changing jobs or changing fields of work may not do much to help them feel more fulfilled or happy with their work.In the case of an unreasonable boss, or a position that no longer compliments your position in life, simply changing jobs rather than career paths may be all that is needed.For the friends of Mona Patel, it was the dawn of a new season in life that made it hard for them to find jobs they liked.Patel’s friends were all well educated women and accomplished professionals that had briefly left the workforce to raise their young children. With the children now grown to ages that allowed these mothers to work, the women didn’t want to neglect their children by working full-time.This limited availability proved to be a barrier for these women in finding work similar to the positions they had left only a few years prior.To overcome this or similar circumstances, Patel suggests reframing the way you think about your job hunt by asking “what if?”As she describes more thoroughly in her new book, Reframe: Shift the Way You Work, Innovate, and Think, Patel insist that thinking creatively – or thinking like a designer – can help job hunters overcome any limitation the marketplace presents them with.In an article for BusinessCollective.com Patel talks about outlining your own dream job. In doing so, she explains that you’d want to make use of your current skills – maybe in a new way – so that even with a limitation like availability, you could be of value to an employer.The purpose of this exercise is to help you weed through the countless number of job postings, but also to help you seek out the companies that want the benefit of hiring you to do a job that complements your life and current expertise in an industry.This kind of reframing isn’t just something people returning to the workforce can make use of. Creative thinking can be a solution that helps all working professionals to find work-life balance and/or career fulfillment.On the other hand, lost passions for a line of work can be hard to resurrect, and sometimes they are quickly replaced with a passion for something new. There are also people who simply fell into a profession that doesn’t suite them. In these scenarios, transitioning to a new career may be justified.Of course, career change isn’t always self-initiated. There are all kinds of reasons for wage stagnations and lay-offs that inspire folks to choose new career paths.#3. What’s my career transition plan?If you’re going to change careers it is important to have a plan.Most career changes require new skills or adapting old skills to fulfill new needs. Sometimes landing a job is simply a matter of showing that skills you already have can be successfully applied in a new arena.The more dramatic your career change, the steeper your learning curve is going to be. It can also be much more challenging to demonstrate how competent you are if you don’t already have experience in an industry.Tim Ferris’ 8 Steps to Getting What You Want… Without Formal Credentials is an excellent guide for helping people overcome learning curves and demonstrate their qualifications for a newly chosen career or in a new industry.Tim Ferris’ 8 Steps to Getting What You Want… Without Formal Credentials:Choose Your New Field of LearningShowcase Your LearningLearn the Basics of Good NetworkingWithin Your Budding Social Economy, Start Working for FreeDevelop Case Studies of Your WorkDevelop Relationships With MentorsLearn SalesSell and Deliver Your Services Within Your Social EconomyFerris’ 8 Steps for Getting What You Want boils down to self-education and then selling an employer/client on your newly established value.For a more seasoned professional, a career transition may not require starting entirely from scratch. Instead, repositioning the value of existing skill-sets in service of a new employer or client base may suffice. Even so, learning how to communicate your value to this new kind of employer or client is something you’ll have to learn.Rather than winging it, deciding on a course of action is the best way to ensure you’ll learn what needs to be learned and transition as quickly and effortlessly as possible.Your plan might include allocating time to decide on a new career path, conducting adequate research in which to make your decision, and goals associated with these early phases of career transition as well as the actual accomplishment of landing a your dream job.[FREE GUIDE] Our Career Goals & Action Plan Worksheet simplifies the process of setting actionable SMART goals and measures of personal accountability. Whether you’re trying to transition to a new career or reach higher levels of success in your current job, this free worksheet will help you do it in record time. #4. How might this career change impact my financial security?In changing careers you’ll also want to plan for how a job change would impact your ability to pay the bills.We often think of how our careers help fulfill the highest levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but if we forget the importance of our jobs to satisfying the foundational levels of the hierarchy we set ourselves up for failure.If your making $450,000 a year at Google, but living modestly, you can propbably live off your saving for longer than most.But, even when a career move is motivated entirely by increasing a person’s earning potential, the days of higher income seldom follow immediately after a job change.If you don’t already have a lot of directly transferable skills to the career path you chose, leaving your current job for one in another industry may come with an initial pay cut.The simple solution to a decrease in pay is to adjust how much you spend, but for some people there isn’t a great deal of margin between their current income and the cost of living.For people in a situation like this, leaving their current job may not be an option in the near future. It might be more wise to supplement thier current income with a side-hustle that allows them to dabble in the work that excites them.Incorporating a side-hustle into a plan for career change is a win-win-win. Not only can a person increase their fulfillment by doing work they love, but they can build up a work history to demonstrate their skill to future employers/clients, all while increasing their take-home pay.If you wouldn't be comfortable making less money, maybe your Start-Up work begins as the side-hustle.With income from a side-hustle some people might be able to meet theirr financial obligations more easily. They could also use that new income to invest in courses or other programs that might help them to develop more rapidly as a professional.If adding a side-hustle is an option you’re considering I suggest Nick Loper’s Side Hustle Nation as a great resource on how to get started.As you grow into your new role there may come a time when your current career becomes the side-hustle, and what started as a side-hustle become your full-time vocation, before earning you enough to complete your transition into the new career.[This answer was adapted from Questions to Ask Yourself Before Changing Careers]

I’ve written a book on it.Winning at Settlers of Catan: More than just a strategy guide - Kindle edition by David Elrod. Humor & Entertainment Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.There’s many different strategies, and it’s important to figure out which one to employ based on what the board state is.The 3 most commonly effective strategies are:A. Attempting to make Cities as quickly as possible. Because Initial Placement of Settlements at the beginning of the game is so important, your first 2 settlements are often the best settlements you can possibly have. That in addition to the fact that it takes 5 total resources to upgrade one of them, compared to 6 total resources to build a road and a settlement (for what is going to be a worse settlement than what you already have). Note that this strategy usually attempts to make Development Cards as well, in order to play Knights to protect the investment made in cities to send the Robber Barren away, which in turn can have the added benefit of obtaining Largest Army later (note that going for Largest Army is NOT a strategy, it’s just a built in game reward for previous actions).B. Attempting to build roads and settlements as quickly as possible, and in doing so your roads become a boa constrictor, strangling off your opponents’ options. This has an added benefit of potentially being rewarded with Longest Road later in the game, provided you’re also willing to carefully plan your roads to have a single path.C. Obtaining a Port, when there’s a lot of a particular resource. This is one of the harder strategies to execute correctly in my opinion, as a lot of players will see “There’s a lot of good numbers for Sheep/Wood/Whatever” and grab the port for that, and think they can just ride trading that resource at the port to victory.You can, and should (after comfortable winning with this strategies by themselves) mix and match these strategies, as there will be times you want/need to start out building roads and settlements, in order to cut off your opponents, but then transition to focusing on cities once you’ve obtained the additional settlement locations to provide enough ore, and vis versa.There are other strategies as well.EDIT:I had answered this question, and another one, that got merged in. The answer to the other question is now what is showing above. Here’s what my original answer to this question was:Generally speaking, the key thing to know is that every game is going to be different based on the initial board setup, and the second biggest key is getting a feel for how to evaluate these differences.Usually, but not always, Ore is the most important resource (because it and brick are the most scarce, and you can only get to 7 VP without Ore, where as you technically can actually win without ever obtaining a brick). It’s important to know when it’s not, and it’s important to know when you’re picking last, what strategies are reasonable paths to victory when it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get Ore the same way your opponents are able to).Sometimes you want to diversify the numbers you’ll receive resources from. Sometimes not.If your position is strong, you’ll usually care less about what your opponents are doing in favor of advancing your own strategy. Sometimes you’ll need to try and impede opponents instead.The key is knowing how to navigate the differences, which is one of the reasons it’s such a great game.