I met Springfield, Massachusetts-based Doug Foresta when he found me on LinkedIn (ahem) and approached me to be a guest on his blog talk radio show, “The Doug Foresta Show.” In doing my homework to decide whether I wanted to be on the show (YES!) and then in preparation for the appearance, I listened to several interviews and checked out the blog affiliated with the show. And that’s when I decided to turn the tables and interview him to find out more about the story behind the blog talk radio show.

HOMETOWN: I grew up in many places- my father worked for the Department of Defense. Mostly I grew up in Lakewood, New Jersey, about 15 minutes away from Seaside Heights, home of “Snookie.”

COLLEGE: I majored in psychology at Rutgers University, did graduate work in theatre and communications at Hunter College, studied screenwriting and playwriting at Gotham Writer’s Workshop and have a masters in social work from Springfield College.

“REAL JOB:” For the past nine years, I’ve worked in child welfare, working with children at risk of abuse and neglect.

When did you start your blog talk radio show and what was the inspiration? I started my Blog Talk show in January 2010. I was doing a lot of public speaking, but had this idea of doing radio. My friend and guru, Angela Lussier, suggested that I get started on Blog Talk Radio, and the rest is history!

Why did you choose that format, as opposed to written interviews? I love having conversations with guests because it opens up this space where anything can happen. I also do print interviews on my creativity blog, but for me, there is nothing that can replace having a conversation. Personally, it is a thrill to be able to talk with people I’ve admired for years!

How do you find your guests? What are the criteria? I find my guests from various sources. Currently, I’m working with several entertainment PR folks across the country. I interview “extraordinary creative people” from all walks of life. Some are famous, some are not. What I’m looking for are people who are living successful creative lives and who are authentic. I’m very interested these days in mid-level creative folks in show business and creative sectors. To me, these are the unsung heroes who provide so much creative content, and have rich stories and insight into the creative process. At this point, I also get at least several pitches a day from individuals and PR people.

What were you hoping to get out of the interview/the show? Personal inspiration, professional guidance, something else?  When I first started doing the show, I simply wanted to gain “platform” and get experience in communications and social media. Today, I’m very clear about my mission for the show: To find the most interesting and wise creative people and have them share tips about how to live a successful creative life.

What is the most surprising thing to come out of the experience? By far, the most surprising thing to come out of the show is that it has led me to my life purpose: To help creative people live successful, fulfilling lives, and fully express their creativity. I am in the process of launching a global community called “Creative Misfits.” The show will play an important role in developing this community.

Can you give us some of your favorite interview moments? The most surprising moments on the show were a) interviewing Barbara Sher (“Wishcraft”) who then invited me to come to NY to a weekend workshop as her guest! Other surprising moments include Burt Young (Paulie from Rocky) agreeing to come on the show, and Deepak Chopra agreeing to come on the show. Unfortunately, I was not able to get Deepak Chopra on the show (yet), but I’m going to meet him in July at America’s Imagination Summit at Lincoln Center, so stay tuned!

What are your favorite blog talk shows, radio talk shows, vlogs, blogs? I really like your blog, YourIndustryInsider.com, especially since so much of my work revolves around show business. I also am a fan of Steve Dahlberg’s blog, Applied Imagination, and Lincoln Center Institute’s blog, Imagination First.

Where do you hope to take your show? What about your own career? Do you have a vision you would like to share about some next steps? I hope to continue to grow the show on Blog Talk and beyond. Most importantly, I feel deeply called to lead this movement of “Creative Misfits.” Growing up, I always felt like a “misfit” and had many painful experiences before I finally discovered my purpose. My hope is to reach out to creative people all over the world who may feel like they don’t fit in, or feel confused or despairing about how they can survive and do their creative work. As a creative person, I’ve found that it is so important to have guidance, support and nurturance, and that is what this creative community will provide. I’m very clear that this is my life’s work. I see myself continuing to grow this enterprise, and create revenue sources through speaking, writing, sponsorship, and teleseminars and webinars. I’m also working on a book, “Creative Misfit Manifesto,” based on my experience interviewing scores of creative people. Nothing makes me feel better then serving amazing, authentic creative people!

Definitely check out Doug’s blog, “The Doug Foresta Show” and his blog talk radio show. You can also find him on Linked In (tell him you read about him here!).

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[Note: For the first time ever, I am putting the same post on both MoveYouForward.com and YourIndustryInsider.com. Everyone can benefit from this post. Read on!]

Not long ago, I did a post on why everyone needs a resume, even YOU. It’s the single most valuable bit of career advice I give to clients, friends, and associates. Bottom line there: A resume is a priceless marketing tool one should have at the ready at all times, whether one is a job-seeker, an entrenched employee, a freelancer, or even a business owner. Read the whole post here for details.

The other top piece of career advice I give to anyone who will listen is to get your LinkedIn ducks in a row. In short, be on LinkedIn and using it in the best way to achieve maximum results.

“What is LinkedIn?”

LinkedIn is an online networking site similar in functionality to Facebook, in terms of allowing users to create profiles and interact with others online. LinkedIn is widely accepted by professionals at all levels as the place to maintain a presence and interact with others for business purposes.

“But I’m not looking for a job. Why do I need to be on it?”

LinkedIn is not just helpful for job seekers. Yes, LinkedIn is a job-search tool, but it’s also a reputation-builder, a marketing tool, and the ultimate online business networking tool.

I have personally gotten press opportunities, business partnership possibilities, and many clients through people finding me on LinkedIn. I also used LinkedIn to find and contact sources when I was doing research for the “Entertainment Career Kickstart Kit” I released through Your Industry Insider. And I have connected with people all over the world who contacted me through LinkedIn to ask a question or get help with a professional project. You never know where those friendships could lead, but for now I have a broad reputation related to what I do. If I ever need a job, I’m in good shape.

“Okay, I get it. What do I do?”

There are three elements to maximizing your use of LinkedIn:

1. Your Profile: That is your professional identity. It’s your cover letter, resume, business card, elevator pitch, and interview suit all rolled up into one. Your profile MUST have an accurate and descriptive title, a compelling summary, well-written descriptions of your current and previous positions, and an appropriate picture.

Accurate and descriptive title- This doesn’t necessarily have to be your current job title, though it can be. If you have a prestigious title at a recognizable company or if you are just representing your corporate identity, use that.

If you want to promote yourself in a broader way, you can use “Marketing Executive” or “Entertainment Industry Professional” or even “Public Relations Expert.” But only use expert if you are an expert. Billing yourself as a “PR Expert” five years out of college makes you look silly and is just plain annoying to those who are PR experts who might be in a position to hire you or refer you to someone else. (That’s where the “accurate” part comes into play.)

A Compelling Summary- If you have a well-written, targeted resume (like all of my former clients do!), you can probably copy the headline section off of the top of that and paste it into the summary section on LinkedIn. If you don’t have a well-written, targeted resume, your summary should be a few sentences on your core skills and career trajectory, with an eye toward what you want to get out of your LinkedIn profile.

For instance, if you are a Marketing Executive starting to look for your next corporate position or a former marketing executive looking for more consulting work, you might put some version of, “Innovative, forward-thinking marketing professional with experience in the hospitality and tourism industry working with top-tier boutique brands, as well as large corporations, such as Marriott and Hilton. Core strengths include branding, special promotions, and strategy.”

As you write your summary, think about who might be reading it and what you want from them. Enticing recruiters and hiring executives requires a different tone and different content then if you want to attract consulting clients, press opportunities, or VC funding.

Well-written descriptions of your current and previous positions- Again, if you have a well-written, targeted resume, the work has basically already been done and you are largely cutting and pasting, only editing due to length and formatting constraints. If not, think about your overall role in each position and what you did, emphasizing accomplishments over duties and really honing in on where you made money or saved money for yourself (as a business owner) or someone else (as an employee or contractor).

An appropriate picture- Focused, close enough to see your eyes, which should be looking at the camera, smiling (or pleasant-looking if smiling isn’t your thing), and professional. No blurry vacation photos with festive hats. No pictures of your cute kids. (Save those for Facebook.) Think about how someone might meet you at a professional networking event. Look like that.

2. Connections: A great profile without a decent number of connections (200+ minimum) is as useful as having a great collection of connections and a lame profile. Which is to say, not very useful at all.

So, if you are a rookie, you want to let LinkedIn search your Outlook or Yahoo (or whatever email system you use) to help you find people you know who are already on LinkedIn. And then LinkedIn will suggest other people you might know based on the connections of your existing connection (called 2^nd and 3^rd tier connections on LinkedIn). (Awesome, right?)

Also, get out the business cards you’ve been collecting at actual in-person networking events the last year or so and find and connect with those people. Soon you will be blowing by that 200-connection minimum I set for you on your way to being a LinkedIn pro.

I myself go to LinkedIn whenever I meet someone new and look them up. Not only do I usually get a better idea of what they do/have done, LinkedIn will also tell me if we have connections in common.  (Awesome, #2!) I almost always send my new contacts an invitation to connect, along with a note about our meeting. It’s a great way to follow up and also to get them into my permanent “Rolodex.”

Everyone debates about whether they should only connect with people they have met or know personally or widen the circle to include people in their industry who they have not met — or even the professional world at large. Some people are even offended when people they do not know contact them to connect.

Personally, I accept connection invitations from people in my field and others who seem interesting and somehow relevant, especially if they personalize the invitation to connect. I pass on people who have no apparent relevance to me and don’t bother to tell me in their invitation note why they want to connect. I also pass on connecting with people who tell me in their invitation message that they want to use me as a job resource. (“Dude, I can’t recommend you for a job if I don’t know you.”)

3. Outreach: Now that you have your profile in shape and are fairly-well connected, it’s time to look around LinkedIn, see who else you might know, or want to know. That’s where GROUPS come in handy. The local branch of your college alumni association, your off-line professional organization, even just a loose organization of people in your field- all of these could be helpful groups to join.

You want groups which contain professionals who might be helpful to you, and who you might be able to help by answering their questions, thus building your reputation and potentially getting relevant opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise know about if you just built your profile and gathered connections and didn’t get out once in a while.

I’m going to close (but I could go on quite a bit longer and don’t you forget it!) by giving one more example of why LinkedIn is awesome: LinkedIn automatically sends out weekly updates of what everyone in your 1^st tier has been up to. If they’ve updated any part of their profile, joined a group, made a new connection, or updated their status, it’s there.

Scanning the update is a great way to find people you might know, too, or discover groups you might want to join. But it’s also a great marketing tool for you. For instance, if you are a freelancer, whenever you add new projects to your profile, the update indicates that you have updated your experience. Potential employers and former employers who are in your first tier get the update and can see what you’ve been up to lately. Maybe they have a similar project.

Now here you are, in a completely passive way, and top of mind when they need someone like you. Awesome, right?

So, are you ready to jump onto LinkedIn and experience the awesomeness for yourself? Or maybe you are already on LinkedIn and have a great story about getting a job, a freelance gig (or five), or some other great opportunity through LinkedIn. Please share in the comments.

And if we aren’t connected already, find me on LinkedIn and send me an invitation, introducing yourself in the note and telling me why you think we should connect. I’d love to meet you.

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I have this conversation frequently these days. It’s usually with people who’ve called me to talk about my resume-writing service, so they know something is up. But this topic also comes up with friends and business associates. One of two things usually brings it up:

1)      I will mention an opportunity that would be just right for the other person. I say, “You should send them your resume.” They say, “Oh, I don’t have one.” I say, “You mean you don’t have an updated resume?” They say, “No, I don’t have a resume at all. I mean, I did at one point but…” They’re voice trails off into silence.

2)      I will say, “I went on your Linked In page and it’s almost blank. What’s the deal?” (I’ll just interject here that it’s not snooping if it’s on the internet.) “Why don’t you have your resume on there, along with a compelling summary of what you do?” “Oh, I don’t have a resume,” they say, either confidently or sheepishly depending upon their circumstances.

I want to say, “Why are you even on Linked In? You have 357 connections and no way that’s going to turn into work for you.” Sometimes I do actually say it (usually, in a gentler way), which leads to me explaining the whole point of Linked In and why having a resume is essential, even for them. (More on Linked In later.)

Yes, it’s true. In the past, lots of people got freelance work – or even permanent jobs – without having a resume. There was a time that when someone who needed a graphic designer or a copy writer or a marketing consultant or even a new VP, Business Affairs would call their trusted friends and associates and their trusted friends and associates would tell them names of potential people to hire. And then the person in need would call a bunch of the referrals and ask those referrals about their experience and accomplishments. Based on that, either finalists would be asked to bid a job or come in for an interview or one person would just be hired depending upon the size and nature of the project.

Here’s the thing: Word-of-mouth doesn’t work as the only strategy anymore. There are too many freelancers and potential employees and, due to the internet, people’s circles are too large.

And, for a big project at a big company – or a permanent position – you don’t just get hired by the person who you talked to on the phone. There are people from other departments who need to sign off on you, as well as upper management in the mix. So now, each time you are brought up as a candidate, the person trying to hire you has to regurgitate everything they know about your relevant work history. If there are follow up questions (“Where’d they get their training? Have they ever done work for our type of company?”), they have to go back to you, get the information and then report back. You could see how someone with a resume would have an advantage in this situation.

Here are other people who need resumes:

People who have had jobs for a long time who would be open to moving on. I’m not saying you have to be actively looking. These are people who want to be ready when opportunity knocks, because they know a good opportunity won’t be available long enough for them to get a great resume together after they hear about it.

Most business owners. Yes, you are your own boss but how do people know they want to use your service or invest in you or come to you with a great offer to collaborate on a project?

Stay-at-Home Moms who need to make some cash while junior is napping. We all know those work-from-home ads are a scam. Network marketing is almost always the fast track to… making next to nothing while pissing off all your friends. But if you have a successful blog or were a very effective PTA president for three years, you could parlay that into a paid social networking or community advocate position that works for your schedule. If people know about you and what you’d done.

YOU. Even if you are 100% happy with your current situation and you do not need nor want any additional income, you still need to be establishing and maintaining your professional reputation. There will come a time when you will need or want to make money some other way than you are now. Your job will end, your current freelance income stream will dry up, etc. You will not want to be starting from scratch.

Here’s where Linked In comes in:

Your resume no longer sits in a drawer or gets passed from fax machine to fax machine or even by email address to email address. It lives on the web! Linked In is the best professional tool to come out of the internet age. You create an identity from yourself simply by having your excellent resume copied onto Linked In, along with a compelling summary of who you are and what you do. You build your reputation by commenting in relevant Linked In groups you belong to. You connect with people in your field. You help them, they help you. 

If someone hears your name as a potential hire and Googles you, your Linked In profile will come up and they don’t even need your resume sent to them. And sometimes people just stumble upon your profile on Linked In and contact you for work. (It’s happened many times for me. It can happen for you.) Which is why…

A blank or incomplete or badly-written Linked In profile is almost worse than no Linked In profile at all.

So if you don’t have a resume – or if your resume is not a strong representation of your career in terms of where you want to go with it – it’s time to put some time into it. And then get it onto Linked In. It will pay-off. Trust me.

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I love this post from Dave Navarro, the personal productivity and internet launch coach with the same name as a famous guitarist.

I consider myself as an independent thinker, able to separate everyone else’s agenda from my own and to stay firmly attuned to the latter. But then I read this post and I realize, of course other people control my life. And they control yours, too.

Think about who you admire, who you respect, who you envy, who you love, who you fear, who you rely on, who you value personally and professionally, who you cannot stand… They all have a hand in shaping your self-image, your world view and your actions. Make sure they shape it in the right way.

Dave will break it down for you:

http://www.rockyourday.com/5-people-who-secretly-control-your-life/

What do you think? Are you immune to the sway of any or all of these?

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Here’s a good question to start your year off: How do you define career satisfaction?

My career has a few pieces to it, which I think is part of my career satisfaction. I enjoy juggling several different tasks at one time and each of the “jobs” I do feeds me in a different way. 

As a writer, it’s about telling the best compelling and authentic story for the goal of the assignment, whether it be a bio, a resume, a blog post, an article, a speech,  or some other piece of written (or, in the case of a speech, verbal) communication. When I am doing my corporate work, it’s about solving a big problem or completing a project in a smart way. And when I am doing career consulting, I am helping my clients find the balance of between what they get the most personal satisfaction doing with where they can make the most money (along with some other factors which allow us to design and implement a strategy).

So, for me, career satisfaction boils down to storytelling, problem-solving, and helping others find their own source of career satisfaction.

What about you?

Photo courtesy of stagewhisper.

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I am of a generation with a large population of women who had or are having- or are trying to have- children later in life. The second half of our 30s- and sometimes at the beginning of our 40s- is when we are ready.

We have been chastised, as a group, for waiting too long, thus making the biology more complicated and often less cooperative. There are generally two reasons, two valid reasons, we didn’t have children earlier in life and it has to do with the lessons we learned in childhood:

Lesson #1. Divorce Sucks. We came of age during a boom in the divorce rate. Even if your parents didn’t get divorced, it was happening all over the place. The grown-ups didn’t know how to handle it or how to communicate to their children, so of course it made for a very unstable environment for them.

Lesson #2. Being a working mother is really hard. We saw our mothers- or our friend’s mothers, if we didn’t have working moms- juggling the demands of work and home. They were exhausted and felt guilty and torn by competing demands. We also often heard the working women being criticized by the stay-at-home moms.

So where did those lessons lead us?

#1. We are picky about who we marry. We waited, didn’t settle, sometimes choosing to be alone rather than with someone we knew we couldn’t go the distance with. As a result, some of us weren’t with the right man until we were in our late 30s or later.

#2. We are hesitant to face the competing demands of being working mothers. We took the struggles of our mothers to heart. We worry that pulling the trigger on having a child will make us unable to cope with our job responsibilities and that we, our careers, our marriage, and our children will suffer. As competent as we are in our professional lives, we also worry or that we will simply not be able to handle motherhood.

So here we are. Late thirties/early forties and a lot of us are ready to have children now. And we know the deal. It is complicated. Sometimes biology puts up roadblocks, yes. I have a friend who is 43 and ready to give birth in June and one who has just “pulled her goalie” and is ready to start trying. I also have a friend who is 43 and whose numbers told her a few years ago to not even bother trying with her own eggs. Too late.

And yet the ones of us who really want to be mothers usually find a way. Some go the IVF route, others, like myself, end up adopting. What about the lessons of our youth?

Waiting to have kids with the right person was incredibly worth it. When your child won’t stop crying and it’s the middle of the night and you are both exhausted, being with the wrong person would be glaringly evident and make the situation much, much harder.

Juggling working motherhood, while difficult, is nowhere near near impossible. A lot of the time, it’s logistics. The same qualities that make us successful professionals make us good at figuring out the baby thing. And unlike our mother’s generation, there are systems in place and everyone knows the drill. And those men we worked so hard to find are ready, willing, and able to do their part.

Now that you know we don’t need a reminder, quit asking when we’re going to get pregnant. We may be wondering the same thing and we don’t want to have to discuss it with everyone we know.

Also, if we tell you we’re adopting, quit telling us you’re sure we’ll get pregnant now that we’ve stopped “trying.” We know you mean well, but biology doesn’t work that way. If we do get pregnant and carry it to term, it’s not because we quit trying. It’s a coincidence. 

And if you are a woman struggling with age-related fertility issues, give yourself a break. You don’t need to feel guilty for waiting too long. If you want to try the IVF, try the IVF. If you want to adopt, start that process. And if you want to make peace with not having kids, do that. There are no right answers. There is only what works best for you and your partner.

Photo by kton25.

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