How to Reinvent Yourself in Six Easy Steps
Not satisfied with your job? Need to reinvent yourself? Struggling to get out of a period of depression?
Then take the advice of Microsoft’s east coast entrepreneur in residence, Tereza Nemessanyi. “Just freakin’ show up.”
Ten years ago Nemessanyi was a successful management consultant and 15 year veteran of innovation, who found herself a new mom and an orphan almost all in one breath. Alone and grieving in her house in the woods, she channeled her pain into relaunching herself professionally into the start-up tech world. Without the benefit of contacts in the industry, she called it her “crazy little secret” showing up alone to events and building her name online from her smartphone in the preschool drop off line.
By the time she was done, she was founder/CEO of a funded startup, a recognized voice in the industry, and one of Forbes Ten Female Entrepreneurs To Watch.
Today she Nemessanyi works directly with high potential tech startups to launch them further and faster in creating the future. She also likes to help individuals start-up their professional lives and she’ll be doing it on Sept. 20 at TEDxNavesink:The Next Wave, the locally organized event at Brookdale Community College. She leads off the conference with Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, and filmmaker Ben Kalina.
Nemessanyi knows all about these disruptors of normal life – illness, death, divorce, empty nest, lay off, financial hardship – and she’s found a way to use them as a catalyst for change.
“I’ve wound up there a few times with no clear direction,” she said, “And I’ve seen some patterns.”
Chief among them is the combined fear, loneliness and paralysis that assails us when we’ve experienced a loss or just need to strike out into unknown territory like an unfamiliar job market after years logged as a stay at home parent.
We ring our hands over our dusty resume and how to make perfect our two dimensional history when, she said, “it is one percent representative of who we are.”
At TEDxNavesink Nemessanyi will share her story and offer ultra practical tips on how to apply them to your life. Here’s a sampling.
6 Steps to Your Personal Re-launch
1. Forget updating! Don’t wait. Set off on your adventure of discovery immediately, be it a Meetup, a conference. If someone asks what do you do? say, “I am figuring out what next, and how my talents fit here. Here’s what I’m good at (x,y,z). Got ideas?”
2. Listen to how people in these circles talk. They will start sharing with you the language of this New World.
3. Attend 10 different events or meetups. This gives you a broader view. Collect the answers, treating it as ‘data’.
4. When you’re done, sit down and analyze the data. What patterns emerge? What conclusions speak to you, or stoke your passions? How might you apply your superpowers in this new world?
5. *Now* it’s time to update your LinkedIn profile and Twitter bio.
6. Define some goals. Now get strategic about whom you should meet. Test your message, ask for leads, incorporate feedback. Try it again. And guess what — you’re doing it. Bon voyage!
For tickets and more information, TEDxNavesink: The Next Wave click here.
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