What To Do If Your Career Takes A Wrong Turn

Regret is a powerful motivator.

This year brought some unprecedented changes to our lives. We are seeing a sudden rise in food prices, and rent and mortgage rates, but shortages in items that we used to see in abundance at the store.

People say that salaries are about the same while many are looking for work. Some are looking for a second job or another gig to supplement their income.

Times are tough. You might be thinking of changing careers or changing to a similar job with a slightly different skillset, but you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on courses. What can you do?

If you’re thinking about changing careers in order to earn a higher income and keep up with rising costs, consider these tips:

  • Assess your financial situation. How much do you have in savings? How much debt? Should you borrow money to pay expenses while you work to get your career back on track? It may be wiser to take the first job you find so your expenses are paid while you continue to search for better opportunities.
  •  Look for options in which you can develop your skills while working. Can you use your current skillset to get a job that gives you opportunities to develop new skills that are a stepping stone to a different career?
  •  Build a professional support network. If you look around, you’ll find some positive online communities that share career resources and job opportunities. It’s also a great idea to attend in-person networking events and get to know people who can introduce you to companies or tell you about job openings.
  • Work with a mentor. A career coach or someone with more experience than you in an industry or field can guide you. They can point out what you need to work on, steer you away from making potential mistakes, and share important wisdom with you.
  • Build your skillset. Take free or paid courses that build your skills and qualifications. Read books. Join mastermind groups. Share your knowledge with your portfolio. 
  • Build a portfolio. Share your expertise online. Blog or post articles or advice on your website or LinkedIn profile. This approach is especially useful if you don’t have actual job experience in the field you’re interested in. For example, if you’re interested in a career in graphic design, you can start building a portfolio of your work on your own website.

Changing careers is tough. Through a lot of investment in yourself and creating networks, it’s possible to change careers with effort and time. 

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Dangerous Jobs: Real Match Girls

Jobs and Tech

On a cold winter night, a little girl lights her matches to keep warm. She sacrifices everything just to see the fantastic images created by the flame of the matches. You may have heard of “The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen, a story of a girl who can’t go home until she has sold her matches. She isn’t the only match girl in history, however. In the same century, “matchstick girls” suffered terrible health issues manufacturing matches.

In 1845, Andersen published his tale of a girl who is too afraid to go home and be beaten if she doesn’t sell her matches on the street. Shivering from cold, she lights one, then another, and another as she sees comforting visions of a Christmas tree, food, and finally, her late grandmother. The story was an insight into the horrible conditions of the poor. 

In the 1800s, people worked in horrible conditions: long hours in factories in unsafe and unhealthy environments. Both children and adults worked in these places. In 1888, the “matchstick girls” made news headlines with a strike that brought attention to the dangerous conditions of the factory where the matchstick girls worked.

They worked long hours, starting at 6:30 in the morning for little pay. Some girls started working at these factories as young as age 13. Thousands of people labored at these factories in terrible conditions to manufacture matches, working with machinery after receiving insufficient training.

The women worked 14-hour days in London and were exposed to deadly phosphorous vapors from the white phosphorous dipped onto the tips of matches. The toxic phosphorous caused health complications such as “phossy jaw” that caused the jaw to rot. The purpose of the strike was to improve working conditions, but it was decades later before white phosphorous was banned from public use.

Today, wooden matches are made entirely by machines. The process is safer for the workers compared to a century ago. When you think about it, a match is such a small item, but it has more impact than just creating a flame.

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Could You Be Sued for Saying a Common Word or Phrase?

Do you have a favorite phrase that you like to say a lot? Now imagine liking your favorite phrase so much that you would want to prevent other people from using your preferred words by trademarking those words!

Celebrities and companies have trademarked words and expressions that you’ve heard in movies and advertisements. Some of these words are so common that you might wonder if you could get in trouble with the law for innocently saying an everyday word or phrase.

Interestingly, it is possible to trademark commonly used words and phrases, such as apple. Apple, the company, can’t trademark “apple” if they’re selling fruit products. But they are selling devices such as computers and phones, not edible products related to fruit. 

Similarly, you can’t trademark the word “pencil” if you want to sell pencil products. But you could trademark “pencil” if you wanted to sell, for example, sofas or gardening tools under the name “pencil.” For more on trademarking common words, check out this post.

You might be surprised that an expression as common as “Merry Christmas” is trademarked. With Christmas around the corner, you might wonder if you, as a business owner, can write “Merry Christmas” on your custom-designed T-shirt that you’re selling on Etsy. Or if you can write Merry Christmas on the homemade card you’re going to give to your family.

Fortunately, you can write “Merry Christmas” on the products that you are making because you’re wishing someone a certain feeling. However, you can’t use “Merry Christmas” on certain food products, decorations, cigar products, and types of clothes… if you’re using them as a type of trademark for your business.

So you don’t have to worry about infringing trademarks on common, everyday words unless you’re thinking of creating and marketing a product using a trademarked word or phrase. 

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How to Make Money in MLM… the Real Story

It’s time to bring back an old post I made about making money in MLM. In the last few years, I’ve seen more articles and social media posts about people promoting their MLM, or people asking if a job post is an MLM scam.

If you’re interested in the real facts about whether you can make money in an MLM, read this post on How to Make Money in MLM.

The Cheapest Way to Upgrade Your Home Office

At first, it seemed like he was attending the Zoom meeting from an exotic tropic location. The window to his office was wide open, the palm trees behind him swaying to the breeze and his curtains brushing against him where he sat at his desk.

Technology has become so advanced that you don’t need fancy office furniture to work from home. You need a solid computer to work remotely and a reliable internet connection. Those are the bare minimum.

These days, even if you can’t afford to work from anywhere in the world of remote work, you can at least look like you can afford to work from anywhere. And you can upgrade your office anytime using the latest features of virtual meetings.

Back to the office worker working in the tropics. Virtual backgrounds have become so advanced now that the background has movement and sound. It’s harder now to separate you from the virtual background behind you. Curtains can sway forward so close they seem to touch your arm, appearing as if you truly are in the fake room.

The key to the illusion, however, is to move as little as possible. Movement destroys the fantasy. When you move quickly, people can almost see the real background behind you because technology can’t compensate fast enough. (So sit still while others admire your fantastic office location.) 

Virtual backgrounds are the new way to upgrade the furniture in your home office. Your computer and internet are necessary for remote work, but you can decide how much you want to “spend” on your office furniture and the building itself. Do you want to be located in an open office space in a building? Hold a meeting in your glass condo with a view? Sit in a coffee shop full of people? The choices are limitless.

However, life gets interesting when you always have virtual meetings from the same polished, immaculate home office, and one day you’re too lazy to turn on your background. You reveal your actual home office backdrop: a messy kitchen with items strewn all over the counter and your fancy desk is the kitchen table. The contrast from your usual setup can be jarring and revealing. (Maybe too revealing.)

Welcome to the modern world of remote work and virtual backgrounds. The magic of technology can save you money. You can really “dress to impress” by finding the perfect work location for yourself. 

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