This is a story about following your gut instinct and forging a career with your natural gift as the guiding light. My guest today is Jam Gamble, a connector of people, ideas and energy, and one of the best public speakers I’ve ever witnessed, both on Instagram and in real life. Jam is the founder of Slay The Mic, an incredibly successful coaching program that helps people grow from anxious to perfectly comfortable using their voice and becoming confident public speakers. How many people do you know who are nervous about public speaking? It’s more rare to know people who are comfortable with public speaking so that’ll give you an idea of why Jam’s program is so damn popular. In this episode, you’re going to hear Jam tell her story about how she tried forgetting about her love for public speaking, and pursue a career that was more along the lines of “the right thing to do” and better satisfied the people around her in society. She tried to do the right thing and walk a straight line but her gut instinct wouldn’t quiet down and ultimately motivated Jam to do her own thing, which has really paid off in the end. Most of us dream about having our careers and our passions align, but few of us actually take the leap and make it happen for ourselves. We’re scared! I get it; being scared makes sense when there’s so much damn pressure in society to conform. But Jam’s a really strong example of a woman who followed her gut instinct and forged a thriving career for herself in the new economy, online. Let’s talk to Jam.

This is a story about the art of self-promotion at every age and stage of entrepreneurship. Do you ever fall into the trap of thinking that you’re too late to try something if you didn’t do it first, or a long time ago before anybody else started doing it? If you have perfectionist tendencies, I would put money on a bet that you think you need to do something first and better than everyone else if you’re going to do it all. This entire season is about the art of self-promotion among professional women and today I’m speaking with someone who has already been running a successful communications company for a long time. She’s not a new entrepreneur, she’s a seasoned and established business owner with a full staff, a long list of devoted clients, and hard-earned confidence. Andrea is a really successful communicator who has earned her keep by promoting other people and their accomplishments her entire career but she never really thought about doing the same for herself until recently, when her mindset shifted and everything changed. If you think it’s too late to start promoting yourself and that other people would think it was strange if you starting sharing your accomplishments now, I’m happy to introduce you to Andrea Lekushoff who just started promoting herself and her business now, after decades of being in service to others and just deciding one day that it was her time to shine. Keep listening to hear how Andrea has grown her business and changed how people perceive HER after years of having an established reputation already, only to make it even better. Let’s talk to Andrea.

This is a story about just how personal business is for women. I could have never guessed that being an entrepreneur would be so difficult because the difficulties aren’t always predictable. Things like how to write a really great proposal, then sell the proposal and turn it into a legally binding contract, then create an invoice and set up automatic payments, and how to accept credit card payments — these are some of the things that add up to make entrepreneurship really challenging for a newbie. We all have different experiences but many of us think it’s only ourselves who don’t know how to perform the functions of business and everybody else has it all figured out. If we don’t speak openly about the challenges we face with one another, we risk becoming isolated and suffering in silence when we could be learning skills from other women who have faced our challenges before and are totally willing to lend a helping hand. Today, I’m speaking with Dayna Lapkovsky who started frank, a community coaching program for Canadian women to learn and teach skills and ask for help with our barriers to success. Frank offers non-traditional networking in a way that suits the nature of women, to be communicative and collaborative. Frank is based in Montreal and offers women across Canada the opportunity to tackle what’s at hand with an action plan and the help of an expert facilitator. The thing I love about frank the most, and kudos to Dayna for building frank this way, is how it offers women the opportunity to hear an outsider’s perspective on problem-solving because sometimes we just need somebody to tell us what to do because they know best. *Important: We recorded this interview earlier this year before lockdown and Boycott Facebook, so if you love what you hear and you want to learn more about frank’s fall and winter programs, make sure you visit frank-talk.com. Let’s talk to Dayna.

This is a story about how your effective self-promotion can create and attract totally unexpected opportunities for your career. I’ve talked about the importance of self-promotion a lot on this podcast and I still think it’s the single most important skill for professional women to hone. Effective self-promotion isn’t going on and on about how amazing and special we are but rather the art of communicating what we do, why we love to do it, and what we are really interested in doing next. In this episode, I’m talking to Amrita Gurney, the VP of Marketing at CrowdRiff, a 6-year-old tech company in Toronto that works with travel and tourism brands, a highly visible public speaker on women in technology, and recently, an angel investor. While we were working together to produce this episode, Amrita shared with me that because she is a woman of colour, she spent much of her life feeling like she didn’t fit in, especially in the tech workplace. She didn’t have leaders that looked like her, and her personal strengths — being a sensitive, empathetic, creative, and expressive woman — were not valued in the first decade of her career. She experienced misogyny, racism, and a lot of gender bias. Today, Amrita’s aim is to help more brown women, and all women from underrepresented communities, have easier access to angel investment opportunities and also to see themselves as people who can be angel investors too. For her, the transformation happened once she started promoting herself and advocating for the changes she wanted to see in tech by public speaking. The more she promoted herself, the more public speaking opportunities she attracted, and the more frequently she began to give voice to women of colour in technology. And that, my friends, is how it’s done. Let’s talk to Amrita.

Everyone who hears this podcast should walk away with a much, much clearer understanding of how to write a resume, why certain things are more important than others, what information is critical to include and also what information can be left off your resume, and also how your resume functions as just one tool in a holistic professional portfolio, albeit an important one and, dare I say it, a necessary evil. Key Takeaways: Your resume is like your defence attorney. It exists to make a strong case for why you’re a powerful candidate. The strongest case will be made with quantifiable evidence that communicates your ability to move the needle forward for a company. The first page of your resume should include a really clever and concise candidate summary that reads like the back cover of a novel to give the reader a clear idea of everything you bring to the table in 15 seconds or less. The first page of your resume should also have a list of key skills that align with the keywords on the job description for the position you are applying for. You can find the keywords by reading the job description with a critical eye. The second page of your resume should list your professional experience, educational background, and continuing education. Your resume should be sent in a word document, not a PDF, and the content should be typed in a single column to read top-to-bottom. ATS hates text boxes, extra columns, and unnecessary information. You want to keep it tight. Finally, you don’t need to include your references, your hobbies, or anything else on your resume because all of those things can be shared with the other marketing tools that comprise a polished professional portfolio, and I’ll be talking all about those in upcoming episodes in this series.

I’ve done some research to try to bring you the most relevant information about what this all means for our job, and hopefully answer some questions you have about the fate of your career, and what you can do RIGHT NOW to keep yourself in a good headspace about work. I’ve consulted a broad scope of content from various publishers, like Harvard Business Review and Globe & Mail, and case studies and articles published by economists and business journalists, and people who are very credible and capable of speaking on the topic. In this episode, I breakdown what the economists are saying, how we may get out of it, what this all means for our jobs, why we as professionals are NOT powerless right now, and, finally, how I think we can all plan to help create the silver lining — for our own careers, and hopefully for the future of the economy as well. Key Takeaways: Economists don’t have a clear picture of what is going to happen yet but the numbers aren’t great and it does look like there’s a bumpy road ahead. However, it is critical to the government, banks, policymakers and the financial markets that people are working and actively developing their careers. Here in Canada, the government is doing a lot to help make that happen and I’m confident there will be more to come. We are NOT powerless right now in maintaining a reasonable amount of focus on our careers. YOUR power right now is to get your ducks in a row and be totally prepared for when we start working towards the economic upswing. If you’re looking for something to do, you can work on your professional portfolio. I personally think it’s the smart thing to do.

This week, I’m sharing some business decisions that I made in my first few years of business — some that were super smart and others, not so much. But how would I have known? When I decided to try self-employment, I had no business education or experience to my name. All I had was an idea and blissful ignorance about what I was in for as an entrepreneur with zero funding, few assets, and nothing to lose. This episode is for everyone who has an idea, blissful ignorance and nothing to lose too. Key takeaways: Don’t hire an accountant; learn how to manage your own money. Don’t join a co-working space; they’re not worth your money if you work alone anyway. Don’t give your business any other name than your own; hurry up and build your personal brand. Do know that you’re in sales; you’re a salesperson above all else. Do find a niche application for your service or product; use your intuition. Do know your message and stick to it; repeat your message always, it’ll be good for PR.

Today, I’m talking about the shady business coach business which we’ve all come to know quite well on Instagram, especially, and here’s why: We’re in the middle of a global pandemic and I’ve been watching a whole slew of shady business coaches ramp up their efforts to sell their programs using extremely problematic fear-based sales techniques. I just saw a business coach on Instagram berate her followers for not thinking more strategically about how to capitalize on the COVID-19 crisis. To me, leveraging COVID-19 to persuade more people to invest in your business is just as unethical as the guy who bought all the hand sanitizer to re-sell it for a profit on Amazon. And we all know what happened to that guy, he got charged with price gauging and became an international case study on what not to do in a time of crisis — trying to capitalize off of people’s fears and vulnerabilities are exceptionally unethical tactics and business coaches attempting to do the same on Instagram are no better. You could call this a buyer-beware episode because there are brilliant and helpful business coaches that are super worthy of your investment and others who are like modern snake oil salespeople in using deceptive marketing techniques to sell to you. Are you confused by which business coach is more legitimate and worth the investment of your money than the next? Listen and learn how to distinguish between the great and shady business coaches of the world. Key takeaways: Learn how to spot a shady business coach on Instagram Learn the qualities and techniques to look for in a really great business coach Hear the common techniques that I see some business coaches use on Instagram that I consider to be quite shady. If you’re employed and not totally loving your corporate office life these days, and find yourself longing after business coaches on Instagram promising you the secret to making a million dollars in just 14 months, this episode is for you. If you’re self-employed and feeling like things should be easier by now, and you should be earning more money by now, and you should have more clients by now, and that your calendar should be filled with way more appointments by now — this episode is for you too. It’s true that the internet and social media are new channels with new opportunities for growth that didn’t exist before. But I want to clarify the mystique a little so you can feel more informed about what’s behind the curtain of coaching and business ownership before you spend any of your hard-earned money on coaching, or mentorship, or an expensive coaching program that promises you the stars and the moon.

In this episode, I’m sharing my personal tips for working at home like a pro. When I started my business, learning how to work from home was a huge adjustment. I know many of you are adjusting to working from home for the first time, and due to circumstances that are way beyond your control, so I hope you find these tips helpful and also quite enjoyable. The enjoyability factor is a big one because working from home can feel isolating, especially if you’re like me and thrive with social interaction. Not having colleagues around to chit-chat with suddenly can feel quite jarring. We’re all feeling a little unnerved right now anyway. I promise you that these tips I’m going to share with you will help you with productivity, your mood, your sense of isolation, and your fear of failure because I’ve had to figure out what works from my first-hand experience. And I don’t only work from home — I’m single and I work alone too. And, like I said, as an extremely social creature, I had to find out the best methods for working from home to ensure I didn’t go crazy with loneliness, drop the ball with work, and completely change who I am and interact with society. I just want you to know that I understand that the transition is tough, and it’s not super easy to just go from working in an office to working by yourself at home and expect everything to be the same and totally normal. It doesn’t work like that. Also, there’s more to working from home in an effective and enjoyable way than having the option to wear sweatpants and watch TV. Way more, and in fact, I would highly advise you against both of those things. So I guess you could say this is an episode on my ways to work from home in a strategic way so that you can be effective, enjoy yourself, and take this COVID-19 as a situation that forces you into finding your self-motivation and dial-up your work ethic, and really work towards doing your best. You owe it to yourself to feel proud of yourself even in trying situations, and that’s what this episode is all about   Key takeaways: Have a morning routine dedicated to creating order in your home Don’t drink wine or smoke weed at lunch Do your workout either first or last, not in the middle of the day Manage your tasks with two three-hour highly focused work sessions Give yourself two 30-minute email and social media sessions Facetime with your friends and family Play a game with deadlines; give yourself one laundry cycle to finish three things on your to-do list. If you have more working from home tips you’d like to share, send me a DM on Instagram @RebeccaPerrin.

You guys know I’m a stickler for self-promotion, I talk about it all the time on the podcast. But why bother with self-promotion when you’re simply a corporate professional working at a corporate firm, with a relatively mundane and boring job, and not much to talk about — certainly nothing interesting, right? Wrong! Trust me, your job is not as boring as you think it is. There are a lot of misconceptions about who “deserves” to be telling career stories and what those stories “should” be all about. In this episode, I talk about how to change your mindset about leadership storytelling and consider how sharing even a “simple” story can have a positive influence on your professional reputation. These are the things you have to know as a career woman with goals, especially if you have an online presence on LinkedIn. Listen to the episode with an open mind because you’re going to learn three “simple” story ideas that everyone can write and use to develop their career brand, and have a positive impact on their professional reputation. What your daily life is like on the job Recent industry changes or innovations that you think are interesting to experience People in your industry who you think are doing cool things Plus, I’m giving away one fully paid scholarship to Love Your LinkedIn! One lucky listener will win full access to Love Your LinkedIn (value $298). Listen to the episode to find out how you can enter to win and good luck! Subscribe & Review in iTunes Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. ! Now if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they’re also fun for me to go in and read. , select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favourite part of the podcast is. Thank you!