The Digital Marketing & Productivity Blog of Stephen Murphy

Three Reasons To Build Your Personal Brand

Here are three big reasons to start branding yourself:

1. Build Trust

2. Engage Experts

3. Dominate Search Rankings

I hope you enjoy the training!

Good Enough Isn’t Great

The Perks of Part Time Entrepreneurship

chicken entrepreneurship Hi everyone, my name is Steve Murphy, and I’m a chicken entrepreneur. A chicken entrepreneur is defined someone who is interested in starting a business, but is too “chicken” to quit their full time job and forego a steady paycheck. I happen to love my full time job, but we’ll stick with the label to spice things up a bit.

For the past two and a half years, I’ve been slowly building my own small business marketing company from scratch. It started as a way to supplement my income, but soon snowballed into an addictive lifestyle that I would never give up. It has inspired me to take risks, fail faster, and learn from my mistakes. Since starting my business, I’ve become a much more mature person, and both my personal and professional lives have benefited tremendously.

I’d like to convince you to also become a chicken entrepreneur. Below I’ll list some of the perks for starting your own business on the side, and then will present you with a unique proposition if you choose take the next step.

Here are the four benefits to becoming a chicken entrepreneur:

1. It Keeps You Sharp

“Hey bro, I can’t start a business on the side, my boss wouldn’t like that very much.” Its sickening how often I hear this used as an excuse. Entrepreneurship is the cheapest and fastest form of education availables, and most bosses would surely opt for this over a $60,000 MBA program. Starting your own business forces you to pick up new skills and brush up on old ones, helping to you to sharpen your abilities and become more valuable as an employee. Growing my business has encouraged me to learn sales, public speaking, graphic design, web development and numerous other skills that I’ve taken back to my full time job. This has accelerated my personal growth along with the growth of the company, and at virtually zero cost to my employer. Can you say win-win?

2. Think Like A Manager

When you own your own business, you change your perspective on how business works. You realize that every single penny is precious, and that time is worth even more than money. This will completely change the way you work, and have a major impact on your full time job. Its much easier to attain a promotion when you already have the mindset of a manager. While many of your coworkers will be content in their day to day activities, you’ll constantly be striving for more, because that’s what entrepreneurs do. They extract more from less, and achieve great success in the process. Combine this with reason #1 above, and your boss will be ecstatic.

3. Accelerate Your Networking

Let’s flip the coin for a minute and assume your full time job sucks. You’re stuck in a rut, and your endless search for jobs on Craig’s List has come to a screeching halt. But there’s a much better way to find a new gig than scouring job boards all day, and its called networking. Engaging with real people will produce much higher results than passively waiting for an opportunity to drop into your lap. Entrepreneurship requires you to build meaningful relationships with a diverse group of customers, vendors, and partners, who may be able to help you find meaningful full time work. I’m confident that if something ever happens to my full time job (knock on wood), I’ll be able to leverage the connections I’ve made through my business to find another job that matches my interests and goals.

4. It’s Fun

The three reasons above are all great benefits from part time entrepreneurship, but you should only start a business you have fun doing. Don’t start a landscaping company if you’re afraid of spiders (full disclosure: I’m deathly afraid of spiders.) If you’re terrible at math, running a part time tax preparation service is probably a bad idea. The best businesses are built out of passion and excitement, because its much easier to stay up past midnight doing what you love than it is to stay up late working. I can honestly say I love what I do, and that’s what pushes me to work more, sleep less, and sacrifice nights and weekends to meet deadlines.

My Proposition To You

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I have a proposition for anyone out there who is ready to take the next step towards chicken entrepreneurship:

Write a 2-3 paragraph summary of what you plan to do, why you want to do it, and how you plan on pulling it off.
Send me an email at sbcmurphy@gmail.com with the subject line “Chicken Entrepreneur.”
If your response is genuine and sincere, I will take the time to help you plan and start your side business.

I assure you this isn’t a pitch, and there are no strings attached; it’s just people helping people. I firmly believe in the statements above, and I’m willing to put my reputation, time, and experience on the line to turn you into a believer as well.

I hope some of you are up to the challenge, and I look forward to hearing back from you!

The Death of The Resume

Today I stumbled upon an article in the Wall Street Journal that highlighted how many companies are now asking candidates for digital alternatives to paper resumes, such as LinkedIn profiles and Twitter accounts. Its a sign of the times that traditional job search is dead, and today’s candidates must adapt in order to stay competitive in an already competitive job market.

Luckily, the internet has provided us with a plethora of tools to accommodate for these changes. Savvy job seekers have already adopted creative job search strategies that leverage diverse online media to land interviews with major corporations.

If you are just getting started in your job search, here are a few tactics you can use to stand out in the crowd with digital media.

Get Active On LinkedIn

LinkedIn is, and will continue to be, the most important online tool for job seekers and networkers alike. A robust profile filled with your personal experiences, future goals, and personality can give potential employers a much better look into your qualifications as a worker. It also connects you to real people in the companies you’d like to work for, which is much more productive than sending resumes into automated online applications (AKA the black hole.)

Dig Deeper: 10 Tips To Crush It On LinkedIn

Build A Personal Website

Building a personal website is no longer a perk exclusive to super nerds. User friendly platforms like WordPress and Wix have made it incredibly easy for the average person to create a beautiful and free website. Your website should be your digital hub, including all of your social profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) as well as samples of your work, writing skills, and pictures. When employers can see your personality, it really humanizes the job application process and makes you more appealing. Remember that companies hire people, not positions.

Dig Deeper: Two Free DIY Website Builders

Prove Your Expertise

Simply building out your online presence won’t guarantee you land an interview at your dream company. Instead, it is a doorway towards establishing your credibility and expertise. Start reading up on important topics in your industry so that you can form your own opinions. Once you are comfortable speaking about a particular topic, begin blogging and engaging others on social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn. This proactive approach will catapult you above and beyond other candidates, regardless of your age or experience.

Dig Deeper: Think You’re An Expert? Prove It!

I hope these tips prove helpful to you in your current and future job search. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to get back to you.

Have you gotten a job using these (or any other) digital tips? Let’s hear about them in the comments.

Learning Each Day Keeps Unemployment Away

I’m not afraid of losing my job. Now I don’t want to come off as cocky by saying this, because I know I’m replaceable (along with everyone else in the workforce.) I’m well aware that I may lose my job on any given day, for any given reason. I’ve accepted these facts early on in my career. The reason I’m not afraid of losing my job is because I’m always preparing for what tomorrow has to bring by educating myself today.

Learning new ideas, skills, and lessons is one of the most interesting human experiences you can be a part of. Its a trait all humans possess, and yet many of us rarely take advantage of our brain’s amazing ability to extract and retain boatloads of information. Think of how good you felt the first time you succeeded at a new task after failing multiple times; its exhilarating.

The internet has created an unprecedented opportunity to help you kick start your education. Blogs, YouTube videos, Wiki’s and other media outlets provide you with the opportunity to build a highly customizable education plan to drive your career forward. Engaging in at least one of these activities for 30 minutes a day can give you a solid grasp of nearly any topic in a relatively short time span.

But enough about the things you already know. Here are a few ways taking advantage of free education can help you in your job search:

1. Read every day. If you don’t have time to read a news article, blog post, magazine, etc., then you need to make time. Keeping informed on the trending topics of interest in your industry will keep you ahead of other potential candidates who have less ambition. It will also provide you with conversational topics that will help you network with others, impress interviewers, and transition into a new job more quickly.

2. Learn a new skill. In my opinion, the best way to learn something new is by trial and error. As children we speak jibberish before speaking real language, and we fall on our butts hundreds of times before taking those triumphant first steps. I’ve taught myself graphic design, web design, bass guitar, and various other skills by investing countless hours of effort into trying new things. Find out which skills will help supplement your core competencies, and try to master a new ability every 6-12 months.

3. Get Certified. There are many low cost certifications that you can use to boost your credentials in the job search. In my quest to become a digital marketing expert, I recently took part of Hubspot’s Certified Inbound Marketing Specialist program. The program was free, and all I needed to do was watch a series of online video lectures over the course of a few weeks. At the end of this training I took a one hour exam online, and now I can proudly flaunt my certificate to potential employers, clients, and colleagues.

4. Ask Questions. Turning to others for help is one of the most useful, yet least used forms of learning available. As I mentioned in an earlier post, most people are dying to be heard. Asking someone for help is the perfect way to feed their desire to be heard, while providing you with invaluable personalized lessons. If you’re desperately looking to get a job at Company A, try to connect with one of their employees to learn what they do. There’s a good chance that person will be thrilled to talk to you about their job, and this may even open up a warm introduction to a hiring manager.

At the end of the day, your career destiny is in your hands. Those who stay hungry to learn and achieve hold a superior advantage over others who are content with the status quo. If you challenge yourself to learn something new everyday, you’ll never fear unemployment again.

Do you agree that keeping educated will keep you employed, or do you think I’m batshit crazy? I’d love to hear from you either way!