Tag Archives: LinkedIn

Going For Broke: Four Ways to Make the Most of Unemployment

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In your professional life, there are few Unemployment signthings that suck the life out of you more than the “U-word.” Chances are you won’t find much humor, but you’ll get copious amounts of stress when you struggle to pay off bills and loans—especially as colleagues in your LinkedIn network keep hitting those annoying work anniversaries.

Whatever misfortune or happenstance got you to U-town, don’t dwell there. Here are four things you can do right now to maximize this “opportunity” and maintain your sanity. The one thing you have right now is time. Invest it wisely.

1) Hit the gym: What’s the No. 1 excuse that people don’t work out? Not enough time. Your old job could get crazy busy 24/7, right? Well, now you’ve got time in spades—and the endorphin release will stave off some of that stress to boot. Without a full-time job, there’s no reason not to be in the best shape of your life.

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Becoming Master of Your Domain: How Small Businesses Can Secure Their Pixel of Cyberspace

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Illustration by Matt Davidson.

When I first branded my consulting business “Jailbreak Media”, I didn’t think much of the fact that there was another Jailbreak Media out there. I owned the URL jailbreak-media.com and mapped it to WordPress; a Dallas-based marketer owned jailbreakmedia.com without the hyphen, which led to a site under construction. Barely a month after I registered the name, however, he contacted me. Turned out he was a consultant too. Unsurprisingly, he—and his attorney—asked that I stop using Jailbreak Media to avoid confusing our identities.

What to do?

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“Trust me, I’m a Consultant…”

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George Clooney plays a corporate downsizer for hire in the 2009 film Up the Air, but most consultants do positive work.

Choosing a job title is serious business nowadays. If you’ve ever attended a Meetup group or built a LinkedIn profile, you know what I mean. Almost every day we inevitably encounter some variation of “So, what do you do?” The answer had better be truthful, easy to grasp, and (most importantly) make you proud to say it.

“Consultant”—the title on my business card—is wonderfully malleable. Depending on who’s talking, it can mean just about anything. Let’s examine just what consulting entails across the career spectrum, and why it’s a fast growing profession.

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