“When you know what you want to do, how do you move from knowledge to action? Even though the path feels totally right, how can you be sure?”

As long as you are excited by the path, as long as the path continues to pull you happily along, as long as you continue to make progress on the path, you can be sure that you are on the right path.

While there is no guarantee of success in any of life’s endeavors, excitement and that sense of it feeling totally right, are signs from your higher self and your spirit guides that the path is important, has merit, and will fulfill you.

When the path feels wrong, it means you’ve taken a misstep. Stand still, take stock, and figure out how to get back on the path. You may need to back up a step. You’ll know you’ve rediscovered the path when the excitement builds up again.

If you can jump right to taking action on the new path, do so. If you need to make preparations first, make preparations. The path will wait for you. It’s okay to make logical preparations, which can help ensure a smooth sail on the new path.

For example, if this new path involves a career change, you may need to make sure you’ve got enough education, finances, and skills in order to make the leap. That’s alright. Do what’s necessary to get walking on your new path. If you can leave your current job right now and start a new one, do it. If you can’t, don’t sweat the wait. Use the time to build up momentum like a race car driver revving his engine at the starting line. When the starting gun goes off, you’ll rocket out of the gate.

But you’re asking the right question. Excitement is the best clue you can get. No one can guarantee success, but your excitement is the gas in the tank. Follow your bliss.

About a decade ago, I was running my online vegan parenting magazine, Vegfamily.com. For the most part, I was just running a magazine, a source of information and connection for the vegan parenting community. But one day, in an effort to increase revenue, I decided to start selling products of interest to my readers. At the time I had 300,000 unique visitors per month coming to the site. A nice big audience.

I happened upon a woman who was making vegan chocolates. This was before the big companies were making vegan chocolates. This woman, whose name escapes me now so let’s call her Barbara, was making peanut butter bon bons. These were like Reeses Peanut Butter cups, but totally vegan.

Barbara had just started her company, so she sent me some chocolates to sample so that I could write a review of her chocolates. She had a basic website up, but no traffic. When I received the chocolates, they were in a box and each one was wrapped individually in foil, but they would slosh around in the box because she didn’t have anything to use as separators. Didn’t really matter, as they were individually wrapped.

I tasted one. Oh. My. God. Best vegan chocolates on the planet. They were like little nuggets of heaven. Peanut butter centers enrobed in sweet milky vegan chocolate. I don’t know how she did it, but boy did she do it!

I contacted her and told her not only would I write a positive review of her chocolates, but that I wanted to sell them to my audience. She was elated!

We discussed price. She wanted $5 per box, and I think there were 20 pieces in a box. Very reasonable wholesale amount. I had planned to sell them for $10 per box.

She sent me a dozen boxes to get me started. I wrote a review, put up a sales page for the chocolates, and within minutes of announcing them, I had orders for 30 boxes. Wow. Okay.

Barbara was beyond happy and sent me more boxes. By the time those boxes got to me, I had pre-sold them all, and there were more orders coming in every day.

I raised the price of the chocolates to $20 a box and still the orders kept coming in. People who had already received their boxes were raving about the chocolates and coming back to place another order. Some people were ordering 5 boxes at a time to give out as gifts.

Barbara was excited, but it was taking her a long time to get the boxes to me because she was making the chocolates in small batches by hand. She told me she was spending all day making chocolate.

The orders continued to come in. They were selling so fast that we had a waiting list for the chocolates going. I eventually raised the price to $30 per box and they STILL sold like hotcakes.

I worked with Barbara to find other ways of packaging them. People wanted more than 20 in a box, so she got a bigger box and put 40 chocolates in them.

Barbara never asked me for more money. She determined that her time and ingredients were worth $5 per box. But I told her she was selling herself short and started paying her $10 per box. She had a hard time accepting that much money.

That’s when I knew we were headed for trouble. She couldn’t understand the value of her chocolates or her time.

Valentine’s Day was rolling around, and we had created a nice little Valentine box shaped like a heart and filled with these delicious bon bons. People reserved their boxes a month in advance because they wanted to be sure they got one.

Barbara worked day and night to make enough chocolates. I suggested she hire an assistant but she said she didn’t want to become an employer. We had orders for more than 100 boxes of Valentine chocolates. That was on top of the regular orders which were still coming in.

We barely got our Valentine orders out the door. That’s when Barbara emailed me and said, “Erin, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. It’s too much. I’m shutting down the company.”

“Nooooo!” I wrote back. “Nooooo! You can’t. These are the best vegan chocolates on the planet. You’ve got a successful thriving business here, Barbara. You just need some help.”

She replied, “No, Erin, I just can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to be a big business. I don’t know how to run a big business. I don’t know how to manufacture or hire help or anything like that. I just want it to be over.”

I tried to convince her to sell her recipe to someone. We had enough evidence of success that I was sure someone else would have loved to run with it. But Barbara declined that too.

Making the announcement on my website that the Vegan Peanut Butter Bon Bons were no more was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. People were devastated. The era of the bon bons was over. People had to go back to dipping their bitter dark chocolate bars in natural peanut butter to get their fix. It was a sad time for the vegan community.

It taught us all a big lesson though. Barbara had never considered what she would do if her business became a huge success. If she had thought it through, she might have realized that success would mean more orders and the need to hire help. If she didn’t want to be a business owner, she probably shouldn’t have started this particular business. The scale of it could only create more work and burden on her.

Think about YOUR business. If it suddenly exploded with 10 or 100 times the volume you have now, would you be ready for that level of success? Do you have a plan in place to handle an increase in sales or business? Do you know what you would do if Oprah suddenly plugged your business and tons of people wanted what you’re offering?

Just give it some thought.

I doubt Barbara ever made a piece of chocolate again. I think she was extremely traumatized by the experience. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do more for her, but I didn’t know how to help her at the time.

Eventually other vegan chocolate companies came to market with fantastic products they manufacture en masse. But none of us who had them will ever forget those pioneering vegan peanut butter bon bons and the frenzy with which we had to have them.

Do you offer something of value to the world?

Not to be confused with “are you of value” because you’re totally of value to the world just the way you are. You are a piece in a vast puzzle and a necessary component of the Whole.

However, I’m talking here about the value you want to be paid for. Do you offer something that other people want? And will they pay you for it?

One of my clients was upset because he’d written a book of poetry, put it up on Amazon, and had gotten no sales. He reworked the poetry and released it again, but still, no sales. He tried ads on Google to generate business. Nothing. He was frustrated and fed up with his lack of success and decided there was no way for him to succeed as an entrepreneur. He was bitter and angry.

When I asked him what the poetry was about, he proudly and promptly replied it was about random, crazy, mixed up things that made almost no sense.

Hmm.

I asked him what need that filled. He said, “I don’t know. But I liked writing it and I poured my heart into it.”

That’s not enough, my friend. Write that on your own time.

If you want to be paid, you must offer something of value. And value is defined as something people are willing to pay you for. By all means, write your poetry all you want. But if it’s of no value to others, then don’t expect to make money off of it. Pure and simple.

Maybe it’s not fair. Maybe you should be able to put into the world what you want to put into the world and have other people see the value in it. But the world is vast, and competition is fierce. If you can’t help someone solve a problem or offer them something they want, you don’t get paid.

Now this doesn’t mean you should ONLY put into the world something you can earn money from. You could if you want to. I know many people who have gotten rich simply filling the needs of others, even when it was something they themselves didn’t personally care for.

But I believe that when you’re passionate about something, and you have a talent for it, AND other people want it, then you’ve got the winning formula.

So if you’re not succeeding right now with your product, idea, or service, ask yourself the hard question. Is there a market for this? Does it fill a need or solve a problem? If the answer is an honest no, then find another way to offer it so that it IS valuable.

My client received advice from his guides about ways to channel his creative energy into drama and acting. He ended up becoming a college drama teacher, writing his own plays, and inserting his own unusual style and brand of creativity into all of them, with great success. And he was a lot happier too. People were finally paying for and appreciating his unusual creative style.

If your passion isn’t profitable, see if you can rework it so that it is. You don’t have to give up on your passion, but if you want to eat, you’ve got to find a way to make it of value to others.

The topic: If you are currently unhappy with your job, you will want to attend. That’s all I can say right now because that’s all they’ve told me.

You can participate publicly or privately. But if you post answers to the guides’ questions publicly, they will provide personal answers for as many people as they can.

This will not be a public broadcast. Only those who are friends with me on Facebook will be able to see the posts.

Also, according to them, there will be four posts. I don’t even know what they are yet, but I’m going with the flow.

So if you want to participate and you want to get out of the job you hate, make sure we are friends on facebook and make sure you tune in to my Facebook wall on Monday, January 14, 2013 at 9:15am Pacific time.

This is new to me too, so we’ll see how it goes. But I trust my guides. This is their show, I’m just the relay. I hope you will join us.

And if it goes well, I suspect we’ll be doing this again with another topic.

Are you in the same situation?

You followed a dream, you had a passion, and you made it happen. You’re living the dream! And then one day you realize it’s become a chore, or maybe it’s just not exciting anymore. You don’t bound out of bed like you used to.

You feel like you failed the dream. “Why aren’t I happy? I got exactly what I wanted, what I asked for. I feel so ungrateful.”

But what you must realize is that dreams can change, and there’s no shame in that. In fact, it’s progress. Once you achieve a dream and live with it for a while, guess what happens next? A new dream comes to take its place.

But so many people aren’t aware that the old dream is stale and that a new dream is knocking on the door. They feel obligated to stick with the old. Maybe it’s how they were raised. You work for something, you get it, you stick with it, possibly for decades.

That’s not how it works though. A dream dangles like a carrot in front of your face, urging and enticing you to follow it until you get it. But after you’ve eaten of the carrot, you get hungry again. That’s normal.

I’m here to reassure you and encourage you. Dare to dream again. What do you want NOW? What would make you wake each morning in the throes of excitement and eagerness? Once you figure that out, go after that dream like you went after the first one. And don’t stop until you get it.

Often it’s not an entirely new dream. Often it’s the same dream you had before but simply expressed differently.

In 2006 I was living a dream. I was doing intuitive readings for people all over the world. Every single morning I would look forward to my day of readings, doing between 8 and 12 a day sometimes. For years, this was exactly what I wanted to be doing. I was helping people, and talking to the spirit guides and deceased people was a total high for me.

Then the excitement started to wane. I was worried. What did it mean? How could something that was a lifelong dream suddenly feel… not quite enough to get me excited. So I tuned in and realized there was a new dream. I wanted to teach. I wanted to share my knowledge and wisdom with others on this path.

So I started creating products, and I started teaching and training others to become professional intuitives. And that got me super excited again. And I realized that this was simply evolution. A natural and necessary movement in a new direction aligned with my joy and my mission.

I didn’t stop doing readings, but I cut back on how many I do each week, so that I could explore my new dreams.

So now it’s your turn. Ask yourself if you’re living your dream. If so, great, keep on going. Good for you.

If not, take time to explore what your new dream may be. Is it a different way of expressing what you’re currently doing or is it something new altogether? Don’t be afraid to let go of an old dream if it no longer excites you. Move on to the next dream. It’s waiting, right there in front of you, dangling like a carrot.

And it’s yours to have, if you dare to dream.

One thing I’ve learned after being a solo-entrepreneur for the last 12 years is the importance of goal setting. If you don’t have clear goals, you can’t achieve them. If you don’t decide what your focus is going to be, you will not achieve it, because you will meander, get side-tracked, or distracted by other opportunities that come your way.

What generally works best for me is to pick 2 or 3 big goals each year. My 2012 goals were to relaunch my website with a better design, and add workshops to what I was currently doing. At first you might think, “Well did it really take you a year to accomplish just those two goals?” Well yes.

It took me a while to decide what I wanted to include in the new site and what I wanted to get rid of. It took me a while to design the site the way I wanted it to be. And it took me two tries to get a web designer and programmer who could get the job done. While I was doing all of that, I was still blogging, doing readings, doing trainings, and selling and marketing my products. But it got done and I’m super happy to be able to check that off my list. I will be making tweaks to my site over the coming year, but no major overhauls.

I did two workshops last year. Again you might think, “Two weekends? That’s it?” Nay. First there was deciding what the workshop would be about, then there was finding a suitable venue on the right date at the right price with the right size room. That took a lot of leg work and phone calls and meetings. Then I had to design the workshop. That took an entire month. I had to get volunteers to help me. I had to print out scads of materials. I had to practice and carefully consider what material stayed and what had to go. I consulted with other teachers since I’d never done a 2 day workshop before. All of that added up to me doing two workshops in 2012. If I do more workshops, it will be easier since the material is solid and the venue I chose would work again.

So those were my two big goals and I achieved them. In the past, I would set 10 goals and probably achieve 2 or 3, and at the end of the year I’d feel like I didn’t succeed. So I learned a while back to ask myself this question, “At the end of the year, what one thing will I wish was done?” Once I pick that item, I ask again, “What other thing will I wish I had accomplished?” That becomes goal number 2. If there is a third major goal, I’ll add it in. But honestly I’ve found, at least with the goals I’ve chosen, that 2 or 3 is the absolute limit.

Now this doesn’t mean you don’t get other smaller goals done. You totally can. In the past year I also began researching teleseminar and webinar software. I began thinking about home study courses. I formed a new company with an awesome partner, which is in limbo at the moment. I made a list of books I want to write. I began learning how to get those books into the right hands. I explored coaching. I explored a reality show idea. I explored a tv show idea or two. But because none of those were my major goals, they never got my full focus or attention.

Consequently, I wasn’t seriously side tracked, and my major goals were accomplished.

In addition to business goals, I also set a couple of person goals each year. Sometimes I discuss those publicly and sometimes I don’t. These goals are usually related to health, relationships, and family.

If you run your own business and you don’t already set goals each year, I recommend you try it. You’ll see your focus become much sharper, because each time an opportunity comes up you can measure it against your goal and ask, “Will doing this bring me closer or further away from one of my major goals?” If the answer is closer, you do it. If the answer is further away, you decline.

It is only by staying sharply focused on your goals that you will achieve them.

If you find that you achieve your major goals too quickly, set bigger goals, or simply select a couple more. Perhaps you have quarterly goals. Or even monthly goals. Find the amount and the timing that works best for you.

When you get ready to start the new year, also ask yourself if there is anything on the plate that needs to go. Were you doing something this past year that no longer has a place in your long term strategy or plan? Be brutally honest. Do an assessment. Let go of anything that you hate doing or that isn’t serving your business. This will make space for new things you want to do, that you are good at, and that people want or need.

When you focus on just two or three goals a year, you build a stronger business. You lay a foundation that is solid and supportive of your infrastructure. If you meander or work on too many goals at the same time, you may find yourself standing in a pile of half completed projects, none of which are serving your customers because they’re all incomplete.

So ask yourself, what can you do over the next year that will take your business to the next level or help you accomplish more of what you want to put into the world. Pick two or three things to focus on, and make sub goals for each one. Then get busy gettin’ busy!

You have passion. You have an idea! You have skill. You have talent. People have told you that you can do it, that THEY would buy your “stuff.”

But is a great idea and talent enough to succeed as a solopreneur?

If you have a vision of yourself falling out of bed, grabbing some coffee, making your way to your computer in your slippers, checking your email and counting all the money that’s rolling in … well let’s hold on a minute and see what it really takes to succeed in business all by yourself.

Your first checklist:

• Talent or skill in your chosen field. Check.
• Passion and drive. You really WANT to do this. Check.
• There’s a market for this. People WANT to buy what you’re selling. Check.

That first checklist is super important because without each of those items checked, you are doomed to fail. But talent, passion, and a market are not enough to succeed. There is much more that needs to happen.

I’ve seen it time and again.

“I’ll start a blog. Other people make money blogging. I will too.”

“I’m great at quilting. I’ll sell my quilts online.”

“I’ve been programming for this company for a decade. I could do this on my own and make all the money instead of just getting a small portion for my work.”

To succeed as a solopreneur, you must be able to effectively and successfully run all aspects of your business.

You might be great at writing, but do you know how to program?

You might be the best quilter in your sewing circle, but do you know how to ship heavy products around the world?

You might be the world’s greatest programmer, but can you handle the accounting associated with your new business?

When you work by yourself, for yourself, you have to wear many hats. It’s not just about your talent. It’s not just about your drive. You need to be good at everything or you will likely fail.

To use an analogy, you might be really good at picking curtains and paint, but that doesn’t mean you can build a house.

To succeed in running your own business you must be good at:

Planning and Strategizing
What will you offer? To whom? At what price? When? How long will it take to launch your business? Who is your demographic? How will you reach them? Will you ever have employees or will you be able to handle business growth on your own for years? Do you intend to do this for the rest of your life, or sell your company after you’ve made it a huge success? The more you can figure out now, the better your trajectory will be, and the easier it will be to make decisions because they will be aligned with your long term goals.

Creation
You have to create a service or product that works, and works well. This is likely what drew you to the idea in the first place so most people do fairly well with this piece. But if you’re wanting to invent something new, you need to figure out how to get it manufactured.

Sales, Marketing, and Advertising
Your product or service won’t just magically sell. You have to learn how to write good sales copy and you have to figure out where and how to market your business. Will you pay to advertise or use word of mouth? Will you create a Facebook fan page or your own website? Will you market on your own site or on other people’s?

Networking
You need to connect with other people in some way, shape or form. Either because you want or need them to sell your product or service when it’s ready, or because you want advice from others in the same field, or because you want to capitalize on opportunities to expand. So get ready to be social and ask for help.

Programming
In this day and age you will more than likely need a website for your company. Do you know how to create one? If you don’t, you need to learn, otherwise you’ll be paying someone to do it for you. If you’ve got the cash, great. But if you’re just starting out, you’ll need to learn how to manage a site including getting it hosted and setting up a merchant account and some form of shopping cart.

Accounting
You’ll have to manage and pay your own taxes. Sure, you can outsource this to an accountant, but that also costs money, and you still need to give your accountant accurate and complete information. So learn how to get your own business account, keep track of sales, pay your bills on time, and see where your money is coming and going.

Social Media
You’ll need to learn to master Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and a host of other social media outlets. If you don’t, you’ll be left behind.

Learning and Growing
You’ll need to stay abreast of what’s happening in your field. Is a competitor coming along who can take your market? Does your site need an upgrade? Is there a new way of shipping that could save you money? How do other people in your field save money? What are the upcoming trends? Do you need a fan page or just subscribers? Do you know how to make an audio program? Is your ebook compatible with Kindle? Do you have the latest equipment? Is there someone new out there who could help you? Is there a new company you could be doing business with? If you don’t continually learn and grow, you will eventually be left behind, outdated, used up, worthless. You don’t want that.

Other Things You’ll Need
You’ll need patience, because sometimes it will feel like you’ve worked super hard and have received nothing in return. Just keep going.

You’ll need to manage stress, because money will come in sporadically and unpredictably, and you’ll need to ride out the dry days or weeks or even months.

You’ll need a savings, because no matter how little you think it will cost you to get going, it will always cost more than you think it will. And you’ll need some savings to live off of while you’re creating your business.

You’ll need a sense of humor, because some days it will appear as if everything is against you and all you can do is smile and roll with the punches.

You’ll need discipline, because it’s just you, baby. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. And if it doesn’t get done, you’re dead in the water. You don’t get paid. If you think you can work 3 hours a day and succeed before you run out of money, you’re dreaming. In the beginning, you’ll work very long hours. Still excited? Excellent.

Are you ready?

Working for yourself is powerful. It’s flexible. There is great freedom in it. But if you think you can take your talent and build an entire business by having mastered one aspect of it, you’ll soon find the house crumbling down around you. Oh the paint and the curtains will still look great, but they’ll be sitting atop a pile of bricks and cement.

Before you go solo, be sure you have everything you need, and be sure you’re willing to do everything and a wee bit more to ensure your success!

The answer is, it’s all about perspective and transition.

You’ll have to agree with me that some people’s lives suck more than others right? Like right now someone is being murdered and would gladly choose your life over theirs. Right now someone is stepping into a jail cell to serve a life sentence and would kill or die for the freedom to work a minimum wage job and live in his parents’ basement. Right now someone is getting ready to be homeless and preparing themselves for those new challenges, and would happily trade places with you.

But it’s about perspective. If you think your life sucks, it means you’ve identified something better for yourself and you simply don’t have it yet. And that’s fine. We don’t have to accept our current circumstances if we don’t like them. It’s normal to want to improve your life situation.

However, while you are IN your current circumstances, you can be happy. And the way to be happy is to be in transition.

Let’s use an example. Let’s say I put you in prison and I tell you that you’re going to be there, doing nothing but rotting, for 15 years. That’s pretty disheartening right? So you sit in prison every day wishing with all your might that you were somewhere else, out of prison, free. And you’re stuck because you’re in prison. The door is locked and you’re not able to leave when you want to. Totally sucks.

Now let’s say I come along and hand you a map and say, “If you can follow this map, you can have your freedom.” You jump at the chance. Anything is better than sitting day after day in prison. I warn you that the map is a little hard to understand, and even more difficult to follow, but that if you persevere and you try hard, you can use the map to get out of prison.

You don’t care how hard it is, you’ve got a chance now! A way out. And even though you are in prison, you’re happier. Why? Because you’re in transition. You have a plan and a way to change your circumstances. It won’t be easy, but you don’t care. It’s a chance and you’re going to take it. The power is back in your hands.

So I tell you now… you are in one of two places in your life. You’re either stuck or you’re in transition.

If you’re stuck it means you’ve given your power to the prison. You are not trying to escape it. You have accepted that you will simply have to serve your time. And you’re more likely to be depressed and bummed about it.

But if you have a plan to change your life, suddenly the prison you’re in doesn’t seem so confining. When you’re in transition, it’s actually easier to be happy with what you used to be very unhappy about. Because you know it’s temporary. It’s merely a starting point to something better.

So if you’re sitting in a career that you hate, or a relationship that you’ve outgrown, or a health problem that is breaking you down, be in transition. Don’t be stuck. Be moving towards something better. Have a plan. Every day take one more step closer to freedom and a life that will make you happy.

Along the way, you can be happy. Happy that you’re moving towards something better. You don’t have to wait until you arrive. Be happy along the way.

Great question Beth, and it’s an important distinction to make because you don’t want to ignore important signs that you’re on the wrong path, while at the same time you don’t want to give up on a dream if something negative happens.

When a negative event happens that seems to slow you down from achieving your goals you have to stop, take stock, and check in to make sure you’re still on the right path. The way you do this is simple. Think about the path you’re on and the goal you’re trying to achieve. Does the goal still excite you? What happens in your body when you think of the goal? Do you feel energized or deflated? Do you feel desire and wanting, or do you feel drudgery, obligation, or annoyance?

If you’re still excited, and you still feel desire and wanting of this goal or this path, then you are still on the right path and the negative event was just a bump. Take a look at what happened, however, and see if your guides are trying to get you to adjust your trajectory. Sometimes accidents happen and it’s not your guides trying to warn you. So you really need to look at the negative event and figure out if you’re being asked to alter course or if it’s just some turbulence on the road to your goal.

If you tuned in and felt obligation or drudgery, and you no longer feel excited about your goal, then it’s quite possible the negative event was designed to encourage you to see that. Being persistent and persevering are great if you’re still on a desired path, and overcoming obstacles is part of the deal. But if you don’t even want to get where you’re going then your guides are going to throw all kinds of events in your path to get you to stop.

The right road will have bumps; it won’t always be smooth. Check in with your body and your thoughts, and you’ll know if the path is still right for you or wrong. The hard part is admitting you don’t want the goal you thought you did, but the sooner you can see the truth, the sooner you will get to a path that is right for you.

If you knew me at the time, you would have described me as proactive, ambitious, motivated, and confident. And I was.

But one thing was bugging me while I was in graduate school. I really had no idea what it was going to be like to get a job in my field. I was learning theories, but had very little application experience. I wanted to know what I was getting myself into before committing wholeheartedly to the path.

I knew my fellow grad students felt the same. Going to school was great, but what was it going to be like in the REAL world?

Then I got an idea. Why not find out ahead of time from people who were currently doing the jobs we were all interested in having?

I approached the head of our program and told him we wanted to know what it was like to have a human factors job in the real world. I asked him if he would help us connect with his previous graduate students who now had full time jobs so we could ask them pertinent questions about life beyond college. He thought it was a fabulous idea.

Not only did he reach out to some great companies, they agreed to send a panel of their experts to our class so we could ask them questions.

The first to arrive was Kaiser Permanente. Human factors positions inside Kaiser Permanente pertained to designing medical instruments and improving systems within the hospital, especially the ER. This was third on my list of areas I wanted to go into when I graduated.

The panel showed up with the head of their department plus 4 or 5 other employees. Me and 12 grad students sat down across from them and they invited us to ask questions. I asked the first question. The panel answered. I waited but no one else had a question so I asked another. They answered. Hardly any of the other students asked questions, but I was firing them off like a machine gun.

“Did you feel you had enough training when you graduated in order to do your job with Kaiser, or was there a learning curve?”

“Was there anything you found you weren’t prepared to do? And if so, what do you recommend we study to supplement our education?”

“Do you enjoy your position? Was it everything you thought it would be?”

“Do you work alone or with people on projects?”

“How quickly can you advance in the company?”

“How much does an entry level job pay and does having a PhD matter or was a Master’s degree enough?”

“Where do you see the industry headed in the next 5 to 10 years?”

“What qualities do you look for in a potential candidate for employment?”

And on and on I went. After a while, the head of the Kaiser Permanente Human Factors group turned to my professor and said, “Send us this one when she graduates.”

The exact same thing happened the next week when the IBM panel arrived. At IBM we would be heavily involved in designing interfaces for human-computer interaction. At the time, this was a huge field that was growing rapidly. I wasn’t as interested in this, but most of the other students in my program were, so that’s why we invited IBM.

I fired off similar questions to IBM. I am a naturally curious person and I like to know what I’m getting into before I get into it, just to make sure it’s going to be what I expect.

After these two panels, my professor took me aside and said, “Erin, both IBM and Kaiser were very impressed with you. Both of them have asked me to make an offer to you for employment on their behalf, if you’re interested. IBM is offering you a position in their department with a starting pay of $50,000 when you graduate. Kaiser is offering you $40,000. These are both fantastic companies to work for with great programs and benefits. I told them you were my best student and they’d be lucky to have you. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll arrange a private meeting.”

I was shocked! I thought the guy at Kaiser was kidding when he said what he said. I felt really humbled and grateful. I ended up declining both positions because I decided to go for my PhD and hold out for a job at NASA or with the military.

But do you see what happened here? Instead of sending a resume to a company and hoping to get an interview, and be in competition with everyone else applying for a job, all I did was show proactivity, interest, and I asked intelligent questions.

Remember what I wrote in my other article, How I Got Every Job I Ever Wanted that the way to get a job was to be a personal solution to the interviewer’s problem? What were these people probably thinking when they sat across from a group of 12 students and only one of them seemed interested in really understanding the inner workings of their company? Instead of them interviewing me to see if I was suitable for them, I ended up interviewing them to see if they were suitable for ME.

In the process I showed confidence, interest, proactivity, discernment, and I didn’t come across as needy. I stood apart from my fellow students.

You can use this very same technique to get a position with the company you want. Here’s how to do it.

If you’re in college, contact a few companies you’re interested in working for when you graduate. Tell them you’re studying and want to make sure the field is really going to be a good fit for you, and ask if you can set up a meeting with someone in the company for a chat. Offer to take them out to lunch. Or arrange a panel like I did and let them come to you. After you’ve impressed them, what do you think they’re going to think when they need to hire someone? They’re already going to know about you.

If you’re out of school and want to work for a specific company, you can do the same thing. I once contacted Dr. Thelma Moss, who was a parapsychologist featured in the movie, “Poltergeist.” Imagine my surprise when she answered the phone herself. I simply told her I was interested in becoming a parapsychologist and wondered if she had any advice for me. She spent 30 minutes talking to me on the phone and answering all of my questions. You don’t know until you try.

If you work for yourself, this works too. Simply present yourself to a company and let them know you’d like to know more about what they do, what they offer, how they serve their clients, etc. You’re not asking for a job, you’re getting to know them. Surely during the conversation they will want to know why you’re asking and you’ll mention what you do for a living and, now that you’ve built some rapport and shown interest in their work, they will be more likely to give you their business.

The point is… people hire people they want to work with. People hire people who are a solution to their problem. People hire people who show enthusiasm and interest in their company. People don’t hire paper. Stand out from the crowd. Do it differently. Make them come to you with an offer. It works.