It hadn’t specifically occurred to me that the way people typically find “The Good Jobs” is really just by using the principles of attraction marketing.  In my own job search in the last week or so, I’ve basically been doing just that.  And I’m quite happy with the results thus far.  I started out by sending a LinkedIn blast to my entire network, telling them that I was looking for work.  As a result, about a dozen different people in my network called and e-mailed me, wanting to know what I was looking for.  Now, I should note that while I did the initial approaching in these cases, I only approached people that I knew, and I didn’t ask them to hire me directly.  I assumed that they were not in the market, but that they might know someone who is.  This is the way to treat your warm market in the attraction model.  That, and build strong relationships.

So, a week later, after submitting very few online applications via Monster and a couple of other sites (I believe in quality, not quantity), I’ve already been contacted directly by two people who are hiring.  Nothing definite on the table yet, but this is encouraging.  I’ve never been approached by hiring managers this soon in the process.  Before, it was me approaching them and stalking after them to try and get them on the phone.  Then, the answer I would usually get was, “We’ll call you if we’re interested.”  Which usually meant that they would not be calling me.

What I learned the last time I was looking for a job is that you don’t walk in to talk to an employer just to get a job out of them.  You talk to them to build a rapport and a relationship.  I remember one hiring manager telling me that if he had just received my resume, he probably would not have been interested in talking to me.  But, he added, since I came in and talked to him, he saw that my resume didn’t really tell the full story about me.  I didn’t end up getting that job, but it was an educational experience.  It taught me that my resume was never going to sell me.  Only I was going to sell me, and I was only going to do that by building relationships and trust.

More on this later.  I decided today that I’m going to synergize my job search with my Renegade Network Marketer efforts.  I’m going to do this by writing articles targeted towards groups of people who can help me get a job, and in such a way that shows them what a smart move it would be to hire me.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress on here.

Social networking is exploding.  Blogs are exploding.  The possibilities for an introverted entrepreneur are exploding.  There are plenty of avenues to explore, and plenty of nooks and crannies to go looking on the Internet for Easter eggs.  That’s precisely our problem.  It’s causing time to implode on us.  There are only so many hours a day, and we introverts are often too creative for our own good.  We think non-stop, we pump out ideas faster than the universe could implement them, and then we wonder why we don’t get anything done.  Now, I’d love to get up on my soapbox here and talk about how you need discipline and focus, and how you need to just pick one thing and stick with it, but let’s face it.  We don’t want to live that kind of life.

A friend recently told me that she’d been to a personal development seminar where the leader recommended “living on the boundary between order and chaos.”  I think that pretty well describes the life of an entrepreneur.  So, time management for creative folks like us needs to look something like maintaining some degree of consistency in life, while not handcuffing ourselves to a schedule an a goal sheet.  It looks like doing things consistently, but maintaining a degree of inconsistency that’s enough to keep life juicy and surprising.

I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to get addicted to writing.  I promised myself I would only write one article per day, and today already I’ve posted six.  That’s an example of what riding the wave can look like.  I realized, today, that I could take off the rest of the week from writing articles if I really wanted to.  I’ve nearly filled my quota.  But, in any case, I have some serious goals, and a ball to keep my eye on.  The bottom line is this: I’m still aiming for getting my Renegade system up and running as quickly as possible, while balancing this with my job search efforts.  I’m still a barista at Starbucks, and I’m starting a year-long training program with Landmark on Friday.  I would think anyone else was crazy for doing this.  But I’m happily looking forward to seeing what comes out of the mix next.  I know that life is going to be full of surprises for the indefinite future, and I love that.

The point is this.  You can set a goal, and you can take action, but don’t get carried away with following your action plan every day.  Follow it every day if you can, and make the numbers add up at the end of the week if you must.  But make sure that you’re thriving on the chaos in the meantime.  Do this, and the numbers will work out.  Trust me on this.  I don’t know how it works, but it does.

There comes a point in the career of the modern entrepreneur when you’re likely to hear him asking, “Do you want fries with that?” In my case, it goes, “Do you want fries, a hash brown, gravy, or grits?”

Last week, I took a job at the local Biscuitville, a breakfast-only fast food restaurant serving North Carolina and Virginia. I’m enjoying the heck out of this. I used to work at Wendy’s, about 10 years ago. I remember long days at the drive through window. Coming back to that environment has shown me that running a drive-through is like riding a bike; once you learn it, you never forget. I’m also really impressed with the speed and accuracy of the ordering at Biscuitville. Working there has been somewhat Zen-like for me over the past few days. I had forgotten the degree of presence and concentration it takes to process orders quickly, one after another after another.

I’m not 100% sold on this company or opportunity, mainly because of the logistics of the scheduling and the fact that they’re limited to this local region, but if I do decide to stick with them, my mind is already racing with ideas. For example, I’ve noticed that service times are heavily impacted by customers taking a long time to put their money away and drive up to the second window. There may be a way to implement a payment and order taking system that removes this bottleneck. Also, what if I made an effort to tell all my friends where I was working, and a lot of them became regular customers? What if a group of 4-5 people had a daily or weekly breakfast meeting there? Unfortunately, a fast food place doesn’t work well for that, but that’s just an example.

See picture for details