Career & professional development expert.
I’ve long been an advocate of building a “personal brand.” I use the quotation marks here because, unfortunately, the phrase has come to mean a lot of things over the last few years and not all of them mean what I mean when I use the word. To me, your personal brand is a distilled […] The post Build a Personal Brand in 60 Minutes per Week appeared first on Zak Slayback .
“Should I do some consulting on the side?” is a question that I’ve gotten pretty regularly with most of the people I help with career coaching over the last few years. Almost without reservation my answer is, “yes.” (More on possible reservations below.) Chances are you know something that somebody wants to know. You have […] The post You Should Consider Consulting on the Side appeared first on…
As you get older, you have the advantage of time on your side when it comes to building a great network of smart, interesting people. Unfortunately, a lot of people (myself included at times) leave opportunity on the floor by falling out of touch with this network. Part of this is just human nature — […] The post How to Stay In Touch With Your Network appeared first on Zak Slayback .
If you are in any kind of field where you want others to reach out to you and help you from time to time, please send update emails. If you’re running a venture-backed startup, please send update emails to not just your existing investors but also to stakeholders, advisors, people who you want to *make* […] The post How to Write Update Emails that Help, Not Annoy appeared first on Zak Slayback .
One of the most annoying trends I’ve seen pick up in recent years is the public use of polls to craft public opinion. As it gets easier for polling companies to connect to people through their emails, phones, websites they visit, and any other place, anybody and their mother can run a “poll” and then […] The post Why You Shouldn’t Trust the Polls appeared first on Zak Slayback .
Alternative Title: Your Sales Comp Plan is a Recruiting Channel A lot of the people I work with are hiring junior sales teams under them for the first time. That gives me a unique opportunity to watch what people have tried, see what doesn’t work, and see what does work. The combination of people I […] The post How to Comp Your First Sales SDR/AE Team appeared first on Zak Slayback .
As I get more exposure to a better data set of young professionals who know what they want to do and don’t waste time floating around between different skills and jobs, one of the constants that has come up as been gap years. A gap year provides an opportunity for a young person or young […] The post How to Take a Gap Year appeared first on Zak Slayback .
Last updated: July 7, 2020. I’ll update this as I find more tools that solve additional use cases that I haven’t addressed below. If you would like to take let your team work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic but do not know how to get stared, please email me. I am happy to help […] The post Tools to Work From Home and Work Remotely appeared first on Zak Slayback .
I often get emails from readers asking, “do you think X is a good idea?” I appreciate these emails and try to give my best feedback based on the limited knowledge I have about whatever market they’re asking about. But my knowledge is limited by experience and time. Rather than rely on my limited knowledge […] The post A Few Quick Notes on Customer Discovery appeared first on Zak Slayback .
“Homeschooling” is a phrase that tends to evoke one of two images in the layperson’s mind. One image includes seventeen kids loaded up into a church bus, all wearing denim down to their ankles and churning butter at four in the morning. The other includes a few kids at home under the auspices of a […] The post “Homeschooling” is a Big Tent appeared first on Zak Slayback .