Lesson 4: Curate Your Own Career Brand Geer
We have surpassed the tipping point in our Surfing the Gig Economy work with clients by this point in the model. We have reframed their mindset towards the gig economy, helped them develop a personal brand that orients them to this new world of work with a positive outlook, taught them how to use the burning fire to become self-led, self-organized, self-managed, and find a self-created community that will support them regardless of their work situation. We have done a lot and now our role is to help clients celebrate their success and lock in sustainable habits for their career future.
Watch the following video.
**DISCLAIMER – This video promotes a specific clothing company. This course and model does not promote any corporate entity, this is simply a good mini-documentary to prompt the following exercise.**
https://youtu.be/CSCW0rSkqUo
Did you think I forgot about your journal? I did not… Lesson 3 was so content rich and thick that I decided to give you a mini-break from journaling. In this lesson, we are actually going to do a lot more guided and self-reflection work in your journal.
Luis Negron from the video discusses how a part of his gear (i.e., professional clothing) was an important element of him finding work and turning his life around.
He represents two of the many populations that career professionals most often think about when they consider helping clients “gear up” in veterans and those previously incarcerated.
Additionally, I think Luis addresses the two reasons one might focus on their gear, one being need but the other being self-regard. It is this second reason that makes using the Surfing Model help all clients focus on the gear.
JOURNAL PROMPT: I want you to spend 20 minutes thinking about a specific client you work with currently or within the past 2 years. Specifically, I want you to think about a client who would be most impacted by the gig economy.
In your journal, please write a “script” similar to the one for Luis Negron. Tell the client’s story around their career work remembering that a good story has three phases: beginning, middle, and end. The beginning can be the story of all the salient material that brought them to the point in their career journey when they came to you. The middle can be the work they wish to do or completed while working with you. The end can be the next decade (yes, 10 years) of their career journey. This last part is conjecture, but base it on them incrementally meeting their
career goals more and more towards a final dream career situation. In fact, break the end chapters into three distinct phases covering 10 years from when they ceased/or will cease to work with you. The end can be the next decade (yes, 10 years) of their career journey. This last part is conjecture, but base it on them incrementally meeting their career goals more and more towards a final dream career situation. In fact, break the end chapters into three distinct phases covering 10 years from when they ceased/or will cease to work with you.
Make this “script” as interesting and rich as you can. Think of Luis’ story to help guide your work. Each phase might be labelled as the Now phase, the Soon (after some success and growth) phase, and One Day When phase (when they achieved their dreams).
Now let’s take a look at this video of Matthias Wandel curating his home work shop. Watch the video below.
https://youtu.be/dBRopVnX17k
Many career professionals will be wondering why you are watching a video of a guy organizing his home work shop. Let’s pay attention to Matthias as he describes his work…
He is working independently. He is taking great pride in himself. He is taking great pride in the way he is collecting and taking care of his gear. There is a solitary sense of purpose and accomplishment in his work regardless of whether or not he is being paid or has a current project to work on.
I would argue that curating his gear like this is a huge resiliency and coping factor for his work.
This is the type of habit and behavior we want to foster in our clients around their gig gear!!
It is important to note that different types of work require different types of gear. A gig worker might have several different gear packages to curate. Let’s take a moment and brainstorm some gear packages:
BRAINSTORM 1: Write down the gear a new gig worker who is driving for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash or other such entry level platforms might need to curate to generate full-time equivalent work. [5 minutes – see if you can come up with 20 items]
BRAINSTORM 2: Write down the gear a gig worker who has been working for 5 years creating websites and social media content using Upwork and social media ads to generate full-time equivalent work. [5 minutes – see if you can come up with 20 items]
BRAINSTORM 3: Write down the gear an experienced (10 years or more) educational consultant and professional development trainer might need to generate full time equivalent work. [5 minutes – see if you can come up with 20 items]
How did you do? Were you able to come up with 60 items across three types of gig work at three different levels of income/ experience in just 15 minutes?
JOURNAL PROMPT: Now, take 10 minutes to go back to your journal. Go to the end of your story, when your client has reached the third phase of their final chapter and all of their career dreams have come true. Describe what their “gear room” might look like.
For some, this was a lot of journaling and self-reflection time. I would argue that we need to learn this skill… to sit deeply with our work, to be able to think about or clients’ lives in real terms, and to think about the way their future might unfold because of their work with us. This type of reflective impact study is how I arrived at the content of this course and the Reframe Your Career Game curriculum.
In the video below, I will talk through this phase of the Surfing Model using a specific example. Additionally, I will add one more organizational schema to this phase by identifying three primary types of gear I help clients think about.
https://youtu.be/w–NgcmItp8
Take a look at the outdated article for examples of tools on-line entrepreneurs might curate in the digital space to perform their work functions. Now… I am using this article first because I like the examples it gives and how it illustrates them… BUT two, I like that it is outdated because it illustrates that curating one’s “gear” is an ongoing process particularly when curating one’s digital gear. Read it here. 
From the article, the following two pieces of digital gear need to be updated:
Hipchat is now replaced by Slack.
Sqwiggle is not replaced by PukkaTeam
**All tools identified are current as of the time of this writing. If more have been discontinued, you can do some homework and find their replacements.**
I want to close this class session with my videos from a favorite charity of mine Playing for Change which brings musicians together digitally from around the world to raise money for music education. I can only imagine the tools used to create such a collaboration.
https://youtu.be/Sc8t6BZUSJs
Once you have completed all the requirements, answer items 12-15 on your worksheet, mark the section complete before you move on.