Getting Connected

Today was a fantastic day for networking.  This morning at the Riverton employment center we had an inspiring discussion facilitated by Ron Anderson on persistence.  He shared stories about Abe Lincoln which were new to me but also talked about how Lincoln never gave up inspite of what looked like insurmountable odds.  How Abe was humble and gave credit to God for his successes.  He ended his presentation giving a written testimonial of a job applicant, George Grzesik, who also persevered in his job search.  George applied the principles he was taught in his career search classes about following up and asking for advice.  "When you ask for people to help you, they go out of their way to help."

He kept calling back recruiters or job screeners, people who he never met personnaly and became their friend.  "I learned that you need to make yourself easily accessible with cell numbers, home numbers and email addresses."  George also volunteered at church activities, at community events and used these volunteer activities to help sell himself and to show he wasn't at home watching Ophra while unemployed.

Just as exciting was an invitation to participate in another networking event sponsored by Mary Cosgrove.  She is an excellent job coach who I highly recommend.  At times we need someone like Mary to focus our job efforts, to network with the right people and to continue to give us encouragement.  Her group was made up of people in job search and in self-employment search.  The presenter at the meeting, Ron Barness was awesome.  He tells a compelling and inspiring story in a humble way about the demise of his prior successful travel business only to be reinvented/reenergized as a marketing expediter (my words) for the Bella Energy company.  He took his passion for starting something from scratch (like a phoenix), finding a need not being met (solar energy in Utah) and partnered with a company from Colorado as their Utah contact for their product expansion.  While he indicated humbly that he didn't do great things, he used his passion for being an entrepreneur, his business contacts and associations and his ability to market a new venture successfully. 

Many out there have that same passion, that same talent but haven't found that idea.  Spend some time finding that hidden stone, then you need to polish that gem (you).