Hating your job or employer is a dead, entry-level cliche of the past. You have no business feeling confined to the structure of someone else’s creative vision. You shouldn’t be afraid to set out on your own and do cool, creative work that resonates with who you are on a personal level. It’s time to get out of the cube… by thinking outside of the box.
My work is about redefining the way we approach professional growth, by understanding brand building on a personal level as it relates to the specific and monetizeable value that we each bring to the professional table. As a small business or a career professional, you are a brand: a creative entity comprised of knowledge, expertise, experience, tappable resource networks, and lessons learned. Those intangible assets have serious value to the right audience, and my job is help you get clear as day on who that audience is, how to speak to, reach and engage them, and how to make damn sure they receive that message around your value loud and clear.
People ask me all the time how I got started in my business.
Like many people who choose to work for themselves as small business owners, contractors, freelancers and independents, there’s a story of experience woven together by threads of different jobs, hard work, luck, bad bosses, bad clients, great clients, and amazing opportunities that opened doors. It’s a mix of unrelenting commitment, sheer enthusiasm, overcome fear and second-guessing. Your career is your personal story, and whether you’re writing a resume, attending an interview, or building your brand, it’s about communicating that story of your experiences and value with confidence, enthusiasm and a complete willingness to simply put yourself out there.
I’ve worked on the creative end of recruiting and HR (if there is such a thing), hired (and sometimes fired) hundreds of people, reviewed and written thousands of resumes. I’ve advised hundreds more folks in creative fields like advertising, marketing, design and technology on building lucrative careers and freelance-ships, and been in the driver’s seat of one of the top recruiting agencies in Boston. For the better part of my first decade out of college, I followed the “corporate” path of finding stable work within the confines of someone else’s organization, following someone else’s creative vision and achieving someone’s else’s financial goals. That was fun.
When the recruiting industry started to feel the pains of the recession around 2009, I decided it was time to make an exit and put my relationship building and business development chops to to work in a new area. I enthusiastically followed a boyfriend creative calling to New York to start my own company as a career consultant, with an unrelenting passion for both helping people see & experience the truth that career satisfaction isn’t dead, and building and running the business that would allow me to get that message out there. It took a few part-time jobs to get to full time consultant status, but at the end of the day (or decade)… I got there.
My love of the creative industry doesn’t stop at simply being a consultant to aspiring freelancers and ad folks wanting to to boost their marketability and explore new opportunities. It takes one to know one, and so volia! – Aspyre Design was born to satiate my right brain which never sleeps because it knows it could be illustrating. And this is a foundation of what I try to help people understand – that a career is not a job, nor does one job define a career. A career is the monetized end product of your collective professional value – it’s all of the things you do to put your best skills and talents out there and contribute to the greater good, while creating a sustainable living. Whether that’s brought to life via one singular project, two jobs, or two companies, it’s about finding that unique mix of talent, passion, hard work and continual growth.
What Else?
- Right-Brain Influences: Roy Lichtenstein, Max Beckman, David Sedaris, Marvel Comics
- Left-Brain Influences: Dale Carnegie, Blake Mycoskie, Michael Port, Michael Gerber
- Entrepreneurial Must-Haves: Confidence, time management, a loose business plan, ability to adapt, creativity.
- Essential Bookshelf: The Right-Brain Business Plan (Jennifer Lee), Start Something That Matters (Blake Mycoskie), How to Stop Worrying & Start Living (Dale Carnegie), The E-Myth Revisited (Michael Gerber)
- Currently Learning: Advanced HTML, basic CSS, mastery of the Wacom tablet, self-publishing, how to cook better than my husband.
The Corporate Version
Creative Businesses. Creative Careers. Dana founded Aspyre Solutions in 2009, focusing on small business development and career consulting. As an artist, illustrator and entrepreneur herself, Dana’s mission is about redefining the way career professionals, freelancers and solo-preneurs approach professional growth, by understanding brand building on a personal level as it relates to the monetizeable value that we each bring to the table. She specializes in working with creative professionals around career transition, personal branding and starting small businesses and freelance ventures.
Dana has helped hundreds of professionals in advertising, marketing, design, multimedia and other industries in creating the career plans, freelance ventures and small businesses that ultimately allow them to make a living doing the work they are passionate about. She has presented seminars on navigating careers, transition and work-life balance to several colleges and universities, and her advice has been featured on MSN Careers, Fox Business News, NewsDay, CareerBuilder.com, GlassDoor and About.com.
Dana has a really expensive piece of paper denoting her academic dabbles in Communications and Visual Arts from a big little University in Boston. She is also an artist, freelance illustrator and proud Brooklynite.
