Careers in Transition, LLC

It’s been a little over a year since I started my foray into entrepreneurship.  Except for one, all the lessons I’ve learned about surviving my first year in business begins with a P:

1. Purpose – define your vision, mission, goals, and action plan.
2. Prioritize – determine what “needs” to be done from what would be “nice” to get done.
3. Prepare – develop a business plan because failing to plan is planning to fail.
4. Practice – stick to your core services, try new ideas, evaluate and try again.
5. Purchasing – buy what is essential; you can buy the rest in year 2 and 3.
6. Publicity – when you’re not actually doing the business, you need to be doing marketing, marketing, more marketing.
7. Prevention – develop a back-up plan and cash reserves in case you run into bumps along the way.
8. People – surround yourself with people that are energetic and smarter than you are; remember: networking is better than NOTworking.
9. Persist – never give up; do a little bit today and tackle the rest tomorrow, but never quit because a winner never quits and a quitter never wins.
10. Question – seek mentors and ask questions; listen to the expertise of other professionals in your business areas of weakness.

(This article originally appeared in AC-Chamber Visions Article – SEC October 2006 Issue.)

Thomas J. Denham, MEd is the Managing Partner & Career Counselor of Careers In Transition LLC.  He helps people explore their options with career testing, make job changes, write resumes and cover letters and prepare for interviews.  He can be reached at (518) 366-8451 and at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it