The Marketing Mentress: Where is YOUR Ladder Leaning?

When climbing the "ladder of success" know on which building your ladder leans.

In 2004 I attended a conference where John Maxwell was speaking. He was speaking on leadership and how to motivate your staff by setting a great example as a leader.

What he said that day made me stop dead and think!

He spoke about having a plan to help your team succeed.

Up to this point in my life I had thought that employees just did what they were told and avoided making mistakes, put their heads down and worked hard. I also thought that employees did not have any say in what the business was doing. When you worked for someone, you just kept adjusting your work to whatever was handed to you. If you spoke up about an issue, you stood the risk of losing your job.

I never even ventured a thought about how I might be pointed in the wrong direction somehow.

John said that many people just get a good job, and go to work every day with their heads down and nose to the grindstone, figuratively speaking. They never ask questions or make a plan of where they want to end up in the process.

Then one day they wake up only to find that the ladder they were climbing was leaning against the wrong building!

Imagine that! Working hard all your life in a dead-end job only to find at retirement that you are not where you thought you would be. You end up very unhappy thinking thoughts like, "I wish I could'a, would'a, should'a!" But by then it is too late and you are stuck in the rut of life that you blindly followed for all your working years.

Is this you? Are you stuck in a rut?

With our Canadian economy in crisis, thousands of people have been laid off because of the oil prices being so low. It has halted many company plans in the oil patch causing thousands upon thousands of lay-offs.

These employees who have been laid off are suddenly finding that their "ladder was leaning against the wrong building". What they thought would see them through to retirement, just isn't there anymore.

A great many of these x-employees are over 50 years old. The chances of them getting rehired in the oil patch are slim.

What do you think is happening?

You guessed it! People are diversifying.

Last summer I checked to see how many people were on LinkedIn in the Edmonton area, and there were something like 318,000+. Today when I checked, there were 375,772 people using LinkedIn in the Edmonton area.

Look at those numbers!

It used to be that there were few oil patch-related people using LinkedIn. I have noticed that there are a lot more getting online with LinkedIn.

Do you think it might be because people are searching for other ways to market themselves?

Do you think it might be because people are being laid off and they are starting businesses of their own?

I heard from a financial planner speaking last night that today in Canada most bankruptcies are with seniors! Here they are at the end of their lives with no money to live out their lives in the style they have been accustomed to.

These seniors are desperately looking for ways to earn extra income. They cannot work a regular job, so what are they doing?

They are starting small, home-based businesses.

Since 2012, 1/3 of the new businesses being started in Canada are by people over 50! Did you know that?

Do you know someone who needs help understanding how to market themselves through social media? If so, tell them that The LinkedIn Marketing Mentress can help.

Register for LinkedIn 101 - Stuck in LinkedIn Peanut Butter on Tuesday, February 9th from 7:00pm to 9:00pm MST. https://linkedinptbutter.eventbrite.ca

Fired at Fifty: Stop Looking For Work and Discover What You Were Meant to Do.

http://bit.ly/FiredatFiftyKindle

Got a LinkedIn question? Feel free to email me and I will answer it in my next blog.

Christine Till