From Midwife to Photographer

From Midwife to Photographer Success Story > From: Job To: Solopreneur From Midwife to Photographer “The love for my job had been knocked out of me.” * From Midwife to Photographer When Jo Littler was bullied at work, it was the final straw in an already exhausting career. Pursuing her passion instead meant working 90-hour weeks and navigating a roller coaster of emotions, but finally, she's come out on top. This is her story. What work were you doing previously? I was a midwife. What are you doing now? I owna photography business. Why did you change? Because of the lack of morale in the NHS. Plus, I had a burning passion for photography and felt driven to pursue it. When was the moment you decided to make the change? When I was bullied by some midwife colleagues for doing something outside of my midwifery career, successfully. It was all very dramatic. In fact, it ruined my career for me. So, I focused on building a photography career to a point where I could jump, while working at the hospital I'd originally trained at, alongside old friends who loved what I was doing and were super-supportive. Are you happy with the change? Best. Choice. Ever. What do you miss and what don't you miss? I miss caring for women and their babies. But I don't miss the frustration of not being able to provide the care I wanted to, because of the pressures on the NHS. And I don't miss the low morale and high stress; shift work with no tea or lunch breaks; night shifts; and having to book leave a year in advance. I'm also able to still satisfy my wish to 'give' to the maternity service by being a volunteer Area Coordinator for a service called Remember My Baby. I work with my old colleagues and the parents they support, taking portraits of babies who die before, during, or after birth. How did you go about making the shift? I started booking shoots on my days off and did this quite happily for about a year. After the incident at work, I think I subconsciously started to make a shift in my head, as my passion and love for my job had been knocked out of me. I returned to be a midwife at the hospital where I'd trained, to supportive colleagues who loved what I was doing. And I carried on building my photography business on my days off. After another year or so, I found some premises while out shopping â€" I'd thought of creating a small studio and called the agent's number out of curiosity. It snowballed, and before I knew it we'd opened! For a further year, I worked part-time hours as a midwife for the steady salary, and worked full-time hours at the studio, managing staff and growing the company. I had no days off, no leave. I was working 80-90 hour weeks. Luckily, my supportive husband shared my goal and took the reins at home and with our toddler daughter! After this three-year process and a year after starting the studio, I was able to pay myself a salary. So, I made the emotional decision to leave midwifery behind and focus on the business. What didn't go well? What 'wrong turns' did you take? I haven't had any wrong turns yet. I've been extraordinarily lucky, meeting the right people at the right time, networking and learning from photographers further along in business. What was the most difficult thing about changing? Making a leap of faith. I was warned business was 'a dark place' and it can be. The stress is phenomenal. The ups are very high, but then the lows are very low. It's a real roller coaster. What help did you get? I applied for a bank loan for financial help building the first studio, and again when we moved to new premises in the middle of last year. What have you learnt in the process? That this suits me. And I'm not bad at it! What would you advise others to do in the same situation? Make a plan. Jump. Have faith. Be brave. To find out more about Jo's business, visitwww.johannaelizabeth.com What lessons could you take from Jo's story to use in your own career change? Let us know in the comments below.

Personal Branding Interview Scott McGrew - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding Interview Scott McGrew - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today, I spoke to Scott McGrew, who has 20 years experience as a television reporter, 10 of them as a technology reporter. His work has been seen on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and the BBC. He has been nominated for 10 Emmy Awards and reports on technology on the Bay Areas NBC.   In this interview, Scott goes over his impression of personal branding, why he has a website in addition to his NBC content, and then talks about authenticity. Whats your take on personal branding? I think people vastly underestimate the importance of managing their online presence. Were all familiar with the idea of Googling job candidates or potential dates personal branding is simply taking a interest in how you appear to the world online. The world is going to talk about you. Either youre proactive about what gets said about you or youre not. In this sense, branding is just an extension of your reputation dont take the concept to seriously; youre not developing a new line of shoes. Just manage your appearance to the outside world. Pay attention to whats said about you, and what you say online. Do you think of yourself as a brand? Im fairly new to the idea of personal branding. I had in the past depended on my network, NBC, to handle my public face. However, as my responsibilities and commitments outside the sphere of NBC increased and my online contributions got more diverse, it made sense to me to think of myself more as my own brand manager. I was definitely influenced by my friend Sarah Lacy, who is an author and a TechCrunch contributor and a blogger and a half dozen other things (including a regular guest host on my TV show). She centralizes all her work at sarahlacy.com Shes also written extensively about creating your own brand though shes uncertain on its benefits. I think you can take the branding idea too far Ive never taken myself very seriously, and having your own self-named website is taking yourself awfully seriously. So there are aspects of branding about which I am uncomfortable. I dont like positioning myself as an expert or an influencer I usually cant find my own car keys. I blog occasionally, and the tagline to my blog is because the world needed one more blog. I hope you can detect the eye-roll there the world was doing just fine before I blogged and is no better because I do it. I Twitter, but even that isnt very serious. Im not posting deep thoughts my tweets are usually just links to something I find interesting. You have a personal website in addition to your NBC content. Why did you do this? I needed a centralized way to pull all my content together. Some people listen to me on sports radio. Others watch me on the morning news in the San Francisco Bay Area. Others watch me online. And I Twitter. And I have a blog. Each website or channel Im involved in has a way to contact me, but it just made sense to make one central place where it all tied together. Far more interesting than me is how my website works. Its absolutely zero maintenance, but it updates all the time. Ive written it to take advantage the fantastic flexibility of a service called Feed Informer. Feed Informer takes RSS feeds and turns them into HTML that you can use on your website. So my website www.scottmcgrew.net takes a look at whats coming from my blogs RSS feed and republishes the headlines from the blog on my main site. Then it examines the RSS feed coming out of my TV shows website pressheretv.com and publishes links to and summaries of the latest four videos posted there. And then I use a similar service offered by Twitter to republish my tweets. So I have three columns of content that are changing all the time, which keeps my content fresh. However, I never touch the actual website at all its all entirely automatic. The site design is from EWtemplates.com I think I paid $60 for it. Microsoft Expression Web is about $100. Combine those two and you can build just about anything. Another terrific service your readers should know about is Posterous. I run my blog using Posterous. To update your blog, you just email it. Attach a photograph, and its automatically included in the post. Add a link to a YouTube video and the player is automatically embedded in your content. And then your Facebook and Twitter feeds are automatically updated with a link to your new content. Its so easy to use, its almost impossible to explain. There are a few downsides: if you upload more than one picture, it automatically creates a slideshow whether you want it to or not, and often times you have to go back and edit links to work properly, but on balance Posterous is great. Can you talk about authenticity as it relates to TV media? Its hard to really be yourself when thousands or even millions are watching you. Being myself is the only thing Im any good at so its what I do on TV. Thats true whether youre working on television or creating an online brand: you MUST be yourself. Viewers and the internet can detect a fake a million miles away. My TV shows are reflections of me and my interests. My guests on Press:Here for instance are not chosen through audience analysis theyre chosen because I want to talk to them. One of my favorites was an interview with cellist Zoë Keating who performed one of her newest songs for us. Some of my co-workers were a bit hesitant about using so much TV time featuring a cellist, but I like her music so much, we did it anyway. And it turned out to be one of our most watched shows. Do the things you love have a passion for them and others will share your enthusiasm. Now that anyone can create videos, do you think this will really hurt television? I dont think its the ability to create videos per se that hurts television. Its that there are so many interesting things to watch or read or do online that hurts television there are fewer eyeballs.   Videos themselves are irrelevant most are not very well done and lack the storytelling that television professionals are so good at. Even the really popular stuff (e.g., Dr. Horrible Sing Along Blog) is professional video, after all.   The videos that DO get a lot of attention often get ported in some way over to TV. So in the end, TVs still the dominant force. For now. Scott McGrew has 20 years experience as a television reporter, 10 of them as a technology reporter. His work has been seen on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and the BBC. He has been nominated for 10 Emmy Awards, but hes quick to point out hes never won any.   He has been dabbling in computers since his first Apple II.   Scott was one of the few reporters in the world allowed to fly Combat Air Patrol as part of Operation Enduring Freedom following 9/11, when he flew backseat in an F-16 tailing civilian airliners.   He was also one of a corps of four reporters to witness the last firing squad execution in the United States. He wrote a piece about it for the London Daily Mail.   Scott reports on technology on the Bay Areas NBC, as well as produces and reports for the syndicated high technology show TechNow. He also joins sports radio hosts Murph, Mac and Gary Radnich on sports radio KNBR 680am on weekday mornings to talk business and technology.

Whats the Best Wellness Technology

What’s the Best Wellness Technology Technology has been introduced to nearly every aspect of our lives and the health and wellbeing sector is no different. In fact, there are some apps and gadgets that some people swear by to help track their fitness levels, while for some people its a total minefield. So is there such a thing as THE best wellness technology on the market? Here are our 10 corporate wellness experts to give us their views on the must-haves when it comes to wellness technology. Sam Fromson From activity trackers and meditation apps to smart ways to administer prescriptions correctly, the great news is technology is making a real difference to millions of people’s lives.  However, there is a lot of it out there which can make choosing the right solution daunting.   A good place to start is a ready-made platform which brings together a range of technological solutions to provide a single holistic and engaging approach to mental and physical wellbeing.   Not only is this approach easier and more cost effective to implement it’s more likely to appeal a broader cross-section of your people. Sam Fromson, Co-founder of Yulife. Jill King With so much health data being captured by individuals, the best technology analyses  your  health and wellbeing data from multiple inputs, makes predictions about  your  future health and proactively plans a course of preventative measures designed to keep you at your best.  The best technology should also enable a personalised experience, meeting employees where they are on their wellbeing journey, by integrating and analysing employee data from multiple sources, including eligibility files, health assessments, biometrics, interests, platform usage, and more â€" all while maintaining the highest data privacy, security and compliance standards Jill King,  Director of International Markets at VirginPulse. Nick Patel It depends on the individual.   Each person has different needs and goals, and as such, the technology best suited to facilitate their wellbeing will be different.   Also, the rise of application specific technologies, namely mobile apps, makes it hard for one solution to be the “best”.   For example, some users track their activity with a device, their nutrition with an app, and practice mediation with another app.   All three technologies are important to their overall wellbeing.   Fortunately, there is a wide array of consumer technologies they can choose from so there is always something for everyone. Nick Patel, CEO of Wellable. Liz Walker The best wellness technology lies not in the tech itself, but how we use the data it produces. For instance, Unum UK recently did a deep-dive into how customers are using its Employee Assistance Programme offered through LifeWorks. Results showed of those who used EAPs for mental health support, 92 percent felt their condition had improved after using the service, highlighting the effectiveness of EAPs. Knowing its value, employers could take this data and dial-up awareness of its availability, benefits and uses. Technology is ineffective if we don’t mine the data and take the findings to make improvements to fully optimise our wellbeing programmes. Liz Walker, HR Director, Unum UK. Sammy Courtright Advancements in fitness and wellness technology have come so far, there are almost too many awesome new apps and devices to list! When you partner with Fitspot to bring wellness to the workplace, for example, you can access to our state-of-the-art wellness portal. There, you can RSVP for classes, see the schedule, track stats and much more. Plus, when you sign up for a premium portal, you also get access to our innovative wellness partners, whose proprietary technology enables people to take their health into their own hands, 24/7. We’ve partnered with brands that deliver unique and powerful virtual services, directly to your employees. Partners include Whil, which offers virtual mindfulness training; Sworkit, which gives you access to an extensive library of workout videos and plans; and Zipongo, which makes it easy to plan healthy meals, personalized to your diet preferences and health goals. That’s just to name a few! Sammy Courtright, founder and CEO of Fitspot Wellness. Lucy Tallick Other than of course saying RG’s technology, the best tech out there is not going to solve your employee wellbeing goals. Whatever you choose to use will only work if you can create an engaged workforce and this needs to be your first step. By creating an engaged workforce you will find it far easier to gain participation and registration into any initiative you launch for wellbeing. But one thing is key; you need to make sure that whatever you choose is holistic, covering all aspects of wellbeing both mental, physical and financial it has to appeal to all levels and abilities and all of your workforce. Remember, every one of your employees has different wellbeing needs at different times of their journey with you and its crucial that you can appeal to all, all of the time! Lucy Tallick,   Head of Wellbeing at Reward Gateway. Alaana Linney Innovation is strong in the corporate wellness market. Big data and AI are transforming the health assessment model, calculating personal risk and helping to develop personalised health care plans. Mobile and tablet apps are also becoming really important, allowing employers to have a whole workforce view of the health of their employees and empower employees to take control of their own wellbeing using a range of tools and reward systems. Virtual GP and CBT services are also very valuable, minimising time away from the office and allowing remote access 24/7. Alaana Linney, Director of Business Development at Nuffield Health. Joe Gaunt It’s all about individualisation.  Health is such a personal thing and it’s important that companies allow for this.  My top tip is to use technology as an enabler and use it to enhance something you know you already enjoy, which is health related and compliments and encourages healthy behaviour. If a person enjoys exercising at the gym try adding an on demand virtual training session, such as Les Mills On Demand for the times you can’t get there on time or are travelling with work.  If mindfulness and time out to reflect and decompress one’s thoughts is important there are a number of great apps for this such as Headspace and Calm.   The clear takeaway is that wellness and health must be personal. Joe Gaunt, CEO of Hero Wellbeing. Shaun Bradley The best technology is one that is available at the right time and right place. For example, if you offer your employees an Employee Assistance Programme that’s only available from 9am to 5pm on weekdays, no matter how good the technology is, if you need it on a Sunday, it won’t solve your issue. Push Doctor is a good example of technology in this field. The platform is there when you need it and available wherever you want to access it via a laptop, phone, or tablet. Shaun Bradley, Director of People at  Perkbox. Ruth Tongue There are so many different apps and wearable technology gadgets nowadays, its hard not to get overwhelmed by them all.  At Elevate, we love recommending the  CALM  app for daily and sleep meditations. We also love  Fitbit  and  Myfitnesspal  tracker for encouraging physical activity and weight management, and DrinkLess for recording your weekly alcohol intake. Nutrifix is also a great new nutrition app to help make decision-making easier when it comes to eating out. Ruth Tongue, Co-founder of Elevate.