(Photo: sturti / iStockphoto)

When it comes to managing your career, you likely have a lot of information to deal with. All the information on your professional training may be in one file, completely separate from the information on your references. Just locating everything you need can add an hour to any career management task or project you work on — a time sink that’s repeated with each new one you embark on (e.g., filling out an online job application or career profile, completing federal background investigation forms, etc.). The problem is that you just may not have an easy way of managing such a wide variety of raw information.

The Career Vault is a tool that can help you bring all of that information together. It provides you with a place to store a variety of information about your career, from the standard resume fodder to your plans and strategy for your future. Once you’ve added your information, keeping it up-to-date is relatively easy. It’s just a matter of adding what you’ve been up to lately: setting aside a few minutes to update the Career Vault every month or two can cut hours from the time it takes you to create new career marketing materials or bring an adviser up to speed on your background. As a communications medium, Career Vault makes it easier to outsource career-related tasks and projects to virtual assistants and career management service providers.

To make using the Career Vault as simple as possible to use, it’s divided into a series of tabs. Each tab focuses on a specific area of your career: it provides you with fields to fill in with your own career information. The tabs include the following:

Strategy and Marketing: This section helps you track your goals, personal brand, and other details related to your future career plans.

Strategy and Marketing

Contact Information: In addition to helping you put together basic contact information, this section provides a place to set out details like your availability.

Contact Info

Biodata: As some jobs require you to provide statistics like your height and weight, you can record them in the biodata section.

Biodata

Experience: While resumes only give you space for a broad description of your experience, many other career marketing materials require an in-depth description. The experience section provides you a place to create such a description. (Note: there’s room to the right to include more detailed descriptions for the company, industry, LoB, sub LoB, and group, if need be.)

Experience

Target Job: This section will help you bring together a picture of your target job, setting down the answers to questions like your desired salary.

Target Job

Education: The education section is actually the first of several sections covering training and your other educational opportunities. This section specifically covers the information about your formal education and degrees obtained.

Education

Affiliations: Your memberships and affiliations are an important part of your career information and constitute a section of their own.

Affiliations

Honors and Awards: In this section, you can record awards from an academic, professional, or other setting.

Honors and Awards

Coursework: The coursework section offers you a change to set out the specific courses you’ve taken that are relevant to your career.

Coursework

Professional Training: The professional training that you’ve received in your career has its own section.

Professional Training

Conferences: With the conferences section, you can create a comprehensive list of conferences and seminars you’ve attended.

Conferences

Skills: In this section, you can describe specific job skills as well as your personal strengths.

Skills

Knowledge: If you have specialized knowledge within your industry, you can record it in the knowledge section.

Knowledge

Talents: The talents section is not necessarily limited to your career. You can also use it to record those things that you are passionate about and have a talent for.

Talents

Capabilities: Your capabilities, or areas of specialty, can be a combination of skills, knowledge, and talent.

Capabilities

Languages: You can record any languages you speak beyond your native tongue in the languages section, along with your proficiency.

Languages

Certifications: The certification section can be used to record your professional licenses and certifications.

Certifications

Grants: If you’ve conducted academic or professional research, you can note the grants you’ve received in this section.

Grants

Publications: Any publications that you’ve created or contributed to belong in the publications section.

Publications

Presentations: If you’ve prepared and delivered any formal presentations, list them in the presentations section.

Presentations

Media Appearances: If you’ve made any media appearances — such as TV, radio, print, podcast, or online video — list them here.

Media Appearances

Testimonials: The testimonial section is for commendations of any kind, from your job performance reviews to LinkedIn “recommendations.”

Testimonials

References: Adding individuals to the references section who are willing to vouch for you can create a list you can use in a variety of career management projects.

References

Addresses: In order to ensure that you have all the addresses you reference throughout the Career Vault, you can create a list of them in the addresses section.

Addresses

Misc.: The misc. section provide a home for such information as military records, security clearances, and personal interests.

Misc.

Help Improve Career Vault

The original impetus behind Career Vault was coming up with a communication medium to make it easier to outsource career-related tasks and projects to virtual assistants and career management service providers. But it obviously serves as a useful tool for simply managing and keeping your career information up-to-date, as articulated above.

A good amount of work was put into creating the initial version of Career Vault, and hopefully that’s reflected in its utility. But more can be done to improve it in its current format. And that’s where you come in. Please, openly and freely share your feedback and thoughts on what you do and don’t like and how you think Career Vault could be improved. To get your motors running, here are some ideas that I have:

• Ideal job description
• Benefits requirements
• Job search keywords
• Metatags or descriptors

Career Vault as a Web-based Application?

Now, if it appears that there’s a lot interest in Career Vault based on your feedback and uptake, then at some point I’ll turn it into a web-based application. But before I do that, I’d like to hear your answers to the following questions:

1. Would you use Career Vault to store and manage your holistic career information?
2. Would you see a web-based version of Career Vault as a solution to the problem of managing your disparate career information, or merely as a contributor to the problem — “yet one more site to enter and maintain my information?” (It’s supposed to be the solution.)
3. Would the site have to be integrated with popular tools like Monster, LinkedIn, and VisualCV to be most useful to you, or would you be delighted to have it serve as your own personal standalone career lockbox where you and you alone held the keys?

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Thursday Bram contributed to this post.

(Photo: claudiodivizia / iStockphoto)

When you’re looking to outsource a writing project to a freelancer, it isn’t just a matter of posting a classified ad and browsing through a stack of resumes. It takes consideration to find a writer who can take on your project, in terms of skill, knowledge, and style — but when you put forth the effort, you can find a writer who can complete a project you’ll be proud of.

The Creative Brief

The first step you can take towards finding the right freelancer for your project is developing a creative brief. A brief is a description of the project you have in mind: the format, the length, the due date. Any information that you can add to clearly describe what the project entails belongs in the brief, including topics you expect the writer to cover and special sources of information you want to use. You don’t need to include information about your budget in a creative brief, although most writers are going to want to talk price immediately after seeing your brief. It’s a good idea to put together your budget for a project at the same time you develop your creative brief.

You can also leave out descriptions of your ideal writer from your creative brief. While you may have a specific idea of how much experience a writer should have, the fact of the matter is that years of freelance experience is rarely a good indicator of skill. Your creative brief should focus on sharing the concept of what you want your final project to look like. If, for instance, you want a blogger who can help you write content for your site, your creative brief should reflect the length of posts you want, topics, the general approach or slant you want a writer to use, and any other information that can help you describe a project.

A creative brief serves more than one function. First and foremost, it can serve as an advertisement to help you find prospects. You can post your creative brief on craigslist.org, Freelance Writing Jobs, and thousands of other sites to solicit responses from prospective writers. You’ll want to add just a little bit of information to your brief, of course: requesting writing samples and mentioning a general budget can limit the number of responses somewhat. Equally important, though, is that a creative brief can help you speed up your hiring process. It gives you a chance to be very clear on what you want, so that you can find a writer who fits your needs — and get started on your project as soon as you find your writer.

The Right Writer

Depending on the kind of project you have in mind and the pay you’re offering, you can easily get thousands of responses to a listing for a freelance writer. Sorting through all those prospective writers can seem like an insurmountable task at first, but with a little tweaking of your advertisement and a little practice, you can find a freelance writer in no time.

When you’re looking for a writer, you specifically want to ask for samples of past work. While I mentioned that looking for a writer with a certain number of years of experience doesn’t make sense, you still want a writer with the skills to handle your project. There are some cases when you set the bar fairly low — for instance, if you have a low budget for a project, you’re unlikely to get a writer with a perfectly polished style. But you do want to know that a writer meets your needs for a project, no matter what they are. The easiest way to check that fact is to take a look at a writer’s samples. You’ll want to request samples similar to your project, preferably pieces written recently.

Sorting through samples can actually be done faster than you might think. After glancing over the second or third blog post, article or website, you can usually eliminate writers who don’t fit your project quickly. Narrowing down from there can be a bit harder: you may wind up with three or four different writers you’d like to work with. But availability, budget, and other factors can usually lead you to just one writer.

You may be tempted to ask writers for a sample written specifically for your project, such as a sample description or a blog post. While a few writers may be willing to provide you with such a sample, many freelance writers will simply refuse. Asking for such samples can eliminate the best writers from your prospect pool: the reasons range from the number of dishonest individuals that have used such requests to get free content to the fact that many of the best writers simply don’t have time to put together something that may or may not actually be published.

The Deal

Once you have a particular writer in mind, you’ll want to set out the terms of your project. Many freelancers have set rates for their services; others are willing to put together a project estimate. The nature of your project can dictate which option is best for you. For instance, if you’re looking to have copy written for a website, a price for the full project may be more practical for you. But if you’re looking for a writer who can provide you with a blog post every week indefinitely, a per-post rate may be the best option. Take a look at the way your preferred writer operates and discuss which options will work best for both you.

In addition to setting a price, you’ll also want to establish how you’ll handle details like payment. Does the writer expect half of the fee for the project up-front? Does he or she expect payment to go through particular channels? Ask these questions to make sure that both you and your writer can focus on the project at hand. If your chosen freelancer has been in business for a while, he or she might have a contract for client projects. If so, take a look at it: if it clearly outlines the terms of your agreement and the project, having a contract in place can protect both you and the writer.

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Got time for life? (photo: AleksandrL / iStockphoto)

American society is open-ended — an endless number of things to do, be, see, have, and experience. This open endedness creates a sense of time starvation among us — always one more thing to do or accomplish — which, in turn, drives us to seek means and methods to maximize every living nanosecond or to complain endlessly about how other people, corporations, governments, and electronic devices waste our time. While the Zen in me tells me to savor time, live for the moment, and be thankful for my mere existence, I’m still American and personally believe that the key to a fulfilling life is ultimately through a combination of Zen-like thinking and the continuous pursuit of effective, efficient, and productive time use. It’s in principal support of the latter that makes time tracking an indispensable means for discovering more time for life. In this post, I offer several tips for tracking and analyzing your time, irrespective of the tool that you use. (Tools you can use include: BubbleTimer, RescueTime, Freckle, Emergent Task Timing, MindTools.com Activity Log, and ATUS Time-Diary Format.)

Recording your time use. Naturally, start each new day at 12:00 a.m. During wakeful hours, the most accurate way to keep track of your time use is to record what you’re doing every 15 minutes. But at that frequency you’ll just end up perceiving time tracking (64 times per day) as your new #1 daily time waster. The approach that strikes the right balance between accuracy and efficiency is to record your time either right before you go to bed or first thing in the morning, ensuring that whatever activities consumed your day are fresh on your mind.

It also doesn’t make sense to track your time 365 days out of the year, unless you want to reaffirm the law of diminishing returns. Set up a recurring basis such as two weeks every quarter.

Don’t distort the data. In reflecting on your previous day’s time use, be brutally honest with yourself. Don’t record what you “should” have been doing; record what you actually did. Avoid the tendency to record the socially acceptable use of your time — e.g., “worked 8 straight hours” when in reality you only worked 5 hours or “played with kids for 2 hours” when actually watched C-SPAN three-fourths the time. For personal activity data you don’t want anyone to ever see, come up with a secret activity code name such as “studied the Klingon language.”

Remember: garbage in, garbage out.

Test the elasticity of your time by crunching it. The primary purpose of tracking your time is so that you can analyze the data and discover better ways to employ your time. Within the context of your time diary, contemplate the following question:

“Suppose that early on during the time-diary day you discovered that something had come up suddenly. You could tend to it any part of the day or night, but somehow you simply had to find one hour to take care of it before you went to bed again. In a day like the one you had yesterday on (diary day), what things would you have given up to make room for that hour?”
[1]

Repeat this question for a 3-hour activity that had to be done, and note what activity you would forgo. Take it further and compress your whole day just to 12 hours. What would you eliminate, reduce, automate, or outsource?

This simple, yet powerful time-crunching technique should reveal some non-essential activities that consume your most precious commodity — time. Sociologists use this clever technique to study people’s time-use perceptions, but you can use it to transform your time-use behavior.

Examining secondary activities. People tend to task-switch with high frequency over short periods of time or undertake multiple overlapping activities at once. (In other words: multi-task.) Given the realities of how people use their time, one important feature of most time-tracking tools is the ability to capture primary and secondary activities. Whether or not a combination of tasks or activities is synergistically productive or counterproductive is highly contextual and individualistic. Much of the current literature on managing your tasks for maximum productivity recommends doing one at a time (single-tasking). Use your time-tracking data to evaluate whether or not undertaking a secondary activity while doing the primary is enhancing or detracting from your productivity (see measuring time-use performance below).

Measuring activity-related satisfaction. The unfortunate reality is that we only have so many hours per day to live satisfactorily. So why then do people fill their days with activities that they actually moderately like, dislike or, worse, loathe? Take for example TV: Numerous social surveys show that TV-watching ranks as one of the least satisfactorily ways to spend free time, yet Americans continue to watch 2.6 hours of it per day. This is somewhat inexplicable to me. Perhaps people just haven’t raised their dissatisfaction with TV-watching to a conscious level, or simply failed to recognize that it represent society’s modern vice slowly killing their time for life.

Whatever the reason, you can use your time diary to measure the degree to which you like or dislike the activities occupying your time. To do this, simply assign a satisfaction/enjoyment rating using a Likert scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being Dislike and 10 being Like. You can use the results of your ratings to identify activities which you might want to consider eliminating, reducing, automating, or outsourcing (anything around or below 7) and those which you should sink more of your life into (anything above 7).

Measuring time-use performance. There are a number of ways to do this, each with varying degrees of complexity. You can gauge your productivity by defining personal output measures. For example, write three 500-word blog posts in 6 hours, or 2 hours per 500-word post. You can measure performance by defining outcome measures such as the three posts average 250 diggs and average 4.0/5.0 quality rating. You can also measure how efficiently you use your time by comparing yourself against others. For example, the average person writes four 500-word posts in 6 hours. The web app RescueTime makes such benchmark comparisons possible by aggregating time-use statistics from its user base through tags and generic activity categories.

All the above are great options. One measurement method that I’m beginning to use, however, is what I call utilizable time efficiency. The idea here is that after you subtract the hours you must spend on personal maintenance (sleeping, eating, and grooming) from 24 hours, you’re left with utilizable time. With your utilizable time, you can spend it in one of two ways: on value-added activities or non-value-added activities. The more time you spend on the former, the better you’re utilizing (or maximizing) your time. The opposite is true for the latter.

Here’s how to use this measurement:

1. For each activity in your time diary, indicate whether it was a value-added, non-value-added, or neutral (reserved for personal maintenance activities) use of your time.
2. Add up the time spent on neutral activities and subtract from 24 hours to get your utilizable time. Let’s assume 15 hours for illustration purposes.
3. Now add up your time spent on value-added vs. non-value-added activities. Let’s assume 10 hours and 5 hours, respectively.
4. Lastly, calculate your utilizable time efficiency: total time of value-added activities / total utilizable time. 10 / 15 = 67%.

Obviously, what this percentage tells you is that you spent about two-thirds of your utilizable time on activities that (you felt) added something to your life or aligned directly with your personal goals. The other way to think this: you wasted 33% of your life that day. On any given day, the target, although not wholly realistic, is 100%. How you get closer to 100% is in large part what this blog’s about.

There are other tips that I’d like to share relating to time-use goals, time pressures, psychological factors, activity coding, location coding, and improving utilizable time efficiency and correlating with happiness, but I think I’ve said enough for one post. Stay tuned, as some pretty cool stuff that can be measured, learned, and acted upon from time-tracking data.

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References/notes:
- [1] Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time

(Image: fpm / iStockphoto)

Creating a personal brand is rapidly becoming a necessity: both employers and customers are choosing whom they work with on the basis of a person’s personal brand just as much as their other qualifications. But developing your personal brand might not be as simple as you might hope: it’s not just a matter of buying a domain name and putting together a business card. Developing and managing your personal brand requires a unique combination of skill, knowledge, discipline, self-perspective, future-oriented thinking, and tools & techniques in order to make YOU standout from the rest of humanity. Fortunately, there a number of personal branding experts out there who can walk you through the whole process of branding YOU and relieve you of some of the burdensome labor associated with the process, such as putting together an online portfolio. While finding a personal branding consultant that fits your needs might take a bit of work, this list of 50 experts should make your search a little easier.

1. William Arruda (website, blog)
   William literally wrote the book on building a personal brand to advance your career — Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand — with his co-author Kirsten Dixon. William has worked with an amazing list of clients, including Disney, Microsoft, and American Express; he also works with up-and-coming brands as well.
2. Kirsten Dixson (blog)
   Kirsten is an online identity expert and co-authored Career Distinction with William Arruda. She specializes in customized personal branding approaches and offers options for building online presences. Kirsten is one of the world’s first to earn the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist certification, a program that she now facilitates in addition to Reach’s online identity certification program that she conceived.
3. Melissa Cassera (website, blog)
   Melissa worked in public relations in a variety of industries before launching her own firm, Cassera Communications. In addition to consulting on personal branding, she offers coaching that allows clients to learn how to promote themselves as well as help with social media elements.
4. Lauren Still (website, blog)
   Lauren is a certified personal life and career coach. While Lauren works with professionals looking to develop their careers, her talent is coaching professional women who are also balancing families and their own needs.
5. Anna Farmery (website, blog)
   Anna offers advice on social media strategies and using social media to create brands. In addition to her consulting, Anna’s blog and podcast are very successful and have been nominated for numerous awards.
6. Hajj Flemings (website, blog)
   Hajj’s book, The Brand YU Life, covers branding in some depth. He also teaches personal brand management at Michigan Technological University, as well as speaking regularly about brand management.
7. Miriam Salpeter (website)
   Miriam offers a tiered approach to her consulting services: most of her efforts are focused on career coaching, but she does include personal brand consulting as part of her services — including some social media work. Miriam has over ten years of career coaching experience.
8. Kim Batson (website)
   Kim, in addition to her career coaching, provides consulting on creating the collateral materials necessary for a good brand. She specializes in working with technology professionals, to the point that Kim is called “The CIO’s Coach.”
9. David Sandusky (website)
   David Sandusky helps clients develop a personal brand through the use of a web-based tool called Personal Board of Advisors, which can help focus growth in a particular direction. He also provides marketing strategies for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
10. Paul Copcutt (website, blog)
    Paul provides both snapshot assessments of personal brands and long-term personal brand coaching — and everything in between. His specialty is professionals looking to move into six-figure jobs.
11. Dan Janal (website, blog)
    Dan has over 20 years of PR experience and was on the PR team that launched AOL. He offers both consulting and coaching services, and offers a free five-minute consultation to those interested in building their personal brands.
12. Maureen Cullen (website)
    Maureen offers a variety of coaching venues, including individual coaching and workshops. She focuses primarily in career fulfillment and transition coaching and holds a wide variety of career coaching credentials.
13. Anthony Fisher (website, blog)
    In addition to providing standard personal brand development services, Anthony also helps build the materials necessary to promote a person’s brand. With a design background, Anthony is capable of building websites and other key elements of a personal brand. Anthony’s clients include a variety of entrepreneurs, as well as artists, evangelists, and speakers.
14. Louise Mowbray (website, blog)
    Louise has over 17 years of branding experience in the finance, technology, and luxury-lifestyle sectors. She provides personal branding services to clients looking to build upon their current careers with control of their personal brands.
15. Vivian VanLier (website)
    Vivian provides career coaching and personal brand consulting services. Among Vivian’s specialties are working with Baby Boomers, as well as her well-known resume writing skills. Her resumes have been published in more than 30 books.
16. Wendy Terwelp (website, blog)
    Wendy provides personal branding and coaching for entrepreneurs and business owners. She also provides networking advice and uses her background as a recruiter to advise clients on career issues.
17. Louise Kursmark (website, blog)
    Louise’s background includes 26 years of resume writing and other outplacement services. She can offer advice on branding yourself during a career search — and help make that search a success.
18. Abby Locke (website, blog)
    Abby has created personal brand solutions for a variety of executives and corporate leaders. She’s a Certified Personal Branding Strategist and can help build an online presence.
19. Tara Kachaturoff (website)
    Tara is Michigan’s first Reach Certified Personal Brand Strategist as well as a Certified Online Identity Strategist. She is the producer and host of Michigan Entrepreneur, a weekly television talk show which features Michigan entrepreneurs and organizations that support entrepreneurship. Tara can provide several levels on services to help clients create an online presence, as well as providing personal brand consulting.
20. Dan Schawbel (website, blog)
    Dan’s specialty is personal branding for members of Generation Y. He’s especially well known for his blog on personal branding, along with his book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success.
21. Megan Fitzgerald (website, blog)
    Megan works with expats and globally-minded professionals and entrepreneurs seeking a career or business that fits who they are and their international lifestyle.
22. Sally Witzky (website, blog)
    Sally has transitioned from marketing such clients as Mercedes-Benz to helping clients build their own brands. In addition to her personal brand consulting, Sally also offers coaching for speaking and online brands.
23. Luke Harvey-Palmer (website, blog)
    Luke goes a step beyond helping clients develop their personal brand. He helps them manage their brands with an eye to the long-term. He provides in-depth information about social media and its uses for personal branding.
24. Shayna Gaspard (website)
    Shayna uses the skills she developed while working in Deloitte’s Strategy & Operations practice. She focuses on creating an overall personal brand strategy for her clients and helping them position themselves to make better use of their own brands.
25. Maria Elena Duron (website, blog)
    Maria has made a specialty of coaching her clients through the difficulties of setting up an online presence and managing brand and reputation across many networks. She regularly works with executives and entrepreneurs looking to create a balanced approach to their own brands.
26. Phil Gerbyshak (blog)
    Phil uses social marketing to promote personal brands. In addition to coaching clients through a wide variety of new media, Phil also speaks on a regular basis to larger groups.
27. Jennifer Rushton (website)
    While Jennifer focuses on creating excellent resumes, she also provides personal branding services to help her clients get the total package. She offers a variety of coaching programs.
28. Bernadette Martin (website)
    Bernadette provides a variety of personal brand management services and produces the Visibility Branding Webinar Series, which explores career development and personal branding. She works with international clients routinely and can provide cross-cultural branding strategies.
29. Cindy Kraft (website, blog)
    Cindy’s expertise is in providing personal branding strategies, as well as career coaching for corporate finance and banking executives. She provides branding help to position clients through new media, as well as through more traditional methods.
30. Krishna De (website, blog)
    Krishna is known as Ireland’s leading personal branding strategist. She works with executives to craft distinctive personal brands, and provides consulting services regarding social media.
31. Nancy Branton (website)
    Nancy provides career and branding coaching starting from initial assessments all the way through the development process. She has over 30 years of experience in human resources and talent management.
32. Walter Akana (website)
    Walter takes a holistic approach to helping clients who are dissatisfied with their current position. He helps clients find more direction in their careers and lives and build a personal branding strategy.
33. Liz Lynch (website, blog)
    Liz’s book Smart Networking is just recently out: it reflects her talents in helping clients build a great network and mass-following both online and in-person. Liz provides several levels of coaching.
34. Stacia Williams (website, blog)
    Stacia uses her image consulting skills to help clients manage every aspect of their personal brands. She works with a wide variety of clients, including executives, entrepreneurs, and politicians.
35. Debbie Weil (website, blog)
    Debbie focuses on helping executives and professionals develop successful blogs. Her approach offers clients an effective way to showcase their personal brands via powerful and effective content. She provides consulting sessions as well as content strategy services.
36. Catherine Kaputa (website, blog)
    Catherine provides her clients with the tools to think of themselves as products, helping to create brands for both professionals and entrepreneurs. Catherine has a book due out in 2009 focusing on how women, in particular, can brand themselves effectively.
37. Diana Jennings (website, blog)
    Diana works with her clients to not only develop their personal brands but also to match their outward appearance to that brand. Her personal brand coaching includes personal style development, wardrobe consultations, and other resources to tweak a client’s presentation.
38. Susan Guarneri (website, blog)
    Susan is known as the Career Assessment Goddess because of her ability to use assessments to help clients discover and clarify what they want from their careers. Susan can then use that information to help her clients build their personal brands.
39. Riham El-Hawary (website)
    Riham is the leading expert on personal branding development in the Middle East. She works primarily with professionals in the area, offering a variety of consulting services to create personal brands for her clients.
40. Deb Dib (website, blog)
    Deb works primarily with executives and limits herself to just 24 clients per year. She walks her clients through every step of the personal branding process, along with providing other career management services.
41. Timothy O’Brien (website)
    Timothy coaches executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs in his “Rainmaker U.” program, enabling them to position themselves with personal brands far beyond those of their competitors. Graduates of Timothy’s program have won numerous awards, as well as succeeded on a professional level.
42. Peter Montoya (website)
    Peter provides personal branding services, along with other coaching and marketing services, to financial professionals. He has limited his clientele to just the financial services industry, but he has perfected personal branding techniques for that type of professional.
43. Karen McSteen (website)
    Karen’s past experience includes a stint as AOL’s Senior Vice President of Brand Strategy as well as Brand Vice President at Marriott International. She has turned over 25 years of brand management experience into an opportunity for clients to learn how to manage their brands from the best.
44. Wendy Newman (website)
    Wendy has over twenty years of marketing and branding experience, working for such companies as Starbucks. She provides personal branding services to high-profile professionals, focusing on authenticity.
45. Victoria Scott (website)
    Victoria offers image consulting services to help create a personal style and visual brand. Victoria provides information about every aspect of your appearance, even down to skincare.
46. Rosemary Davies-Janes (website)
    Rosemary trained as a life coach and spent 15 years in marketing. She has combined her backgrounds to offer personal branding services that allow clients to define their me brands and build upon that definition.
47. Gerry Visca (website)
    Gerry’s “Red Chair” personal coaching program provides clients with an opportunity to focus on their personal brands. The four-week program caters to entrepreneurs and includes creating a personal plan that clients can put into play.
48. Chandlee Bryan (website, blog)
    Chandlee’s career coaching experience includes time spent as the Director of Career Services at Dartmouth College’s engineering school. Personal branding is one of several services she offers as part of her career coaching.
49. Jan Melnik (website, blog)
    As part of the career transition resources she offers, Jan provides clients online identity management. She particularly focuses on creating an online presence that will appear when prospective employers search for you.
50. Billie Sucher (website, blog)
    Billie’s more than 20 years of career coaching experience allows her to work with clients to develop a personal brand that will offer significant advantages during a career transition. She has worked with entry-level to executive-level clients to create personal brands.

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Post updates:
- January 12, 2009 at 11:00 AM ET: Made corrections to Tara Kachaturoff’s information.
- January 13, 2009 at 7:00 PM ET: Made corrections to Kirsten Dixson’s information.
- February 2, 2009 at 6:15 PM ET: Updated Megan Fitzgerald’s information.

Time she could be saving you per year = 269 hours. (photo: sjlocke / iStockphoto)

How often have you looked into your refrigerator and noticed that it was empty? That you didn’t have anything to eat and no ingredients to cook? I don’t know about you, but this happens to me way too often, forcing me to make an unproductive run to the grocery store or eat yet another overpriced and unhealthy meal out of the house. If only there were a method to make sure you had enough food, always. Fortunately, with the increase in personal outsourcing options, now you can even outsource the most basic of tasks: grocery shopping.

What can a personal grocery shopper do for you?

Depending upon your needs, a personal grocery shopper can do a lot of different things for you:

• Plan your meals/diet for you;
• Give you recipes and ideas for healthy meals;
• Research discounts and deals on recipe ingredients and grocery items;
• Buy items at the grocery store and deliver them to you;
• Sometimes, even cook for you!

Who should consider hiring one?

Those who should consider acquiring the services of a personal grocery shopper include:

• Busy professionals — If you’re working the 9 to 9, then you probably want someone to do everything for you: plan your meals, purchase ingredients, deliver them to you, and perhaps even cook for you. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone could help you reclaim some or all of the 269 plus 371 hours you spend over the course of a year, or 7% of your annual life, on grocery shopping and food preparation, respectively? [1]
• Health nuts — If “your body is your temple,” then you might want someone to research good diets, purchase healthy ingredients, and offer you ideas on what healthy foods to prepare.
• Disabled or elderly — If you’re disabled or elderly, then you might need someone just to purchase and deliver your groceries.
• Frozen-food connoisseurs — If you find yourself eating frozen foods every night (don’t lie, I know this is you), then you might want a grocery shopper to help you determine your nutritional needs and help you live healthier.

How to get one?

Finding a great personal grocery shopper is a lot like finding a great personal assistant: before you start searching, you need to know exactly what you want. Do you need someone to plan your meals? Cook for you? Or simply buy your groceries? How often do you need help? What days and times of the week? And so on.

After you figure out what your needs are, it’s time to start your search. Based on my experience, the best place to solicit the services of a personal grocery shopper is craigslist.org. Simply post an ad with your needs and wait for the multitude of responses to choose from.

Whose response should you select? To make this decision, you need to weigh such factors as price, qualifications, and customer references. For someone who’s only going to buy your groceries, little to no experience is required so consider any price above $15/hr unreasonable. For someone who’s going to plan your meals and cook for you as well, you need someone with experience so consider $20-$35/hr a reasonable price range. (Advice: often times “personal chefs” set price by the number of meals and the number of people served. Translate this into an hourly unit to check whether the price is actually reasonable.) Keep in mind you can always negotiate the price down or receive a considerable discount by setting up a multi-month agreement (some assistants will lower their price in exchange for “income security”). In making your selection, be sure to hold an interview and to check references; you want to be confident in and comfortable with whomever you’re hiring and bringing into your home. If you have any reservations, you can always setup a trial period or take extra precautions upfront — for example, security cameras, melee weapons, and small firearms.

After hiring your personal grocery shopper, work with him or her to develop a plan and “system” for getting you fed. Set up a diet, list of ingredients and grocery items, and meal preparation plan. Then unleash your assistant. You’ll be glad you did. You’ll find that your personal grocery shopper is not only great for freeing up extra hours in your day, but also making sure you get healthy, decent meals for an overall improved quality of life.

1. If you just want your groceries picked up, consider ordering them online (see Smartlife’s list of 100 places to grocery shop online) rather than paying someone to go to the store. The only significant advantage to in-store grocery shopping is the chance to handpick your produce so you only get the freshest available.
2. Consider having your personal grocery shopper purchase your grocery items in bulk rather than individually, as a way to save yourself some money. Items purchased in bulk are typically discounted and, therefore, priced much cheaper on a per unit basis, especially at wholesalers such as Costco Wholesale and BJ’s Wholesale Club whose prices are considerably lower than retailers’.
3. Ask your assistant to find coupons for the items on your list, probably something you wouldn’t do on your own time. To track how much he or she is saving you with coupons (and other bargain-hunting techniques), simply check your receipt and tally the results.
4. If you reside in a high-rise building, consider purchasing a folding shopping cart so your assistant doesn’t waste time, time for which you must pay, lugging groceries back and forth from the car, up the elevator, and into your fridge. You should especially get one if your assistant is going to shop at a wholesaler such as Costco where paper or plastic carrying bags aren’t supplied at all as way to keep costs low.
5. Make sure the person you hire owns a set of hot/cold food containers to keep your food items chilled or warm, especially if he or she shops for multiple customers. You don’t want to pay upwards of $100 or more per container out of your own pocket.
6. How much you need to budget depends on a number of factors, namely where you live, what you ask your assistant to do (some tasks are cheaper than others), level of experience required, number of persons in your household, dietary habits, and final price negotiations. To approximate the amount, I recommend that you post an ad on craigslist.org and see what kind of proposals you get in terms of cost. From these, determine what the consensus cost to you is going to be. If it’s too much, you can always scale back the level of service that you’re requesting and re-post another ad.
7. If your budget is tight (tough times, I know), but you really desire to free up some of your time for other pursuits, try to find a nearby friend or neighbor who would like to “timeshare” a personal grocery shopper with you as a way to spread the costs out. For example, let’s assume that you found a really great assistant for $15/hr, but can’t afford that. If you negotiate with the assistant a two-person rate of $22/hr, you now reduced your individual cost to perhaps a more affordable $11/hr.
8. Since you’ll probably grow semi-dependent on the services of your personal grocery shopper, consider hiring a backup in case he or she leaves town. Or at least hang on to the names of those who made your shortlist as part of the initial hiring process.

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Chris Cairns contributed to this post.

References/notes:
- [1] According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2007 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), Americans who engage in the activity of grocery shopping spend an average of .74 hours per day and those who engage in the activity of food preparation (and cleanup) spend an average of 1.02 hours per day.

Suggested reading:
- “How to Store Bulk Food Purchases” (eHow.com)
- “How to Buy Food in Bulk” (eHow.com)
- “How to Be a Personal Grocery Shopper” (eHow.com)
- “The Price of my Dreams – $60 a Week” (SidSavara Blog)
- “Are wholesale clubs like CostCo and Sams Club worth the money?” (Tony Spencer Blog)
- Dietary Guidelines for Americans (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
- “How to Make a Grocery Shopping List When Someone Else is Doing Your Shopping” (Associated Content)

(Photo: Douglas Cole / Flickr)

This post presents my full three-night/four-day Las Vegas trip itinerary. As explained in Part 1 and Part 2 of this post series, the purpose of providing you my thoroughly-researched and fully-tested agenda is threefold:

(1) Save you time. Whether you follow my agenda to the letter or tailor here-and-there to meet your preferences, this information will save you considerable planning time. With the help of my assistant, I spent nearly 15 hours researching logistics, costs, rankings, texture, timing, and ambience to arrive at my weekend plans. If you can spare 15 hours, then by all means take the time to plan your own Sin agenda. Otherwise, save yourself some valuable time and use mine.

(2) Save you money. As I explained in Part 1, going to Vegas without a plan could end up costing you. Las Vegas loves the non-planner who waltzes in and loses the majority of his or her money in the first and last thirty minutes of a visit. Vegas profit numbers have a lot of zeroes made off the occasional, recreational gambler. Don’t become another statistic. Plan, plan, plan. Then go have fun. Is there anything worse then returning home and discovering there was something you wished you’d done?

(3) Maximize your experience. Without a plan, the shiny lights, loud dinging noises, $.99 buffets, plush lounges, and other distractions will do just that. After 72 hours of wandering like a 10-year old in Toys “R” Us, you’ve missed Vegas (or most of it).

Here are few notes that you should keep in mind about my agenda:

• As I explained in Part 1, this schedule is directed at the Hybrid type of Las Vegas visitor (such as couples going to Vegas for a long weekend). Others can use the schedule as a planning tool and, in fact, I challenge anyone to experience my deluxe Vegas agenda and tell me that didn’t have a good time.
• As also noted in Part 1, this trip agenda is pretty much age neutral and that’s always a nice feature of Vegas: any person age 21 and up can enjoy a plethora of opportunities to do as thou wilt. I’m not saying that there aren’t spots that trend towards certain older and younger demographics, but those unwritten rules reflect vague boundaries that are self-enforcing as opposed to written law.
• As mentioned in Part 2, my significant other and I stayed at the Venetian. The agenda works equally as well for any mid-strip hotel: Paris, Bellagio (still the place to be and be seen), Palazzo, Mirage, Treasure Island, Wynn, Caesars, or any other big name establishment adjacent to these. While the Venetian’s hotel room prices run higher than the average, it’s worth the extra money based on location, room, size, and hotel amenities. Other hotels work, too. On the high-end, I’d pick Wynn. On the less expensive end (but very nice) is the Mirage. All of the hotels that I mentioned are extremely nice and will serve you well.
• My flight departed from the East Coast, so factor in your own flight times into the agenda.
• If you follow the agenda in its deluxe form to the letter, you and your travel mate will need a combined budget of around $3,565 ($1,782.50 p/p). (A detailed cost breakdown is provided below, following the agenda.) This amount of money should cover EVERYTHING: flight, hotel room, shows, meals, drinks, gambling, and ground transportation. Of course, your costs may vary slightly depending upon city of departure, time of year (I went in May), and other factors.

Now that I covered the benefits of coming up with a plan, and variables you should take into consideration in planning your trip, let me unveil my whole schedule, followed by some quick comments on why I chose what I did, how it worked out, and how much it cost.

Las Vegas 2008 — Three-Night/Four-Day Itinerary

Las Vegas Trip in Brief:

DAY ONE: So you’ve arrived on a Friday afternoon. Once you retrieve your luggage, head directly to the taxi line out front. The line will be long but it moves very quickly.

En route to your hotel, the Venetian, take a moment to ask your cab driver which hotel entrances are you most likely to find cabs that are quickly accessible. Most people stand out front in a huge line, but there are several other locations where cabs are dropping off people and looking for a Smartlife Traveler who walked 100 yards to save 45 minutes.

After the taxi drops you off, check-in to the hotel and then immediately head back down to survey the facilities. Take a good look around so you will avoid missing something that you accidentally discover at the end of your stay that you wish you’d known about.

After settling-in, head over early to Bellagio, pull the slots, and order champagne (which comes with plump strawberries) or gin and tonic. Remember to tip. At the Bellagio Buffet, you will not be disappointed. Plenty of everything and the place can get crowded but never too crazy. The desserts are definitely worth trying so watch your pace. The décor could use a little more pizzazz but you’ll be so busy eating that you probably won’t notice. Come early as the line can get very long (VERY LONG).

Now go enjoy Cirque du Soleil’s “O”. This show is mindboggling from an engineering perspective (not to mention the act). Seats are somewhat irrelevant as the theater isn’t that large and, although we sat in the front section and paid top dollar, I couldn’t see a bad seat in the place.

A few more cocktails afterwards then off to THEhotel (Mandalay Bay) for some clubbing. Mix Lounge at THEhotel is never too crowded and certainly not the chaos of PURE or TAO. However, what you do get at Mix is a great club with a view of the Strip that’s worth the ride.

Ok, back home and sleep for a few hours.

DAY TWO: Ok, ok, I know we’re going back up the Strip to the Mandalay complex but the Four Season’s and breakfast at the Verandah is a welcome escape and worth it. The Four Season brand has mastered the reserved sophistication. No matter who you are, you feel comfortable and welcome at their establishments. Their food is excellent and you can choose from their buffet or a la carte (try the pancakes but be warned: they’ll ruin all other pancakes for life). Float around the complex or head back to base camp.

Back at the Venetian either go swimming in the pleasant but not over-the-top pool or gamble or do something (anything) to work up an appetite because we’re heading to the Paris Hotel at 3:00 PM for another outstanding brunch.

Le Village Buffet is an “open air” dining experience (it is all indoors but you’ll see what I mean when you get there). Great selections from seafood to prime rib to comfort foods. And, of course, French foods are scattered throughout the seemingly endless stations. Again, just like the hotel, make sure you look around first before you start stacking your plate.

After bidding au revoir to Le Village Buffet, we head back home again (or walk around a bit and people watch). Not too much time because we have the 7:00 PM LE RÊVE show over at the Wynn. LE RÊVE is Wynn’s version of Cirque and is very well done.

After the show, we’re back over to the Bellagio. Enjoy a drink at the Petrossian Bar as the pianist melodically transports you. Watch people, win and lose at the tables, or tap the innumerable slots buttons that surround you. If you have alligator arms, skip the bar and play the slots for free cocktails.

Dinner is at the Prime Steakhouse. Ask for a seat in the front window. We’re dining late here so the front row request shouldn’t be an issue. While enjoying great, but expensive steak, you’ll have a front-row seat for another show: the famous Bellagio Fountains. Well worth it.

Ok, tonight we jump into the fray and head over to Caesars for a few hours of clubbing in their mega club PURE. Getting in can take some time for guys. Hot chicks, on the other hand, usually get in without much effort. A purchased VIP Pass expedites things but I’m not sure it’s worth it. Be patient and watch the “I’ve got a clipboard and therefore I am important” bouncers do what it is they do.

After PURE, back to bed or maybe a late-night run at roulette. Bet black. Ok, go to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow…I mean today.

DAY THREE: Up at 9:30 AM, make your way to Canyon Ranch Spa for a massage. After the rub-down, luxuriate in the pool, sauna, steam bath, and other facilities that are included in your treatment.

1:30 PM you hit the Sterling Brunch at Bally’s. Bally’s doesn’t look like much and neither do the three restaurants you’ll be buffeting in, but once you’re seated and you realize that you have access to unlimited lobster, King Crab, filet mignon, twice-baked potatoes (hidden around the string beans pan), and Champagne (Perrier-Jouët), you won’t leave. I asked the waiter if anyone had stayed as long as we did (I won’t say how long). He said “no” so we quickly drank up and got out. Believe me when I tell you that a little Perrier-Jouët is sublime; a lot of Perrier-Jouët can be downright dangerous. Excellent value at $75/person. Gamble, drink some more (I drank some more and that was really NOT a good idea), but don’t drink and gamble at the same time.

We have another show tonight; it’s lighter than the others but good fun nonetheless. Head across the way to Treasure Island and enjoy Mystère. While not as complex as “O” or LE RÊVE, it’s a manageable act and fun throughout. Seats here are good across the board and I had some excellent popcorn that mysteriously disappeared by show’s end.

Ok, I know that we’ve eaten a lot today (and that popcorn was really unnecessary), but back at the Venetian, Bouchon awaits us and you’ll like it. Food is excellent and its upscale bistro atmosphere will further cheer you up. The bread will bring you to your senses. After that, it’ll all fall into place as you peruse a multitude of good choices (hangar steak with frites for me).

Ok, back to the fun of getting into a club. This time we stay at home and penetrate TAO for some dancing, people watching, and expensive drinks. TAO is a test of patience, but if you stay focused, you’ll get in and have fun.

DAY FOUR: We’re up semi-early for a little rest and relaxation by the pool. After the obligatory sunburn, we shower, change, and pack. After packing, check your luggage at the bell desk and head over to my favorite buffet at the Wynn. If you’re leaving from the Wynn to the airport, take your luggage with you and check it in with the Wynn bellhop. For a couple of bucks, they’ll stash your stuff for a couple of hours.

The Wynn Buffet is on par with the Bellagio in terms of food, and a little ahead of Le Village (but not by much). The real difference is the dining area. It’s light, fun, and thoroughly enjoyable. After this final gorging, we retrieve our luggage and head to the airport via taxi. We aren’t in a hurry.

Approximate Breakdown of Costs:

Summary

My travel mate and I saw a lot of Las Vegas, ate enough to embarrass ourselves, won or lost at games of chance, and experienced some of Vegas’ best. In the end, it was a highly memorable trip thanks to a carefully-planned, easy-to-follow, step-by-step agenda. I highly recommend that you use it as a planning tool for your couples trip. You won’t be disappointed in the results. Now go book your Vegas trip for two, and when you return, let me know how much fun you had.

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If you have any questions — any at all — about the agenda or what to do in Vegas, leave me a comment. I’ll respond. The Las Vegas Travel Desk (that’s me) is here for your convenience. If you followed my agenda in any way shape or form, let me know how it went! I’ll use your feedback as input into planning next year’s couples trip.

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