No CS degree? No problem. A Code Fellows insider offers scrappy suggestions on how women interested in getting into tech can teach themselves to code.

By Maris McEdward (Marketing Manager, Code Fellows)

Much ink has been spilled discussing the need for more women in technical roles. Studies by groups like Catalyst and McKinsey have shown that companies with strong representation by women at all levels – and in all departments – perform better than those where women are a tiny minority.

And while it feels good to have mainstream conversations acknowledge what smart and ambitious women have known all along, we also know that recognition is only the first step in creating a solution.

So how do we get more women into jobs where they will thrive and where they’ll make outsized impacts? How do we get more women in tech?

One solution I see is for women interested in becoming developers, engineers, and coders to take a page from their sisters in startups. Female entrepreneurs have been playing by their own rules for awhile now and thriving because they ask, because they take, and because they don’t wait for permission. If you’re a woman interested in learning a coding language, learn it! Who cares if you didn’t take one CS class in college? What does it matter if you are work in marketing or sales or are an at-home mom? If you want to learn a technical skill there are plenty of resources out there where you can work at your own pace. The following sites are great places to get started:

• Basic Web Pages: http://teamtreehouse.com/library/websites/build-a-simple-website
• HTML5 and CSS3: http://www.codeschool.com/paths/html-css
• More HTML/CSS: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/web
• Javascript: http://www.codeschool.com/paths/javascript
• Git & GitHub: http://try.github.io
• Ruby & Rails: http://www.codeschool.com/paths/ruby
• Build a complete Rails app: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

Self-led learning is a relatively frictionless and low-risk way to learn basic coding. After you’ve mastered the basics there are numerous bootcamps and programs that can help polish your skills and prepare you for a technical job.

Once you have an understanding of coding and a portfolio to show people, you’ll have the experience and the confidence to ask for more help, which will grow your expertise and your network…and lead you to the technical job you were born to do!

Code Fellows, where I work, is one such bootcamp. It’s an intense six-week coding camp based in Seattle, WA that guarantees students will find a $60,000 job upon graduation.  Code Fellows is now accepting applications for their women-only bootcamp. This Ruby on Rails program begins July 8, 2013 and features Code Fellows’ exceptional instructors, small class sizes and in-depth mentoring. Learn more; apply now!

Women 2.0 readers: Did you teach yourself to code? What resources did you use?

About the guest blogger: Maris McEdward is the marketing manager for Code Fellows, an organization that offers coding bootcamps in Seattle and guarantees graduates a $60K job offer within six months of completing the program; and the program manager of the Microsoft Accelerator, powered by TechStars, a three-month, intensive program for startups developing in the cloud. In addition to working with early-stage startups, Maris also involved with several Seattle-based organizations that promote women in tech. 

Photo credit: hackNY.org via Flickr. 

• Learn Ruby on Rails in a Girls-Only Boot Camp
• What Have I Learned in the First Week of Coding in Python?
• Women At The 2012 Crunchies Awards, Tech’s Academy Awards
• How I Learned To Code
• 2012 In Review: Getting Hands On With Code

Starting your own business? Brace yourself for more work, less play… and a radical redefinition of ‘work-life balance’

By Nina Nashif (Founder & CEO, Healthbox)

I shot up in bed last Saturday morning, concerned about the status of a deck. I looked at the clock on the nightstand and the bright red lights glared 2:14 a.m. back at me. After telling myself for the next hour that the changes fundraising could wait, I ultimately turned on my computer, unable to fall back asleep.

This is not the first time my thoughts have hauled me out of bed at strange hours since I founded Healthbox in 2011. I often awaken in the middle of the night with inspiration for new ideas or anxiety about something I have to finish.

The phrase “work-life balance” inevitably means different things to different people at different stages in their lives. For someone in the process of building a company, you may only reach true equilibrium when you have done everything you can do to make your company a success. It is naïve to believe that being an entrepreneur is not all consuming. Every breath is filled with thoughts about what needs to be done, how to grow faster, who you need network with, what investors you should talk to and what direction your company needs to go in next. Why? In the end, the fate of your company lies with you, and without devoting complete focus and energy on its growth, you simply cannot gain momentum. Even if you find initial success, a true entrepreneur is always questioning what else she can do or agonizing over missed opportunities.

At The End of the Day, the Buck Stops with You

In the two years since starting Healthbox, I have built a capable team and partnered with some of the brightest entrepreneurs in the health care industry, but ultimately I am the one still held accountable for every success and every failure. While choices are going to be made without you and things will happen outside of your control, each decision is a reflection of you and your vision. This type of pressure does not come with the choice of an even work-life balance. Sacrifices have to be made in order to see your vision and dreams realised.

As an entrepreneur, you need to understand that your work-life balance when you’re in the early stages of building your company will naturally change as the company grows and develops. Yes, you need some down time, but tt is important to make time for you to process everything you are doing and learning… even if that happens at 2:14 in the morning. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out. And then you can take that vacation.

Founders: Are you having sleepless nights too? Do you still make time for you?

About the guest blogger: Nina Nashif is founder and CEO of Healthbox, a business accelerator created to support early-stage entrepreneurs and stimulate innovation in healthcare. Nina is best known for her expertise in creating entrepreneurial ventures and leading high performing teams. Nina has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and by Crain’s Chicago Business as a 40 Under 40. Follow Nina on Twitter @NinaNashif.

• The Key to My Startup Success: My Family
• What Leaning In Means to Me
• “I’m On A Boat!” – The Rising Fleet Of Startup Incubators
• Anne-Marie Slaughter Inspires Audience At WIE Symposium In NY
• Work/Life Balance: You, Me And My BlackBerry Makes Three

Raising kids is hard. The recent MamaBear Family Tech Conference spotlighted founders who are using tech to make it easier, including these incredible women. 

By Jessica Stillman (Editor, Women 2.0)

Tech has revolutionized our work lives, our leisure, our communications, but our families? Perhaps not as much. While kids and screens are certainly not strangers, many parents still agonize over product choices with friends and ask around at daycare for babysitters and activities. These old-fashioned methods equal annoyance for them but a massive untapped market for startup founders — Dave McClure estimates its potential value at $2.1 trillion market.

The recent MamaBear Family Tech Conference examined opportunities in the niche and shone a light on some amazing founders trying to solve our parenting woes and tap into this important emerging market, including these amazing women to watch:

Chandini Ammineni (Co-founder & CEO, ActivityHero)
Serial entrepreneur Ammineni’s latest venture, ActivityHero, which helps parents find activities for their kids, was the winner of the People’s Choice Award at Women 2.0 Pitch NYC 2012.  Follow her on Twitter @Ammineni.

Andrea Barrett (Co-founder & VP of Product, UrbanSitter)
An industry veteran with more than a decade of software development experience, Barrett’s startup aims to make finding a reputable babysitter fully digital and far easier for parents. Follow her on twitter @am1019.

Maya Bisineer (Founder, MeMeTales)
MeMeTales offers apps, ebooks and other tools that help kids fall in love with reading and share their own stories. Bisineer is also an advisor at Women Startup Lab. Follow her on Twitter @thinkmaya.

Mauria Finley (Founder & CEO, Citrus Lane)
With experience at eBay and PayPal, Finley has the background to make Citrus Lane, a startup that sends parents a monthly parcel of baby items, a success. Follow her on Twitter @mauriafinley.

Natalie Gordon (Founder & CEO, BabyList)
Everyone loves their baby, but preparing for the bundle of joy? That can be less than joyful. 500 Startups company BabyList wants to help. A former Amazon engineer, Gordon developed the idea while pregnant. Follow her on Twitter @natgordon.

Sandra Oh Lin (Founder & CEO, Kiwi Crate)
Need to keep the kids occupied? Kiwi Crate will delivery activities to keep little hands busy to your door monthly. Previously, Oh Lin did stints at eBay, PayPal and several startups. Follow her on Twitter @sandrohlin.

Moms speak up: What tech tools make your life as a parent much easier?

Jessica Stillman is an editor at Women 2.0 and a freelance writer with interests in unconventional career paths, generational differences, and the future of work. She writes a daily column for Inc.com and has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch, GigaOM and Brazen Careerist, among others. Follow her on Twitter at @entrylevelrebel.

Photo credit: aperturismo via Flickr. 

• Female Founders To Watch: Startups Catering To Moms
• Greylock-Backed Citrus Lane Helps Parents Discover “Best Of” Products For Little Ones
• “Family Tech” is the New Buzzword for Mom (and Dad)-trepreneurs.
• The Secret to Our Success: Hiring Moms
• Get Mentored At Lunchtime At The Women 2.0 Conference – Learn From A Baker’s Dozen Of Experienced Entrepreneurs On Feb. 14

The founder and CEO of Stitch Fix explains why her company dodged the press, spent nothing on marketing and avoided hype in the initial phases of their startup.

By Jessica Stillman (Editor, Women 2.0)

Most startups would drool at the prospect of journalists knocking on their door desperate to hear about their business. Not StitchFix. When Fast Company came calling last year, CEO Katrina Lake was reluctant to be featured by the magazine.

“Stealth–not the hardly quiet ‘stealth mode’ we hear about so frequently–was a linchpin of her business plan,” explains a recent post dissecting this strategy and why it worked well for the San Francisco-personal shopping startup. Fast Company’s Lorraine Sanders writes:

The company, which has grown from a few hundred shipments per month in its early days to an average of 2,500 per week in April, has eschewed traditional marketing for word-of-mouth buzz-building, mostly among bloggers, and it’s bypassed opportunities to grow fast early on in order to collect data.

“We actually needed a lot of data and a lot of historical data…and we couldn’t have as accurate of buying and styling now if we didn’t collect that data over that course of time,” Lake says.

Though Lake admits that holding back was hard (“they were tough decisions”), the approach worked: Revenues more than doubled from December 2012 to the end of the first quarter this year.

“They’ve really let the business grown organically, there’s been no marketing dollars spent yet….The business is growing at a pace where [Lake] can make sure she can scale,” says Julie Bornstein, Sephora’s chief marketing officer and a Stitch Fix board member.

Instead of spending hefty sums to drive up the user base, Lake has preferred to collect customers slowly, with wait times for prospective members varying depending on a person’s size, style preferences, and the compatibility of those factors with current inventory.

This slow approach helped the company to keep quality up and customers happy (60% become repeat clients, Sanders reports), as well as allowing the team to build exactly the tools they need rather than those they predicted they might need in the future. But the tactic wasn’t without its critics. How did Lark respond to the naysayers and does she feel Stitch Fix has outgrown its ‘slow’ startup origins? Check out the complete post to find out.

Women 2.0: Have you ever worried that your startup is generating too much attention too soon?

Jessica Stillman is an editor at Women 2.0 and a freelance writer with interests in unconventional career paths, generational differences, and the future of work. She writes a daily column for Inc.com and has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch, GigaOM and Brazen Careerist, among others. Follow her on Twitter at @entrylevelrebel.

Photo credit: littleprincessdiaries via Flickr.

• This Week, Three Women Entrepreneurs Announce Series A Funding

“If you want to go fast… go alone. If you want to go far… go together.” – African proverb

By Sumeera Rasul and Sheila Iverson (Founders, Madesmith)

We created Madesmith to tell the story of the makers who are producing well-designed goods locally and sustainably. We know that this is a very ambitious undertaking that demands a lot of resources to do it well and ensure that it thrives. In the short amount of time since we launched, we have received an overwhelmingly positive response from makers, designers, customers and everyone we’ve met. In the process, we have also created many close friendships with our community. We strongly believe that any new venture needs a very strong community to help it survive and prosper.

Here are some of the tips that will help you form and build a strong community to support your business, no matter what stage you’re at.

Stand for Something

Make sure your business has a well-defined purpose. Make sure that this purpose is in line with your own personal values and those of your audience. For Madesmith, our purpose is to promote ‘mindful consumption’ and the stories behind the people making our things. We both strongly believe in consuming less, buying less, and knowing where our stuff comes from. This is not a philosophy that came about overnight, rather an important part of our lives well before we formed Madesmith.

Once, we formally started working on Madesmith, we made sure that we say this philosophy out loud to all the makers, our friends, our family, our audience and anyone who would listen. By doing this, we’ve formed a strong community of others who think like us. Perhaps, not everyone (as much as we would have liked to), but it is a very strong community of active advocates who want to make sure that we succeed. This community is helping us shift the mindset of others as well. And, that gives us tremendous strength on a daily basis.

An important thing to note is that if you are not getting a positive response from someone you potentially want to partner with, you have to learn to not dwell on it too long and take your energies elsewhere (after you have tried a couple of times). Try to find out the reasons so that you know how to address the issue in future. However, you and your business must keep moving forward,

Create In-Person Relationships

Whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert, it is important to understand that your business is bigger than you. This means that we have to look past ourselves and things that hold us back to get out there in order to service our partners and customers. Despite being quite happy cultivating friendships via email and social media, we both make sure to invest in relationships around us. We often schedule regular tea times, lunches, brunches, and drinks with our makers and friends who believe in us.

Another thing we try to do as much as possible is to make sure that we attend events that are important to our makers, supporters and customers. We want them to know that we value them and that we are there to share these important moments with them. In return, this tight-knit circle has become a very strong foundation and some of the biggest advocates for us and our business. We’re very proud to say that many of our friendships with these makers and supporters go beyond business transactions. And, that’s important to us.

• Top 10 Technovation Challenge World Pitch Teams Announced, Will Pitch Next Week at Twitter HQ in SF
• 5 Rules To Build Community Engagement For Startup Success
• Happy Birthday, Founder Friday! Meet Our New York Team
• Want To See Ideas Before They Become Big? Come To SCAMP
• Getting Your Startup Team to Understand Your Customer

The journey of one Latin American entrepreneur has taught her the importance of choosing the right team and the benefits of accelerator programs. 

By Angela Cois (Co-founder & COO, LastRoom)

My story as entrepreneur starts late and, unfortunately, it’s not full of impressive numbers or big successes. I’d rather say that it’s a story of building awareness and learnings compromise. I’m 30 years old and I launched my first company in 2010, curiously the same year I decided to be mom. To my parents, it was a strange decision, complete madness to my friends but the best thing I ever done for me.

It’s Never Too Late

My purpose during college was to study hard and dedicate myself academica. I dreamt about an excellent PhD which would lead to a glorious carrier as a lecturer, or at a big international organization. As soon as I got my master’s degree I decided to apply for an internship in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I worked for a commission focused on counter-terrorism policies and criminal organizations. It was a really good experience — I learnt a lot, particularly about what kind of person I would not be in my life.

Since then, two things started to be quite clear in my mind. First of all, I would not try to convince anyone that I’m able to do something. Secondly, my job won’t be an empty practice of erudition, where you are supposed to know everything but you’re not in the position to express your opinion or have a positive impact in the society where you live, work and grow every day.

Bootstrapping

I missed something between the day I realized that I would be an entrepreneur and the day I acted on my decision. There must be something between the theory and the practice. I have to work, like every person in this planet. I have to get some experience, practice and save money to feed myself and the business I have in mind. It’s unquestionable that if you’re not a former employee of Google, Facebook or Twitter, it’s hard to get funds without interesting numbers to show. Investing in people who have some kind of pedigree because of their experience in big companies is less risky than investing in talented people with a weaker professional record. You must be ready to start, develop, launch your MVP, test it, make the first pivots and possibly generate the first significant revenue through your own efforts and resources. This is the most common scenario. So, don’t throw out your job if you have not saved enough money to feed your business (and your family!) or if you’re not close to signing a term sheet with an investor.

Team

My first startup was a group-buying platform, called Ofercity. I launched it in Mexico in 2010, together with one of my co-founders in LastRoom. We started operations in June. We generated the first sales and everything seemed be going pretty well. However, like the best stories of entrepreneurship, we failed after four months. Our main weakness was the team. Our main error was to underestimate its importance.

We hired a developer from Peru, a designer from Spain and some account managers in different parts of Mexico. We thought that two people could manage everything. We completely ignored the difference between a co-founder and an employer, which can be captured in one word: passion. Companies have so many fields to cover: design, development, distribution, administration, negotiation with your suppliers if you’re building a marketplace. You can’t do everything by yourself. You should trust in people’s skills and talent. Spend a lot of energy looking for the perfect match with your co-founders. You’ll find it when you realize that each of them contributes something unique and really essential for your business. Successful companies built by just one person simply don’t exist. You can be the first to have an idea, but it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not able to transform it into a viable and productive business. And to do so, you need talented people, in love with the same project who are willing to sacrifice to reach the same goal. It’s a kind of marriage, not so different from a traditional one — partners must share good and bad days, trust blindly in each other and show a full commitment from the very first day.

Accelerators

Accelerators are quite important, especially if you’re not a serial entrepreneur. Apart from the advantage of receiving seed funding which gives you space to breathe for some months and maybe finish your MVP, it’s a unique networking opportunity. The feedback you receive from the mentors or the other entrepreneurs, the visibility with investors that could be quite difficult to reach by yourself, these are the main reasons why I always suggest applying for an accelerator program. In the last two years, a large number of new startup programs have risen up in Latin America. Be careful about making a good decision. There is more money than good investors. The knowledge and the mentors’ experience (preferably real entrepreneurs and not theorists of entrepreneurship!) are the most important factors that could really make the difference for your startup.

Angela Cois is co-founder and COO at LastRoom, a mobile app for same-day hotel bookings in Latin America. She completed her studies in Italy. Previously co-founder of Ofercity, a group-buying platform in Mexico, she worked for two years as account manager for a US business consultancy. LastRoom launched in December 2012 and was the first Mexican startup invited to be part of NxtpLabs, an Argentinean acceleration program. LastRoom is now operating in Mexico’s main cities and is working on expanding to Latin America. Follow her on Twitter @angiecois. 

Photo credit: Dylan Parker via Flickr. 

• How Tech Is Changing Film Distribution
• Funding: What’s Changed and What Needs To
• Beware the Hole
• How We Got Into TechStars
• New Urban Ventures Accelerator Launches Applications for its First Cohort

Facebook COO and Lean in author Sandberg placed at #6 and Mayers placed at #32. 

By Rachel Lehmann-Haupt (Editor, Women 2.0)

Tech titans Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer were two of sixteen tech leaders on the infamous Forbes’ World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. Facebook COO and Lean in author Sandberg placed at #6 and Mayers placed at number #32.. The list also included Google SVP Susan Wojcicki at #30, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood at #63, and HPs Meg Whitman at #15.

According to a story in Ad Week when putting together the list Forbes considers three factors. They include money, which means company revenue, income, or GDP.  They also consider media presence such as news hits, TV and radio appearances, and social media following. Finally, the editors consider the person’s impact or as Forbes put it:  ”the extent of their reach across industries, cultures and countries, numbers of spheres of influence and people they affect, and how actively they wield their power.”

Forbes also has a interesting infographic along side the list called “Power Circuits” that tracks the connections to the colleges and companies that helped these women get into the networks that powered their rise.

Read the complete list here. 

Photo credit: Forbes.com

Women 2.0 readers: Do you dream of making the Forbes Most Powerful Women list?

Rachel Lehmann-Haupt (rachel@women2.org) is an editor at Women 2.0. She also works with companies on the art of storytelling. This includes content strategy – blogs, web articles, contextual commerce, e-books and e-magazines – with the goal of better influencing and engaging audiences. She was a founding editor of TED Books and has published and edited numerous articles and books. Her interests include gender politics, working motherhood, urban innovation, health, and fashion. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Daily Beast, New York, Vogue, Self, Outside, and Wired.  Follow her on Twitter at @rlehmannhaupt.

Photo credit: Miriam Berkley

• In Conversation with Women 2.0
• Women 2.0 Startup Competition – PITCH 2010
• Win Tickets to Web 2.0 Expo Conference!
• 2007 Napkin Business Challenge

Companies that persist in picturing early adopters as exclusively male are missing out on massive business opportunities, claims Sephora’s CMO.

By Jessica Stillman (Editor, Women 2.0)

Who’s the stereotypical early adopter of tech innovations? For the answer look no further than satirical Tumblr ‘White Guys Wearing Google Glass.’ This white dude image might not be correct (in fact an African-American man is apparently one of the most prolific Google Glass testers, and plenty of women are trying it if not necessarily loving it) but it is the kneejerk picture that pops into many heads when they hear the phrase.

But not only is that image of early adopters totally wrong, writes Sephora CMO Julie Bornstein on Business Insider this week, it’s also terrible business. Thankfully, the stereotype is slowing starting to erode, she writes, due to the compelling case for viewing women as just as likely to be in the tech vanguard:

The perception that men are always the early tech adopters is definitely shifting as women get increasingly technologically savvy.

Women are embracing technology to make our lives easier.

Savvy retailers get this. They are tailoring in-store and online technologies to the needs, tastes and interests of the consumers who will appreciate them the most: women.

In turn, women are drawn even more to brands that use technology to enhance the shopping experience. Call it a virtuous cycle…. Today, women comprise one of the fastest growing demographics of Internet and technology users, with some 87 million women between 18 and 76 online according to a BlogHer study. With that, women have become top mobile commerce adopters as well.

Women (56 percent) spend more time visiting retail sites on mobile devices than men (43 percent), according to comScore.

How can companies looking to sell to these decidedly non-mythical female early adopters best appeal to them? Bronstein offers three pieces of advice in the complete post.

Women 2.0 readers: Do you think companies are still leaving money on the table by failing to serve female early adopters?

Jessica Stillman is an editor at Women 2.0 and a freelance writer with interests in unconventional career paths, generational differences, and the future of work. She writes a daily column for Inc.com and has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch, GigaOM and Brazen Careerist, among others. Follow her on Twitter at @entrylevelrebel.

Photo credit: ElizabethHudy via Flickr. 

• Lessons of the She ++ Conference
• 5 Girl Coders Under 21 To Watch
• Women 2.0: Are You Excited for Google I/O? (Registration Opens 7AM PDT Tomorrow)
• Getting Early Adopters, Acquiring Customers and Monetizing

A female programmer who worked in tech in the 80s talks about what has changed, and what younger female technologists can do about the sexism that persists.

By Jessica Stillman (Editor, Women 2.0)

Compared with farming or carpentry, computer science may be a fairly young field, but women entering tech careers today can still benefit from the wisdom of at least a few generations of women that have come up before them. What did these older generations experience, what has changed, and what wisdom can they offer younger women?

Those the questions tackled in a recent New York Times Sunday Review column by Ellen Ullman, a former software engineer and the author of the memoir Close to the Machine. In it she looks back at her career as female programmer in the early 80s, digging for useful lessons and illuminating comparisons. What does she remember?

In short, some pretty outrageous sexism from a client who stroked her back as she worked to a boss that kept commenting on her “pretty hair.” These tales of sexism in earlier eras of tech may sound outrageous by today’s standards (well, the stroking at least, if not the hair comment) but Ullman feels what young women technologists face today is even worse:

Women today face a new, more virile and virulent sexism. The definition of success has somehow become running your own start-up. And venture capitalists decide who will get funding, who will get a chance for that success. Venture capitalists are all but explicit in their search: they want a couple of guys who can write an app over a weekend.

If hired by start-ups, younger women find themselves sorely underrepresented. One woman told me that in her growing, 24-person company there were four women, which is “considered a good ratio.” And, as always, our ranks thin at the deeper technical levels. We get stalled at marketing and customer support, writing scripts for Web pages. Yet coding, looking into the algorithmic depths, getting close to the machine, is the driver of technology; and technology, in turn, is driving fundamental changes in personal, social and political life.

What’s to be done about the biases of VCs and the direction of women towards undervalued “empathy work?” Ullman addresses this question from the perspective of the individual woman “alone with the anti-woman prejudice: the joke, the leer, the disregard, the invisibility, the inescapable fact that the moment you walk through the door you are seen as lesser, no matter what your credentials.” She writes that,

the prejudice will follow you. What will save you is tacking into the love of the work, into the desire that brought you there in the first place. This creates a suspension of time, opens a spacious room of your own in which you can walk around and consider your response. Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.

Women 2.0 readers: Does Ullman’s experience and advice resonate with you?

Jessica Stillman is an editor at Women 2.0 and a freelance writer with interests in unconventional career paths, generational differences, and the future of work. She writes a daily column for Inc.com and has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch, GigaOM and Brazen Careerist, among others. Follow her on Twitter at @entrylevelrebel.

• How Hiring a Multi-Generational Team Can Help You Stand Out
• 2012 CES Booth Babe Problem Highlights Women’s Perceived Role In Technology – Let’s Fix This

How do you get unstuck when life is not what you imagined it to be?

By Bo Ren (Technical Project Manager, Opower)

You’re in your 20s, a couple years into your first corporate job and you feel stuck; you’re in a less-than-ideal living situation; you’re in an unhappy and unhealthy relationship but you just can’t seem to leave. Let’s be honest, life is pretty low, underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time, and downright shitty. Your post-college years are not what you imagined. You thought you’d move to NYC, go to grad school, meet that Mr. Right etc…Instead you embarked on a circuitous path full of unexpected twists and turns.

This was me at 25. Less than ideal.

After two years at a clean-tech startup, I called my 20-something life malaise “one big de-bugging triage”. For some reason, ascribing a corporate, software, seemingly asinine name distanced me from my misery. How do you get unstuck when life is not what you imagined it to be?

You pivot.

After reading about the notion of a life pivot on Medium, I quickly realized it was time for me to pivot. Unlike the Pinterest pivot, we’re not talking about a startup—pivoting your life as a minimum viable product has a lot more at stake. We spend our entire life building this MVP, shipping it, and iterating it through time. We may have an idea or plan for where we want to be or what happiness looks like, we encounter unforeseen hurdles, readjust (iterate), course correct when necessary (pivot) to continuously ship the MVP called life. No one wants to claim a failed product especially when it’s your life.

So I began my life pivot over two months: ended an unhealthy relationship, moved out of an unhappy living situation, and quit my job. In that order.

Scared shitless sums it up pretty well. I was scared shitless and ridden with anxiety. Anxiety about whether I would find a new apartment by the end of the month. Anxiety about whether I would find another job. Anxiety about being single again. Anxiety about running out of savings. Anxiety about managing my anxiety. Free flowing anxiety seeped into every crevice of my life.

Making a decision to change is easy, persisting to make that change is the hard part.

These are the 10 steps I took to embark on a life pivot:

Quit Being Unhappy

Staying an extra day at a job or relationship where you feel like there is no room to grow robs you an extra day from doing meaningful, challenging, fulfilling work. If your role is not the right fit, if you’re under appreciated and overworked, if you’ve outgrown your job—quit. Quit being a cog in the wheel, quit being unhappy, quit giving yourself excuses. Quit so you can devote all your energy to pursuing to new opportunities and embarking on a new journey.

Set Yourself a Timeline

Give yourself  one week to sort out your angst, let go of the anger and the past, and start focusing on what you really want to do. Use this time to mourn, detach, purge, move on, and start exploring new options.

Increase Your Luck Surface Area

Talk to people about your passions, your experiences, and what you want to do. Broadcast yourself. Let people know you’re on the market for a new job or apartment through social media outlets. Look at shared LinkedIn connections with your existing network and ask for introductions. Don’t underestimate the power of friends of friends. Two of my four job opportunities were referrals from friends of friends. Your friends and old coworkers may know you well but it’s the tertiary connections of mutual friends that expand your horizons.

Take the Plunge and Find Your Flow

You’re like a shark, keep swimmin’ or you’ll sink. Runners don’t look back when they’re sprinting ahead neither should you. Keep sending out new job applications, start interviewing and gain traction. Once the momentum builds, you’re going to get into the flow. Work won’t feel like you’re working. Interviews will become conversations. Your performance becomes natural in the ebb and flow.

Fail Fast and Celebrate It

Each interview that doesn’t work out, each demo presentation full of technical glitches brings you closer to what your ultimate goal. Learn from your mistakes early when it’s still cheap.

 Count Your Small Wins 

Small changes occur a day at a time, ultimately, a lot of change accumulates within a month or two. Small things going right when everything seems wrong will make your life pivot more bearable. Some of my small wins: 1. avocados on sale at Trader Joe’s 2. free washers during the day at the local laundromat w/ pin ball machines 3. my Birchbox arriving a day early.

Don’t Conflate Uncertainty With Risk

Embrace uncertainty and risk but realize they are separate notions. Some of the best things in life come with risk. You don’t need game theory to tell you to hedge your bets and that high risk yields high return. Take calculated risks and accept uncertainty as a double edge sword. Uncertainty is also a sense of possibilities.

Embrace Serendipity

Talk to that random recruiter who messaged you, entertain a spontaneous last-minute chat with a startup founder, say yes to unexpected things that come your way. You’ll be surprised by what the universe can conjure up when you become receptive.

Find Side Projects

Learn to knit, fix a light bulb, frame your pictures…do something to preoccupy and structure your day while you’re waiting to hear back from recruiters and interviewers. Do things that you can’t do with a full-time job like attend a 9am vinyasa yoga class or go on a mid-afternoon urban hike. Career woman, it’s time to get in touch with your domestic side. Bake rhubarb pie, drink wine while doing so, and enjoy it!

Celebrate

When you get that offer, apartment, or find that special someone, don’t forget to celebrate. Congratulate yourself for braving through the shitstorm, for staying gritty, for not losing hope. Realize that you’ll undergo many life pivots throughout your 20s and beyond. Each time the pivot will be different but after each pivot, you’ll become fitter, happier, and more productive (to the words of Radiohead). Life comes in many rounds. Pivoting is not about wining each round but rather recognizing when something isn’t working and changing your approach.

Ben Huh, founder of the fail blog and the Cheezburger Network, said he hopes in five years he will be wrong about his future because whatever projection he makes today is based off his present limited knowledge. Embrace uncertainty. If life goes exactly as you planned then you have probably missed out on some amazing opportunities and detours to arrive at your destination. Sometimes you shoot for the sun (it’s not a straight trajectory) so you course correct and take detours before arriving. Keep pivoting–you never know when you’re going to make a quantum

Women 2.0 readers: Have you ever faced a life pivot? How did you manage it?

This post originally appeared on bosefina.com. Photo credit: R/DV/RS via Flickr.

About the guest blogger: Bo Ren is a technical project manager at Opower, building a SaaS platform driving energy efficient behavioral change. Prior to software, she worked in cross-functional product and customer support roles at Sunrun. She also navigated the nonprofit space working at the ACLU of Oregon and Graff Lab building an urban aerosol art sanctuary in Los Angeles. She studied psychology and economics at the University of Southern California. Follow her on Twitter at @bosefina.

• In Conversation with Women 2.0
• Women 2.0 Startup Competition – PITCH 2010
• Win Tickets to Web 2.0 Expo Conference!
• 2007 Napkin Business Challenge