Today we’d like to introduce you to Christy Noel.
So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My career has been in marketing, primarily for B2B tech companies. I worked my way up the company ladder working for and primarily with men. I didn’t have a female mentor or anyone to help me or guide me through the situations I was in. I had to learn, literally, on the job. I made some mistakes, got my priorities mixed up, and worked long hours while others were getting more recognition. When I finally figured out some of the answers and how to be a better manager and leader, I decided to write a book to help other women avoid the learning curve I went through.
I had been working on this idea for a workplace advice book for women for a few years. Somewhere along the line (you’d think I’d remember the details better!), I discovered my father had been developing his own book to help young business professionals. When we realized we had shared visions and ambitions for our career advice books, we joined forces. The result is the upcoming career advice book: Your Personal Career Coach: Real-World Experiences for Early Career Success. A father-daughter author team with the help of 25 amazing contributing authors! We all share stories from our own careers to help others learn from our successes and missteps.
In preparing to launch Your Personal Career Coach, COVID-19 hit. It quickly became clear that getting information to help people tackle the unique challenges brought about by finding and keeping a job during a global pandemic and economic crisis was needed. So, I wrote Your Career Survival Guide; How to Get and Keep a Job in Times of Crisis.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Specifically to writing a book, it took us about four years to write the book, find a publisher, re-write parts of the book, polish, edit, design a cover, interior design, etc. All the “fun” stuff people think about when writing a book. In hindsight, that was the easy part of writing a book.
What they don’t tell you is how much effort goes into marketing and promoting a book. You must create an audience for the book (“platform”) before you publish. It requires a lot of work to build social media following, a mailing list, media presence and more.
As for my marketing career, when you work for someone else, you desperately want to be the boss. You want to make the decisions, set the direction, hire, fire and give reviews. When you finally get that role, it’s not nearly as glamorous as it looks from the other side. It’s hard work managing people. It requires patience, tact, listening skills, time management. Many managers, myself included, often long for the time when we could have more time to focus on getting the actual work done, rather than meetings, calls, and people management. As for recruiting and hiring, once you get it done, it’s a great help. Until then, it’s incredibly time consuming and disrupts your work routine!
Please tell us about NoelCo.
I provide career advice to help professionals, from recent graduates to those pivoting their careers, get hired, get ahead and build a rewarding career. I’ve written and published two books on career advice. I also have free resources and guides to assist people in various aspects of their careers from creating a resume that gets noticed, how and why to write a cover letter, what to do to get promoted, and how to benefit from informational interviews. I provide my career advice through social media, videos, blogging, as an industry expert to the media, resources, guides, speaking engagements and my books.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
For my books, I would have started building my platform earlier. And I would have started by putting my effort into my email list rather than on starting on new social platforms. Your email list is ten times more likely to buy than your social media following (or something like that).
If I was starting over and I knew how much time and effort goes into writing, marketing, and promoting a book, I may have been scared off. So maybe, it’s better that I was a bit naive about that part! But I likely could have been smarter about it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://christynoel.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/christynoelcareercoach
- Facebook: facebook.com/christynoelcareercoach
- Other: linkedin.com/company/christynoel
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