10 Strategies for Work, Life Success

CHANNEL PARTNERS EVOLUTION — Who still isn’t trying to figure out how to balance their professional and personal life? Well, maybe you have to go beyond balance, which is what attendees at The Alliance of Channel Women networking event at Channel Partners Evolution in Philadelphia learned something about Tuesday night.

Guest speaker, SixFigureStart co-founder and career coach Caroline Ceniza-Levine, shared 10 strategies for success in both work and life in a presentation titled – “Beyond Balance.”

So how does that go? Well, for starters, think first about getting happy, then getting successful.

“The thing about balance is, do we want balance or do we want what balance will give us? said Ceniza-Levine, who specializes in career change.

Caroline Ceniza-Levine

Caroline Ceniza-Levine

Ceniza-Levine knows a thing or two about variety. She’s the co-founder of two businesses — SixFigureStart and Costa Rica Fire, a real estate and financial independence retire-early blog. Her 15 years in strategy consulting, executive search and human resources, prior to founding SixFigureStart, in 2008, have executives from top companies seeking her out. She’s written for Forbes, Money and Time, authored three books and teaches professional development and negotiation courses at Columbia University. She also does stand-up comedy and is a classically trained pianist.

So, back to those 10 strategies.

The first is the pitch — blended is better. That means mixing it up with the personal and the professional into not only something that lights you up but makes others remember you.

While this strategy can be advantageous for your professional life, it’s also applicable to your personal life. Coach Ceniza-Levine advised attendees to blend their day to create a multidimensional life.

Another strategy is to choose “pull” over “push.”  Pull is what seems interesting, while push is the stuff that burnout is made from, such as feeling like things are just too much, or needing a change. Do more pull.

Get social. Getting social doesn’t mean meeting tons of people but learning how to say thank you, or congratulations, or making introductions. Share with a business buddy how you solved a business problem or give a results update.

And, sometimes, you have to put the big rocks first. This is a time-management strategy that you’ve might have heard before. The big rocks are the major things. Think of a big jar — first you put in the big rocks, followed by the smaller rocks, the sand and the water.  If you didn’t pay attention to the big rocks first, you’d never fit them in the jar, or get the big stuff done.

Other strategies, from Ceniza-Levine: Prioritize billable time — made more manageable by creating a time diary; follow your natural energy; for high priority, or “must” type appointments — set it and forget it. And the last three strategies: Ditch the one big goal and, instead, set up 12 smaller monthly experiments; run a pre-mortem; and finally, ask what’s changed as you look back at the first nine success strategies.

The Alliance of Channel Women network event keynote speaker and several other channel leaders talked about ways to “Light up your Life,” the theme of the evening, which was sponsored by IntelePeer, a provider of cloud-based multi-channel business communications.

The Alliance of Channel Women empowers women who work in the channel today as well as the next generation of female leaders.