Who can I connect YOU to today?

This week was a real eye opener for me. 

On Monday I was laid off from my job as a Technical Recruiter for a very large public staffing company.  I was faced with the choice of starting a new business or going back to the Technical World that I had worked in for 12 years.  Last summer, I had read the book “Eat, Pray, Love” and it inspired me to do what you love.  My love was working with people to help them grow their businesses.

I decided to take the great leap of faith and start my own business. I could always go back to technology later if it didn’t work out.   I assessed my strengths and came up with my new business.

I am a born networker.  When I was little I used to spend my time talking to grownups at all of my parents parties.  Children who were around my age had nothing interesting for me to learn. Grownups and their stories fascinated me. As I grew older I did whatever I could to never forget a friend’s birthday (no facebook reminders then).  If I moved or a friend moved I tried my best to keep up with them. This was long before the days of the internet where an email address could travel with you wherever you went. I felt an intense need to connect.

As I got older I found that I may not know the answer to everything (okay, I knew the answers to very few things) but I knew who I needed to go to to find the answer I was looking for (this was before Google).  I was able to pair people together in order to drive a solution.  Naturally, I am a bridge builder, hence the name Bridge Austin (BridgeATX).  

The next question became “how do I make money doing what I love to do”.

I had already found that I loved technical staffing. It allowed me to put a special slant on the staffing model since I had already worked so many roles that I was now staffing (BA, PM, Developer, QA, Implementation, Support, Data Mining, etc).  I was able to look at the candidate and decide if I were my client would I want them to work for me.  I also received great satisfaction from helping to make the connection between two needs. One need being a client who needed an employee who could fill their role perfectly and the other need being the job seeker who needed a job that they were going to love.

I also needed to add in my love for meeting people and finding out what they do.  The more people I met, the more connections I was able to make.  If someone were to tell me – “I need to move my business” - I would immediately think of all the people I knew who could help make that happen.  I know companies who lease commercial real estate, who give commercial real estate loans, who do the physical move, who rent (or sell) the office furniture, who set up the wiring, who print the business cards with the new addresses, who ………   

This all lead me to decide to start my Business Bridge Building Business (say that 5 times fast).  For the time being I know that I want to continue to be involved in Technical Staffing.  There are just too many people out there who need that right now.  However, I also want to become know for the goto person for anyone with a business problem looking for a solution by partnering with another business.

So, that’s where I’m sitting now.

Wish me luck!