__________________________________________________
Cape Cod SCORE
Free Business Advice and
Business Training
(508) 375-4012
www.capecodscore.com
Experienced Professionals
are here to help!
__________________________________________________
Lower Cape Cod Community Development Corporation
3 Main Street, Unit 7,
Eastham, MA 02642
(800) 220-6202
www.lowercape.org
email: info@lowercape.org The Lower Cape Cod Community Development Corporation exists to promote a vibrant and diverse community on the Lower Cape by addressing housing needs and encouraging small business development and job growth.
Small Business Programs
Encouraging small business development
and job growth
The Lower Cape Cod CDC is committed to supporting economic development within our community through programs and education that foster the start-up and growth of local businesses, as well as those that tackle the unique business challenges of the fishing and aquaculture industries, home-based businesses, artists and other crafts people on the Lower Cape.
Education and Training
Smart Start Workshop
The Smart Start Workshop is a three-part interactive program for individuals at the early stages of business development. Participants learn how to apply best practices of successful corporations to their own small business—including identifying and understanding their market, analyzing the competition, and assessing their management strengths and weaknesses. If you are wondering if your business idea is a good one, or if you want to sharpen your basic business skills, this workshop is for you. To learn more about the Smart Start Workshop or to sign up for our next session, please contact Lisa Panaccione, Business Development Specialist, at (508) 240-7873 ext. 25 or via email.
One-on-One Business Develoment
A Business Development Specialist is available to meet one-on-one with business owners to discuss a variety of business issues, including business plan creation, marketing, financial management and operational issues. To learn more or to set up an appointment, please contact Lisa Panaccione, Business Development Specialist, at (508) 240-7873 ext. 25 or via email.TechSMART
The TechSMART program supports business owners on the Lower Cape by helping them to streamline and grow their small businesses with integrated technology solutions. Micro Lending
Through the Micro Loan Program, the Lower Cape Cod CDC provides loans to qualified businesses of up to $40,000. These loans can be used for working capital, real estate for the use of small business, and for machinery and equipment. Programs for Artists
The Lower Cape Cod CDC recognizes the unique character the many local artists and artisans bring to our community, as well as the multitude of challenges these artists face each day in trying to make a living through their art. In response to these challenges, the CDC offers a number of programs that focus on the professional and personal development of our valuable artist community.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CapeWomenOnline.com
P. O. Box 720, North Eastham, Cape Cod, MA 02651
Telephone: (508) 255-5084
All rights reserved
Beverly Ryle Publishes New Book on Finding & Creating Work
Beverly Ryle, the Director of the Center for Career and Business Development in Eastham, publishes her new book, Ground of Your Own Choosing: Winning Strategies for Finding & Creating Work, this October.
FINDING WORK IS DIFFICULT even in the best of times, but with gloomy economic news, layoffs, outsourcing, and general employment uncertainty, it feels even more daunting. In her new book, Ground of Your Own Choosing: Winning Strategies for Finding & Creating Work, Beverly Ryle teaches people to deal with the changing realities of the workplace in a way that offers them greater security and more satisfaction in their professional lives. Beverly is the Director of the Center for Career and Business Development in Eastham, and for over 20 years she has been helping corporate professionals, business owners, and people-in-transition achieve their full potential through education and empowerment.
“We’re used to complaints about how Cape Cod is a difficult place to find employment—the economy is seasonal, there are no big companies, the good jobs are all in Boston, and so on. While there are unique challenges on the Cape, people are struggling to find work in Hoboken and Des Moines and Sacramento as well,” she says. She goes on to explain that the reason goes far beyond the current economic downturn: we are living in an era of fundamental changes in the nature of work itself, in which jobs as we have known them are disappearing.
As she explains in her book, most American workers used to be free agents—farmers and artisans. When the country began to move toward an industrial economy in the 19th century, these “independent contractors” scoffed at the idea of giving up their self-sufficiency to work for others, and factory owners had to resort to hiring women, immigrants, even children. Yet, as the Industrial Age advanced, it became harder for free agents to compete, and eventually the job, rather than free agency, became the norm. Self-determination was eclipsed by dependency in the form of a nine-to-five, Monday to Friday routine.
The tide of history has turned again. In our electronically connected service economy work opportunities are less often being packaged as traditional jobs. They are increasingly taking the form of consulting assignments, outsourcing, short-term contracted employment, etc., and as employers abandoned the paternalistic notion that they have a responsibility to take care of their employees, even the jobs that remain are being viewed simply as long-term contracts.
“Within the professional lifetime of a single generation,” the author writes, “we have seen transformations in the kind of work we do, how we work, where we work, how long we work at one place, and even why we work. Yet despite changes in virtually everything having to do with work, we still go about trying to find and sustain it in the same old ways.”
In light of these changes, Beverly makes a compelling case for the necessity of changing the way we look for work. Her book was written to wake readers up to the futility of the traditional job-search and offer work-search alternatives which are more appropriate for the times we live in.
As a career counselor, Beverly has been an eyewitness to the ways that traditional job-search practices fail in today’s volatile work environment. In the book, she takes the reader through a step-by-step re-education process designed to help shift attention away from a dependence on others (i.e. employers) to focusing on themselves, in essence, to manage their career as if it were a small business and to know themselves well enough to clearly articulate their unique value in the marketplace.
The book will help the reader to not only be better prepared to engage in finding or creating work, but also be more excited about it, which makes it a good choice for anyone who feels unsure, stuck or intimidated by looking for work. Real-life stories and whimsical drawings by Denver artist, Eloise Morley, support the book’s wisdom and make its core teachings more accessible.
Ordering information can be found at www.groundofyourownchoosing.com
or through www.Amazon.com
A Conversation with Beverly Ryle
Recently, I met with Beverly Ryle and one of my first questions was why she had written this book.
“I wrote Ground of Your Own Choosing to bring work-search up to date,” she explained. “The book explains how and why the world of work has changed and I discuss the changes that need to take place in people’s thinking before they can take the actions that will help them succeed on the new playing field. It speaks with understanding and compassion to those who feel insecure or frightened about finding work, giving them a sense of hope. I got tired of watching people get shot down.
When I started out as a career professional, there was such a thing as job security, and people stayed with the same company for years. Then came the layoffs in the ’90s, and I worked as an outplacement consultant helping people who were being let go in droves. I was teaching them traditional job-search, all the things I now advocate against because, at the time, I didn’t realize how dramatically the world of work had changed. The book is for people who are ready to take ownership responsibility for their professional future, in the same way you would choose to become the owner of a business.”
She admits that the book’s usefulness depends more on someone’s degree of openness than their age or where they are in their career. Frequently, new graduates and people a few years out of college are more open to an entrepreneurial approach to work-search than mid-life executives with extensive business experience. “I think this is because younger people are less invested in the old model,” she says. “People who grew up with the passive methodology of a resume-driven job-search have to collect a lot of rejections before they are willing to try something different, which is unfortunate because by then they are already battle weary.”
She says there is no longer security in any job, but there is a way to create a secure future: “Be on the lookout for work opportunities all the time, just as a business is always looking for customers,” she advises. “You don’t do it just when you are miserable or after you’ve survived a round of layoffs. The first step is to stop trying to hold on to the security jobs can no longer provide. Then you need to find ways to make work search comfortable enough for you—whatever your individual blocks may be—to keep doing it on an ongoing basis. Put simply, we stop doing what we don’t like to do, and no work search strategy is useful unless it is fully implemented. Other career books do not anticipate and address this very real aspect of human nature.”
Having worked as a career counselor for many years, Beverly knows how people resist putting themselves out there, so she has focused in the book on giving the reader the strategies and techniques for overcoming self-defeat through inaction. “Change is difficult,” she admits. “It requires undergoing an often chaotic internal process of undefined length. In today’s world, where graduation-to-retirement employment with the same company no longer exists, knowing how to remain in uncertainty long enough to recreate yourself is essential. The process of becoming is not easy, but it holds within it the key to a joyful and fulfilling work life.”
Beverly has studied with Richard Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute? and William Bridges, author of Transition: Making Sense of Personal Change and You & Company, who have “been primary sources in shaping my thinking.” And more recently, she says that the study of effective leadership and the use of self has added a new dimension to her work. “I’ve been a career counselor with academic credentials in both counseling psychology and business for over 20 years, and I’ve helped hundreds of clients make successful career transitions. But for me, the most important credential I have is that I live what I teach, and much of what I teach is driven by my commitment to integrate both business and counseling disciplines.”
What makes it all worthwhile? Beverly thinks for a moment and then says, “One of my reviewers wrote that my book ‘reframes the task of finding work in a practical way that fits current times and helps the reader to be optimistic, proactive and even excited about it.’ There is nothing that would make me happier than to have this affirmed by people who use Ground of your own Choosing to find or create work.” – GHD
As a career counselor and business consultant, Beverly Ryle has been helping corporate professionals, business owners, and people-in-transition achieve their full potential for over 25 years.
Beverly Ryle, Author talk and Reception at Brewster Ladies Library, Tuesday, October 28th from 5:30 to 7:30. The event will feature at presentation on “Finding work on Cape Cod,” a jazz duo, refreshments and book signing.
www.successonyourownterms.com