Push the envelope and test yourself

Grammarist.com says:

To push the envelope means to extend the boundary of what is possible, to take a risk by going farther than others think is acceptable. The term push the envelope was popularized in the early 1980s, following the publication of the book The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. The book The Right Stuff chronicled American pilots who tested high-speed aircraft, including the early astronauts. Tom Wolfe quoted pilots using the term “pushing the outside of the envelope” to describe challenging speed records and other aerial feats.

Why push the envelope?

These are strange times. Anyone would agree. A pandemic, COVID19, challenged our very way of living and to me, and I suspect to many, it seems surreal. A pandemic in a time when everyone can talk to virtually anyone on earth if they want to because of the strides in technology, social media, and overall knowledge.

The pandemic made companies push the envelope to try to continue business by deploying more of a distributed workforce than ever existed previously. Schools were forced to push the envelope with virtual learning, which subsequently boosted the popularity of companies like Zoom who enabled the technology to allow teachers and students to meet, share resources, and expand classrooms in the cloud.

Zoom, in turn, had to push the envelope to improve its security with stronger encryption:

Zoom has become a prominent player in the video conferencing industry in recent months, driven by a surge of clients prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. Its use for work-from-home purposes, as well as for education and by families and friends, has led to increased scrutiny of the app, including its security.

How I push the envelope at Design Resumes

I don’t know if early adoptor fits, but I moved to Zoom in early 2016 after I was introduced by a mutual client to Alex Freund, my colleague and owner of Landing Expert Career Coaching who provides interview coaching services for my clients. Alex introduced me to Zoom in our first meeting to discuss working together.

Since then, I moved all of my client sessions to Zoom. Zoom’s technology allows my interactive coaching and writing style to work with clients throughout the United States and Europe. I’m still a little in awe of how my clients and I use this technology to collaborate to capture their stories while I coach and teach them new job search strategies.

I continue to push the envelope at Design Resumes with more services to help job seekers succeed. Last summer, Jason Alba, known for multiple innovative products and services in the career space told me about his plan to develop a 6-week audio-based job search program designed to help job seekers get their next job.

I enthusiastically said yes, I would be willing to add the program to my array of products and services I offer to job seekers. I did add it to my Ultimate package in January. Ultimate clients benefit from the added encouragement of getting the Job Search Program’s audio link by email. The daily audio training helps them know what to do each day with a list of three daily tasks every day.

This program was just added to all of my packages. Every job seeker needs encouragement!

What push the envelope means to me

I stay open to new ideas, concepts, and strategies as I continue to push the envelope of my own curiosity and creativity.

For example, this week, author and digital transformation maverick, Nicky Verd, reached out to connect on LinkedIn. I accepted. This in itself was unusual because I didn’t know her or even know of her. But her profile drew me in. Her branding statement catches your eye.

Igniting Human Potential in the Age of AI || Keynote Speaker || Kickass Author || Africa Enthusiast

Since then, Nicky, who is in South Africa, and I have been chatting on LinkedIn messenger. Did I mention she wrote a book? Disrupt Yourself or Be Disrupted: Escape Conformity, Reinvent your thinking, and Thrive in an era of Emerging Technologies and Economic Anxiety

I bought it. Here’s a snippet of why I wanted to read it:

You can’t afford to fiddle at the margins; you can’t sit back and wait for government or someone else to hand you your future. It is either you disrupt yourself or you will be disrupted. Either you drive disruption or you will get outpaced by it.

I just added her book to all my packages. Why? Because her focus on equipping and empowering yourself fits perfectly into how I coach my clients while writing their career stories. It also fits how I push the envelope to find new services, ideas, and strategies to help job seekers succeed.

If you found this interesting, poke around my resume package page. Maybe it is your turn to push the envelope and disrupt yourself.