Creating An Entrepreneur’s Résumé: The Resources You Need

How to Create an Awesome Resume

by Nick Waterhouse

Experience is good. And so is money. These two things are the reasons why I find myself back in America doing the one thing I hate most in this world: job hunting. I’ve had a great 5 years of working for myself, living by the beach in Los Angeles and traveling all over the place. At some point during this period of blissful self-support, I convinced myself that a return to the job sector was necessary to further my understanding of certain industries of interest. While the jury is still out on whether this is a good decision, I’m not going to lie and say the prospect of working with a great company (and potentially doubling my income) doesn’t excite me… at least a little bit. I am still running my e-commerce company and am still helping small businesses market themselves, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. But at some point, it’s necessary to take a leap – to make a sacrifice – in order to grow. That is where I find myself now: sacrificing a bit of freedom (and sleep) to invest my time and energy into working for an organization that will help me network, learn and grow.

Sounds great, right? Sure, having an awesome job will be a positive thing, but finding that job is a whole other story. Before I began the hunt, it was time to “update” my résumé. Unfortunately, my most recent résumé was about 5 years old and didn’t include the majority of my relevant work experience. It was time to hit the drawing board. I researched how to sell my experience as an entrepreneur, how to make my résumé stand out and found tools that helped make this whole process a walk in the park.

Below you will find the best articles and resources from around the web that helped me put together a great résumé.

Résumé Templates

I wouldn’t recommend using a super colorful and crazy template (unless you are a graphic designer) but showcasing your creativity and making yourself stand out amongst the crowd is never a bad thing. Just be careful when choosing as a lot of these templates are .ai files and if you are not comfortable with Adobe Illustrator, you’ll spend more time on formatting than you would like.

The 41 Best Resume Templates Ever

27 Beautiful Resume Designs You’ll Want to Steal 

279 Free Resume Templates – For those of you that want to keep it relatively simple using Microsoft Word

 

Staying Competitive in 2015

5 Ways to Spruce Up your Resume for 2015

Top 7 Resume Trends for 2015

6 Secrets of Great Resumes, Backed by Psychology 

 

Entrepreneur Specific 

A (decent) Former Entrepreneur Sample Resume

How to Write a Personal Summary  

7 Examples of Entrepreneur’s Resumes

 

Writing a Personal Bio 

Bio vs. Resume

Writing a Bio Like a Pro

Boring Resume Objective vs. Branding Statement

 

General Résumé Hacks

Get Your Resume Past the Robots 

45 Quick Changes that Help Your Resume Get Noticed

185 Powerful Verbs that will Make your Resume Awesome

5 Marketing Secrets that will Help your Resume Get Noticed

 

 

These are my favorite résumé articles out of the hundreds I read. I hope this list saved you time and energy and that you were able to gather some useful information. When researching for any project, I use Evernote to save awesome articles and websites. Evernote is an amazing tool that I highly recommend using to stay organized and share media between devices. If you have any more résumé tips or tricks, please don’t hesitate to post them in the comments below. If you want to check out my résumé, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

 

Lessons Learned: How to Avoid Travel Burnout

A very patient elephant gives me his leg to help me mount up. Elephant Conservation Center, Sayaboury, Laos.

When preparing for a trip, it’s instinctual to plan a full schedule in order to get the most out of your journey. This crammed itinerary may look good on paper but could come back to haunt you in the end. Even if you only have a week of time available to travel, it may not be ideal to pack those 7 days full of sightseeing and things to do.

I’ve noticed that the longer I travel and the more I do, the less I appreciate things later in the trip (especially if I am not taking care of myself). Travel fatigue, or the correlation between appreciation and exhaustion, is a common occurrence among many travelers. After traveling for a long time, or packing a ton of activities into a small amount of time, people find themselves going through the motions without fully appreciating what it is they are doing or seeing.

The more shitty you feel, the less fun you’ll have. Period.

By understanding your limits and knowing how to pace yourself, you can get more of what you set out for in the first place: enjoyment! On my most recent 8-month trip around South East Asia, I covered over 23,000 miles while visiting 50+ cities. It was amazing to see and do so much but it was an uphill battle trying to stay fresh in order to take pleasure in everything. Here are 4 lessons I learned that will help keep you going, seeing and doing as much as possible while still loving every second of it.

1) Sleep is king

Nothing wears you out like frequent travel and no amount of coffee or Red Bull can make up for not getting a proper night’s rest. When flying, studies have shown that your body can take a full day to recover for each hour spent in the air. This means that a 7 hour flight could take your body a FULL WEEK to recover. One way to speed this recovery time up is to make sure to sleep 8-9 hours a night and hydrate properly. The longer you travel the more you realize that your energy is finite. Scheduling enough time to sleep will keep a smile on your face and provide you with enough oomph to adapt to and enjoy all that you are doing and seeing.

Scheduling sleep time is the easy part but ensuring good, quality sleep is a different story. Make earplugs and eye masks essential packing items and try to lay off of the booze as it can cause a restless night. I know too well how easy it is to have a few with new friends and stay up late on a trip, but allowing for an occasional relaxing night in makes all the difference later in your travels.

2) Plan downtime

If your itinerary is packed to the brim with sightseeing and activities, chances are you’ll wear yourself out much earlier than you think. To save energy and get the most out of your trip, treat relaxation and downtime as things that need planned. This can be as easy as setting some time out of each day to lay out at the beach or check e-mails in the hotel room. If you have some work to do, plan out time to do this in between activities to let your body rest and reset your mind. Reading and light exercise (going for a swim, or doing a few pushups) are my go-to’s for breaking up a long day of exploring.

3) You can’t see and do everything

It’s normal to feel the urge of wanting to cram as much as you can into your trip. I’m guilty of this on many occasions. The more I travel, the more I realize that quality trumps quantity.

Are you really dead set on visiting your 15th temple in 3 days?

Would you normally be interested in visiting a ceramics museum?

Asking yourself these questions is a useful strategy when worrying about burning yourself out. When cutting out a few activities you aren’t crazy about, you will find yourself better able to enjoy the interesting ones.

4) Remember your initial intentions

So you’re tired, your legs are sore and just about everything anyone says or does annoys you. In a normal situation, you would take some time to yourself to rest and regroup. But alas, you are traveling! Time to power through it and do everything possible… right? Of course not! Why create memories that will have negative feelings attached because you’re worn out and exhausted?

When finding yourself on the verge of collapse, take a second to pause and reflect on your initial intentions of traveling. Was your goal to wear yourself out and half-ass your trip in an agitated state? Probably not. Remembering these intentions will make you slow down and focus on why you set out on your journey. Sometimes relaxing with friends or reading a book in a beautiful setting is what’s most important.

Do you have any other techniques to avoid burning yourself out? Have you incorporated meditation into your routine on the road? Let me know in the comments below! 

Nick Waterhouse is the founder of AirBuds, Ltd. and BackpackingWithaBusiness.com. When not starting new projects, he is exploring far-off lands or making music with his friends. Feel free to contact him at BackpackingWithaBusiness@gmail.com.

Improved Adaptability: Traveling’s Greatest Benefit

by Nick Waterhouse

Long term travel can be just as rewarding as it is challenging – but challenging it is. Constantly moving my body countless miles, usually over rough terrain, definitely takes its toll. I have been backpacking (going going going) for six months now and I am tired. Don’t get me wrong, I am still having a blast and have learned, seen and experienced so much in the 40+ cities I have visited. I have recently been reflecting on this trip and asking myself a lot of questions. What have I gained from traveling for so long? What experiences have stayed with me and changed me? What can I “bring home” with me that will help me improve and accomplish my goals? After all of this pondering, one area of self improvement that stands out is the newfound ability to quickly and seamlessly adapt to new situations.

This improved adaptability isn’t so much convenient as it is necessary while traveling. It is necessary in the fact that in order to get the most out of a small amount of time, I can’t waste energy developing new habits and routines for every place I visit.

Getting settled in is now instinctual.

I usually book a place to stay in advance. Although this can take the fun away from being a complete vagabond, this process introduces me to the geography of a city, insures I will have a good wifi connection and a comfortable place to rest, and saves valuable time and energy. Next, I find a local shop where I can easily buy water and other essentials and I usually don’t shop anywhere else for my entire stay. This eliminates unnecessary decision making so I can save my finite mental energy for more important decisions. If I plan on working while in the city, I find a convenient cafe that serves a cheap breakfast and has a reliable internet connection. Again, saving mental energy and helping me stay in my routine of having a quick breakfast and completing work in the mornings. I then feel out the general layout of a city and the best way to get around (i.e public transportation, biking, walking, etc..). Within a day, I am settled in and my routine is solidified.

Being able to quickly adapt to a new place is essential for staying productive while traveling. Incorporating this skill to my everyday life when returning back home will be awesomely valuable. While I plan on continuing my personal ventures, I will be relocating to a new city and looking for new professional opportunities. I am now confident that I will be able to adjust to a new city, job and living situation in record time. Acclimating to a new work environment will be easier than ever as I am already accustomed to being in new situations constantly. I will be able to get a feel for a new city, pinpointing a neighborhood to live in and staying in my routine without skipping a beat; something I would have had trouble doing without all of the practice I’ve been getting.

Coming home from any long trip can be stressful. Improving your ability to quickly adapt to new situations will increase confidence and eliminate a lot of this stress. I am now excited for what new opportunities await me and am looking forward to continuing my adventure back home.

What are some other benefits of long-term travel? Are there any negatives? Let me know in the comments below! 

Nick Waterhouse is the founder of AirBuds, Ltd. and BackpackingWithaBusiness.com. When not starting new projects, he is exploring far-off lands or making music with his friends. Feel free to contact him at BackpackingWithaBusiness@gmail.com.

A 12-Hour Time Difference: How Traveling Helped Me Manage E-Mail

by Nick Waterhouse

We’ve all come to the conclusion that e-mail sucks. Everyone and their brother has figured out a “perfect” inbox management technique. From auto-responders to batch and unsubscribe programs such as Boomerang and Unroll.me, I’ve tried them all. Surprisingly, nothing has worked better for me than taking an extended trip through Southeast Asia.

I am not going to pretend I am some public figure who gets 1000s of e-mails a day, but, like a lot of you guys, I do receive 100s of daily e-mails even after religiously unsubscribing from junk. But with wanting to cover a lot of ground over the course of a year, I refused to let my inbox dictate my evenings. I took this trip to help rid some of the bad work habits I had at home, not reinforce them. Plus, my evenings are much better spent with a Beer Lao and new friends.

After being overseas for a few months, I am happy to say that the problem of managing my e-mail has solved itself without the use of any fancy techniques or tools. I used to be a big fan of auto-responders and used an e-mail template similar to one Tim Ferriss recommends but have recently steered away from this tactic for a few reasons.

First, auto-responders clog up inboxes. If someone doesn’t need something immediately, there is no need to clog up their inbox with a slightly pretentious “I’m too busy for you” response. Second, if something is actually urgent (medical emergency or death-in-the-family urgent) than someone wouldn’t be e-mailing anyways. Before traveling, I always make sure at least one close friend or relative has a way to reach me in case of emergency.

If I know I will check and respond to e-mail every 48 hours or so, an auto-responder is unnecessary. I think my lack of an immediate response can be a good reminder that e-mail shouldn’t require immediate attention. Plus, people get used to my typical response time and will stop worrying after a few exchanges. If I know there is a chance I won’t have any internet for more than 3 weekdays, I will use a very basic auto-responder including the date that I will be back on e-mail and always thanking the person writing for their patience. Or, a short “Sorry, I was having e-mail issues” usually replaces the need for an auto-responder. A little white lie won’t hurt anyone in this case.

Unless intentionally avoiding a wifi connection, you would be hard pressed to go 3 days in any country in the world without finding one. Over the last few months I have had a solid wifi connection on buses in Malaysia, jungles in Thailand and on a floating restaurant meters away from the oldest rainforest in the world. Although a constant connection can be a huge productivity killer, it is possible to find one if necessary.

I usually check, or batch, my e-mails in the mornings after breakfast. I am currently 12 hours ahead of EST and 15 hours ahead of PST, which is perfect for my e-mail schedule. During my morning e-mail session, I can see all of my (US based) e-mails from the day before. Any long and loopy e-mail chains have answered themselves and I am able to quickly delete or sort all of that day’s junk and ‘no response necessary’ e-mails.

After narrowing a full day’s response required e-mails down in a matter of minutes, I can efficiently and intelligently respond on my own time. There is not someone waiting for me to get back to them immediately so I always make sure my responses are thoughtful and accurate to avoid another e-mail on the matter. Once I am satisfied with my responses, I send all the e-mails at once before signing off – usually for the rest of the day.

I literally process hundreds of e-mails in one go rather than checking my inbox five – ten – twenty times throughout my workday as I did back home. On top of that, I usually maintain a 24-hour response time for all of my e-mails that I deem a response necessary.

Continue reading…

Overcoming Doubt with Mindfulness

By Andrew Fredette 

You will never create anything of value through doubt.

Ironically the further down a path of creativity or entrepreneurship you go, the more frequently you will have to face doubt. We might as well figure out how to intelligently deal with it.

It’s essential to our happiness that we critically examine our lives to make intelligent choices, but doubt is not critical examination. Doubt is the tendency to second guess, to create illusory obstacles for ourselves. It’s the habitual questioning of your worth, skills, and potential. Critical thinking is objective and clear- it doesn’t start with a negative assumption.

By seeing doubt for what it really is, you can absolutely abandon it. Doubt is a mental parasite you don’t need. It serves no purpose other than creating a personal crisis. An imaginary crisis is very fulfilling for the ego, but utterly useless in all other regards. Doubt and negativity of any form is an indulgence of the ego. Like Krispy Kremes and reality TV, it’s best not to indulge too often.

Abandoning doubt doesn’t mean that you won’t experience it anymore; it means that it no longer informs you. By accurately identifying doubt as a useless mental abstraction, you immediately liberate yourself from the need to respond to it… at least in theory. The actual practice of relinquishing the power of doubt requires mental awareness and ability to identify doubt as it occurs.

Practicing mindfulness is essential for pulling this off (A note from the editor: For an easy-to-read explanation of mindfulness and meditation, check out this article). Unless you are used to objectively examining your mind, it will be difficult to identify doubt without getting caught up in it. A mindful mind will quickly identify the pattern of doubt and ignore it. Untrained minds will get wrapped up in a cascade of negative thoughts. Mindfulness training is the antidote to the monkey mind’s feverish movement.

With this meta-awareness, there’s less inclination to take thoughts too seriously. The value of the pattern of thinking is considered rather than the content of individual thoughts themselves. This larger perspective is empowering and completely changes our relationship with the contents of our minds.

Mindfulness increases mental resilience. It diminishes the negative effects of doubt and makes us more effective people. Like all things, developing the ability to identify and detach yourself from doubt is a practice. It requires time and consistent effort. So while you’re developing your mental superpowers, remember to be gentle with yourself.

Meditation, meditation, meditation. The science of it’s benefits can’t be ignored. It’s a new year and there’s no better time to start a new goal. 10 mins in the morning and 10 mins in the evening will work wonders- especially if you’re on a creative path, or would like to begin one.

TL;DR: Doubt can and should be completely ignored. It is inevitable and a subjective way to look at the world. Practice mindfulness to get mental superpowers.

Andrew is a 27-year old meditation advocate, blogger, and entrepreneur living in Portland, OR. He’s voracious explorer of science, self-improvement, and philosophy. His writing can be found at www.revolutionme.net.