With a media and advertising career spanning 25 years, Scarlett Vespa is a brand maker, keynote speaker and founder of digital marketing firm The Conscious Agency, working with iconic brands such as Disney, David Jones and CBA.
Vespa works with top executives hitting crisis mode through redundancy, parenthood, corporate burnout or all three helping them forge a new career direction. In creating a new breed of “conscious entrepreneurs”, Vespa shows how roadblocks are a modern day rite of passage into a more meaningful life, with personal accountability for success. With more than a million people in Australia said to be out of work now, the mental and physical state of our nation will be left in shock once the pandemic curve flattens, she says.
Organisations will be left facing a new flexible workforce after working from home was enforced on so many. This will create a forced redesign of current processes, attitudes and trust – a value not seen in current corporate identities. “I personally experienced having to change careers after losing everything many years ago, so I understand the mindset required to manage the emotional challenges ahead,” Vespa says. “I have always helped corporate refugees find their true purpose, leaving toxic corporate culture behind to launch new careers as a “conscious entrepreneur”.
According to Vespa, the key ideas include to find your purpose; you have been working hard to build the organisations’ brand vision and now it is time to turn to yours; re-connect with your passion and find what lights you up. The next is to embrace your intuition; you learned that other peoples’ opinions mattered more than yours and ignored that inner voice. Get in touch with your intuition, learn to trust that internal compass again. Then keep your focus on the process; organisations are goal driven, but will now be values driven.
Then, she says, stay conscious on the journey and life will show you signs of what to do along the way. The next step is personal branding, creating your own personal brand creates clarity. Start by honing your three core values (embrace individual responsibility, never give up, glass half full attitude). These will become your compass, communicating who you are and what you believe in. Everything you say and do should be consistently filtered through these three values. That is your brand voice, says Vespa.
Now, audit your skill set; most of us undervalue what we do. Audit your skills and do not forget the natural superpowers you are not paid for, such as creativity or leadership skills. Only then can you tap into true entrepreneurship and future proof your career. Finally, personal development; humans do not like change and we are in the biggest change we will see in our lifetimes.
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