What's up, everyone? For today's episode,we have our second guest for 2019 - Nickquolette Barret! She's the author of the "You're Hired!" book series, career & interview prep coach,resume & linkedin profile writer, speaker and founder and CEO of iRockResumes.
With Nicquolette's experience, we wanted toknow what she could share about herself and her business!
Nicquolette has had a lot of experience and success in her job which focuses on prepping their employees for the next opportunity or promotion they could get – this included prepping them for interviews and resumes. A lot of the employees she worked with got promoted –she was a natural pro when it came to career coaching.
With her getting so much success at her job, a lot of the employees she was in charge of gave her the idea that maybe she could start her own business as a career coach. She made use of social media to get started, but LinkedIn was able to help her out a lot! Thus, a rock star in career coaching was born – iRock Resumes! Nickquolette and her business have been rocking out for five years now.
Believe it or not, Nicquolette still has her day job! Since the nature of her day job allows her to have flexibility, she is able to achieve better organization and time management! A lot of her writing for iRock is done in the evenings and weekends.
We bet y'all are wondering how a busy womanlike her is able to balance everything out. Well, for Nickquolette, all she needs is her virtual assistant, who helps her out a lot, and the two softwares, Dubsado and Asana, that allow her to keep track of a lot of things like invoices, projects and different workflows.
Nicquolette is a natural when it comes to maintaining her social media pages. She makes great use of social media management tools like Social Bee and it has really helped her stay on top of her game. A lot of the content she puts out is scheduled in advance and her themes for specific days help her keep the ideas rolling.
Since Nickquolette handles a lot of clients who are business professionals, LinkedIn is her slice of heaven. She's able to meet career professionals and budding entrepreneurs via LinkedIn and her Facebook Live series have helped out a lot as well!
The best thing she loves about LinkedIn is that she upgraded to LinkedIn Premium. With LinkedIn Premium, she is able to look for new clients and even target specific ones by getting into their inboxes right away! LinkedIn Pro Finder also allows her to get direct leads for people and potential clients that are looking for services like resume writing,interview preps, and career coaching.
By day, Nickquolette is an employee and at night, she's a business owner. It's pretty hard to have two roles to play, but she doesn't seem to have problems with it. Her tips for those budding entrepreneurs who are planning on taking that big leap, be sure to be clear about what your company's mission is and who is your target audience.
The new year is going to be quite a productive one for iRock Resumes to say the least! Nickquolette recently launched a LinkedIn meet up group for people in the McKinnie area – so folks in the Allen and Frisco area are welcomed as well!
She also plans to hold online classes and her first one will be "Master the job hunt in 90 days or less". The class will focus on how to present yourself on paper and in person, the dos and don'ts for interviews, and what you should do for networking.
Different organizations have reached out to her as well for her services and she'll be working with them in order to develop their C-level employees!
The subhead is obviously a joke, but Nickquolette has been an avid reader ever since she was a kid! When she used to live in Chicago as a child, she went through the entire local library's books from the kids' section when she was nine and started reading books for older readers. Her habits as a bookworm still carry on to this day because she listens to audio books all the time whenever she's on long drives.
It may seem strange, but having a P.O. box attributes a lot towards the image of your business and even yourself as an entrepreneur. With a P.O. box, Nickquolette is able to not only receive mail safely– it also gives the reassurance that her business is legitimate and professional. So, for $80 a year, she's able to get her packages without the fear of it being stolen, and her business' image improves – so much win!
At first, Nickquolette was like many entrepreneurs when they started out – she went with the flow and mainly focused on the tasks that were at hand every day. She soon realized that this repetition was hindering her from growing, so she sat down and figured things out by creating her own system. The addition of software, updating of workflows and proper organization has helped her business grow and stabilize.
We all make mistakes when starting out, but she started out, the names for her e-mail lists weren't collected. This resulted in her having problems with keeping relationships with her clients and she hasn't really been able to keep track of how they've been doing. She plans on doing that differently now and we're sure that a lot of them would be more than happy to keep in touch with her again!
Even if Nickquolette has created a system for her workflow, we're glad to know that she's able to fit in a Netflix binge!She's currently going crazy over the sitcom Grace and Frankie. It stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and focuses on their adventures together after getting divorced by their husbands who get married because they are in love with each other! Sounds like a really interesting show, we'll definitely check it out!
Today's podcast was really fun! It was such a joy to have Nickquolette be on the show. Her insights on her business and personal life has really given us a different perspective on things and we hope that y'all did, too!
We'll see y'all next week for another awesome episode!