Seasons Greetings,

2020 had it all. I think for a lot of us, it was a pretty uneven mix of good and bad. I wanted to write a little bit about what this year has meant for me, and share a few thoughts as we move into 2021.

Good Things Still Happen

I launched my consultancy in April this past year, right in the middle of the COVID-19 shutdowns. This was a dream of mine for years, and it's one I put off continually because of how scared I was of falling. In the end I made the jump and it has been wonderful.

I've been writing. Though I could always poke at myself and say I should write more, I am happy with keeping up a habit and skill I developed last year. In fact, in 2020, I wrote 62 articles on my site. That doesn't include these newsletters either!

I had several new career coaching clients, and numerous short calls to help people with making sense of offers. I even did a panel discussion with the folks from the Agile Alliance. Not bad, considering I first cooked up the idea to do this somewhat seriously right about a year ago!

Bad Things Happen Too

COVID sucks. While my immediate family didn't get hit by it, the rapid changes as we all had to adapt quickly to a new routine and perspective wasn't all that pleasant.

I am no stranger to working remotely, but many people I worked with were. Collectively stress went through the roof at my client, as people found themselves burning out more, having to adapt to communicating differently, feelings of isolation, and finding new ways to leave work behind when the day is done.

Putting those two together was no picnic. There was a cloud of anxiety for months as a rapid-spreading and poorly understood dominated our thoughts as we quickly moved to our homes. Thankfully many people I surround myself with were quick to point out this one-two combo's potential effects and I was able to find my way through it eventually.

Always Opportunity

Some time ago I started a habit which was to take a few pieces of input that I see in a day and try to identify an opportunity with it. Admittedly I'm not as regular about this as I'd like, but I bring up this idea of finding opportunities up for a reason.

As insane as 2020 was, it was full of opportunity. As shutdowns started moving in, those of us with remote team proficiency or remote facilitation ability had ample opportunity to offer training, help, and consulting to businesses and schools. A similar opportunity for teachers to create a viable commerce site for video and material purchase to supplement classes emerged. Companies that have relied on status-quo had massive opportunities to pivot their products to serve new customers in new ways. Many focused on weathering the storm instead, but people were desperate for relief and products that many companies provided could have helped.

I think people now are realizing a world outside of an office is possible, but there are many details to figure out. Managers are having to learn new techniques to lead as they can't rely on past information flows and control. Employees are figuring out what "Work-life" balance means all over again. The barriers between us as professionals and us as people in our homes and families are thinner. These all present opportunities.

Welcome 2021

I'm personally excited for 2021. There are countless reasons why, but leaving behind some of the hard things and going after some of the new opportunities ahead have me pretty worked up.

Even if you don't do any of them, a change no matter how big or small, like the digit of a year changing can be as significant as we want.

• So what opportunities do you want your 2021 to be about?
• What is the smallest thing you can do to take a step towards it in one week or less?
• What don't you want to lose as you try for this new opportunity?
• What do you really need to start?

Here's my weekly update for December 29th, 2020...

🗒️ How I’m Building My First Online Class

I published my first book Land the Job, early in 2020, which led to many other ideas.

One of those was to create some online courses to walk people through the book’s content in various ways.

So I started putting together my first course, which covers resumes.

Here’s how I’m going about it.

Click here to read more

Sincerely,

Ryan Latta