Are you trying to figure out what you want to do with your career and how to get there? Then read up on our interview with Austin Braksick, partner at ProjectYou, located in Charlotte, NC, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
ProjectYou supports young professionals in finding and advancing a career that they love. We provide clients 1:1 career advising with former Fortune 500 executives, assessments, and professional LinkedIn and resume support to help them take their careers to the next level. Our clients range from college students to young professionals in the first 15 years of their careers. In short, we help our clients with what they want to do and build the necessary skills to get there. All of our engagements are customized to our client's needs. We're different from other career coaching services in that our advisors have led global organizations at the senior levels. Providing young professionals with clarity, capability, and confidence is what they want to do in their own "next seasons" post-corporate world. ProjectYou is a child company of MyNextSeason, which specializes in career transitions and ensuring that those transitions happen well. Currently, MyNextSeason is supporting 20+ Fortune 200 organizations.
Tell us about yourself
I would've been the prototypical ProjectYou client had it existed when I was in college. I didn't know what I wanted to do career-wise but I received some great advice to follow my passions. This led me to work in professional sports, where I got great experience with the Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Avalanche. It was with the Avalanche that I cut my teeth in sales and fell in love with selling. I then moved into tech sales, where I started off as an individual contributor before ultimately moving into management. It was within that management role that I interviewed, hired, and worked with a lot of phenomenal people for whom that was their first or second job. Even so, many of them still struggled with what they wanted to do with their careers. But, outside of talking with friends and family, there was no one they could go to help them figure it out. What motivated me to join ProjectYou then was what still motivates me today-- to help young people figure out what they want to do and how to get there. We live in a world that loves to put people in "buckets" based on their college major, course load, and interests. In doing that, we so often fail to recognize what we call "The Whole You." We encourage clients to think about their lives and careers holistically and realize that their interests and career don't have to be mutually exclusive. Outside of work, I live in Charlotte, NC, with my wife and our two awesome daughters, and love just about anything/everything outdoors.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
We have a phenomenal team at ProjectYou. We're fortunate enough to have world-class advisors who have led highly-decorated and successful careers, but more importantly, they care and show they care in every client interaction. With this, although I'm sure it sounds hyperbolic, we have yet to have a client have a negative experience. So many of our clients come to us feeling defeated and drained from the job search/application process. Many of them feel like they are sending their resumes into a black hole where they apply, oftentimes, they don't hear back, and more often than not, they receive little to no feedback and end up doubting themselves and their abilities. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing our clients grow in their confidence, be able to tell their stories, and represent themselves in a compelling, unique way that differentiates them from other candidates and, ultimately, land their dream job or internship. It's why we do what we do.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
To date, 90%+ of our clients come from referrals from previous clients and word of mouth. This speaks volumes about the types of experiences our clients have, but a lot of our focus has continued to be around expanding our impact and reaching an even broader client base. With this, we have some exciting things in the mix for 2023 as a way to improve our digital presence, provide more thought leadership from our experts in this space and help even more clients reach their goals.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
1. Don't be Afraid to Pivot - From our inception, we were trying to figure out what type of delivery format would help us scale our support as effectively as possible... We tried a college cohort model and online platform before ultimately landing on what our "bread and butter" was, which is our 1:1 advising. Through trying different delivery formats, we were really able to learn a lot, listen to our clients and ultimately broaden our range of content to be as effective as possible in meeting our clients where they are.
2. Infrastructure Drives Scalability - Year 1 of ProjectYou, we spent the majority of our time focusing on infrastructure. For companies in career advising and consulting, consistency in client experience is a NEED to have. If advisor X talks about interviewing skills different than advisor Y, we lose repeatability. With this, we created advisor guides and workbooks for our advisors to use in engagements. This has allowed us to continue expanding our amazing team of advisors, while also ensuring consistency.
3. Don't Stop Learning - Our team has done a great job of creating materials and infrastructure, but these are ALWAYS evolving. We depend heavily on advisor and client feedback to continue adapt these. We've also found it necessary to stay on top of industry trends and the future of work to understand the challenges our clients are facing. For example, networking can be an intimidating subject for young professionals. With the transition to hybrid and remote work, networking becomes even more complex and intimidating and so we've had to adapt and nuance the way that we teach young professionals how to network.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.myprojectyou.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myprojectyou/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myprojectyou
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-project-you/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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