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How it all began Hi and welcome to Tim’s Strategy. My name is Tim Tyrell-Smith. In 2007, I became officially unemployed (in between) for the first time in my career. It was joyful, stressful, freeing, exciting and frustrating all at the same time. And, in some ways, I needed to make a game of it. To find unique analogies that I could use to maintain a positive and confident psychology. You see, there is something very stimulating about being on the job hunt. You get to test your skills against many others and in front of a great variety of hiring managers. Where else do we really get to compete in life anymore? Plate spinning as the first analogy for job search, career and life The act of plate spinning was the first analogy I identified because its focus was on efficiency – the best, most productive use of time spent. And it led to the original name I used for the blog and website. You see, I found during my own search that people were tapping into too few resources and using them up beyond their usefulness. See my intro blog post for the full story. And I think we have opportunities to apply this idea broadly throughout life. I originally called it “spin strategy” Building this community is an act of thanks to all who helped me during my own search. To get started, I created a name and a logo (after all, I’m in marketing) and started to share the idea with a few friends. I then created a set of tools to help job seekers identify and determine how best to use their network – all based initially on the analogy of plate spinning. As the concept matured and caught on, job seekers wanted more than just a concept or a tool. They wanted a broad menu of resources so I started to blog and began to create free downloads to support the job search. And plate spinning became just one of many ideas to share. Then I made some changes . . . About 15 months into creating the concept, I decided to make a change. To re-jigger things a bit. So I re-named the blog and combined it with the website. It became Tim’s Strategy. After all, it did originate in my head, right? And every day I wrote or built a new tool, the strategy got more complete. So then I worked on ways to pull it all together. I’ve written a few books on job search strategy and created a bunch of videos to bring it to life. But in reality, the content is not mine alone. Like anything that is created from experience, it is never one person’s strategy alone. But it’s mostly mine! You can read more about my start in this article by Peggy Lowe of the Orange County Register “Unemployment Was My Big Deep Breath“. It’s A Competitive Market I hope this site will become a great resource for everyone who needs the help. There are a lot of great resources out there on the web to help with career and personal development. I only hope Tim’s Strategy adds to the quality content available and does so in a fun and inventive way.