Career Action Center

 

Career Counseling and Coaching Services


Cimino helps clients make dreams a reality

Susan Cantrell Quotable Notables
Posted to the Monterey County Herald,
Sunday, September 11, 2005

You've heard the term "multitasking"? Picture a man with a baby on one hip, a cell phone under his chin while discussing a corporate merger and his free hand stirring a pot on the stove. It means doing a bunch of stuff at once.

Now you can add to that "multicareering" or a "portfolio career," as Estelle Cimino, a local and Silicon Valley career counselor, calls it. This is where you pursue several careers, or hold several jobs, at once. In yesteryears, you'd be called a flake for not sticking to one career from youth until retirement. In these uncertain times, you're considered smart for spreading your energies around like a balanced stock portfolio. Forget job security. According to Cimino, there never was any -- it was merely an illusion.

Cimino can handle it. The diminutive brown-eyed dynamo lifts like a parachute when she talks of her life, loves and work. She declines to give her age, saying due to age discrimination she also helps her clients disguise it in their résumés. Incense wafts through the rooms of her spacious Monterey home and her Akita, Kia, nuzzles my hand.

I ask her what her advice would be to someone who places this ad: FOR HIRE: skilled interviewer, creative writer, researcher, creative thinker, leader, teacher, independent, self-motivated, works at home.

Her answer? "Wow! I don't know if I'd give you a job. You fit more as an entrepreneur; you're more a dream weaver or architect. Being a writer is perfect for you."

Grooving with the jargon, I say, "OK, but what if I want to add to my portfolio career?"

"Marketing research would be great for a good interviewer. A friend of mine does that and is very successful. Big companies hire her to create research for their products, like hair color, etc."

Then she takes off her shoes and curls into a chair, ready to take on more questions...

Q: Were you always a multitasker?
A: Yes. I think I was born that way. There are so many things to do and experience in life, I want to grab hold. I was a child entrepreneur. I'd create these little businesses, like a carnival, a lemonade stand and fundraising. At 15, I chose a bunch of professions I wanted to do and (eventually) did them. I worked in a restaurant, a women's clothing store and in a bank.
Q: Wow, you were very enterprising.
A: My father and most of my family were entrepreneurs.
Q: What are you selling?
A: Ah! (Grins) The prime thing I tell all my clients: everyone is selling themselves and their services and we are all branding ourselves. I'm selling that you can be, do and have anything you want in your life, and you can manifest and attract what you chose by taking action and steps. I've set my mind to what people have said I'd never do and I've said, "Watch me!" I want to help people live their passions and realize their callings. A lot of my clients lost everything in the stock market and then lost their jobs. I tell them everything in life is like a road trip: You chose your destination and then figure out how you're going to get there. And sometimes there are detours and wrong turns, but that's OK. That's what life's all about. I've had plenty. Then it's getting up, dusting yourself off and deciding what's next.
Q: Personal example?
A: I remember when I had to close my store in 1996 (Monterey Bay Coffeehouse Bookshop) and it was tough. We just weren't making it money-wise. I had to shift my life. Then I made the decision to get my master's in career counseling. The days of one permanent job for a lifetime are pretty much over. It's self-reliance now.
Q: So, like in the stock market, you should diversify?
A: Exactly. You don't want to put everything into one fund/job. You want multiple streams of income, really. I consult, write, teach and run businesses.
Q: Have you always had excellent self-esteem?
A: It's something I've worked on very hard. My major issues are self-esteem and worthiness, and most people I work with as well. We carry these issues from childhood and spend a lifetime working on them.
Q: Do you ignore naysayers?
A: Nature and animals are magical to me, that's why I chose this house (in the forest). I was told I couldn't afford it. And I was told I'd never get a start-up loan for my first business. Naysayers are often coming from their own fears. I just had a client starting a personal chef business and his family was being very negative.
Q: My, you're intrepid.
A: Oh, I've got my fears. But you know what? Lots of times when your fears come to be, they're not as bad as you imagine in your head. I always feared what would happen if my store had to close. But it happened. And I'm a better person today than back then for what I've experienced.
Q: The entrepreneurial spirit requires:
  1. fearlessness
  2. acceptance of change
  3. the confidence of a card shark
  4. tremendous focus on goals
  5. a whimsical nature
A: I think all of them. For me, being whimsical is to be willing to try anything; almost like being a free spirit. An entrepreneur is always coming up with unique approaches and finding solutions to customers' needs.
Q: How much hand-holding do you do in the Silicon Valley?
A: Hewlett-Packard was laying off employees, some who had been there since the day they graduated from college, and it's a total shock to them. I've done presentations to these people. I go on days when they're downsizing, when employees get notices and they are hardest hit with pain, grief and shock. I like to help people move through that. It's part of why I volunteer to lead a grief support group for hospice. Whether it's career or survivor counseling, I want to help create a safe haven for them.
Q: Cite a client's radical career change.
A: He was in the high-tech industry and went into the equine photography business and he's very successful. He used to photograph his own horse.
Q: What's hot in the job market?
A: Anything to do with the medical field, health care, and they need creative people, too.
Q: Most common marketing mistake for beginners?
A: To fall in love with what they are selling instead of their customer's needs.
Q: Devil's advocate: Multitaskers brag about getting 5-6 hours sleep, but studies say less than nine can compromise your driving skills and immune system.
A: I get 7-8 hours. It's very important to me. Otherwise, I don't work or play as well.
Q: How easily are you bored?
A: Probably fairly easily. That's why I do many things. I wanted to experience hang gliding in Marina, and I gave myself that gift, also kayaking. I horseback ride almost every week, too.
Q: Your favorite getaway?
A: Someplace very nature-oriented, spiritual, like Sedona. Eselen is on my list of things I want to experience. Last year I did Tassajara. This year I walked the Big Sur Marathon.
Q: When are you on a high wire with no net?
A: Actually, I feel like that most of the time. But that's OK with me because I know deep inside that I'll always be fine.
Q: Who helped you with that?
A: Probably my therapist. I haven't been in therapy for a while, but after I spent time digging into issues, finally a light turned on and it's never turned off.