Inspiring Conversations with Kaylyn Blair of AOK Resumes and Career Coaching

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kaylyn Blair.

Hi Kaylyn, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
When I first started my business, I used to say my origin story was a response to the pandemic. March 2020. I was about to graduate from University of Colorado Denver with my master’s when my studies and my new post-grad full-time job became remote, my home became my office, and my colleagues, peers, and I were struggling to adjust to the myriad of changes in the professional world. I had already been helping friends and family with resumes for years, given my training in college career centers throughout my academic career, so it made sense to convert my free help to a profitable side hustle. And thus, AOK Resumes was born. However, the more my business grew, the more I came to favor entrepreneurship over my stable full-time job in higher education, the more people came to me for career clarity and coaching in addition to resumes, and the more I began to believe in myself as a career coach and outgrow my role as a resume writer. That’s when my business formally evolved to AOK Resumes AND Career coaching.
After about a year of balancing the demands of my full-time job, working from home, and navigating the nuances of entrepreneurship, I found out that my full-time job was requiring everyone to return to the office, in person, full-time, no exceptions, no flexibility, no hybrid schedules. I panicked. I personally had a lot of trauma associated with this particular office environment. I was sexually assaulted by my supervisor years before in a different department. I went through a two-year-long title IX and legal investigation in the agonizing journey to learn to stand up for myself. Once I left the physical environment in the name of the pandemic, my nervous system could relax in ways I forgot it could. There was no way I was going back to that same environment. I could not move backward. I had to find a new way to move forward, even if it was a bit risky and nontraditional. The more I learned to stand up for myself both personally and professionally, the more I empowered I felt.

So, I quit my full-time job and dedicated my time and energy to my business. I dove in. All in. There were significant ups and downs. I’ve had months that completely replaced and even exceeded my full-time income and months that barely covered rent. However, I’ve also had months of working remotely from different places I would not have been able to easily access or intimately explore had I stayed with my full-time employer. I took my work into the mountains, to Costa Rica, Belize, Utah, New Mexico, Maryland, to family in Massachusetts, through cross-country road trips and life transitions. I’ve truly curated a life that I love in the wake of a trauma that made me question whether or not I wanted to live at all. At the root of it is my business. My ability to rely completely on myself and trust the universe to deliver. My dedication to live in alignment with my strengths and my values while encouraging others to do the same. My commitment to lead by example while I curate a career that supports the life I want to live has allowed me to coach others through similar career transitions as well. It is more fulfilling than I could have ever imagined, completely different than anything I could have planned, and totally unpredictable and inspiring as I continue to move forward and embrace the unknown. Are you ready to come along for the journey?

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I was always confident in my training and experience to deliver resume writing and career coaching services. However, I was initially paralyzed by the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship as a whole. I didn’t have a business degree. I was an education girly. How could I possibly launch and start a business, let alone sustain it? Getting over this hurdle was the biggest of all. I sat on my business idea for about a year before I applied for my LLC. I struggle with hyper-independence. I have to do everything all of the time. And as much as I have valued my time in education both as a student and as an instructor, I hate the learning process. Feeling like I don’t know how to do something, let alone feeling like I’m BAD at something, makes me want to hide in a hole. That’s the thing with entrepreneurship though, there’s no hiding allowed. You are on all of the time. So that’s the first limiting belief and shadowy part of myself I had to overcome – how to ask for help. Since then, I hired business coaches and social media experts and photographers and web designers. In turn, supporting other small business as well! And I am so incredibly grateful for their help and for finally understanding that my business is my own. I can do as much or as little as I want. And I can pivot as many times as I need to in order to continue living within my value system by curating a career that works for me and empowering others to do the same.

The other obstacle has been my intense healing journey from the aforementioned trauma. My therapist once described me as “occupationally dysfunctional” because my ability to do my job had been compromised by my earth-shattering experience, understandably so. I had to rebuild myself from nothing. I had to reestablish my sense of self. I had already been working to process this experience for years, and it would have been foolish to believe that this deep inner work would not come up in entrepreneurship. It’s one of the main reasons I left my full-time job in pursuit of AOK Resumes and Career Coaching in the first place. And it’s something I keep coming back to, again and again. To heal myself from different angles and perspectives as I grow through life. However, that’s somewhat of another gift that entrepreneurship has given to me. The ability to go where I need to go and do what I need to do to prioritize my healing. There are no career emergencies, but there are personal emergencies and crises and breakdowns. The ability to take time to honor those and seek out spiritual and emotional support while running my business on my own terms is incredibly healing all in itself and I am so grateful to be here in the midst of it all.

We’ve been impressed with AOK Resumes & Career Coaching, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
As your Career Coach, we dive in deep to identify your strengths and values to then determine if present and future career opportunities are in alignment with those values. If they are, we move forward to find and apply for said opportunities through job search strategies, interview preparation, and salary negotiation coaching. I also provide support with graduate school applications and admissions.

Even though I have resumes in my name, I am in the process of pivoting from resume writing to primarily career coaching. This type of coaching encapsulates every phase of the professional journey. I serve recent graduates and career changers. It is incredibly important to me to show up authentically in this work. I am transparent with my own strengths, weaknesses, and values. I share the ups and downs of my own experiences to ensure my clients never feel alone throughout the process. I lead by example, as messy and as unpredictable as it may be, and that’s just me.

In terms of my success so far, and more importantly the success of my clients, I’ve helped individuals land jobs in a variety of fields including social work, education, finance, cybersecurity, healthcare, forestry, interior design, marketing, communications, and more. My clients have gotten into 90% of the graduate school programs they’ve applied for, including MIT, medical school, and law school. More recently, given the shifting culture around work and “quiet quitting” I’ve helped clients set healthy work-life boundaries, ask for the raises they deserve, and leave jobs that no longer serve them.

My coaching process often reveals when careers are misaligned as well. That’s when the work really begins. To figure out what is going wrong in the working world and why. Of course, the pressures of capitalism and our collective pandemic trauma in addition to personal trauma and limiting beliefs play a role. From there, we can evaluate what opportunities would be in alignment with the life you want. I’m throwing away the idea of a dream job. We should not be dreaming of work. We ought to be manifesting a beautiful life within which we work and serve a purpose. I’d rather have you focus on what that life should look like and find a career to support it instead of building a life entirely around your career. I deeply believe that careers are not linear. Job hopping gets a bad reputation but our needs and values shift as we move through different chapters of life and it only makes sense that our careers evolve with us. That’s what I’m here to do. As a career coach, I provide a road map to curate a career that supports the life you want, whether it’s finding a traditional job to support you and your family, going back to school, landing remote opportunities to take your work on the road and travel the world, or starting a business to be in the driver’s seat of your career once and for all. The possibilities are endless.

I will still offer resume support going forward. Instead of doing the work for you, I’ll provide the resources and knowledge to empower you to do it yourself. Writing your resume should be an exciting process in which you give yourself credit for all of the work that you’ve done thus far. It shouldn’t be an obstacle to landing an opportunity that you know you deserve. Please message me to inquire what these resume services look like. Otherwise, you can find my ATS-friendly resume templates along with short-term and long-term career coaching packages on my website and social media pages.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Starting this business during the first wave of the pandemic was a risk. Leaving my full-time job to pursue this business full-time was a risk. Showing up authentically as myself and encouraging others to do the same is a risk I take every day, especially on social media where trolls are just waiting to bring you down. Being open about my trauma experience, its impact on my career trajectory, and my healing journey is a huge risk. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. There’s a great Hugh Laurie quote that I think of often. “It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.” Yes, it’s definitely scary to take a risk and go forth into the unknown, but not as scary as staying in the same place for the rest of my life. I don’t want to waste any of my wild and precious life waiting for a risk to feel less scary. I’d rather face it head-on and keep moving forward.

Pricing:

• Resume Template: $11.11
• LinkedIn Profile Revamp & Refresh: $99.99
• Short Term Career Coaching Including Job Search Strategies, Interview Prep, and Salary Negotiation Coaching: $299.99
• Long-Term Career Coaching: Careers by Design – Your Roadmap to Curating a Career to Support the Life you Deserve: $777
• Grad School Coaching Including School Research and Admissions Support, Personal Statement, CV, and Scholarship/Assistantship Applications: $555

Contact Info:

• Website: aokresumes.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aokresumes/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AoKResumes/ 

Image Credits
Dalia at Agua E Coco, Costa Rica