The recent career shift I’ve made has been one of the biggest of my life, yet it also feels like a natural progression since it brings together the different types of work I’ve done over the course of my working life.
The short version is that I have moved away from productivity training and consulting (though I have integrated many of those practices into how I do business and how I support clients) and have moved into web design and development, which satisfies an artistic yearning and utilizes a design talent that I have.
The back story
For those interested in stories of transformation, this is mine: My transition started while working for Mission Control, where I sold and led productivity training courses. I learned a lot and, due to the success I had as both a sales person and program leader, saw a bright future for myself in the field of productivity training and business consulting.
Over time, however, I noticed that while people liked what they learned from the trainings, they didn’t always put them in practice, and I wondered why. I wanted to help people discover what was behind their issues of productivity, so I decided to move more into business consulting. In this phase of my career, I made some difficult changes, including learning to let go of my need for people to like me, because in order to serve people I needed to give them honest feedback and support regardless of how that would make people feel toward me. I also learned more about business and the challenges that business owners and their employees face every day. My favorite part of this work was to explore the dynamics and relationships between people that impacted business effectiveness, and support people to work in a more co-creative and mutually supportive way.
The only downside to this business (and it was a big one) is that I didn’t love the field of business itself. I had an artistic yearning that began expressing itself through volunteer work I was doing with web design and development. I did this in my “spare” time, working on this nights and weekends and loving it. Soon to follow was video work (which was my major in college – I have a B.A. in Radio and TV). As a volunteer, I have now shot and edited hundreds of hours of video for the Consciousness Boot Camp curriculum, which is a consciousness training made available globally over the internet.
This hobby of mine persisted in grabbing my attention and soon became my primary focus and my business. I have now completed work on dozens of websites, which you can explore at www.bentonwebs.com. If I think about it, it makes complete sense. My father was a set decorator and art director for feature films. He was very gifted, with four Academy Award nominations. While I don’t pretend to have the same gifts as him, some of the Benton artistry worked its way into me, and I am loving the design and development of each website that I create. This work also taps into my technical skills in addition to drawing on my consulting experience, helping me to work with clients, listen for what they are trying to achieve and understand enough about their business to make their website a tool to support both their business and their authentic self-expression.
I invite you to look through my portfolio and ask that if you know of anyone who could use a website or website re-fresh, to please contact me.