Forget the Job Resume, Show Me Your Life Resume
A friend once joked, “I want to see your resume of actual things you’ve done.” It made me laugh at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were onto something. A polished LinkedIn profile only tells part of the story. The real picture of who we are often shows up in the scrappy, messy, and sometimes unexpected experiences that shape us along the way.
So here’s mine — my so-called “life resume.” I was head of design for L&Z Ltd., the custom birdhouse company my brother and I launched as kids. I sold photography as greeting cards in local stores and learned sales the hard way. I once babysat four kids for twenty bucks, directed Vacation Bible School multiple years in a row while in high school, and designed the sets for it too. I coordinated a 1,700-person festival, wrote grants, and manned the rapid refund counter at H&R Block during tax season. I designed logos and packaging for my mom’s bakery, sold biscuits and fried pies to local stores, and later worked retail at Go Fish. I mowed yards with a twenty-year-old push mower in the hood, posted rental listings on Craigslist, and ran signs across town for real estate. I worked as a personal assistant, then became Director of Operations for a real estate team, dabbled in web development, and co-owned that same team years later. Along the way I raised tens of thousands of dollars for causes, coached business owners, renovated homes, and designed a custom one. I served as president of a two-hundred-year-old nonprofit, led mission trips to West Virginia, and traveled to Zimbabwe, Haiti, and Guatemala on missions. I co-published a cookbook, started a neighborhood food drive that ran for a decade, and created more content than I can count. And honestly, there are probably other random things I can’t even remember.
And while they don’t belong on any job application, I’d still add these to the list: Godmom to four of the best kiddos around. Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Packed up and moved across the country solo. Wandered through some pretty incredible places on this earth.
Forget the job resume. As Jesse Itzler says: show me your life resume. Because isn’t that what actually tells the story of who we are? Not the tidy bullet points designed for recruiters, but the odd jobs, the side hustles, the leaps of faith, the experiences that tested and grew us. That’s the stuff that gives us perspective. That’s the stuff that creates clarity about who we are and what we bring to the table.
So here’s my invitation: make your own life resume. Don’t overthink it. Just start jotting down the jobs you worked, the projects you tackled, the roles you stepped into, the adventures that shaped you. See what themes show up. Notice what patterns connect. My guess is you’ll find pieces of who you were made to be written right there in the middle of it.
P.S. If you’ve been carrying a jumble of experiences and wondering how they add up, that’s exactly the kind of clarity work I love doing with entrepreneurs. Together we’ll connect the dots and build a business that reflects your whole story. You can see how to work with me here.
