Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in professional development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Anna Dushkina, owner of CareerHD Inc., located in Toronto, ON, Canada.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

CareerHD is a top Resume Writing and Career Coaching service in the Greater Toronto Area, serving clients across North America. We work with clients of all walks of life and varying career levels: entry-level/students to senior-level executives and technical professionals (niche markets).

Our writers and career coaches have expertise working with various career levels and possess the necessary education, experience, and North American certifications to provide top-quality services to our clients that yield results. We are inspired by our clients' stories and driven to help them evolve in their chosen career paths, even when transitioning to new ones!

Tell us about yourself

The inkling to coach and help people develop professionally came early on to me in my career, partly driven by my many years as a competitive tennis player and coach. Combined with experience gained working abroad in China, where I had provided writing services to adults in search of work in North America, my time overseas helped me discover my passion, and by the time I returned back to Toronto, I was determined to begin my new journey serving clients in the GTA and across Canada.

Like many solopreneurs, I started out very small, testing methods and processes until finally, things “clicked,” and our client base began to grow! I am proud of CareerHD’s humble beginnings and motivated every day by our clients’ success and the positive impact we can make in their lives.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Providing services that yield real results! There is nothing better than hearing that you’ve helped someone land their dream job, this is one of the most rewarding feelings as a business owner.

I started CareerHD determined to do just that, strongly believing I could help others succeed professionally, one client and small project at a time. Today, we have a team of writers and coaches who share this passion and determination with me and have further expanded our skillset as a professional services business and have helped CareerHD evolve.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

One of the hardest things is being the “Chief-of-all-things” this includes sales, marketing, operations, client & public relations, web design, etc. You will learn a lot in the process about all the things, but you will also learn to delegate and seek out professional help for tasks that a specialist would better handle. Part of the challenge is recognizing when to invest in outside help.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Start small, test, launch, and evaluate – sitting on an idea for too long won’t necessarily make your idea more successful. If you have a solid reason to believe it will succeed, test it and launch it. Then, proactively find cost-effective methods to utilize analytics to track the activity of your launched service or product. This will help you understand your results, learn from your findings and make appropriate adjustments if needed.
  2. Embrace challenges and your failures – reflect and learn from those experiences. Document key take-aways from both positive and negative experiences, this will help you implement changes in your business.
  3. Practice agility early on – be adaptable and flexible as this will help you make better business decisions and adjust quicker during uncertain times

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Don’t overthink it, and don’t sit on an idea for too long. Remember that you will have numerous iterations of your product or service; you will fail before you succeed. If you’ve set your mind on starting a business, then don’t wait another day. It is more gratifying to try (and maybe fail) than not do anything at all.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.careerhd.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/careerhd/


If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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