Starting a business can feel like jumping off a cliff and figuring out how to build wings on the way down. In the latest episode of my podcast, I share the raw, real story of how Resume Assassin came to life. It’s a tale of lessons learned, persistence, and finding joy in helping others transform their careers—a journey that began back in 2008 with a boxer named Mixi and a scrappy little business called Brown Dinosaur.
Back then, I had no clue what I was doing. Fresh-faced and eager, I launched my first resume writing venture, inspired by my energetic dog and a belief that I could make a difference. But it didn’t take long to realize that enthusiasm alone wasn’t enough. Between the Great Recession and my marketing experiments on Craigslist and with DIY flyers, the business quickly fizzled. It was a tough pill to swallow, but those early failures were pivotal. They taught me resilience, the importance of strategy, and the value of truly understanding your audience.
Fast forward to 2013, and I found myself in Austin, Texas, with my husband, brainstorming business ideas during one of those sweltering summer walks. The spark for Resume Assassin ignited during that walk, fueled by a love for resume writing that wouldn’t quit. Naming the brand was part of the fun—and the challenge. After discovering “Resume Slayer” was taken, “Resume Assassin” emerged as the perfect embodiment of the bold, creative approach I wanted to bring to clients.
Resume Assassin wasn’t just a name; it was a mindset. With the support of my husband, I began shaping the brand into something authentic and unapologetically me. Together, we poured creativity and grit into every detail. From the logo to the voice, everything about Resume Assassin was designed to stand out in a crowded market and reflect my passion for helping others succeed.
Building Resume Assassin has been a journey of highs and lows. In the podcast, I dive into the nitty-gritty of balancing the hustle with self-doubt, taking risks, and finding joy in the process. I share how what started as a side hustle became my full-time career and how every brick I’ve laid has been fueled by a desire to make a difference. It hasn’t always been easy, but the rewards have been worth every late night and early morning.
One of the most rewarding aspects of Resume Assassin has been helping clients achieve their career dreams. There’s nothing like hearing from someone who landed their dream job or turned their career around thanks to a resume we crafted together. It’s the ultimate validation of the work I do and a reminder of why I started this journey in the first place.
This episode isn’t just about my story; it’s a call to action for anyone sitting on a dream they’re too afraid to pursue. I open up about the fears and uncertainties that almost held me back and how embracing those challenges led to something far greater than I imagined. Passion, when paired with persistence and creativity, can pave the way for incredible things.
For anyone struggling to take the first step, I offer insights and lessons learned from my own experiences. Whether it’s bouncing back from failure, leaning on loved ones for support, or staying true to your vision, this episode is packed with takeaways for aspiring entrepreneurs and dreamers alike.
The road to building Resume Assassin wasn’t a straight path, but every twist and turn played a part in creating something I’m immensely proud of today. Tune in to this episode to hear the full story, and let it inspire you to take the leap toward your own passion project.
So, whether you’re curious about the behind-the-scenes of Resume Assassin, looking for a dose of entrepreneurial inspiration, or just want to hear a great story, this episode has something for you. Grab your headphones and join me as I take a trip down memory lane, sharing the journey of turning a passion into a thriving business.
Watch and listen here. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review!! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Transcript:
Mary (00:02)
I’m recording a solo episode today, I suppose. you guys aren’t going to get these very often because I host an interview style podcast and I much prefer bringing on leaders in their field and interviewing some people that are just a whole lot more smart and more interesting than I am. but you know, today is it’s Christmas Eve Eve. So
You know, I guess first of all, Merry Christmas if you celebrate and happy new year. It’s been a crazy year. I don’t know if you guys have felt this at all, but I feel like this has been like the absolute fastest year of my life. It’s gone by incredibly fast and I’ve done just a lot of really exciting things, a lot of things like launching a podcast.
a video podcast nonetheless that have really forced me to step outside of my comfort zone, but it’s opened up the doors to so many really fun and amazing opportunities that I’m definitely gonna talk just a little bit more about. But today, what I kinda wanna start the episode off with is just talking a little bit more about Resume Assassin’s origin story.
And I get a lot of people that are like, how did you come up with Resume Assassin? What’s the story behind the brand there? And so I want to talk about that just a little bit today. And so before I do that, what I want to do is of fast, I guess, rewind to the year 2008.
I mean, if any of you were in the job market or just entering the job market in 2008, you know that there was a huge recession. Like literally nobody was hiring. and that’s when I decided to launch my first resume writing company. so I decided to name it Brown Dinosaur because at the time I had a, you know, a boxer dog and her, her name was Mixi, but, we called her Brown Dinosaur because she was
absolutely insane. So I launched this company, Brown Dinosaur, and my bottleneck at the time was I had no idea how to market a company or land my first client. Like literally no idea. And at this point, know, LinkedIn was around. I was on LinkedIn. I didn’t post on LinkedIn. Actually, I didn’t start posting on LinkedIn until this year, which
you know, hindsight, I should have been doing that a long time ago. But yeah, LinkedIn was around, but it definitely is not the creator economy that it was today. There aren’t the, you know, they didn’t have the tools and the resources that it did, that it does today. It was a lot different. So I spent a lot of my time creating like physical flyers and posting on Craigslist. Yes, on Craigslist.
And I just, I never leaned at a client. You know, and I didn’t pursue it very hard. It’s frustrating. You know, I didn’t have a very big network myself because I was, I had recently graduated from undergraduate in 2007. So it just, you know, the timing wasn’t right, I guess, you know, for business. So it didn’t work out. It failed very, very miserably and very, very quickly. Fast forward to about 2013.
If you’ve ever been in Austin, Texas, you know how excruciatingly hot Austin can get in the middle of the summer. So my husband, my boxer dog, and myself are going for a walk. It’s the middle of the summer. It’s just incredibly hot. And we’re having a conversation about starting a business and we’re thinking about, if we could start a business, what type of business would it be?
If you’re anything like me, you don’t really see yourself as having the skills, the experience, the knowledge that it takes to start a business. So when I’m brainstorming these businesses, I’m thinking, looking at my husband and I’m like, well, you’ve got all of these really great technical skills. Like, you know, he knows…
Photoshop and he knows all of these 2D programs and 3D programs and I’m like, well, you should start a course, right? You could teach Photoshop to kids. You could teach kids how to animate. You could, you know, he’s got, he’s got just enough skills to be able to create simple websites, right? So I’m like, you could create websites for small businesses. You could crush it doing that. But me, I like,
don’t think I have any skills to do anything. So for me, like, well, I start a dog walking business. I could pick up dog poop. I could do that. Another one that I thought of that is actually, it was genius. I was like, you know what we could do? We could do an alcohol delivery service.
And so this was before Instacart, this was before DoorDash existed, so I’m like, damn it, I should have patented that idea and gone with it, but I didn’t, so here we are. But I thought of that before it was a thing. I’m sure many other people did too. If you don’t act on it, guys, it doesn’t matter. Thought doesn’t mean anything. But then I was like, you know what? I’ve always loved
job searching and I’ve always loved writing. And when I thought back, you know, throughout my career over the course of the last eight to 10 years or so prior to 2013, you know, I thought about how much I actually loved the process of researching a company, writing a really highly tailored resume and doing this over and over again. And
You know, once I would land the interview, I was like bummed out. Or if I would get a job offer, I was bummed out. Because I was like, man, now I’m not going to be able to keep applying to jobs and keep writing resumes. It was like a game for me. And so when I won the game, the game was over and I was bummed out. And so I was like, you know what? I can start a resume writing company. Let’s do that. And I remember my husband saying, I’m not going to create a website for you if
you’re not going to pursue this. And you know what? I did pursue it. And you know, it was never thought in my mind that it was something that I would do full time eventually. You know, it was more of like, well, I can do this on the side. It was a side hustle. Really, it was a side hustle before side hustles became popular, which is actually kind of cool to think about. But
You know, the very first thing that I did when I was thinking about, what do I want to name my company? Because the very first thing that I actually thought about was how I could create a name and how I could create a brand within this company. Because when I did just a small bit of market research, I found that, you know, a lot of the other resume writing companies that were out there that were on the market at the time were just like really boring. It was like
write a resume, write a resume dot com. you know, best resume ever.com. And I was like, Nope, I want something way cooler than that. Something that, you know, is more aligned to my personality. So I was like, I’m going to, I’m going to get resume slayer. That was the first thing that I thought of. And unfortunately for me, resume slayer was already taken. And so what I actually did was I reached out to the.
person who owned resume slayer.com and they were just closing down their business. so believe it or not, that was how I landed my very first client was the person that used to run that business ended up sending me a referral. But once I realized that resume slayer wasn’t available, I was like resume assassin. Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s second best, but it’s really cool still.
And in hindsight, actually now I like resume assassin way more than I like resume slayer. So resume assassin it was. And I came up with this vision of an assassin and you know, she was tough, right? She was a badass and she had tattoos and she was just, you know, a really motivational character.
And lucky for me, my husband is an amazing artist. And so he was able to put that vision to life for me, which I thought was really, really cool. And in terms of colors, I think my colors started off like green and brown. was like colors that actually don’t resonate with me at all. And then it kind of evolved over time into more of a…
a purplish color, which, you know, one of my favorite colors is like a deep, dark blue purple. Kind of like what you see in the background here. But yeah, so that was like that was the start of Resume Assassin. And, you know, again, like I said, it wasn’t like I started this company thinking I want to do this full time someday. That wasn’t even a thought in my head at the time.
It was just something that I love to do and something to keep me busy. didn’t have any kids at the time. And just a way, I wasn’t making very much money even though I had my master’s degree. And I was like, well, I could make just a little bit of money on the side, which is great.
And so I built the brand and you know, when you’re building a company, if you’ve ever tried to build a company from the ground up, nobody really knows what they’re doing. And it’s a lot of work. And you know, there’s something that you could, that you should be doing all of the time. And, you know, for me, I was lucky because I had a full-time job that I enjoyed at the time.
And, you know, on the side, just, I was always working on just doing little things to start establishing my brand, to start building my brand, to start getting it in front of an audience. And, you know, I did that. I, was like brick by brick. I was doing these things and, you know, at the time it was like, I wasn’t even thinking like, this, this is a good thing that I’m doing this. Like, you know, myself.
five, 10 years from now is gonna thank me. No, I was just doing them, because I’m like, I was trying to be as scrappy as I could. I was doing as many things as I possibly could. Like for example, one thing that I did was, I believe it was indeed.com used to have a forum. So I used to go on their forum every single day and just answer questions. So people would go on there, they would have a question, I would go on and I would give my advice. I would respond to their questions and…
believe it or not, for a while there before they discontinued that, I would get some clients from that discussion just based on me providing some free advice and some free value to people. And I started to get these small wins. I would land a client just from a seemingly random place, although I was building these blocks.
like, you know, reaching out to resume slayer. I got my first client from that. I wasn’t expecting that, but I did take the initiative and I stepped outside of my comfort zone to be like, hey, how do you build a resume business? I want to build one. And I got a referral from that. And then that person ended up referring me and that person ended up referring me. And then I was on this forum and I got some people and, you know, I was doing all of these things that, you know, eventually
somebody would see it and they needed a resume and they would come to me for a resume. And so, you know, these small wins were awesome. And if you know anything about small wins, if you keep building and stacking those blocks and getting those small wins over time, those wins are going to compound and they’re going to turn into something a little bit bigger and a little bit better.
And it did. you know, and I’m not saying it didn’t come with challenges because I made a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of obstacles, a lot of hurdles, lots of things to figure out. And I failed miserably a lot. But I learned from those things and I kept going forward. I kept taking steps. You know, for me, they were they were slow steps, but I was
being proactive, I was doing something every single day to really, build my business, to build my brand. And another part of what I really focused on was the client aspect of building a business. for me, my clients are everything. If I didn’t have my clients, wouldn’t.
have a business, I wouldn’t be anything. And I know that, and I knew that then. And because I knew that then, what I wanted to do was to make sure that my clients had the best experience possible throughout their entire journey of working with me. And that means a lot of things when it comes to resume writing specifically, but the ultimate experience…
the ultimate customer experience is winning an interview with that resume. So there are things that you can do from, know, streamlining, you know, your process in terms of gathering the information that you need and more of that, the boring part, you know, automating some of that stuff. You know, there’s a lot that you can do in order to boost the customer experience there throughout, you know, the onboarding part of the journey all the way through the end. But for me, what I wanted to focus on was
just making sure that I was taking the time to write a resume that would get my client an interview. And I did. And over time, I got better and I got better. And I built clients that were willing to advocate for me. And what I mean by that is,
I wanted to have clients that were willing and excited and able and eager to share my information with their friends, with their family, with their colleagues, with their neighbors, with the person they run into at the grocery store, at the gym, whoever it is. Because at the end of the day, when you’re a solopreneur, when you’re a service-based one-woman business, referrals are
everything. Your clients can give you those referrals. And so that’s what I focused on. And you know, again, like I said, I ran into a lot of problems and I failed in a lot of different ways. And I can definitely talk about that in a different episode. If you guys are interested, you know, let me know. I could have a whole other deep discussion about, you know, all of the ways that I failed.
And it’s also been really challenging in a lot of other ways, especially when I did decide to take the leap to go from just resume assassin as a side hustle to resume assassin as my full-time job. It started to become more of an identity for me. So something else that was just really challenging was finding that separation.
between yes, the work-life balance, but actually the separation between what are my interests versus what am I doing to move my business forward. There really was no fine line there because everything that I’ve been doing for the last five years has been to make my business better, give my clients a better.
experience to grow my business, expand my brand, open up opportunities, expand my reach. And I love doing those things. so, you know, especially over the course of the last year, it’s like, well, me as a person, what is it that I actually enjoy outside of my business? Because I do enjoy my business so much that I kind of like meshed.
myself and my business together. so like separating the two is, you know, that’s been a challenge. And I guess that’s a whole different opportunity or a whole different conversation outside of, you know, the foundation of Resume Assassin and how Resume Assassin came to be.
But yeah, I think it’s also worth noting that, you when I did decide to take the leap from resume assassin being a side hustle to a full-time thing, it was really scary, you know? And I know that there are a lot of people out there right now that are building side hustles and, you know, they’re like, should I take the risk and, you know, pursue this thing? And…
Maybe if you would have asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have said, no, absolutely not. Do the safe thing. And maybe that’s a smart answer today. But now knowing what I know and kind of with that foresight and the hindsight knowledge of where I was at 10 years ago and where I’m at today, I would tell myself 10 years ago, absolutely yes, take that risk.
on yourself. You know, and for me, I’m not a huge risk taker. I am uncomfortable with change. I fear going outside of my comfort zone. But if you do those things, if you go against your personality, if you fear change, if you don’t like taking risks, sometimes taking a risk on yourself is
100 % worth it. I should say not sometimes, always taking a risk on yourself is worth it. Now, am I saying, you you have an awesome job right now, you know, making 70,000, a hundred thousand dollars a year, quit that job and pursue your side hustle? No, I’m not saying that. But you know what I did, you know, again, as I took, I built bricks, you know, I built a business layer by layer, brick by brick.
start taking the steps now to build that side hustle and You just never know where you could take it in the next five years in the next ten years If you start doing those things today And so yeah, I mean that’s really that’s the origin story of resume assassin. That’s how it started That’s how it came to be. I wanted a resume assassin chick ninja that could
motivate, that could inspire, that could empower people to grow in their career and to land interviews at the companies and for the positions that they wanted. So it’s just, it’s my passion. It’s something that I’ve always loved and I plan on doing it, you know, now and well into the future.
And I also want to talk just a little bit about the future of Resume Assassin because I’ve done a lot of really cool things in 2024 and I have a lot of really cool things planned in 2025. So what is Resume Assassin? So first and foremost, what Resume Assassin is, I’m a company that offers one-on-one services to my clients.
personalized services. So resume writing, cover letter writing, and LinkedIn optimization. That’s what I love to do. That’s what I will always love to do. And I hope to be able to continue providing those services five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, forever and ever. Amen. So that’s number one. Number two, this year I launched a podcast which I’ve
been absolutely enjoying. know, again, it’s an interview style podcast. You’re listening to it right now as a solo episode, but I interview LinkedIn top voices, thought leaders and recruiters. And I’ve had some awesome conversations about, you know, all things careers, all things job searching, all things recruiting, AI, business, everything.
Another thing that I’m doing is I launched a job searching group course. Now this course is awesome and I’m really excited about it. I actually just wrapped up my first coaching session just a few minutes ago here. But it focuses on how to write a really highly tailored resume, how to optimize your profile, how to create a networking strategy.
and then how to put a job search plan together. So there are four sessions. It’s live. It’s directly with me. And there’s so much value to be had out of this program. So I’m really excited about that. Another thing that I launched is Resume Sidekick, which is my AI enhanced resume builder. And this is kind of a spoiler alert, but I think that I’m going to completely rebuild.
resume sidekick with a completely different programming language, as well as incorporate an interview prep piece to that. Something else that is kind of a spoiler alert and this is coming out. This will be launched in early 2025. It’s going to be a one-click resume builder. So basically you’ll be able to copy and paste a specific job that you’re applying to and upload your resume. And within like
less than 30 seconds, AI will generate a new resume for you that’s tailored to that specific job. And you guys, I’m gonna be giving away free polls on that. It’s gonna be like, ch-ching, slot machine style. So I’m gonna be giving away free polls on that every single week. So follow me on LinkedIn if you haven’t already and keep your eyes out for that, cause that’s coming soon.
Another thing that I launched just this year as well is an interview prep piece. So if any of you are in, you you’re rusty with your interview prep skills, hit me up. I’m happy to help.
So yeah, mean, Resume Assassin has a lot of exciting things coming in the pipeline. You know, I have a lot of exciting conversations on this podcast that I’m excited to release. I’ve already recorded. haven’t released yet. I have a lot of podcast episodes and guests that are on my calendar and those that I hope to try to get on the podcast. So I just have a ton of exciting conversations that I’m
super pumped for you guys to hear. So yeah, thank you guys again for coming on this journey with me. I’m in it for the long haul. I’m glad that you’re here with me. Tons and tons of exciting things coming up here into 2025. But yeah, I hope that you guys enjoy your Christmas, spend some time with your family, take some well-deserved time off, and we’ll talk to you soon.