Plenty of Work, if you're willing

Sometimes it's easier to quit than to make the effort. What amazes me is how many people quit without ever making an honest effort. If you want it, pursue it with everything you have...not for a few hours, or a few weeks, or a few months. Give it 100% of your effort, pursue it like it is the most important thing in your world. There are plenty of opportunities, just not enough people willing to work at making them into realities.

Ten Easy Ways to Sabotage Your Career

1. Be conceited, ungrateful, or arrogant. Watch the leaders in any field and to a person, they always find time to say thank you, to share, and to listen.
   
2. Be vengeful, negative,  and deceitful, especially in public places. It’s always easy to find faults, but it takes talent and discipline to find solutions. Employers and clients need solutions not criticism.
   
3. Treat your online activity like the boy’s locker room. Everything you say or do online can and may eventually be seen by the people whose respect you need to earn. Acting and posting as if you are in eighth grade shows an future employer you are not yet mature enough to represent his or her firm.
   
4. Put cute messages or extremely long musical numbers on your answering machine. When a client or employer wants to speak to you they don’t want their time wasted. I know an excellent designer who has lost at least three interviews because you can’t leave her a message until you’ve sat through 90 seconds of a poorly recorded message. “I don’t have time for this. Next!”
   
5.  Dress and act as if you don’t care. If you don’t care enough to iron your shirt, to comb your hair, and to put a little polish on those shoes, then you don’t really care about the company for which you are hoping to work. It’s a matter of respect.
   
6. Go to the interview, presentation, or meeting unprepared. Research the company/client. Be prepared to not just answer questions but to ask intelligent ones as well. Reorganize your portfolio to show your future employer /client the work which is relevant to their business. Being prepared shows you care and are willing to earn the opportunity to work for the firm or individual.
   
7. Treat the receptionist like a peon. He or she doesn’t really count anyway and has no influence in the company. Right?
   
8.  Make people wait and be impatient if you are required to do so.  I remember my firm once lost a $10,000 web site because my sales person was ten minutes late and didn’t even bother to call. “If you don’t respect the value of my time, then you don’t respect my company.”
   
9.  Place your company information on a vehicle and then drive like a jerk. I seldom respond to vehicular advertising except when I make it a point never to work with a particular company because their driver cut me off in traffic.
   
10.  Don’t bother hand-writing a thank you note and following up with a phone call. Taking the time to say thank you isn’t really that important anymore and neither is the person who gave you an opportunity to work with them.
    
11. Send out mass e-mails and thank you notes. Everybody loves being treated like a number, so why not reaffirm this by showing some real insincerity. It's better to personally thank a few individuals at a time, by name, than to try and thank everybody with a generic mass mailing.

Yes, I know I can't count. Giving more than I promise is another one of those nasty habits I'm working on. :)

Finding work.

At some  point, we all need to find a job. We all need to find clients. We all need to begin our journey to success.  The problem is that 80% of jobs are never posted and the competition for the other 20% is intense. Often the 20% that most of us discover are positions that are actually going to be filled internally (the job posting is a mere formality), or where the pay being offered does not match the qualifications being required. Think about the millions of people who are searching Monster and Craig's list everyday who are willing to work for almost any amount of compensation. A  huge supply of potential employees divided by recessed current demand equals great deals for employers and not a great deal of pay for you. This does not mean there are not jobs, there are plenty, it simply means that if you do not consciously decide to become outstanding and promote yourself, then you are probably not going to find the level of success which you desire.

I was not necessarily a great student in school. I did not explore my creative potential until late in my 30's.  But, I was very success at sales, have been consistently recognized as one of the top educators in my university (Instructor of Distinction- 2006, 2008; Evelyn Keiser Instructor of the Year - 2008), and won awards for being among the top design educators in the state of Florida ( FAPSC - Florida Instructor of the Year-Visual Arts, 2006). These accomplishments did not come from my formal education but because of my insatiable curiosity, my belief in self-directed research, and because ultimately my success ,or lack thereof, is based upon my own commitment and effort. I don't mention these accomplishments to blow my own horn, but because I do wonder if I had been taken my success more seriously at an earlier age or had followed my creative dreams earlier in my life, where could I be today?

So here are my observations and recommendations to any student who has a dream and a desire to have an extraordinary career:

1. Don't focus on grades or ever be satisfied just to be the best in your class. After you leave school, your classmates will have very little to do with your success or even your life. If you let them limit your potential, then you are letting them determine the pace upon which you will achieve your success. These people may be your friends now, but they don't care about your future. Be selfish. Set your own high-standards. And never let your classmates lull you into accepting mediocrity. 
   
2. Take an honest evaluation of your assets and limitations then find ways to accentuate your assets and overcome your limitations. If you are challenged with writing, read more and practice writing. If you have difficulty with math, memorize your multiplication tables already and let go of those excuses you hold so dear. If you get nervous in public or have challenges expressing yourself, find a Toastmasters club and join it. Instead of focusing on who you were (which has not led you to where you want to be) focus on who you are becoming. The only limitations you have are those which you place on yourself.
   
3. Develop winning habits, those that lead you to where you you want to eventually be and replace those that keep you trapped in the past. If you are not reading an hour a day about this industry and the successful people in it, then you are not serious about being successful.  If you don't practice design after you leave school each day, then you are accepting mediocrity. If you are not meeting at least one new person each day and letting him or her know what you are capable of doing, then you are missing opportunities to let others help in achieving your dreams.  One to two hours a day of extra effort, will help you get more out of each and every class you take and will help you grow exponentially, instead of linearly.  How badly do you want that dream job? How much effort are you willing to exert to get it?
   
4. Expand your circle of influence, develop new friends. We know that eventually we will become just like the people with whom we spend our time, so who are you choosing to spend your time with? I am not saying lose your current friends, but develop friendships with those who are already living the life you want. The more time you spend associating with other successful people, the more you will begin to think and act like they do. It may be awkward at first, but growth is not always an easy path.  
   
5. Let everyone you know what you do! Recently I have had leads come from my anesthesiologist, my masseuse, an ex-girlfriends, and a former student in a different program. In fact, I get 12-15 freelance jobs a year with absolutely no marketing and I don't aggressively seek freelance at the moment. If people don't know what you do, they can't recommend you to friends and colleagues. How many people do you know? Family, friends, former teachers, people at the gym, online acquaintances, old classmates, that cute girl down the hallway? They may not need yourir services, but their friends might. This by the way is where that other 80% of jobs get filled.