The Early Works.

Back in 2001, when I still lived in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Art Museum was featuring an exhibition of early sketches from some of the greats, Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Picasso and others. One fine weekday afternoon, I wandered over on my lunch break to take in what I assumed would be the raw seeds of genius. Now, let me preface this story by saying that I’m not well versed in art history, and what little I do know was absorbed by osmosis, growing up around a sister who exited the womb with a passion for the stuff.

And so, I entered the museum fully expecting to be blown away…to witness that it’s just in the cards for some people. They are born, and from a young age, talent just pours out effortlessly from their bodies. I hurried past the Greek and Egyptian wings, anxious to see if these preconceived notions about genius would be proven right. As I approached the exhibition, my pace slowed until finally I came to a stop in the center of the main room, where I then sat down on one of the large wooden benches. I carefully scanned all of the sketches, taking in the subtlety and simplicity of the collection as a whole. While some were quite stunning and full of emotion upon close examination, the majority of early sketches were just that. Most of us (common folk) would never know them from the student drawings hanging in our local high school. Continue reading »

You Could Still Be Talking to a Wanker.

A while back I went to see my third recruiter at an agency that places people in “creative” jobs. We talked, I gave them my portfolio consisting of some marketing blurbs, a couple of gardening articles, and a series of paragraphs copywritten for websites that sold either shoes, electronics, psychic readings, or constipation meds (I like to think this makes me versatile). I left feeling like she and I had connected and that this would surely lead somewhere. Three long months rolled by…

I had pretty much decided I would never hear from this person again until she called me last week. She had a lead, and so I had an interview! Much to my dismay however, it was the dreaded phone interview. I loathe a phone interview. I can’t tell what they’re thinking! There’s no body language! The whole time I imagine the interviewer rolling their eyes, stifling a yawn, or doing the “yap, yap, yap” gesture with their hands. The last phone interview I had, I’m pretty sure the guy was eating. Continue reading »

Before You Call it Quits…

Whether it is a decision to pursue a degree, try a completely different job, or start selling handbags at your local farmers market, there will be moments when you think to yourself, “my idea is stupid, and I’m a douche bag.” It comes with the territory of putting yourself out there, and it is in the very moment that these thoughts come on that most people curl back into their shells.

Well, I’m going to try and discourage you from such a retreat by reviewing two ideas that are easily much more ridiculous than anything you could possibly be trying to market, and yet they have been wildly successful.

1. Manheim Steamroller. Chip Davis, and his merry band of old men with pony tails make what he describes as “18th century rock n’ roll.” Well, yeah, of course they do. And somehow they’ve managed to sell 20 million albums. If they haven’t already completely destroyed Christmas for you, then get ready because at some point they will. Continue reading »

Take Those Ridiculous Things Off.

Nothing ever goes the way you imagine it will. And I suppose that’s the wonderful and horrifying side of taking a chance. Wouldn’t you know it, that on the very day I could hear the last pretty penny of my business loan clink against the bottom of my piggy bank, I landed a freelance writing job, which partly explains my two month absence from the Blackbird blog. And now that the job is winding down, I’m faced with a strange irony. Rather than earning a respectable living through my t-shirt business, the business itself landed me a different job that allowed me to reclaim financial stability.

When I launched back in February, this scenario never would have crossed my mind. Blackbird Tees was either going to be a hit or not, and being a hit equated almost exclusively to sales. In fact, it was in the very area that I dreaded most–PR and marketing, that I achieved the most success, which ultimately led to a writing stint with a marketing company. I guess the point of all of this is to say that notions of success should be flexible. If you take a risk, start a business, go on an adventure around the world, etc., you will experience some level of success, but I’d caution anyone that homes in on just one definition of the word. You might miss all of the other rewards for your efforts. Even more, the significance of each step is lost somehow when you have blinders up. The small moves made everyday are complete actions in their own right. They’re choices, sometimes difficult ones, that shift your position, move you forward or sideways, and each has a stake in what happens next.

If hiring a web designer had been more affordable, I may never have felt compelled to learn how to build my own site. And if I had experienced even modest success in the first month of business, I wouldn’t have brushed up on my marketing skills. In the moment, it feels like you’re just doing what’s necessary to meet an immediate need, but over time, the ability to bend, problem solve, and change course builds a unique brand of endurance. So, the day-to-day decisions may feel small, but just like with any type of transformation, there will be moments when you get to pause and look back at the cumulative effect, and if you’re lucky, perhaps even surprise yourself.

This One Goes Out to All My Peeps.

Back in Virginia, my middle school used to host an annual dance for the students. And so, every spring hundreds of awkward, socially inept tweens would gather ’round the basketball-court-turned-dance-floor and stare at each other or down at their shoes. In preparation for this momentous occasion, my mom and I would scavenge the mall for the most hideous dress available, pair it with clip-on earrings the size of my fists, and top the whole ensemble off with an Ogilvie home perm. It was like a makeover in reverse. Even worse, I would show up at the dance, talk to my same two lame friends and, if it was a good night, dance with a boy three inches shorter than me that hadn’t bothered to brush his teeth.

Well, as much as I’d love to say that these types of experiences are faint memories, now barely visible in the rear view mirror of the polished, socially graceful woman I’ve become…I’m afraid I can’t. In fact, as an adult, I have often entered social situations, felt horribly uncomfortable, and ended up staring at my shoes for hours upon end. Because my years of work in the service industry demanded a certain amount of conversational skill, I learned how to handle awkwardness with more finesse, but it never completely dissipated. So, to be authoring a blog about putting yourself out there feels a bit like my way of dealing with personal social shrapnel. Continue reading »

I’m Really Big in Canada.

Actually, not really, but thanks to Montreal’s CJAD radio station, and talk show host, Peter Anthony Holder, I landed my very first on air interview. Feel free to take a listen. I find it particularly awesome that the segment opens with Herbie Hancock.

 

 CJAD Interview: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tips from a Reliable Source.

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing recently wrote the below article for Information Week. If you are remotely interested in having bloggers write about you, it is well worth the 5 minute read. I have provided just the first few paragraphs along with a link at the bottom if you’d like to access the full article.

17 Tips For Getting Bloggers To Write About You

One of the best ways to get publicity and generate buzz is to get bloggers to write about what you’re doing. Boing Boing co-author Cory Doctorow provides some tips on making it easy for bloggers to point to you.

By Cory Doctorow
InformationWeek
March 11, 2008 10:00 PM

I edit a blog, Boing Boing, that’s pretty darn popular (Technorati says we’re one of the five most popular blogs), so there are a lot of people who try to get me to write about their stuff. That’s cool — I love getting good suggestions for things to write about. I couldn’t find everything on my own.But often I can’t write about the tips people send me, because the people who posted the material did something crazy to make life tough for bloggers. I suppose that if you’re aiming for obscurity, that could be a feature, but if you’ve put up a Web site because you want people to find out about your stuff, then being blogger-unfriendly is most certainly a bug.

What makes a site blogger-unfriendly? I’ve been keeping a list for the past couple of months. These are simple design and deployment mistakes that kept me from picking up a link and reposting it where millions might find it. Here’s the list, a kind of anti-checklist for anyone who’s spending money and time trying to get a message out:

Have a link. Seriously: if you want bloggers to link to you, you need to have something linkable. Your upcoming TV show, protest march, product or soccer tournament is literally unbloggable unless you put it on the Web somewhere first.

Have a permanent link. Don’t just change the front page of your site every time a new speaker for your speaker-series in announced. A blogger who links to the front page of your site today in a post about the upcoming address by Philo T Farnsworth, wants that link to stay good for in the future, and not point to the upcoming address by Paris Hilton when you change it next week. Put up a separate, permanently linkable page for everything you want to get blogged.

For Doctorow’s 15 other useful tips, click here!

The Answer is in the Question.

There are a ton of websites and blogs offering all kinds of business advice, tips, resources, and news, but after scouring many of them, I’ve come away feeling rather unenlightened. Perhaps it’s because most of these sites are rooted in the assumption that you already know what it is you want to do. While it may sound odd, I actually think it is the prelude to that stage which warrants attention, advice, tips and resources. After all, you feel most vulnerable when the old internal compass is on the fritz. So, it seems strange that significantly more aid is directed to people who have intact navigational equipment. What about the millions of poor souls lost at sea? Continue reading »

We the Jury Find…A Little Peace of Mind?

Last month, I received the universally dreaded jury summons in the mail. Amidst business startup insanity and an insomnia induced haze, it was the last thing I needed. How could the gods conspire against me like this? After years of working crap jobs and praying for any believable excuse to call in sick, it is only now that I get tapped on the shoulder and handed the ultimate get out of work free card. As the owner and sole full-time employee of a fledgling company, timing really couldn’t have been worse.

I tossed the summons onto an ever growing pile of stuff to avoid and went on about my day secretly hoping that I’d be visited by some sort of civic duty fairy that could wave her wand and POOF, my summons would disappear. Sadly, several fairy free days passed and I began to realize that it was going to take more than wishful thinking to get myself out of this. So, as a last gasp attempt to dodge the bullet, I wrote a weepy request for postponement, taking extra care to trap a single salty little tear in one of the paper folds. Continue reading »

Keep Your Stinking Ribbons.

Before I could walk or even crawl, I could swim. My mom often tells the story of how a woman at our local pool suffered a near heart attack when, at the age of 2, I walked over in my diaper and jumped right in to the deep end. It was like that familiar footage of newborn sea turtles that break out of their shells, shimmy to the surface of the sand, and instinctively crawl toward the water. Without influence or suggestion, I simply knew the water was where I wanted to be…all the time. I had the chlorine tinted hair and wrinkly extremities to prove it. And my affection for it would remain alive and well until competitive swimming entered my life. Sadly, adding structure, discipline, and a bunch of blue ribbon obsessed parents to the mix robbed it of all that was special to me, and I retired my little suit and cap by age 6.

Now, at 31, I look back on that early instinctive drive with wonder. It seemed to fade with childhood, only to be gradually replaced by all the things I was attempting to escape when I quit swimming. Rules, opinions, competitiveness and insecurities are far more accurate characterizations of adulthood than the self-assurance I felt as a child. You would think the opposite would be true, that people would get closer to their true identity, but in my experience that is rarely the case. Continue reading »

Plop a Fat Note Right in Mahoney’s Inbox

So my latest and greatest idea, yet to be dismissed and tossed onto the enormous, festering pile of already considered ideas, is to go to work in advertising. The goal would be to work for an agency for a while, branch off on my own after learning the ropes, freelance my skills to worthy, sustainable businesses with a soul, all the while sitting back in the local pubs and coffee houses writing radio jingles and commercials. Sounds pretty good to me at this point! So now what?

One thing that has been reiterated constantly to me lately is that the job search takes bravery. Being a total coward makes this difficult for me, but I did something COMPLETELY outside of my comfort zone the other day. I emailed a dude at an agency and asked him for an information interview in exchange for a coffee beverage of his choice with all the trimmings. That’s right! I just plopped a fat note right in Mahoney’s inbox, asked for 12.3 minutes of the man’s time in exchange for caffeine, and sat back to wipe the sweat off the keyboard while I waited for a reply. He declined the coffee, but….he did say I could call him. Continue reading »

A Car and an Iceberg Away.

By the age of 6 I had already decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was gonna live on an iceberg. In a rusty old Volvo. And there I would sit, eating raw fish with my hands. If that for some reason didn’t happen I was going to be a singer with 12 kids.

I guess things don’t always pan out. I don’t own a car and I dislike children, so obviously I have to look into some other options. I’m in school now working on my third degree and this time it’s going to be different. It’s almost like having a new boyfriend. My nursing-degree boyfriend was nice for a while, but turned out to be kind of abusive. My literature-degree boyfriend sucked the joy out of reading, and frankly didn’t bring in the big bucks. So I’m hoping my veterinary medicine boyfriend will make me feel better about myself. I swear he’s not like the others! Continue reading »

Even Robots Get the Blues.

You really do have to be a machine in order to make any significant headway as a self-made man or woman, or at least this is what I’m assuming since ’self-made’ doesn’t quite apply to me yet. As a culture, we have an undying fascination with the whole rags to riches story, but what gets someone from the rags to the riches exactly? There is this romantic notion of chasing down the American Dream, but as we all know, with romance comes the ever encroaching risk of heartbreak.

No one seems to linger on this point though, perhaps because the people that ‘make it’ are only interesting enough to interview post-success. And so, looking down from the top, it’s probably easy for them to adopt a sentimental view of the struggle. I, however, am in the thick of it, and the uphill climb is a sonofabitch. Sentimental feelings are a long way off for this little bird. That said, the relationship is not without romance. Waking up at a reasonable hour, strolling in to my very own studio, enjoying the backdrop of good music and old movies while I work, these are the small payoffs that I treasure. Continue reading »

Forget enthusiasm. Just be polite and professional.

So, it’s finally the weekend, your coveted two day stretch between the 5 laborious and exhausting days you spend at work. So what are you going to do? How about call up someone you barely know and, in a roundabout way, ask them for a HUGE favor! YEEAAAH! This ghastly practice is called networking. And while this isn’t the only way to do it, it’s one of the few ways to get in touch with a specific someone you feel could help your situation. So, you suck it up, pace the room, and give them a ring. I had to do this a couple of Saturdays ago, and while this woman (we’ll call her Miss Sprouts) is extremely nice, you may still feel like a filthy beggar soliciting a well-dressed pedestrian on the street. I called Miss Sprouts because I heard she was good friends with the woman who owned an agency I was interested in working for. To make a long story short, I was able to get my resume forwarded to the agency, allotted no face-time, and was ultimately rejected. So while my efforts may seem fruitless, I was able to walk away with one lovely sentiment:

While on the phone with Miss Sprouts, I went off on a tirade exclaiming how I had to get out of my current job lickety split or I was probably going to get booted out on my rump. “I just can’t fake the enthusiasm anymore!,” I said. And that’s when she eloquently replied, “honey, forget enthusiasm. Just be polite and professional. Continue reading »

A Pat on the Back and a Punch to the Face.

So, the whole marketing thing is new, and somewhat uncomfortable territory for Blackbird Tees. That said, once the novelty of launching a business wears off with friends and family, I am actually going to need customers. And so, today I dipped my feet into the frigid water of self-promotion to see what happens. Will I lose a toe, drop a toaster in and end my misery, suffer lasting hypothermia? Well, the jury is still out.

After creating an account on craigslist, I submitted a post to the job market forum, describing my business and how I screenprint people’s resumes onto their shirts. Well, within seconds, a stranger responded with some words of encouragement, “fabulous, innovative idea.” Great, I’m feeling good, embraced by the community at large…at one with my people. Not even thirty seconds later, another user, who identifies him/herself only by the alias ‘fartedatwork3′ replies to that post by writing “for tards like you, maybe.” And that’s all she wrote, folks. So ends today’s plunge into the Arctic cold, and I’m walking away feeling like I’ve taken a hit. A little like our friend the dog. Continue reading »