What They Didn’t Teach Me in Business School
While my education prepared me to think critically, work my ass off, and funnel Budweiser, it provided zero insight on a few things.
Disagreements are good. Strong opinions from our designers and developers, and disagreements between our partners, is what has kept our work original and pixel perfect.
Treat everyone you speak to about your business with respect, not just staff, clients, and peers. There should be a class in every School of Business focused strictly on building general people skills. I know this seems like common sense, but believe me it’s not. I know a lot of assholes.
As an owner, you are the last to get paid. Employees won’t always share your passion for what you’re doing. Keep them happy, pay them when you say you will, and pay them fairly. If you can’t, find another job.
Everything you have learned is just boiling water. Your education, whether formal or self-taught, should just be the beginning of what you’re cooking up; i.e. it’s the easy part. Once you have that, you need to constantly gather ingredients from everyone and everything around you. Never stop learning, inventing, and trying new things; cause the only way trends change is by wild minds designing outside of them.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Whether it’s a client, or a shitty review of your work, suck it up and move on. Nobody’s work, in any field, is perfect. Accept all critique, and use it to excel at your craft.
Never be nostalgic. Inject all of your passion and emotion into your work, and leave none attached to it. It makes the grieving process much easier when your work ends up in the scrap pile because the client found out his nephew used to be a graphic designer.
Working in an office doesn’t mean you have to wear dress clothes. In fact, it doesn’t mean you have to wear clothes at all.
Surround yourself with weirdos. When I say weirdos, I don’t mean those oddballs that shave patterns in their facial hair. The wild, the mad, the weird; they’re the ones out there hustling to create and push the envelope. So go find them. Your surroundings are so influential on the caliber of work you’re putting out there. Sitting in a cubicle, or at home, can be limiting to the creative process. Get out and work in different places. If you can afford to rent a desk at a collective workspace, do it. It’s worth every penny.
Be Motivated by Competitors, Not Intimated. Every industry is bursting with talent, most of it undiscovered. In the traditional definition they are your competitors. But there is always going to be someone more talented than you, pushing the envelope harder and faster. So embrace them. Meet the people around you doing great things. Learn from them, get inspired by them. Shit, inspire them yourself. Maybe you’ll end up collaborating on a project.
We’ve worked hard to develop a large network of talented colleagues, simply by reaching out to designers from around the world that we respect and look up to. Design is like sports. It’s much easier to excel at basketball if you’re practicing with Lebron James, rather than your beer gut restricted uncle that calls himself “White Chocolate”.
If you can truly harness collaboration and cooperation within your industry, there really is no such thing as competition.
Most importantly, there is no book or professor that can teach you the best way to launch a business. We hit hundreds of snags, and hundreds of home runs. The only constant was our passion for our craft. Maintain that, and you’ll have fun, at the very least.
