GIVE PEOPLE A REASON TO FIND YOU INTERESTING
Your GPA only matters to be people who have no other reason to find you interesting- Chris Sacca
In 2009, I was a freshly minted incredibly entitled MBA graduate. I thought my two degrees, one from a world class undergraduate institution where I had a below average GPA (Berkeley) and another from a place that I affectionately refer to as a very expensive surf lesson (Pepperdine), were my passport to a high paying prestigious job.
Much to my disappointment and what would turn out to be a great gift, nobody wanted to hire me for more than 10 dollars an hour. I didn’t even get an offer from our local utility company, where I dreaded the idea of working. So I figured if I was going to work for next to nothing, I might as well work on my own projects for nothing at all.
10 years earlier I’d made a critical mistake that I was paying for now. The filter for every decision I made was how much the job paid. I never assessed any opportunity based on how much it would cause me to grow or what the experience would be worth in the future. In college, I had passed up lots of opportunities to work very closely with startup founders, some of who went on to do some impressive things. I didn’t value learning over money, and because of that I missed out on a priceless education both during the dot com bubble and in the wake of it.
Now I was choosing to work for zero dollars, of all things to start a blog, which would eventually lead to a podcast, a 60 person conference, an animated series with Soulpancake, and a book deal, but not until almost 6 years down the road.
MY FIRST CLIENT
I honestly don’t remember how I met Steve Pheng. Either I posted an ad on craigslist saying I was a social media consultant or I responded to an ad he posted. Steve was my first client. I don’t even know why he hired me. He wanted advice for his online jewelry store, and he asked me to help him with public speaking. That was the first bit of money I’d made doing my “own thing.” When I get married and have to find an engagement ring, chances are I’ll call Steve.
Sid Savara convinced me that I should start a podcast for bloggers because he thought my writing was average, but I was good at interviewing people. An email he sent me in 2009 planted the seed for what eventually became The Unmistakable Creative Podcast.
For most people a conventional path leads to average results. For me it lead to abysmal ones.
So it would be completely insane to go down the route again and expect a different result. On some level, I think this is why I’ve persisted when most people would have quit after not seeing an external result. I know exactly where one road ends, and while the one I’m on now is a narrow road with unexpected detours, twists turns, and an incredibly uncertain outcome, I’d be an idiot to choose a dead end over uncertainty.
All of these things changed my life. They gave people a reason to find me interesting. I used to be worried that if it didn’t pan out, I’d never be able to find work. But, I’m realizing that building a body of work has been far more useful than padding my resume and trying to spin the bullet points and bullshit into something compelling.
What have you built or made?
This seems to be a far more prevalent question for potential employers these days. Redditt founder Alexis Ohanian says that it’s something he looks for when hiring people.
I’m an employer and I don’t really care where you went to school or what your GPA was — I want to know what you’ve done. Paid off student loan debt bytutoring computer science in New York? Rock on. Raised $20,000 on kickstarter for a Daft Punk tribute album? Awesome! Started the ‘dear photograph’ meme? Splendid! Blogged years worth of eating across the world and now creating food-tour-guides? Now we’re cooking with bacon.
In his book Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky wrote
“The ability to gather and present your past accomplishments visually in a “show don’t tell framework” is much more effective than having a list of clients or distributing a resume.”
For those of us who could never figure out how many golf balls fit in a 747, or just don’t give a shit this is good news. I was terrible at questions like that and most of those questions disqualified me from a ton of job opportunities in 1999. For me, the internet has always been for making things. If I could add one thing to myadvice for graduating seniors, It would be this.
Build something. Make Something. Give people a reason to find you interesting.
I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast. Every Sunday we share the most unmistakable parts of the internet that we have discovered in The Sunday Quiver. Receive our next issue by signing up here
