Because the last several months have been some of the most difficult for me. I truly would describe it as surviving instead of thriving.
My main goal for 2021 isn’t to train for some brand new Ironman race or achieve some lofty professional or financial goal. While I have set some fitness and financial goals for myself, they are the top of the priority list.
To get it out there in the open my main goal and top priority next to being a husband and father: my mental health.
Right before the holidays I was officially diagnosed with depression with a side of anxiety and mounting, overwhelming life stressors.
Just how bad was it?
As we take time to reflect on this past year, with all its ups and downs, we want to thank you for continuing to support us and for showing up for your community. Because of you, we were able to fund our first ever scholarship program, and we awarded four Black Creative Students scholarships to students from all over the country. This year, we were also able to publish 26 new blog posts, had 10,400 page views, added and featured 4 new contributing editors, hired and on-boarded a super creative new social media, Greer Blount, and offered our first writing internship to Maggie Barbour who created and published 10 posts in less than 12 weeks.
It's been an eventful year for out team, and to close it all off, TNM founder Kevin O'Connell is sharing his thoughts on 2020, dealing with change and transitions as a new dad and entrepreneur, and finding new approaches for 2021. Keep reading for Kevin’s end-of-the-year message!
Working freelance may sound glamorous at first, but those who've been doing it for a while know it takes hard work. Getting your business off the ground isn't easy and sometimes it means juggling various projects all at once, but it also has it's benefits - I mean you are your own boss after all!
This week, writing intern Maggie Barbour asks The Niche Movement's Editor-in-Chief Jaylene Perez and founder Kevin O'Connell, both of whom have experience in freelancing, what it really takes to make it work.
Read on for Jaylene and Kevin's best practices when it comes to finding clients, marketing your services, settings rates, and more!
For all those in pursuit of professional development, this week we're taking a look at which skills you'll want to brush up on depending on your specific industry. Whether you're a freelancer, marketer, entrepreneur, or work in another creative role, you'll want to read up on what will make you and your work really shine.
Tap below for the full post!
Job searching is a tough task on its own, and job searching during a pandemic... well we know it's not easy. You'll have to be flexible, know how to network and market yourself, and really hone in on what it is your looking for as you search for the right fit.
To find out what can help you land your dream job, keep reading!
This year, with the help of our community, we were able to raise enough funds to award five scholarships to five highly talented and dedicated Black undergraduate students interested in the creative fields. We had over 30 applications from over 15 different schools, and it was a challenge picking just five.
College students and graduates alike found their time on campus cut short this spring by the ongoing pandemic. Campuses were reduced to virtual classrooms and many students reluctantly witnessed their summer plans - and internships - be put on hold. So, as summer approaches, what is there for students to do?
Meet Jaylene Perez, our social media intern and a senior at George Washington University, working towards a BA in English. From a young age and through the example her parents set, Jaylene knew you didn’t have to have a traditional career path to be happy and love what you do. Learn more about what Jaylene is doing to pursue her passions in our Q&A.
Hi everyone, Amma Marfo here. Two quick things about me that you’ll need to know before we begin:
(1) I am a reader. I am a library-loving, constant tome-carrying, unapologetic bibliophile. (2) If there’s anyone you will meet who can connect what she’s reading to the world around her, it’s me.
As such, I want to dedicate my time in this space to sharing with you what I’m reading, and how it could inform a budding professional’s daily life.
I am a sucker for a good read on creativity. These are the books that energize me in my day-to-day work, the ones that help me look at daily problems from a new perspective, the ideas that reassure me that my quirky take on my life aren't as isolating as they might seem. And in that reading, there are a few companies that are constantly referenced as being "the gold standard" for creatives. You've heard of these places- Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Disney/Pixar. So when people started recommending Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull (president of Pixar Animation), I knew I had to add it to my reading list. And sure enough, it was a wonderful read that provided me with many tips and tricks that I'm eager to employ in my own life. But the one I want to share here today, is the seventh tenet of their 7 Core principles: Give good notes.
Feedback is a funny thing. When you're new to a work environment, it is simultaneously necessary and absolutely terrifying because so much of our self-worth and vision of success is tied up in our being great. However, when you're more established and in greater need of it, it's harder to get because people "below" you in the organization may fear giving it. This pair of factors, combined with people who are largely non-confrontational by nature, and we're left with either empty and nonspecific platitudes, or emotionally-charged criticism that may overstep the boundaries of work. Pixar has worked for years to create a feedback system devoid of those two scourges of honest feedback, through what they call their "Braintrust," or a group of directors and advisors that watch rough cuts of films as they come together and provide the feedback needed to transform these sketches into the blockbusters we know and love like Toy Story or Finding Nemo.
Catmull eloquently addresses the fear of failure that comes with sharing a new idea in Creativity, Inc.:
From a very early age, the message is drilled into our heads: Failure is bad; failure means you didn't study or prepare; failure means you slacked off or- worse!- aren't smart enough to begin with. Thus, failure is something to be ashamed of. This perception lives on long into adulthood, even in people who have learned to parrot the oft-repeated ideas about the upside of failure [...] And yet, even as they nod their heads in agreement, many readers [...] still have the emotional reaction that they had as children. They just can't help it. That early experience of shame is too deep-seated to erase. (emphasis added)
I believe that Catmull used the word shame in the final sentence intentionally, and for an interesting reason. Helping scholar Brené Brown makes a clear distinction between guilt (a bad feeling that results from a bad action) and shame (a bad feeling that results from being a bad person). Too often, mistakes or missteps are framed to make us feel shame, when we should really feel guilt. Guilt, in most cases, comes from a temporary state, where shame is designed to come from a more permanent one. But our ideas aren't us, and the failure of an idea shouldn't be equated to us being failures. Pixar's "brain trust" was designed to divorce the two and truly concentrate on developing ideas without shaming the idea's developers. They do this by embracing candor, believing in iteration, and leaving freedom of solution. If you inject these tenets into your feedback-giving process, you're more likely to create space for development without creating offense or judgment.
Embracing Candor: Catmull is quick to point out that most ideas suck at the beginning. More to the point, he says most Pixar movies suck when the first ideas are shared. The sooner this is embraced, the better. Few ideas are perfect on the first pass; even if they appear to be, as they develop problems will start to surface. Being able to speak up to refine the ideas, without criticizing the person or people presenting them, is a gift to anyone invested in making the idea work. And when we smooth over flaws with "Great work!" or "It's...good!" we rob people of the ability to make their ideas the best they could be. Anyone invested in creating a good product (as the thousands of people who work at Pixar undoubtedly are) needs candor, or their work will go toward a less than stellar idea. Nobody wants that.
Believe in Iteration: I have written previously about how general praise, devoid of customization or specificity, isn't particularly helpful and at its worst can be patronizing. A necessary element of this is being able to give actionable criticism. Telling somebody what they've done wrong isn't particularly helpful if there's no way for them to improve upon it. I tell the students I work with often, "I can't do anything about 'this sucks.'" But if I know more about the experience they're struggling with, what the problem is, and what they'd prefer to see, I can work with something of a road map in front of me, as opposed to the veritable game of Marco Polo that the phrase "this sucks" is providing. When you give feedback, give it in such a way that the person receiving this information can realistically go back and try again with some idea of what needs to be fixed.
Allow for Freedom of Solution: With that said, your feedback doesn't always have to provide the solution within it; in fact, Pixar believes that the power of the Braintrust's feedback is that they don't prescribe a solution for the problems they identify. In fact, the director and his staff don't even have to address the notes that are given in these meetings. I believe that this is the strongest element of the Braintrust. The key part of the concept is that second word: trust. When we bring people on to a team, we have to trust that they know what they're doing and that they arrived in their positions for a reason. So if problems present themselves, we have to trust that they have the expertise and judgment to attack these issues and come to a feasible solution. There have been times that this strategy has failed at Pixar, and they do have mechanisms to address that. But for the most part, the people who come in with ideas are equipped to solve their own problems, if given the space and faith to do so. Think similarly of the people you work with.
Most of our ideas will not garner the audience that those of Ed Catmull and his team do. But they are just as deserving of a respectful and constructive process by which to develop them. Anyone interested in a feedback process that is (literally) award-winning should check out Creativity, Inc for some of the best reading on creativity, and how to productively harness it, I've done this year.
In day 22’s post on Monday, I introduced Katie Bean as one of the biggest activators to help spread the Niche Movement when I launched it in early 2013. Because of Katie’s support, I was introduced to Nikki Uy. Nikki was a student at St. Joseph's University, when she was accepted into our first Niche Movement online cohort program in the spring of 2013. When I met Nikki, she was your typical student leader: - led a group of volunteers to teach ESL
- part of the school’s chapel choir
- Dean’s list
- and was part of the peer educator program.
Within the first few weeks of working with Nikki, I realized that as a junior in college she was close to finding her niche but didn’t know how to take the next step. She has a passion for speech therapy and teaching English as a second language to others. Specifically, Nikki wanted to learn how to help others tell their story by participating in our program. In reality, what Nikki needed, was a way to tell her story first, before she could help others tell their story.
I am a very big advocate for young adults to leverage digital networking and social media tools while keeping in mind that face to face conversations still is still the most valuable form of communication. On paper Nikki had a great resume from her extra-curricular experience at St. Joe’s, but she was missing a digital footprint. She was not on Twitter and had only reactivated her Facebook account to connect with others in our cohort. She didn’t have a LinkedIn profile, blog or any real significant presence online. Here was a young woman that had accomplished so much, yet if someone searched for her name online they would find nothing.
This happens to all too many student leaders. Employers look at a resume they like and then search the name online. Finding nothing is about as bad as finding a college party picture. This is why producing a strong digital identity is such a critical component of the Niche Movement, because in order to land the job you love (or start a business you love) you need to have a strong digital presence.
As part of the cohort I was leading that spring, I taught students how to not only leverage digital networking and the tools at their fingertips, but I helped them with their digital footprint. The first thing I did with Nikki was advise her to give Twitter a chance and create an account. Nikki created an account and together, we helped her identify Twitter hashtags, accounts to follow, and weekly chats to jump into. By the end of the cohort experience, Nikki already saw the power of digital networking and advantages of putting herself out there. In June 2013, she wrote a follow up blog post for The Niche Movement sharing her experiences of how she connected with other speech therapists, graduate students, and became reassured that there was a high demand of work in this field. In her post, Nikki said “These sort of connections, simply through reading Tweets, have reaffirmed what I want to do with my life.” That is how powerful digital tools can be for students when they understand them and how to best put them into action.
I came to find out that Nikki was also passionate about photography, videography, and documentaries. This all made sense, especially, since she was passionate about telling other people’s story. The six week program was over, but the journey of how Nikki was telling her story and getting closer to her niche was just getting started.
In the summer of 2013, going into her senior year, Nikki went on to create a well-designed about.me page and started a blog where she was documenting her life photo journalism style - something that was inspired by other writers and artists she connected with on Twitter.
Throughout her senior year, her story continued to unfold and she continued to make more connections. As many college students do, she spent a weekend unwinding and went on a Netflix binge. While she was watching ShelterMe, a documentary series that celebrates shelter pets with positive and uplifting stories, she was left so inspired and took to Twitter. Her initial tweet was favorited by @ShelterMeTV and they also followed Nikki. She then direct messaged (DM) them thanking them for the follow and mentioned where she was from and asked if there was anyway to help.
Unfortunately, Nikki didn’t hear back right away but that didn’t discourage her. She followed up about two weeks later with another DM. About two weeks after that, she received an email from Steve Latham, the director and producer of ShelterMeTv. He wanted to jump on a phone call and talk wit Nikki because now, there was an opportunity to help. Nikki and Steve connected and found out that they had a story they were shooting in Long Beach Island, New Jersey and they needed a video production assistant for the weekend.
Nikki pushed through her comfort zone and accepted the 3 day position even though she had little video experience and was a Philosophy major. This was an experience that Nikki would never forget. Her responsibilities in addition to taking pictures, included holding reflectors, posing for camera angles, and assisting the crew with errands up and down the island. She was working side by side with a crew that has worked with MTV, Travel Channel, and National Geographic. All from one tweet - how incredible?!
Nikki didn’t return to school her senior year all of the sudden planning to change her major and try and land a job in the media field. What this experience did encourage was for her to use her interest in taking pictures to tell stories (like she learned from ShelterMeTV) in a creative and artistic way. In her own words, “I basically found another niche.”
While Nikki’s story is an incredible one, the outcome is not that unusual for those students utilizing digital tools and willing to push boundaries. The reason why this story may seem so ‘unrealistic’ is because so many students are not taught how to use these tools to connect or amplify their message. We assume that as digital natives they know how to do all this, but that is simply not true.
Working with Nikki was one of the first times I got to see my two passions come together (much like she ended her story with a second niche). As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am passionate about social media and digital trends. In this experience I was able to share that knowledge with Nikki and her fellow cohort members to assist them in producing their digital footprint. The Niche Movement will never be the same after that experience, because now producing a strong digital presence is part of every conversation, workshop, keynote, etc. In fact, when I gave my first WOW Talk last November, I shared Nikki’s story while imploring other students and job hunters to follow her lead and start working on creating their strong digital presence.
My experience working with Nikki taught me that these two worlds, ending employment unhappiness and social media/digital identity, were interconnected. She also taught me that when students say they are not a fan of social media, we can’t just say ok and back off. We need to find out why. Perhaps Nikki wasn’t into the shallow side of social media, but showing her the productive and purpose driven side open her eyes to a completely new perspective on digital tools.
In Nikki’s application, she said that she finds fulfillment in her work if she can make just one person smile throughout the day while retaining her positive personality. Well, her story has made me smile everyday. I have presented Nikki’s journey in various talks that I have presented over the last 6 months. She has inspired me to keep helping students and that The Niche Movement’s strategies can help young adults get closer to finding their niche early in life.
The Niche Movement showed Nikki how these platforms, apps, and technology can speed up the process of bringing people together and growing your network. I encourage both students and professionals to be using these tools. Everyone has a reason they get up in the morning and something they care about. Use social media to amplify your message and connect with others who believe what you believe.
To read Nikki’s amazing story and connect with her, check out her blog post featured on our site.
