Progress report: I’m on my second contract now. The first was for a bank, editing and rewriting a manager’s guide and creating telephone scripts for a new product. Now I’ve been brought in to help a large organization’s communications department with various projects as it restructures and things long put on hold are resurrected.
I’m afraid to say it’s been a bit easier than it should have been, finding work so fast. In both cases it was thanks to friends and acquaintances whom I’d let know that I was available (network, network, network, right?). I also have a promise of potential work on an annual report when the time (again, from an acquaintance), and word from another that a work sample of mine would soon be presented to an executive committee for consideration.
I’m not certain this quickly-found work has done my psyche tremendous long-term service, however.
I’d been a bit afraid of going out on my own because I’d never been good at selling myself – not an asset to have when you’re in the business of pitching your services to make the mortgage. It goes to my old-school upbringing, I think, where I was taught to ‘never brag – let your work speak for you.’
Add to that, I confess to being shy, a claim that friends have always scoffed at when I’d confessed to it.
“But you were a reporter! Your job was to approach complete strangers and strike up conversations,” they’d say to prove me wrong.
Well yeah, it was my job. But perhaps I gravitated to journalism in order to confront my demons, or rather; journalism pulled me in for the same purpose. There is some evidence to support that theory, albeit data I’ve collected on my own.
Of the hundreds of fellow reporters I’d met in my career, I’d estimate that at least half of them were deep-down shy and/or self conscious individuals, certainly when they first started out.
Put a microphone, recorder or notepad in their hands and say: “Go get ‘em, boy/girl!”, and those who had the potential for journalism would do just that. Yet put them in a room full of people in a social setting, and they’d cling to those they already knew like rhesus monkeys in a socialization experiment.
That was me.
It’s kind of weird as I’d never been hesitant to speak publicly, act as emcee, give a business presentation, or lead discussion groups, and was often volunteered by others to do so because I was “so outgoing!” As far back as Grade 7 I can remember always being one of the first to engage the teacher in debate, speak up for another student, or read out my composition when asked. So long as the topic wasn’t about me, I did great.
Before this contract came along, I was learning to sell John Schmied. Baby steps, though. I approached acquaintances from my reporting days, who remembered me and my work. I had been to their organization’s web sites and looked around. How well were they communicating to their audiences, I asked as objectively as I could. If I thought they were missing the mark, I re-wrote some of the pages and sent it to them before making the call and the pitch.
It’s one of those cases where my work is being brought to that executive committee meeting for discussion. Maybe it will lead to something, maybe it won’t.
For the sake of supporting my family, I hope it does.
For the sake of supporting my psyche, I’m a little less sure.
But that’s something I’m working on.
John Schmied Toronto News 24
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