Category: career

career, success, work

Beautiful: Focus Your Vision of Success So That Others Can Help You Make It Happen

Christa Avampato

c596868fa70d40b9f9014790c616de8eYesterday one of my mentors scheduled coffee with me for one clear reason – to help me. He wants to know how I see my career unfolding in the next 3 – 5 years so that he can help me figure out how to get there. I understand how lucky I am to have a mentor who is this generous and invested in my future. It makes me grateful beyond measure.

As I walked home from my meeting, I thought about his question. Where do I want my career go? Am I doing the right things to help me get there? It’s so easy to get in the cycle of doing: to-do lists, meetings, emails. It’s easy to waste time getting no where. It’s much harder to discriminate between opportunities that keep us on track and those that take us off-track. There is no end to the amount of work that others want you to do to help them. But as a freelancer, you have to be careful. The work you do to help others also has to help you, too.

At the moment, I’m doing a lot of things that are advancing my career in the direction I want it to go. I’m also doing a few things that are distractions. It will be difficult for me to cut those things loose, but I know that’s what’s needed. Focus is the path toward and the tool to generate success. It’s also the best way to help others help you.

career, creative, creativity, imagination, innovation, job, work

Beautiful: Forget Job Searching. Instead, Create the Job of Your Dreams.

Christa Avampato

eb20a4bca686ede0d04a1cc9628f3e6bImagine if college wasn’t about preparing you for the job search. Instead, imagine that it was a 4-year haven for you to grow the skills that most interest you and for you to craft your own business that utilizes those skills. Over 3 million people graduate from 4-year colleges every year in the U.S. That’s potentially 3 million startups created every single year.

Imagine what that would mean for our economy, for our communities, and for education. Tom Friedman did just that in his New York Times column last week. Soon, we won’t have to imagine. This is the reality for our children today, and for their children, and so on. They will be job creators, not job seekers. Our society and our economy are changing rapidly. The paradigm of work and income is shifting, and there will be no turning back. This is a transformation in the economy that is moving full-steam ahead.

Rather than asking our kids what they want to be when they grow up, we need to help them figure out what they intend to build. And then we need to set that example for them in our own careers.

career, choices, decision-making, time

Beautiful: The Doors of Our Lives

Christa Avampato

3c33fede4cc8d8cc5206d8873851c641“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” ~ Flora Whittemore

I’m in the midst of choosing among different doors, literal and figurative. I’m looking for a new apartment. I’m considering where to take a long vacation this summer. I’ve got several new career opportunities in front of me – I’m now trying to decide whether to take all of them, some of them, or none of them. At the ripe old age of 37, I’m thinking about what matters most in my personal life and how that should take shape going forward.

While these big decisions can be daunting, I also have to remind myself that this is the real stuff of life. This is the fun stuff. Choosing which doors to open, which paths to take. Each of these choices alters the course of the journey, in big ways and small ways, and I am so fortunate to have the ability to decide which way to steer. Life doesn’t happen to us; it happens because of us.

career, choices, grateful, gratitude, time

Beautiful: The Art of Living

Christa Avampato

63b511e384dfa2398a6f4ae9b3f63a6aLast weekend, I read the New York Times opinion article by Erin Callan, former CFO of Lehman. Having climbed to the top of the corporate ladder, she found that the view wasn’t worth the work it took to get there. She gave up a lot of her life to reach that position and in the article she expresses profound regret. I am glad that I took the leap from that path long before I lost my perspective.

Now my life is a work of art, and for that I am immensely grateful.

career, decision-making, experience

Beautiful: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself as the CEO of Your Career

Christa Avampato

growing-in-a-petri-dishI read an article yesterday about the five questions that every company should ask itself. As I read through it, I found that the questions are helpful on a personal level as well. We hear the line that “we are the CEOs of our own careers” all the time but how many of us actually live that way? When was the last time you asked yourself these questions, answered them, and made any necessary changes to align your life with your values?

The questions are:
1.) “What is your purpose on this Earth?”

2.) “What should you stop doing?”

3.) “If you didn’t have an existing way of life, how could you best build one?”

4.) “Where is your petri dish?” – a.k.a. “How do you experiment and make plans for your future without feeling hampered by your current situation?”

5.) “How do you make a better experiment?”

The last 4 center around the process of experimentation in which success is not guaranteed, or even likely. Ultimately, they ask us to consider how we will learn from taking chances and possibly falling. They also lead us to consider how we will pick ourselves back up and try again, better and stronger than we were before. This kind of reflection is worthy of our consideration.

career, choices, opportunity, work

Beautiful: How to Know When to Let Go of an Opportunity

Christa Avampato

66938dw9i9fftf5-300x300Opportunities are everywhere and if you took every one that came your way, you’d wear yourself out before you even got started. You’d also become highly distracted from the work you’re meant to do. Turning down an opportunity, especially when it’s a particularly good one, is a tough call. We second-guess our judgement. People give us their opinions and plant fears in our head with sayings like “well, if you don’t take this opportunity, someone else will.” I say that’s just fine. There is more than enough opportunity to go around for all of us. Your only job is to figure out which ones are right for you and then make the most of them.

When I first left my corporate job last summer, I was offered a freelance gig immediately by another division of my former employer. I knew the VP well (I actually adore her) and knew the work would be fun. However, it didn’t align with what I really wanted to do and why I left my employer in the first place. I wanted to focus my energies on consulting for nonprofits in the education and healthcare space, my teaching, and my writing. While this freelance gig would have paid well, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So, I turned it down. The VP totally understood and left the door open for me if I ever changed my mind.

You should have heard the firestorm from some people in my life. “You should take it so that you have a big client on your books right away.” “Are you crazy? You can’t afford to turn down work when you’re first starting out.” “You can’t always do work you love.” Mind you, this was day 2 of starting my new company.

I didn’t listen to the criticism. I knew I did the right thing for me. I think what really flipped people out was that if I turned down work that wasn’t right for me, what did that say about their decisions to do work that wasn’t right for them?

At the beginning of January, I was offered a gig with a client I had worked with before. My first gig with them was not fun but it paid well and gave me an opportunity to learn a new skill set. It was a good experience but I had no desire to repeat it. When they came back to me and asked if I’d like to work on a new opportunity with them, I turned it down. Another firestorm ensued, this time directly from the client and the headhunter who had negotiated my first contract with them. I easily stood my ground because I was very clear about my own goals.

And that’s the trick. I’m a firm believer in you following your goals, not the goals of others. What do you want to learn? What kind of work do you want to do? What type of industry / company do you want to work with? What matters most to you? If this whole shindig is up tomorrow and it’s game over exactly where you are, will you feel good about the legacy you’ve crafted? Those are the only questions that matter. Let other people wage their own battle with their own choices. Your concern is how you spend your time, and that is work enough.

adventure, career, choices, creativity, job, work

Beautiful: Consider Taking a Crappy Job

Christa Avampato

2b22a1692e52c0522ffd195cd829ba27“What???” you might be saying to yourself. “Christa, the self-appointed evangelist for only doing work you love, is suggesting I take a crappy job?” Yes, yes I am. Under 3 big, fat conditions. It must be: 1.) temporary, 2.) lead to something you love, and 3.) possible to keep your dignity. Let me give you an example.

When I first moved to New York in 1998, I took an incredibly crappy job to follow my dream to work on Broadway shows. (This is more years ago than I really care to admit but since this story benefits you, I’m going to let that slide.) I sat on the floor of a very cramped theatre office opening mail, speaking to screaming customers, getting coffee, and doing just about any horrible job they needed done for $10 / hour.

Taking that crappy job was the best career decision I ever made because it got me inside a theatre which is exactly where I wanted to be. My boss was so appreciative of my work that I was promoted two and a half months later (on my birthday) to a slightly less crappy job managing a box office. In my new role, customers still screamed at me and I got a new boss who was completely awful (which was really unfortunate since I loved my first boss at that theatre), but now I was making $15 / hour and managed a team.

I spent 9 months “in the box” as I affectionately referred to my time there, and on my lunch break one day I ran into a college acquaintance totally by chance who put me on the trail of a job that let me go out on my first theatre tour. On tour, customers still screamed at me and I had a second really awful boss, but now I was making A LOT more money, traveling the country, and running a whole company.

Life was good, until it wasn’t, and then I quit, moved to Florida, and 6 months later got a great job with a great boss and lots of responsibility. There I learned how to be a fundraiser. Unfortunately, it only paid $13 / hour. I took it any way. That was the second best decision I ever made in my career.

My theatre career was a series of trade-offs. I worked my way from job to job gaining experience, making money, then making less money, and then taking my career in an entirely different direction. When I look back, I took those crappy jobs for all the right reasons. They were all temporary (which to be honest is true for every job eventually), they all led me to do things I love to do (working in a theatre, raising money for causes I care about, and managing a team), and I always kept my dignity. Even when customers were screaming at me, I was empowered to help them. Even when my few bad bosses were doing things like throwing staplers around the office and cursing out everyone who came near them, I learned how to stand my ground, stick up for people I cared about, and be confident in the face of great difficulty.

Most of all, those crappy jobs showed me the power of determination and the strength of my own abilities to make a rough situation much better. My presence in those jobs mattered, to the mission of the organizations and to the people around me. And that was a wonderful, beautiful thing. It still is. I’m incredibly proud of the work I did as a theatre manager and to this day I will tell anyone who will listen that it was the very best business training I’ve ever had. It taught me to take calculated risks and go after my dreams.

Your crappy job may do the same for you. If it does, I think it’s worthy of consideration. Sometimes, the very best opportunities aren’t the ones that are shiny and bright but the ones that require our efforts to make them shine.

career, determination, entrepreneurship, work

Beautiful: Entrepreneurs Work Like Ducks

Christa Avampato
Work like a duck
Work like a duck

Do you know how a duck moves forward? It may look like it’s just gliding along the water effortlessly and peacefully. If you were to look under water, you’d find that a duck is paddling is furiously to get ahead. In this way, entrepreneurs are no different from ducks.

Forget overnight success
I talk to a lot of people who are just starting out. They’re all looking for their big breakout moment, their game-changing innovation. Many of them want success yesterday and they get frustrated when they’re latest greatest product or service is not an overnight sensation. We have become a nation obsessed with insta-everything. All of the successful people I know worked very hard for a long time to get where they are. Their success required hard work, determination, and unrelenting passion for the work, not prestige.

How to make the leap
Taking my leap into a freelance life took a lot of careful, deliberate planning. I put myself through school twice while living on very little money. I took lots of jobs that were difficult and didn’t pay well because they were phenomenal learning opportunities. I took jobs that I hated, working for people who were grossly incompetent and flat-out mean, because I needed the cash. I did a lot of work for free because I believed in its value for the world. I read incessantly, network constantly, pitch myself every single day, and help other people take their leaps because I believe in their potential and because I know that a rising tide lifts all boats. I take lots of risks, and many of them do not carry tangible rewards but they’ve all been valuable experiences.

We all need to get a little lucky
And even with all that work, I still needed luck on my side to get to a point where I cover all my expenses on my freelance work and am now poised to begin to save again, too. I still needed a few lovely angels who came in the form of bosses, mentors, friends, teachers, and even some complete strangers. I’m always prepared to be lucky, and every once in a great while that preparation pays off.

Everyone has ideas. Everyone is creative. Everyone wants to evolve and grow and blossom into the very best people they can be. My advice? Be a duck. Keep a calm and centered exterior. Trust that if you are willing to pedal madly that progress will indeed be made.

career, creativity, work

Beautiful: Thinking With Our Fingers

Christa Avampato

writing“Writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers.” ~ Isaac Asimov

There is something magical about the act of working with our hands. Whether we’re painting, writing, creating music, cooking, or some other tactile-based project, there is a certain pride that creeps in when we look upon something we physically created. It magically makes us feel whole, capable, and empowered.

I think this idea holds a lot of promise for how we think about our careers. I recently read a post on LinkedIn about 16 words you should stop using to describe yourself. Overwhelmingly, the words that the author suggests omitting are ones that describes traits, not activities. When someone says they’re an architect, I immediately get a picture in my mind of what they actually do. They make things, structural things like buildings to be exact. I can get my head around that. It’s real to me. I understand how they spend their time.

In the next few days, I’ll revamp my LinkedIn profile and business website to better define what I do, why, and how. It will accurately describe how I spend my time and for what greater purpose. I’ll cut the jargon and popular buzz words of the day and get to the simple statements of how I use my heart, mind, and yes, my fingers, to create things I care about.

career, creativity, learning, technology, time

Leap: Why I’m Learning to Code

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

For a few months, I’ve been taking mini coding lessons at on Codecademy. They’re hard for me – I’m learning a new language, turning my thought process on its head, and getting familiar with a whole new way of structuring my creativity. I’m not good, but I’m getting better. This weekend, I received a new book that’s geared toward teaching the very basics of Python, a popular programming language.

I have no interest in becoming a programmer so why would I devote time to gain a basic understanding of coding?

1.) Our world is becoming increasingly influenced by technology. Knowing the basics of coding will soon be as necessary in the workplace as knowing how to use Microsoft Office.

2.) It’s difficult for me. By forcing myself to learn something that doesn’t come naturally to me, my mind must look at challenges in new ways and create new neural pathways. Just as we work muscles so that they get stronger, we must also work the brain.

3.) It grows my understanding as a product developer. There’s noting worse than a business people who ask the world of tech teams without having a clue exactly what their requests entail. I saw this all the time in my old job. Hardly anyone on the business side ever truly understood what they were asking of others. I want to do better.

4.) All it takes is time. Not so long ago, I would have had to enroll in a class to learn these skills. Now there are sites like Codecademy that offer these lessons for free and online. There are excellent manuals and books that will walk beginners through the basics. If it’s there to learn, then why not give it a try?

Are you working on learning something new? Would love to hear how the adventure is unfolding for you!