Your career path doesn’t have to be obvious from the start
If you’re starting or questioning your journey as a student, creative or new entrepreneur in 2022, this one’s for you.
I gave a talk for some students who run a nonprofit organization to help aspiring business students and entrepreneurs. They had me there last week to speak about my career and journey, which prompted this reflection.
Looking back, over 15 years ago I started my nonprofit ACCESS Innovation 8 years ago I started my agency Now Impact Studio, and a couple years before that, I started freelancing.
So if I had to summarize the path I was taking at the time, and give that to someone as a clear instructions document, they would say, “I’m not signing up for this, this doesn’t, this doesn’t make any sense”.
But looking back, they say that it’s easy to connect the dots moving backwards. But going forward, sometimes you really have no idea – you just have to take as many opportunities and make decisions on where you’re going to commit and spend your time to ultimately see where things go and where it takes you.
From this I’ve learned that:
- Taking those opportunities, and saying no to things, is just as important along the way.
- Choosing who you’re going to collaborate and work with, or work for, matters.
- You’re definitely going to be put out of your element and challenged (so passion and vision is important). If you don’t have a clear passion or vision of what you’re trying to get done, or what you want to explore what you want to learn, it’s going to be pretty easy to stop and give up along the way.
Walking this specific part of Toronto – between OCAD University where I went to school and the Toronto Eaton Centre where I worked at the Apple Store, also across the street from where my agency built a community – there’s a lot of times where I thought, “What the heck is going on? How am I gonna continue to run this? How am I gonna make money? What am I going to sleep? How am I gonna get out of this situation? Or how am I going make this client happier? How am I going make this team member happy?” There are always challenges and late nights as you’re figuring things out along the way.
But like all entrepreneurs, I got through some challenges and learned from each of them.
The best thing is that you can now take those lessons, apply it to your next experience, and get that much further in the next venture, the next project or the next organization – which all adds up to one big journey that you could not have predicted from the beginning.
