My latest setback

Community
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[COLOR=“Blue”][FONT=“Tahoma”][SIZE=“4”]Siggh… :goof: Pathetic! :nono:
I got a call from a local company to come in about possible graphics work. They found me on LinkedIn! Lucky me!!! :smiley: I even went to high school with one of the owners. We chatted for a brief moment.
I was interviewed by a young hot maden. I showed her my print work, which was perhaps not as well presented as it could have been. I only had print outs from my Epson. Then she said my web work was really advanced. Ohhh that was good! :wink: Then I met one of the other owners. We talked with the hot young maiden right next to me. As we were talking I heard my voice get softer , and softer and softer … I felt I was losing all confidence like I always do. HE kind of looked at me like the other interviewers look at me and called it a day. He said he was going to talk to a few more people… I looked at the girl and asked her didn’t she want to know my rates? She kind of said no… and that was that.
It ruined my whole day. It ruined today. It blew me out of the water. Same old crap.:sick:

However, he did say he was in a hurry for another appointment before the interview. Who knows. Perhaps I will get a call to do some work.

I do have someone from town who wants me to quote him on a big job for a website. I lost all confidence as of yesterday. I hope to get it back by tomorrow. :wink:

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I second this comment, I’ve noticed Another Designer that lately you’ve been bouncing around so many potential things, from design to SEO to advertising to animation all of which you seem to want to become skilled at within a short period, while it’s great that you’re enthusiastic it’s unhealthy for one person to burden themselves with the need to become skilled (to the levels you can charge for as a professional) with not enough time to learn the craft. Stick to what you know you can do well, if you’re not a strong designer or SEO person, then don’t offer it, focus on the niches you can do a great job on and sell yourself on those points. :slight_smile:

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I’d start on focusing on the skills you can hone and improve on right now rather than trying to be an allrounder.

It takes some time to learn CSS, HTML, Javascript, and the fundamental principles of designing for the web. And it takes many years to be a “good” designer.

There’s so much more to being an adequately successful web designer than meets the eye. Learning just the basics of web design will take you a year, and that’s a mildly realistic approximation.

If this is still too early for you, I’d concentrate on the things you are already good/excellent at, since it seems that your financial situation is urging you to push yourself to expect rates of returns in the web design industry that don’t accord with your current skillset.

Know your skills and build realistic expectations as the next catastrophe is only a minute away otherwise.

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To quote Ray Winstone ‘Don’t say it, DO it’.

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strategy, it is not

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Hmmm, TKE, you’re probably correct! I guess I have to work on that. I seriously will try to work on this! :slight_smile:

Stomme I am going to try to find someone who will work with me. I know there is help out there. I will get it. I’m going to turn this thing around.

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Hmm, I’ve never heard of that strategy. :shifty:

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:rofl: the payments department - well that is ficticious really - I used to get tongue tied when it came to collecting payments sort of like what’s happening with your situation - I asked a few people on SP here for advice on how to get over that awkwardness and the introduction of creating a payments section of my business was proposed - so that eliminated the awkwardness completely for me, everything would be handled by myself of course but the client wouldn’t be aware of that plus it’s really handy if people try to corner you about a lower price - I can just say now that all payments are handled by the accounts department :smiley:

The sales - well I have yet to put this into practice, I am researching right now for the best solution for me but this is something I’m not great at - primarily due to the lack of sales experience I guess but I’m more than happy to out source in areas that I don’t feel accomplished in - I guess this is something I was suggesting for yourself, even though you are learning which is great, in the meantime you could out-source until you do feel confident enough with your design skills - is it always the design that throws you off in the conversations?

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[FONT=“Palatino Linotype”][SIZE=“4”]mizwizzy I am totally in a phase of either brushing up on my skills asap or getting the heck out of the business. :confused::wink:

It’s interesting that you have your own payments department and sales people. How on earth can you afford that? :)[/SIZE][/FONT]

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I have been reading a lot of your posts and what have you really done all this time? from what i see you haven’t done so much to promote yourself.

you only have some hasty printouts from your Epson to promote your work?

if you don’t take your work and skills seriously, how can you expect others to do it?

sit down and make a plan to promote yourself.

write a list of things you are good at in the fields of your work.
make a list of things you would like to achieve.
make a list of things that keeps you away from your goal.

then take the list with the things you are good at and anazyle it. reassemble it to a story to present yourself.

think about the things you would like to achieve and those things that keeps you away from achieving it and start to work.

start building a presentation of yourself and your work based on the story from the list of things you are good at.

explain who you are, what you do and the importance and characteristics of a good design. show examples of your skills and examples of some previous work as you describe and explain how important a good design is.

use examples from the real word to explain how important this is. look at apple, now they got some nice design on their things. look at Rolls Royce, ferrari, lamborghini or Versace, Gaultier, Lagerfeld, Valentino, Chanel, Rolex etc and use some of them to point out the importance of a good design. be creative and present yourself as an authority in you field.

make your presentation and use examples of your own work and experience and also use real world examples to point out and explain the importance of what you are doing and saying. act like a pro, and people will treat you like a pro.

have other people review your presentation and hear what they say. tweak it until you feel confident and satisfied with it.

Get it professional printed, convert it to a powerpoint presentation and also convert it to PDF on your website.

get yourself some businesscards with name, phone number and web address and give them a cd containing your presentation.

train in front of a mirror or in front of friends and family on presenting yourself and your work, until you feel confident.

Always think about the things on the list you would like to achieve, and always try to stay away from the things that keeps you away from your success (if you can’t deal with them) always dress properly.

always try to talk about things you feel confident talking about, and always use examples and/or ideas based on examples.

then go out get a job :slight_smile:

or do as i said before, create your own business on teaching others what you know about your field.

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Ok, so how are your skills when it comes to Design? Maybe this is what throws you, perhaps you are less confident talking about this subject or you have no confidence in your skills? If this is the case then you need to perhaps consider out-sourcing therefore you can (with confidence) describe someone else and how good they are especially if it means losing the possibility of potential earnings! Or you need to brush up on your skills asap!

I had a similiar situation myself - I’ve always found it awkward to ask for payments but with the help of some great minds here on SP I now have a “payments department” to drop into the conversation or issue some follow up emails with regard to payments etc :tup: Plus even with sales - I’m not a good sales person - you don’t have to be good at everything, sometimes it’s just not in your make up - It’s not a defeatist attitude either to say hey, I’m no good at this - but I do have someone who is amazingly talented in this field :tup:

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This is a perfect example of the things that I was talking about. It took me a few reads to figure out where I mentioned anything about your education/skills in the post.

When I said no formal training whatsoever, I was discussing how my opinion of you was based on your posts and how I had no formal training to be diagnosing your issues but you took it as a comment on your skill set instead.

Based on your previous posts you look for the negatives, you look for slights whether they are there or not. See your posts about your wife setting you off, your boss setting you off, etc…

That all goes back to your lack of self-esteem IMHO. You can post all you want on SP about how you should dress, how you should look for business, how you should… but none of it is going to help until you address the core issues, and the good thing is that addressing the core issues will help every aspect of your life (personal and business).

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Thats quite true, but you’ll notice I didn’t say “finding a woman” because there are a millions ways to do that just as there are to find new prospects.

Maybe the word “woo” means something entirely different in your part of the world, but the definition I’m most used to is…

Main Entry: woo
transitive verb
1 : to sue for the affection of and usually marriage with : court
2 : to solicit or entreat especially with importunity <woo new customers>
3 : to seek to gain or bring about
intransitive verb
: to court a woman
— woo·er noun

…and that’s exactly how you should treat prospective customers. Taking time to get to know them and finding out what their needs are while providing some value to them along the way at every step of the process - not just immediately saying “hello” and then asking them to buy.

Sorry, maybe I should have been much more detailed in my original comments on this, but I’m seriously surprised your cute little example was what you took away from my comments.

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Good question. I started talking about doing digital photography landscapes as well as graphics. I knew I blew it at that point. I could feel the confidence spilling out of my vibrations. I’ll get there. :slight_smile:

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ShinoKage thank you for understandin about the woman/dress thing. YES SHE DID DRESS LIKE A STREET WALKER! 100% RIGHT ON TARGET! AND SHE LOOKED LIKE ONE TOO! Sorry, I had to get that out. Oh, and be careful if you by chance check out a woman’s behind walking by you. Because other people are waiting to see if you are going to check out her butt! I know that for a fact!! So it’s better to NOT LOOK AT ALL!

Luckily for me I find the sneakers jeans and hoodie-with-something-nerdy to be the most comfortable dress. If I dress up at work I notice one of my bosses gets uncomfortable.

In any case, it sounds like it’s definitely the attitude and not your workmanship doing you in here… my husband knew a pretty good coder on a coding forum, and asked his company to interview him. But when the guy showed up, he turned out to be a druggie. Now his work was of pretty good quality, so working with him over teh innernets wouldn’t have been a problem, but since this job involved the nerds actually being together in the same room, corporate culture of whatever sort (relaxed as these were indeed nerds) did matter… the bosses didn’t feel that he would fit in.

Find someone you trust and ask them to be brutally honest and tell you how you seem to someone first meeting you. We all do stuff we’re unconscious of. Maybe you do something that turns people who don’t know you Off in interviews?

Some people just suck balls at interviews, and those people tend to find out how to work with others either remotely or they practice how they act, speak, sit, etc during interviews to get better at them.

I don’t do well at interviews, but it seems that I tend to get interviewed by people who are bad interviewers or new to it, lawlz. People seem to really like getting the vibe of your love of the type of work you do, though. They always go back to those applicants.

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It looks like you’re more upset about missing the chance to work with the young hot maiden than missing on the job:p

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I agree - it happens to everyone. You’ll get a new wave of confidence in a few days :slight_smile:

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Probably best to ask how he met his wife first, it could go wrong in so many ways… I’m rather tempted to ask you if a good business method based on that approach would be to (A) get them drunk and work off their low inhibitions, (B) say something embarrassing and have a sympathy vote or (C) do as Jimmy Carr (a famous English comedian) and say… “does this rag smell like chloroform to you?” (captive audience) - getting business and finding a woman aren’t alike. :smiley:

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Another Designer - When you’re voice went lower - what were you talking about that prompted this reaction?

@Tommy - :tup:

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It’s one job. You will get more opportunities and some of them will work out for you.

I’d say, sulk for a day or so, then move on with fresh confidence and energy!