Live Your Life Be Free!

In my second and third year of University I worked in the back office of a consulting firm. I had a boss who referred to associates as "bodies" instead of people. I worked in quality control and soon became a team lead. It was a ‘heads-down’ job, where I analyzed outputs, reports, investigated outliers and did a tiny bit of statistical analysis.

There wasn’t much smiling or inspiration and there was a lot of pandering to my boss, who eventually came to see me as a human. It wasn’t exactly my passion, but if it wasn’t for that job, which I did on Mondays and Fridays, and crammed my Bachelor of Commerce courses in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I would never have graduated from University with a relatively small amount of debt.

When I was 24 and first started in the working world, I knew my place. I got a job as a Marketing Analyst at a very large American manufacturing company. Similar to the consulting firm, there was a lot of heads-down work and pandering, despite my graduation from University on full scholarship… at the time, I believed it would all eventually be worth it, and I would come out of the other side of the hard work as a better professional with more interesting opportunities awaiting me.

Now, looking back, I can’t help but wonder if this hard-work thing is a myth. I happened upon this interview with Carissa Reiniger who has just had a 1.4 million dollar year with her Marketing Consultancy business at the age of 24. So… at the same time that I was "getting a better character" by pushing through the administrative and analytical work, she is actually achieving her dream. Now, I understand from a colleague that knows Carissa that she had financing from her family and friends to back her up… but I think she is still a good example of using her skills to the maximum vs. developing character through doing mundane work.

I think that this mundane work thing is a throwback to the old economy – a kind of factory-worker mentality… where using skills to the maximum is more information-age. I strongly recommend to any young person entering the business world: don’t take advice from 40-50 year-olds that you should do strictly mundane work in order to pay your dues. Remember, if they are your employers, that they think of you in a certain way, and when they are giving advice it has a lot to do with what is best for them… not what is best for you.

Don’t feel sorry for me and my early career – I eventually figured it out. I ended up doing some very interesting projects at the company. I released two very exciting products nationally which is amazing for someone under 30 and in managing the website for my product group, I discovered my passion for website marketing. But, I didn’t get those projects because I was the greatest at the clerical work. I did those projects because I grasped for them… I built a foundation of successes and good ideas and earned more and more freedom.

So… in the new economy, success is built on the basis of solid ideas and creativity rather than that mundane hard-work. My advice to people in your early-twenties – work on developing and expressing ideas… and whatever you do… don’t put your head down and for God’s sake, don’t work for a guy who thinks of you as nothing more than a body.