The premise of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is that “talent” is really just the culmination of extraordinary amounts of practice. Everyone is talking about it. “Put in 10,000 hours doing what you love.” But what happens if you’re interrupted in the middle of becoming great? Maybe you just graduated and you’re trying to break into advertising/marketing, maybe you got laid off. For all my fellow unemployed marketers out there, if you’re like me at all, you’re worried about losing “it”, that creative spark that let’s you know you were made to be a marketer. How can you prevent this from happening while you’re out of work?
So the big question is how do you hang on to everything when you’re out of work?
1. Exercise
All you have to do is a Google search on “Exercise and Cognition” and you’ll get more than a million results. I don’t need to prove that from a science standpoint. But from another perspective, one of the keys to success is confidence, and regular exercise makes you feel great about yourself.
2. Recreational Think Tank (or Get Together and Collaborate with Friends)
Not long ago, I was working a job that provided me virtually know mental challenge. I was “losing it” even though I was employed! I got two of my friends together and we met on a regular basis, just to pitch ideas to each other. We called ourselves a think tank just for giggles. Most of our conversations were about new business ideas. We’d go talk to experts on how to best accomplish certain ideas, even wrote marketing plans, and did market research. None of the ideas ever became businesses, but it kept my mind working. The more excited I got about our ideas, the more my mind poured over them. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t employed; I was challenged nonetheless. All of you know more people like you. Screw up your courage and ask someone to get together just to pitch ideas around. Nothing has to come out of it, all that matters is that you keep the wheels turning.
3. Volunteer
Volunteer opportunities abound, and I encourage you to go build a house with Habitat, or hand out blankets to the homeless for the upcoming winter. But I also encourage you to additionally seek out a very specific kind of volunteering. Reach out to non-profits and see if they need any help from the marketing side. Marketing is one of the areas that usually gets neglected in a non-profit’s budget, so chances are they will jump at the chance to bring you in. Once in, take it seriously and do good work. You’ll be able to add this to your resume, but more importantly you’ll be gaining real world experience and making contributions that hopefully will continue past your time volunteering. Talk about building confidence!
4. Read (Duh!)
This one is the most obvious, but also the one I have failed at the most here. I have Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing and Purple Cow, Zig Zigler’s See You At The Top and Secrets of Closing the Sale, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, QBQ! The Question Behind The Question by John G. Miller, and James Collins’ Built to Last. All gathering dust. Don’t be like me; do as I say, not as I do. These are great titles that have been recommended by many people I respect. You (and I) would benefit from reading them.
5. Mentorship
For some people, this comes easily, but for others it is bloody hard. I’m in the latter, and still working on it. However, the glimpses of successful mentorship I’ve experienced have unlocked my creativity and reignited my drive. In fact, Unemployed Marketers Group is an idea I began developing out of one such relationship.
6. Remember What You Learn
This idea isn’t mine, but comes from a designer named Alan Knox over at a great agency called redpepper. He has a great process for hanging on to what he learns. He sums it up with Capture, Process, Categorize. But that summary doesn’t do it justice. Watch his presentation here and get the slideshow here. Seriously, do it. I’ve got to start putting this into action.
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The ante has been upped. Nowadays, it isn’t enough to have good interview skills and even just networking may be insufficient to get by. You have to keep growing, keep getting better, even when you’re out of a job. The Unemployed Marketers Group came out of that very need. Check out the below post, and if you want to be a part, drop me a line! Plus, your complimentary or constructively critical comments are always welcome.
