This Awesome "Anti-Resume" Makes Me Rethink How I Approach Marketing Myself

daily awesome that I learn and share, but none of that has anything to do with something profoundly “me” in nature. A fundamental and deeply rooted part of my online presence, and how I present myself. This anti-resume does.

I’m not entirely sure what changes I’m going to have to make, but given the nature of everything that has happened with me in the last couple of months (not including the wedding and being married), something has to change here. I have an awesome skill in many different levels of digital space, and in media creation, and I consider myself a fair writer, but one thing I’ve never been good with, is presenting myself. Presenting who I am, and what I can do in a way people want it. Okay, two things… I’m not good at making money either (I suppose that sorta goes with the first thing though). I can present products, services, application ideas, video, photography, and other ‘stuff’ that I have a part in making real, but what I can never market well, is me. It shows, because I make terrible money for what I’m capable of, and when I do make something, it’s acknowledged as usually being extremely undersold compared to others (I once charged about $25/hour to make a commercial for a business. I also did it for like $8 an hour working at a car dealership, when I made an ad for my employer that I already worked for). I’ve already talked about a problem similar to money and working for what I’m worth before, but this presentation by David Crandall (shown above) is something I needed to see. It’s defining something that I’ve strived to get right, and something that I’ve been reading up on and tweaking to make work for me… and calling that bit of work that I’ve focused on, a tool for a cog. Ouch. True, but ouch. He’s right though. if you pre-define what makes your ideal employee, than you disregard everyone who isn’t inside this predefined bubble. What you get when you do that, is a very limited view of who you should be talking with, and maybe even somebody who’s simply another robot, waiting for instructions to perform an action as requested. That’s not what you want as an employee, and it’s certainly not who you want to hire. Don’t get me wrong, I fit that category in a lot of ways. I’m a robot in a lot of things, and I was all through college for the most part. Sometimes, I can admit now, I was a dysfunctional robot. I didn’t work as needed, but for whatever reason nobody really noticed like they should have. But the changes I’ve had happen to me since my wedding are grand, if only in the mind and in habit. I haven’t really had a chance to experience the changes made so far, since I finished several things soon after, and lost the biggest client I had (I was essentially  an employee) at the same time. I went from too many clients (making the mistake of over-budgeting my time and neglecting people more than I should have), to having nothing at all to work on (which is where I currently stand, not counting the 5 clients I sort of have in the “limbo stage” as I call it (where they claim they want to hire me for something, and talk with me about it, but I never hear responses from follow ups. Again, I can’t market myself). This graphic says it all really. It tells people “you don’t want a guy who’s going to just do the job they are told to do, you want a guy who will fundamentally change your world in ways you didn’t even know you needed.” That’s the guy I have to be. I see that now. It’s the guy I’m not, and I don’t know how to be… but somehow, some way, I want to get there. If you have any advice for me as far as getting there, please drop it in the comments below. [charliead]]]>