The phone call that changed my life forever

I got my first “real” design job back in 2002 by taking a wild chance:

A guy came in to the print shop I worked at to pick up something for a marketing agency he co-founded. While he waited for it, I chatted with him about the agency— his name was Chase Jarvis, and at the time he was mostly just known as a ski photographer.

I said “fk it,” picked up the phone and asked him for a job. And to make a long story short, I ended up working at his agency doing projects for Nike, Nintendo, Red Bull etc.

The choice to pick up the phone that day changed the course of my life forever. It got my design career started and set everything else in motion for me.

(years later I also ended up working at his startup, CreativeLive)

Maybe I would have found another way in… but maybe not.

Who knows where my life would have gone if I didn’t make that phone call?

And it happened again in 2009:

I was working at a design agency in Cincinnati and I needed to reboot my life for a lot of reasons I won’t get into here.

My job search was going nowhere, so I just randomly tweeted: “I need a new job. I’m a graphic designer, can anyone help?”

Honestly, it was pure desperation and I didn’t expect anything to come of it.

I only had 850 followers or something from a small blog I was doing at the time, but someone replied: “I can get you in at Abercrombie.”

My inner voice said, “Some random dude on Twitter is just gonna get me a job at the #1 mall apparel brand because he likes my blog? No way…”

But a few months later, to my absolute shock— he did. And I spent the next 4 years doing design and marketing for Abercrombie & Fitch.

(shoutout to Shawn Khemsurov, check out his agency Feel)

And again, what if I didn’t make that random tweet? What if I listened to that voice that told me it was cringe?

→ Here’s the point:

You can completely change the course of your life in a single meeting, phone call or DM.

And you don’t need a big audience, because all it takes is reaching the right person at the right moment ONE SINGLE TIME.

It could be a 2 minute conversation, but it might open a door that was closed to you for years and transform your whole life in an instant. You can probably think of examples where it’s happened to you, right?

But you’ve gotta put yourself out there. Those moments will never come if you just hang out in your comfort zone, hoping that somehow, someone will discover you.

→ They won’t.

Which is exactly why I’m such a believer in building a personal brand: Every time you publish content, leave a comment, send a DM, etc you’re creating the chance for one of those random, life-changing moments to happen.

You’ll get hit up for media appearances (I got in NYT, CNN and Billboard from emails that came out of the blue), brand collabs, speaking engagements, and people you admire just telling you they like your work.

And those opportunities build your authority which leads to MORE opportunities— the snowball just grows.

I can’t promise when those moments will happen, but they WILL. It’s just a matter of time.

So start putting yourself out there NOW. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Action is better than inaction.

Just start TODAY!

I promise you’ll be glad you did.

PS - Here’s the part where I try to sell you something. If you want to talk about how you can use LinkedIn or YouTube to grow your business, reply to this email or just set up a call here!