221: Be Willing to Be the Exception (For 2020 Grads)

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Be willing to be the exception this is a message for 2020 grads and anyone else that needs to hear it at this time. There is a headline that is driving me crazy and it keeps coming up in interviews and Q and A sessions that I've been doing during this pandemic. Here's a headline from today's front page of the New York Times Facing adulthood with an economic disaster's lasting scars, those entering the job market in a downturn may never catch up in pay, opportunities or confidence. And it shows a photo of a handsome young man darkened by shadows, his eyes looking forlornly into the light. Do not mistake this message and today's podcast as discounting or dismissing the truly tough times that today's grads are experiencing. Many of their classes have shifted to virtual, if at all. They're graduating without the normal in person pomm and circumstance, and they are in fact entering the job market at an incredibly challenging time. But to tell them the story and to hang this dark rain cloud over their head that they may never catch up in pay, opportunities or confidence, I can't think of a more disempowering story to graduate with grads. Do not let this story, this prognostication, hang over your head like a permanent rain cloud. If you believe that you will never catch up in pay, opportunities or confidence, how will that affect your future? How will that affect how you think about your work? How you negotiate your salary? Of course, a thought like that is going to completely diminish your sense of confidence and self worth and your ability to envision what's possible. It may be difficult right now, and it may be very difficult for even a few years, but be willing to be the exception. It might be true, categorically speaking, that graduates who graduate in a recession earn less over the lifetime of their career. We can look at that data from 2008. Be willing to be the exception. If you accept that story flat out and you assume that that's you again, it may even stop you from trying in the first place. Now of course, statistically speaking, we can't all be the exception. So while you want to break away from the pack if everyone has this mindset, I do believe that you can more creatively solve problems. Run pilots, take on project based work until you work your way into a career that you love. This article and looking at earnings and looking at past data is just that, it's past data. In a very linear approach to earnings, career satisfaction and the job market, don't bench yourself before the game begins. Be willing to be the exception. I remember hearing so many times how many small businesses fail in their first five years and then it gets even more grim when you look 10 years out. Be willing to be the exception. That always worked for me with self employment. I thought, how can I be the exception? Whatever data was disempowering, of course we want to be realistic about the very real challenges that you might face as a recent grad or a small business owner. But be willing to be the exception. What does that mean? It means saying why do so many businesses fail? Why do grads earn less and how can I work around that? How can I make myself even more indispensable in a frequently changing, if not constantly changing job market and economy?

Yes, we do need more social and institutional support as a society, at least here in America. I absolutely believe that. But for over a decade now, a college degree has not been able to simply land you a job straight away the way it once did in the past. After I wrote Life After College, I remember getting asked by a lot of people, do you think people still need to even finish school? Look at all these entrepreneurs who drop out of college and then they go on to be very successful. My answer to that was always that a college degree, at least a liberal arts education, was never really promised to make you job ready. Companies and people hire because they are looking to solve a problem. So what will differentiate you is a unique skill set and a mindset and work ethic that allow you to jump in and solve problems. When I took my first job at the startup company, it was doing moving political polling online. I was still just starting my junior year at ucla, so I took a leave of absence from school. I Moved back home to Palo Alto as the first employee. Slowly, over time, I started to show my value. I did everything from office manager to webmaster to marketing assistant. My job was equally to run our Google AdWords campaigns as it was to anticipate when we needed more toilet paper and to receive packages from the FedEx delivery person. Make yourself indispensable. Be willing to learn on the job. Be willing to learn on the side. When I took over of managing the company's websites, I loved computers, I loved tech, but I didn't know the first thing about web design. This is back in 2004 and there weren't all these WYSIWYG editors that you have now like Squarespace and WordPress. At that time it was Dreamweaver and hard coding by hand in an HTML coding app. So I bought HTML and CSS books and I used to read them on the treadmill or the elliptical machines at the gym. I was that nerdy. But over time it grew my skills and it grew my capabilities. When I was the editor of the high school newspaper, I learned self taught myself Photoshop which served me when I started making our ads for our Google Ad campaigns. If I was waiting for my political science and communications degrees to get me the job or to equip me for that job, I would have been waiting a very long time. Now it's true that the reason I got the job at the startup was because of a political science class that I took with the inimitable Lynn Vavrek. Professor Vavick, she was so incredible. She taught Poli Sci 40. It was intro to American Politics and my friend Margaret and I used to sit in the front row. We loved her teaching style, we loved everything about her. And Margaret suggested we go ask her could we be her research assistant. I didn't even know that was a thing. But that turned out to be the pivotal question that helped us apprentice under Professor Vavrek do research for her, such that when this job opening came to be at the political polling startup, she reached out and knew that I might be interested and that even though I didn't have any official job skills, I was at least trustworthy enough to figure things out with her guidance. By the way, they thought they were hiring me to file papers and by the time I got there, they ended up giving me a raise shortly after I arrived because they saw, oh, she can do a lot more than file papers and tidy the office and order new furniture. It helps to prove your value over time. What problems can you solve? What skills can you Develop now to make yourself indispensable for any position, any job, any, any company in any economy. I am not saying that this is going to be easy, but why not hold the thought. What if this was easy? Anytime that you're inheriting a story like you're graduating at the worst possible time, at least consider, what if the opposite were true? In what ways could this be the best possible time? What could you do to transform this into the best possible time? Maybe you're graduating at the most interesting time in history. You are. You're seeing a global economy pause and collectively pivot and problem solve together. This is the first time in our lifetimes that the entire world is having the same conversation at the same time. When I say be willing to be the exception, it means be willing to go the other way. Be willing to ask how you can stand out, how you can be different, how you can shake off disempowering, stressful thoughts that are seeming to hang doom and gloom over you for the rest of your career or for your future. This doesn't mean falling into exceptionalism, thinking that you're better than others. It's not about that. This is a mindset of collective creativity and problem solving. How could you help your fellow grads at such a difficult time? What would that look like? What does your cohort need now more than ever? What does your cohort need that no other generation knows how to give them? What can you uniquely create with your skills, your interests, your upbringing? At this moment in time.

We are all fumbling through this pandemic. Nobody has the answers, not even those at the highest levels. So as much as anybody, you have a chance to get creative, try things and start solving problems large and small. We know that these generations are more crippled by student debt than any prior generations. Student debt is a huge bubble in our economy, at least in the US and it's a huge problem and it's practically criminal. The amount of student debt some graduate with for what is now moving forward might be a half zoom education.

So again, this is not to discount these very real issues of student loans. How are you going to pay it? How will you find short term employment? Even if you keep your long term vision, stay as present as you can. You will probably need to get creative. Studies or research is already showing and they call it the boomerang generation, that kids are living at home for longer and they're returning to home early in their career to save money until they leave the nest. So many parents are having older kids live at home with them Even after they graduate college, for better and for worse. And that's part of the reality we live in. So not everyone has the privilege to say, oh yeah, I don't need to work for two years or three years while I wait out this recession or possible depression. Though no one wants to call it the D word. If exceptionalism is thinking that you're exempt or were entitled to a certain set of circumstances, or that you're entitled to have a job just because you graduate college, that's not going to work. But being willing to be the exception is saying, I am willing to look at this differently, to think about this differently, and manage fear differently than even what you see in the mainstream.

We all have fear when it comes to our careers. If you are a recent or current graduate and you feel afraid, it's okay. Don't even try to make the fear go away. The idea is to harness it. Those who think that they have a secure job, many are very afraid of losing their job in further economic contractions. We know that over 35 million people have lost their jobs during this time. Those who are self employed, like me, are navigating crazy, insane roller coasters. That in a way is the worst case scenario that I didn't even think to ask myself of everything that could go wrong in running my own business. What if all my work, my client work, got canceled at the exact same time and there were such circumstances that nobody wanted to schedule ahead even for the next six months? This is wild. This is on some level the worst case scenario. But I can tell you as somebody living through it, you just take it day by day. Of course March felt like total chaos and the sky was falling. But then interesting things start to emerge and you can start to say, what am I meant to learn from this? What skills am I getting during this time? How have I already adapted? How is this time shaping all of us to be better equipped as individuals, as companies and as a society moving forward. In the New York Times article that I mentioned earlier, there's a line that says the question is what kind of scars this will leave in the hearts, minds and pockets of younger people.

While it's true that you may want to talk to somebody, definitely, and I would never discourage you from doing that about what you're experiencing during this time. Talk about what you're grieving, talk about what you are looking forward to in the future upon graduation or any other life milestone. So many are were set to get married this year. You have had a loss and it's important to process that Loss.

And yes, you may get some kind of scar from this, but see that scar as a good thing, as weird as that is to say. There's a saying, make your mess your message. And I've often heard writers say, write from the scar, not the wound. You might not know what to create. You might not know what kind of jobs to go for or how to network during this time. It may still feel like an open, raw wound of processing, grieving, pausing, confusion, and in some cases, even in tremendous anxiety and uncertainty. But as this wound, as you start to learn the skills of even how to navigate this kind of emotional turmoil, you are becoming more resilient. That wound will turn into a scar. And that scar can become a huge part of your story. What motivates you, what drives you again, what problems you want to help solve, how you want to contribute to society, to your community. So if it's going to leave a scar in your heart, mind and pocket, let it be an empowering scar. Let it be one that continues to remind you, almost like the reason some people get a tattoo of a mantra or something important to them. You choose what that scar says to you. You can choose what you want to do with that, what you want that reminder in your heart, mind and pocket to teach you. I can tell you right now, going back to the self employed example, of course, this year 2020 will be seared in my memory as a small business owner and I will remember it in my heart, in my mind and in my pocket. But I'm looking at that as what can I learn? How can I build my pivot portfolio to be even more resilient? What kind of diversification do I need to have in terms of streams of income, mindset, scenario planning, worst case scenario planning, cash Runway on all kinds of things. So for each of those areas, these scars in hearts, minds and pockets, what can you learn? What can it teach you for the future? How can you be better prepared? Even though we can never be fully prepared for something like this, what would it look like to empower yourself for any number of different situations? Because nobody is guaranteed work in our society. That's the scary reality. And again, I'm not getting into the politics of this today, but I think it's terrible amount of income inequality and how we leave so many people out to dry in our society without getting into that, some of you will feel called to serve in those ways and address those systemic institutional problems that are very real and that need to be addressed. But I encourage you one more time, do not do it. With this thought that you are forever negatively impacted hanging over your head for the next 30 years. Hear it, understand the reality of it, Use it to empower you to problem solve and get even smarter with your skill building and how you can add value to any organization that you join and then move on. Be willing to be the exception for any disempowering statistic that you hear. Ask yourself what would it look like to go the other way? What if the opposite were possible? What if the opposite were true? I'm wishing all of you recent grats clarity and your heart's desire during this wild time. Even if you need to take short term measures to make it through this pandemic and this recession and contraction that we're in, I encourage you to hold the candle, protect your flame. As we shared recently on the podcast for the vision that makes your heart sing and trust that you are mining very interesting research, observations, conversations and skills during this powerful time in the global consciousness.

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Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.