From my first job at 9 as a nanny to three children (in which I learned to juggle quite a bit and realized I need to speak up if I was ever going to make money. $1.hr was not enough!), to my first jobs out of high school (tourism) to my first job in America (Merrill Lynch!) to my last job before I went out on my own, I learned things that I would need to be successful as a freelancer.

Tourism taught me about people; what they need, what their expectations are and what happens if you disappoint (and how to quickly turn a negative into a positive), time management and wheeling and dealing (I loved getting free hotels, trips and raft rides and reporting back about them). I learned relationship building with all the different tourism jobs I had from working and living with the people to connecting new properties to a tourism company I worked for. I also learned whilst working at a world-famous hotel to "treat everyone as though they were paying for the most expensive room. When they're walking the halls you don't know who go the bus-tour special or who got the fabulous suite. So treat everyone as though they got the suite."

Corporate America taught me a lot of things. Merrill Lynch taught me that I didn't do well in very rigid environments (I was written up twice for not wearing pantyhose) but I learned that there were levels and certain levels did not get written up as much and could leave a few minutes earlier than the rest of us. I wanted to be on that level. I also learned about budgets and how not to go over. I learned that a view really does make an office nicer.

My last corporate job taught me how to really deal with business from PR to marketing to acquisitions. We owned a smaller company, which we sold and I was right in the middle of it all. We were owned by a larger company that wanted to sell us so I was in the middle of financial statements, board of director meetings, layoffs, managing and trying to save my own staff, trying to save the company and so forth. It was pure hell at the time especially since it was an elite outdoor manufacturing company and I wasn't particularly interested in that but all that went on was better than what I could have learned at university. It taught me how to look at my own company in a serious way – should I sell it, keep it, bring on new things, get rid of the old? How to market, how to sell, and how to connect my work to others.

Working in fields I did not like helped me to find fields I do love. And even within those fields I sometimes work with difficult people or situations (Hollywood, anyone?) But the three whiny children that I looked after at age 9 taught me that if I do the job well, I could ask for and get a raise and will be recommended to other people so that I can eventually leave the whiny kids. Tourism taught me that sometimes mistakes happen; someone is going to get on a bus that heads to the ocean when they wanted the bus that would take them to the mountains but if you handle it quickly, professionally and calmly, you'll save their trip, save your job, and save the company from losing clients. Corporate America taught me that I was more ambitious than I thought because the thought of being reprimanded a 3rd time for not wearing hose was more than enough to make me want to get into a position of power where I didn't have to worry about that (I've been hose-free ever since!). And my last job taught me that I worked really well under pressure, doing a million different things and that I really needed to work on my own to survive (which literally became true as my position was made redundant 4 months later when the company was sold).

So this year, I'm not sure I'm going to celebrate my freelance anniversary in the ways I've done before because really, I couldn't have gone out on my own without being in the company of, well, those companies.

I think that's important to note if you're stuck in a job right now that you want out of so desperately. It might not be the answer, but I guarantee you it has some. And there is a use to everything we go through. So celebrate where you are. Maybe that's the answer for me, too.

April 8, 2007 | Link to this | Filed in Everyday Play