A post where I say Freelance Ad Guy a lot!

Over on Twitter I decided partly as an experiment and mostly just for fun to create a sub character to my already very decidedly caricature of myself.. I created Freelance Ad Guy and since his wisdom would be sporadic at best he became a sub character instead of having a whole new account. I like to think of my Twitter account as a sitcom with an ensemble cast. Why would there be a need for Freelance Ad Guy? Well he takes all that goes wrong behind the scenes not only in Advertising and Marketing but the whole creative workplace and then relates it in an entertaining manner. Now in doing this I have offended some people because he does hit a little too close to home for some and.. well… I get to see Freelance Ad Guy as an acronym.. some people are just not very nice. The more fun ones are when I get accused of giving out “trade secrets” sure sometimes Freelance Ad Guy gives acceptable wisdom but for the most part its a joke, not to be taken seriously. I wouldn’t hire Freelance Ad Guy and I would hope you wouldn’t either. Obviously people out there are because I would’ve ran out of material before I started if Freelance Ad Guy wasn’t getting work. I look at this little Twitter show of mine as an extension of what I try to do with my interns, I don’t so much focus on teaching them how to use particular software because they should already know that, I focus on trying to impart all the things I learned the hard way doing this for almost twenty plus years. Now if they listen I don’t know but I can at least say I tried…

Lately I’ve been seeing around the big media websites articles with this theme. A sensational title like the above plus a filling helping of horror stories in the body about some poor individual who lost out on that great career because of  that compromising photo and statement placed online.  The moral is always the same Myspace/Face book/Twitter/whatever social website your using is going to ruin you professionally and leave you pumping gas for a living.  Sure some caution needs to be taken with your online self and if your in consideration for a position with the Red Cross perhaps its best to not to post about how your a vampire and can’t wait to get your hands on all that free blood.  These articles though, I feel are going to an extreme bordering on an almost sort of censorship, they want you to be so afraid of posting any sort of humanizing details that we all revert to just blind consumers again.  The real power of social media and the internet in general is the low cost entree into being able to speak your mind about the important issues of the day.  Those who follow me online know I’m very opinionated and post things that they might not agree with and some stuff they would be terrified to post in fear of a potential employer or client find it and be offended.  Sure I’m concerned about such things but I also feel I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t say what was on my mind.  Advice for how to handle oneself online is something I find all these articles to be lacking so I will share the rule that I find works pretty much everywhere in life, Understand just what exactly TMI really means. A little bit of responsibility is in order when you post online, When you show photos of you and the neighbor’s dog doing keg stands every Friday night a company might not find you to be a reliable professional but if you have photos of you at a political rally high fiveing G.W.B they’re going to over look that.

These days it seems most people are looking for a shortcut, that product or service they can buy that will make it so they don’t have to work and be the next big celebrity.  The fallout from this sort of pie in the sky dreaming of your big break being just around the corner is that you allow yourself to fall into a trap of inefficiency.  You tell yourself “If I only work a few more hours this week I can pay enough off my credit card so I can buy this new designer product” How is working hard inefficient? Most of the time it’s not, but when your always looking for a shortcut longer hours aren’t always productive hours plus it’s made worse when your not passionate about what you are doing.  Now some jobs are all about hanging around waiting for something to happen but office work is not. Everyone has that person in there office who spends more time telling everyone how much work they have to do and how much of there personal life they have to give up for the good of the company than time actually working. This very same person will also be the one who wishes they could afford this or that object. I’ve even seen this person given the opportunity to shift their work schedule and have more of that personal time they said they so desperately needed, guess what happened? Thats right they fought it because what they saw was not a way to become more efficient but a loss of overtime pay.  As a member of the marketing machine I feel as though we have done a disservice to the workforce of our country. We  produce the dreams that everyone is bombarded with everywhere, we tell them buy this and you too will be one of the beautiful people.  The Media is telling us that there is a shortcut to riches and we can find it if we just spend more.  The big secret though is you don’t have to work endless hours and have huge mountains of debt to have a comfortable life.  The other part of this secret is, yes you do have to work hard, there is no magic piece of software of gadget that’ll do the hard bits for you.  But working hard doe not correlate to working long hours, sure you may have the occasion when you need that 60 hour week but it’s the exception not the rule.  Also it’s not about big paychecks, it’s about how you manage the resources you have access too.  Of course all this stuff is easier when your an entrepreneur and not working for the man.  Managers who think anything other than you chained to your desk 40+ hours a week are rare but when your calling the shots and decided that today is the day your going to work from the local coffee shop who is going to tell you no?

Organizing your workday based on tasks instead of time is a huge part in living a better personal life.  Life at least to me is about celebrating your victories, doubly so on the small ones.  When your workday is task based it’s so easy to say “I got that project done so tonight I’m going to celebrate by grilling a steak and opening that bottle of wine I bought last week for a special occasion”.  When your office is time based, well every evening is “whew! I made it through another day, let’s hope tomorrow doesn’t suck as bad”.  It can make all the difference between how successful you feel which in turn actually helps you be more successful and we all know people like to be on the winning team and when your winning you work better so you’ll keep winning.   The second part of the puzzle is to not run off promising things to your customers that even under optimal conditions would be difficult.  Yes you want to be the hero and deliver what everyone said can’t be done, but you need to honestly accept your limitations.  The surefire way to destroy your productivity is if your spending all your time cleaning up the mess because you could not make a deadline or shipped a shoddy product.  All too often making a promise that wasn’t followed through on is the biggest killer in a company I’ve seen it first hand damage customer confidence which then destroyed employee morale and with it productivity.  When your task based it becomes easier to know what you can do and allows you to set realistic goals and deliver the quality product your customers want.

It’s a hard sell but the accepted practice of working a 40 hour work week is a bad idea.  Even harder is selling the point that letting employees set their own hours gets better results and makes for a happier employee.  When I have to punch the time clock, I lose incentive to work on problems after 5 because of the delineation between “my time” and “company time”  I’ve found that if one can do their work anywhere and are allowed to do so they will complete more tasks than if they are coming into the office everyday.  It’s where things need to go if people want to have happy full lives.

This article is just a stream of consciousness rant thats been bugging me for awhile.. I must have started and restarted it 4-6 different times over the past month and today I decided that I’ll just dump whats been on my brain as it came out.

There is a sickness in the land, I don’t know what it is called and the signs are both elusive and right in your face.  I don’t know how far beyond mid Michigan its dangerous grip extends but I can assure you that here its roots have taken hold deep into our culture.  The disease I’m speaking of is this notion that as an adult one must work tremendous hours for another receiving little in satisfaction and usually also in wages.  Yes the world does need these hard dirty jobs but what I’m talking about is the whole culture of mental abuse found in some workplaces.  While it’s normal to tell an individual they need to be present at their job from 8 to 5 all week, it’s not normal to then make them feel guilty and less of a person because they aren’t coming in earlier and staying later every day.  Somehow people have bought into believing that the you can only measure their worth to a company by how many hours they are seen sitting behind the desk in the office, that if they are not there they obvious are not caring about the company’s well being. Employees are believing this and employers are exploiting it.  Beyond the mental stresses this is causing for our workforce it is even worse for our economy. These same employees who feel they must been seen “giving a shit” about the company are also becoming more resentful and less productive. Having less time outside of their working hours each day they do an ever increasing amount of their  personal business at their desk, sure it starts out with scheduling appointments and making holiday purchases online but it doesn’t stay at that for long. The more you tell your employees “just be thankful you have a job in this economy” and the more “reasons” you give them to give more of their limited time to you the greater they’ll resent where they work.  Sure many of these workers will still love what they do, they’ll just dislike who they are doing it for because just getting an ever decreasing paycheck has never been proper investment in a company.  I’ve seen a lot of companies both large and small act this way I’ve also seen companies who’ve treated their employees well and not only allowed for personal growth but encouraged it, guess which type of companies are hurting or gone?

Greetings all. As a brief intro, my name is Andy, and unlike the other Rusties, I’m from Central New York rather than the upper Midwest. The snowfall is pretty much the same, but the state isn’t in the shape of a mitten. No, Central New York is not anywhere near the city. The city is about four hours down. I’m a sports/video game geek, and I thought that there would be no better way to start my rantings by ranting about… a sports video game.

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The concept can be a good idea for new users to Twitter but then again maybe not. I asked the question when I signed up “Outside of my friends, who should I follow”. I received a huge number of responses from the people I knew out in the real world and all of the suggested people to follow were top notch, plus I picked up a few others that have been suggested by someone I had starting following through a previous suggestion.

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