I became self-employed in September of 2012. Since then, I’ve had countless people ask me the famous cocktail party question:
“What do you do?”
I’m not a fan of that question because it’s so vague…
What do I do? Well, I do many things:
- I hang out with my family
- I play music
- I try to teach my daughter Spanish
- I ride bikes
- I dream about surfing
- I enjoy getting outside
- I design things
- I code websites
But that’s not the correct answer. The question people are really asking is:
“What is your job?”
I also don’t like this question, for a couple of reasons:
I don’t consider what I do a “job”
The word “job” to me implies something undesirable, something you have to force yourself to do. Famous comedian, Chris Rock, once said:
[blockquote source=”Chris Rock, on Jobs vs. Careers”]When you got a career, there ain’t enough time in the day. When you got a job, there’s too much time.[/blockquote]
I understand that’s not necessarily true, because the words “job” and “career” can mean whatever you want them to mean. I actually don’t even call what I do a “career”. I prefer to call it my “mission”, because I feel there’s a larger goal to work towards; something larger than my day-to-day tasks.
I don’t have an actual job title
I really don’t! I have a company name — Brightside Studios, but I don’t have an official job title. In fact, I’ve experimented with many. Some include:
- Designer + Developer
- Front-end Developer
- Web Designer
- Owner
- The Captain
- Code Carpenter
- Desiñador y Code Constructor
The title is arbitrary for me. Since I do so many things at work, I feel having just one title compartmentalizes my skills and makes me feel like I should only be doing the thing my title implies I should be doing.
However, some people legitimately want to know what I actually do during the day while I’m working. Since I can’t just throw them a generic title, or job description, I sometimes don’t know what to say. This has lead me to try and come up with a job title & description that is clear to people, and satisfies their curiosity when trying to understand how I make a living. Here’s what I have so far:
I’m a digital entrepreneur. I run a company called Brightside Studios, and we design & develop custom websites for small local companies and large international corporations. I also create online courses & tutorials for people who want to learn how to build websites and start a web design career. I’m also a blogger and write about passive income, minimalism and lifestyle design.
How’s that?
Do you have a job? A career? A mission?
What is it that you do? Do you have a job title & description? Or are you building something that’s more than just a title? I’d love to know. Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Yours in entrepreneurial spirit,
Brad