My Top Advice for all GRADUATES

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Congrats! You did it – you’re graduating! Big ups on all the hard work and long hours. But here’s the scary part. Graduation is the first day of the rest of your life.

Last week by far the most popular question I saw in my social feed was around graduation. Either YOU were graduating, your friends or sons / daughters–and, naturally, there was a lot of concern. Generally you asked what I’d tell new graduates in a time like this … So that’s what today’s #chasejarvisRAW is all about. Whether you are a twenty-something just about to enter the job market or you know someone who is “graduating” to a new career, whether it’s photography or any other creative / entrepreneurial discipline … here are my TOP 3 THINGS GRADUATES NEED TO BE THINKING ABOUT.

Thing 1: Be Great At Your Craft

Learning doesn’t end when you’re no longer in the classroom. This might be seem like an obvious thing, yet so many people leave school and forget that they need to be great at their skill and instead get consumed by the myriad of OTHER things surrounding a career, such as building a website, getting a job, or trying to schmooze potential clients/bosses/peers. Don’t get me wrong – you’ll need to spend time doing all these things. But my point is — don’t let them happen at the expense of your craft. If you’re coming out of school, you’ve just scratched the surface of what your craft is. Keep track of how much time you’re allocating to various activities and make sure there is always time carved out to keep learning, growing, and evolving your craft. Without it, you’re dead in the water. And no matter how “good” you were in school – the big wide open market doesn’t care about where you went to school. Or what grades you got. It only cares about results….and results start with your craft. Can you make / do / build what you say you can? Stay close to your skills / craft.

Thing 2: Learn the Biz

Coming fresh out of school there’s still a lot to learn about business. Many art programs, and even some business programs, don’t really cover the day-to-day grind such as building & managing budgets, setting rates, building systems for data management and other workflows — just to name a few. Whether you want to be your own boss or have your sights on an awesome company, knowledge of business will only elevate what you’re doing.

An extension of the above / to the biz (and a major key) is learning how to sell. It doesn’t matter what you do, we all need to sell. Somehow over time, selling became a dirty word yet it’s fundamental to everything we do as creators. Selling doesn’t need to be smarmy, especially if you can reframe it in your mind as simply pitching your idea to a team, a client, or a prospective client who are likely to give you money. It’s about having a point a view that you’re looking to get someone else to care about.

Thing 3: Take Risks

It’s common to go right into the job market after graduation, but if you have the opportunity to pursue some of your bigger dreams, now is time to consider that. If you’ve always wanted to live overseas, direct your first film, travel… figure out a way to be scrappy and go for it. Over time, you will just accumulate more responsibilities (ie. excuses) that will be harder to part from. Take a risk and swing big.

And there’s a bonus bit in the video above that I’m not going to chronicle here in writing – you’ll have to watch the vid all the way to the end to get THAT golden nugget… Let’s just say it has to do with doing hard work + caring about your dreams such that you don’t use the chasing part as an excuse to suck or not give it your all.

Hit me up on social / anywhere if you want to jam with me further on this.

And my snapchat feed is @chasejarvis – check it.

What’s Covered

Keep developing your craft [0:49] Understand Business [1:37] The Daily Grind [1:54] How to Sell [2:11] Taking Risks [3:10] Chasing Dreams. Working Hard. [4:11]