Lessons
Class Introduction
06:03 2What is an Authentic Design Career & Life?
12:16 3Common Mistakes When Creating Authenticity
04:43 4Discovering Your Unique Differences
07:57 5Defining Your Strengths
04:38 6Creating a Life's Purpose to Drive Your Career & Life
16:16 7A New Way to Approach Your Life
17:58 8Crafting Your New Career Mission
19:43Lesson Info
Class Introduction
I am so excited to be here in this very, very fancy swanky studio. I think the only thing I can compare this to is infomercials. When I was a kid I loved infomercials so much, so I feel a little bit like the Billy Mays or the ShamWow guy. These references are all very 2004, but if somebody could bring up a pile of dirt or something that I could clean up that would be great. You want to get that for me? He's not going to. Oh, not his job. (laughter) So welcome to Creating An Authentic Design Career In Life. I am your gracious instructor, Meg. I created this course because I went on my own personal journey struggling to find my perfect career in life. This class isn't really about me, even though I'm going to give a small introduction for myself. But this class is really about you. We're going to talk a lot about capitalizing on what makes your personalities unique and special and how we can push that to 100%. So that's really, really what this class is about is figuring out yourself. I ...
really want you to know the most important thing is to be really kind and gentle to yourselves throughout this process because I'm going to ask you a lot of really hard questions about yourself. You're going to do a lot of challenges in this class. The important thing to know is that you're not going to have all the answers right away. What I want you to do during this couple hours of class is to come up with the answers that you can think of right now very easily. And in the coming weeks and the coming months and the coming days you can flush these answers out and get a little bit more in depth with it. So don't put too much pressure on yourself to have all the right answers right now. We have time. Without making this about fluff let's get on to the rest of the class. My name is Meg Lewis, as Chris so graciously mentioned. I am a designer. I make experiences for what I call happy companies. So rather than being a skill-based designer like a logo designer or web designer or product designer I am something that I made up, which is a value-based designer. What that means is that I work with companies that share the same values as me. It's super simple. So my values are working for what I call happy companies. And that is companies that are working to make the world a happier place. And that can be through their product or service. That can be through their company and their community culture. Whatever that is, that helps me to make the work that I feel the most fulfilled doing. I think since this class really isn't about my work I don't like showing this slide, but I think it's important specifically for this class because this class is all about taking what makes your personality special and putting it into your career. That's what I've been able to do over the past couple of years, is take the things that make my personality special and dial that up 100% and clients actually really that and they hire me for my personality. There's this wonderful unity there with my unique personality and the things that make me really excited and the kinds of companies that I'm working for, these happy companies. So people hire me for my personality and for the type of work that I make. Like Chris mentioned, I founded a company called Ghostly Ferns. We are a group of best friends. We're a collective of designers and commercial artists. We are mostly individual freelancers with different specialties. But we like to work together as often as possible because who doesn't want to work with their friends all the time? We're a group of individual people that make individual things and we have our own skillsets. But whenever we work together for clients, that's when we really shine and we love to make work together. So I inspire and encourage all of you to start groups similar to our because we love it so much. It's so great working with your friends. I want to show this dumb collage of videos to you because I think it's important to note that it hasn't always been easy for me, and it's taken me a long time to get through my journey of struggling to figure out who I am, and struggling to dial that up to 100%, and to show that off to the world. It's really scary to be vulnerable and be yourself. But what I found over the past couple of years with changing my career and life to become more authentic and to become more myself is that the more that I be myself online and offline and post these dumb videos of me trying to do magic tricks and juggle and being weird the more that I am myself online and offline the more opportunities I get. I've noticed personally the more that I post these videos online I get clients that email me and say, hey, we love your personality. Would you like to come work for us? Or would you like to come bring your personality into our brand? And of course the answer is yes. Being able to be hired to be myself and to bring myself into a brand is the most exciting opportunity that I could possibly get. Whoo, that part is over. Thank goodness I don't have to talk more about myself. This class is not about me at all. It's all about all of you. It's about everyone at home. It's about all of you in the audience today. This class is about you looking inside of yourself and figuring out who you are, and figuring out how you can tailor you career and your life to reflect that as much as possible. We talked about the workbook a little bit, but we have this handy workbook. It's available via download. So if those of you at home don't have the class purchased you might want to purchase the class so you have access to this download. The workbook is really important. All of the people in the wonderful studio, hello, have the workbook in their hands right now. They have a clipboard and they'll be working on it in class. So if you see them working on this workbook in the class you'll know what's going on. The workbook is really important because I'm going to challenge you a lot and I'm going to ask you a lot of questions about yourself. And it's really easy to have this handy. This class is pretty fast. So those of you at home might want to have the workbook handy just so that you can answer the questions via printed out workbook or on your computer.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Juliette
I just absolutely love Meg's style. Cheerful, fun, unapologetical... And her insights really helped me have a clearer vision of where i want to go, how i want to travel on life's path (so poetic haha) and be PROUD of who i am and most of all, what i do. Even though i'm not your average creative girl. LOVE THAT. Merci beaucoup, thanks a LOT Meg. And YES, do yourself a favour, buy this class !
LA McCabe
i love this class. I was inspired, encouraged and applies the information to my life. learning what makes your unique and special should be law. This was a refreshing and fun loving course. watch this and enjoy
Annie Wong
Meg's class was really pivotal for me at this particular stage in my career. Traditionally I have been taught to be a jack-of-all trades in order to be employable. While this does work for a lot of people, this put a lot of the power balance into luck and timing (is there a slot open for you in a competitive market, or a company?) because it's hard to stand out from the crowd if you are just a set of hands. Meg's class encouraged me to dig deep and figure out how I could be more than a set of hands and how my unique personality traits can actually be used as part of my personal brand. This is so refreshing since I have always been worried about how I can fit into a company, but instead, I can think about how to broadcast my particular style and brand so that the clients that are looking for ME, can find me! This is a great class for people that want to live in a more holistic way where you can blend your work with your personal interests and beliefs.