8. How "The Start-Up of You" Shaped my Career Planning

As Ben Casnocha, co-author of The Start-Up of You, once said: “we make connections with strangers by laughing at the same shit.” We live in an information age, so everyone wants the latest and greatest ideas. Even if someone is of a much higher status, you can always offer him or her information, because that is the one thing that people can never get enough of no matter who they are.

While I still don’t have much job experience yet, I have a good idea of what my strengths and weaknesses are based on my personal experiences in and out of school. I believe that a company will hire me over other professionals because I place a unique importance on my peers to help improve myself. Unlike others, I believe in learning from my failures and using them to improve and move forward. Whether it's hosting prospective students as a member of the UMD Highriser program, or taking business networking trips to NYC, I capitalize on every opportunity that comes my way in order to absorb new knowledge about the world and connect with others. I thrive in group settings because I believe the most valuable resource we have to develop creativity is each other.

From this book I learned how to develop my competitive advantage by finding the intersection of my assets, aspirations, and market realities. Aspirations shape what I do, but what I do also shapes my aspirations. My identity isn’t found; it emerges. I learned that there are always industries, places, and people with momentum. I need to put myself in a position to ride the waves instead of getting stuck in a rut. The book explained that I can learn new skills to be successful, or I can put myself in a market niche where my existing assets shine brighter than those of others. For example, college basketball players who don’t make it into the NBA here in America will go play in European leagues where their skills are much more valued.

This book also gave me a newfound awareness that I need to plan to adapt. Contrary to what I had previously believed, it is possible to follow a plan AND be flexible. I have to both listen to my heart as well as listen to the market. ABZ planning is an adaptive approach that promotes trial and error in business plans.

A good plan A can be stopped/reversed/morphed into a plan B and minimizes the cost of failure. My plan A at the moment is to work at a marketing firm, perhaps in D.C., where I will exercise my creativity while also working across a spectrum of business activities. A major skill I need for this profession is critical thinking. Critical thinking is the foundation on which modern business professionals build their careers. It is a key skill that leads to creative thinking, which in turn leads to problem solving. All of these are skills that I believe I am on the right track to obtaining. I also plan on applying for multiple internships in the area that have to do with marketing and business strategy. However, so that I don’t end up stuck in one position, I will keep my job options open and always be on the lookout for new opportunities. The Start-Up of You explains that it’s important to have patience and think in the long run, not just strive for immediate success. For example, my first job in this field will most likely not be the best. However, it’s important to trust the journey. Anywhere I work will teach me something. Then when I feel like my time there has reached an end, I will move on to other options. I’m going to try to think at least two steps ahead at all times so that I won’t just choose the best option presented to me, but instead consider where I want to sooner or later end up.

A plan B is a slight pivot from my plan A when I decide that I need a bigger change. Pivoting is changing direction to get somewhere else based on what you have learned along the way. If my plan A doesn’t turn out as planned, my plan B is to change my focus somehow. I very well might decide that marketing is not for me, so I need to have a backup plan for something else I can do in business. My plan B if I veer off track is to go into advertising, which is similar to marketing but a little different. The Start-Up of You taught me that unless I need to take immediate action, one way to begin the process of pivoting is to start my potential plan B on the side of my plan A. That way, changing plans is not as risky because I was slightly working on my plan B all along. To work on my plan B on the side I will do some self-teaching about the advertising industry by reading books and articles on the subject. While still in my plan A, I can sit in on meetings at my company that aren’t required. Whichever company I work at will likely have an advertising team, so getting advice and learning from what they do is the best way to ensure that I am doing good planning.

If working in marketing and in advertising both fail, my plan Z is to become an independent entrepreneur. With the wisdom I gain from my job experience I’m sure I will have some creative ideas stowed away in my internal vault. Perhaps I could do some work at my dad’s company to find inspiration. As time goes on, I will also have a much larger network that could help me be successful if I do come up with a good business plan.

I am so thankful to have read The Start-Up of You because it introduced the entirely new idea of ABZ planning that I never would have come up with on my own. In regards to career planning, I know that the fear of failure will never go away, but it can be face head-on with careful planning. The way to feel comfortable with the future is to have one strategy that is fairly certain. The certainty of the plan B backstop is what enables me to be aggressive, not tentative about my plan A.