I feel so defeated right now.
Today I was browsing a local developers group in Facebook. There was a person asking for a developer to do some work for a website. The person was asking specifically for a local person to do the job.
From what I can gather, some people jumped on the offer and contacted the person to offer their services. I know local people can be pretty condescending most of the time and it seems that’s how things went. People were being sarcastic about the offer.
I went into the person’s Facebook to page to see who the person was. I liked the content he was sharing on his page because they were similar interests of mine. The guy seemed well versed, educated and with a sense of adventure, I might say.
At this point I haven’t contacted the gentleman because I am not a fit to what he’s looking for. But, in difference to the other people who jumped the gun and just treated the guy like crap, I decided to google this person’s name, see if anything would come up.
As it turns out, the person is an Executive Producer of a massive TV series. It looks like he’s working on a project that requires multiple websites and apps. I’m just not the level this project demands. I basically started FreeCodeCamp three weeks ago and was taking a course before that in Udemy, which is great but I needed to really learn Javascript first, which I’m doing from different sources right now.
So, in short, I just saw a bunch of people probably blow the chance of a lifetime to do awesome work, to gain experience that would’ve added an huge amount of value to their resumes, and they just blew because they acted like assholes, they didn’t know who they were talking to.
Why do I feel defeated?
I just witnessed what could’ve been the opportunity of a lifetime just pass in front of my eyes because I don’t have the necessary skills to accomplish the job and quality a client like this demands. I feel defeated because when others jumped the gun I did my due diligence and researched who was the customer but that’s just not enough, I don’t have the skills to do the job. While others trashed their chances I stood by and don’t have anything to offer to this person. It is crushing to feel like this, when you see such a huge opportunity just pass you by. The work that goes into that project will probably be around for years, and having that in your portfolio will almost for sure bring you to the top of your game and most definitely you won’t be out of work, ever.
So, I think this brings a few lessons.
1- Always be ready. You never know when the chance of a lifetime is going to walk right in front of you. work your ass off like that chance is coming to you today,everyday.
2- Never treat a prospect client like crap, you might just not know who you are talking to.
3- Always be professional, make everything around you show that you are a professional and you mean business. Your Facebook profile, your tweets, your portfolio,everything that represents you and the work you do, you just don’t know where that chance might come from.
I hope this helps anyone stay focused on what their doing, really big opportunities do show up, be ready for them. I know I’ll be kicking myself about this for a while.