Be a good reference.
One of the interesting things about spending almost 30 years in the yoyo industry is that I’ve met a lot of kids and watched them grow up and leave yoyoing. Some of them keep a throw in their pocket as they get older, some don’t, but eventually they move on to real jobs and families and all that stuff. It used to make me feel sad to be “the guy who stayed” but that’s only when I’m feeling maudlin or especially broke as I think about some of the things I’ve turned down in order to stay involved in yoyoing. The path I’ve chosen so far has been a good one, and an interesting one, and you can’t ask for a whole lot more than that. OK, I guess “lucrative” would also have been nice.
But one of my absolute favorite unexpected joys of this life has been yoyo players asking for me to be a personal or professional reference for them. I’ve worked for several yoyo companies and employed a lot of people as demonstrators or designers or photographers or videographers and for young folks trying to get that first “real job” it helps to have some kind of experience to point to and some kind of references to offer.
And I can tell you right now….I give really fucking good reference.
The secret to this is twofold: first, you have to actually like the people you surround yourself with. That helps tremendously. Do your very best to excise the dead weight in your life. And I don’t mean surround yourself with only people who can do something for you, I mean surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, faster than you, more talented than you, and then use your experience and vision to point them in a direction and get out of their fucking way. Being a leader doesn’t mean you know how to do everything, and it doesn’t make you better than the people you’re leading. It just means that right now, for this particular endeavour, you’re in charge of setting the direction and holding the whole thing together. The better your team is, and the better you support them, the better you’ll do.
And secondly, when someone asks you for a recommendation you should only do it if you’re gonna put your whole heart into it. Make it your personal mission in life for the length of that phone call or email to be the singular deciding factor in this person getting the gig. Give that full-throated recommendation with everything you’ve got. Make it loud, make it beautiful, make it absolutely count.
That’s it, really. I pride myself on taking care of my people, and I think everyone should feel that kind of loyalty to the folks around them. And I hope every person reading this gets to build the kind of life for themselves where they are surrounded by the kinda folks they want to go all out for.
Agree that giving good references is important and it is more meaningful for the potential employer as well as employee. Having been, as you, on both sides, I know how much a heartfelt or truthful reference helped when hiring new teachers. Those teachers were excellent and usually stayed with the school for years. In my last years before retirement, HR gave us strict protocols to follow when giving a reference. It took out the personal factor entirely.