I had a crazy conversation with a friend lately about a major reach job I kind of wanted and he just pishawed me and essentially said of course I’m going to get it because I’m me.

I looked at him as though he’d lost his mind and changed the course of the conversation, but I’ve been thinking of it on and off since then.

• I am kind of a badass. I have 6 degrees and am currently working on a 7^th.
• I have survived 16 years as a stage manager.
• I am financially solvent.
• I travel like it’s my job (sometimes it actually is).
• I have truly excellent and supportive family and friends.
• I have a weird little side project that is successful enough.

If you want me to 30 second elevator pitch you on my life, I can kill it.

This is largely because who 30 second elevator exposes all their failures? When do we do highlighted bulled points of things we’ve been rejected from and stuff we suck at?

• I have an email folder called Jobs I’ve Already Applied For with 82 emails in it from companies I really wanted to work for, interviewed with, and then did not get hired.
• I’ve interviewed 3 times for the company that builds the show for my old cruise line and never got hired.
• I’ve applied to PhD programs (multiple ones) three different years, and never got in.
• My blog took 2 years of work before it made any money.
• I spent a year working as a production manager in a venue where I felt like an idiot every single day and I’m still 99% sure my boss thought I was the most incompetent human he’d ever met.
• I’ve tried to figure out affiliate marketing like a dozen times with no real success, even after taking some affiliate marketing courses.
• I cannot use CAD for the life of me.
• I have seriously applied to Cirque du Soleil no less than 75 times over the last 10 years.

And these are just some of my professional life failures.

And here’s the road to some of my successes: Mills Entertainment 

Submitted an application to Stage Manage for them. I had submitted easily a dozen over the years. Bam. Got an interview. Why? There was literally no logic to it other than I applied at the right time that time.

I worked for them for 2 years with a really good working relationship and mentioned once that I had applied a ton of times over the years and never even gotten an interview.

Turns out pretty much no one reads those resumes you send in cold over there. You need to send it in like the day the ad goes live on a job site.

Cruise Ships

Turns out the exact opposite is true here. I sent in a cold application pretty much the day before they fired someone.

Literally dumb luck got me that job.

Ringling Brothers

I am pretty sure I only got that interview because my ex-boyfriend was already working on the unit. I feel confident based on how the year went that I was a good choice and I was darn good at the job, but I never would’ve gotten my foot in the door without knowing someone there.

Oh, and fun story, for about a year and a half before that, I’d been applying for all sorts of jobs to try to get off the cruise line, and none of them ever panned out – so there’s a few more fails for you..

Big Apple Circus 

Of all my jobs, this is one of my few success stories where I psychotically fought for a job and got it. But I did it by breaking every rule you’re supposed to follow and writing a flat out insane cover letter. If my boss hadn’t had exactly the kind of personality he had, I never would’ve gotten that job from that application.

The thing about a lot of my successes, other than that dumb luck cruise ship, seems to have been tenacity. And even with the cruise ships, I applied to every line I’d ever heard of. I spent hours each morning for a week, Googling cruise line names and then applying through their websites.

The main reason I even still think I’ve got a shot at Cirque someday is my sheer, endless persistence.

An interesting thing about failure though is that you start to get kind of immune to a lot of it (though there are some big ones that’ll gut you no matter what). If you’re hustling hard enough and moving fast enough, most of the rejection doesn’t stick, because you’ve got too much on your plate to worry about it. You’ve got the next job to apply for, the next certification to take classes for, the next hobby to work on.

So, if there’s one job skill I could encourage you to brush up on, it’s failing. It makes you tough as hell, which is always useful, and eventually, you wind up not failing at a few things.