I love answering questions but there’s one question that is incredibly difficult for me: “What do you do?”
Maybe one of you reading this can help me out with this one?

My work experience has covered quite a gamut from my first job as a dish washer at age 12, to waitressing, to working at my dad’s sand & gravel plant doing everything from pressure washing heavy equipment to operating a Caterpillar D9 front end loader, and pilot-car driving.

I’ve been a seasonal park ranger, a sign painter, film & video production assistant, and a bank teller. I’ve done sculptural and fabrication welding, I worked my way up the web dev and design ranks to eventually partner in an awesome interactive agency, and on to leading the team that built the first mobile apps (iPad, iPhone, and Android) for Zappos. I’ve worked as a contractor on top secret mobile app projects for companies like Apple, Nintendo, Disney along with some small and fun apps through agencies and startups.

Multiple roles across my career have had relatively generic titles and vague job descriptions that required me to define my own responsibilities. I loved those jobs and my bosses really liked me, too! During my full-time jobs, I almost always had a side-hustle of some sort going. Sometimes writing, building/designing websites, content strategy, writing business plans, or conducting workshops amongst other miscellaneous but similar things. I spent years teaching everything I know about how to be better designers and developers through communication design and word choices in both, our products and interpersonally. I’ve been invited all over the world to speak and train, evangelizing best practices and human interface guidelines for digital product creation, and when to break the rules for a better customer experience. I’ve written for awesome publications and have co-hosted and guested on a nice range of podcasts. I’ve spoken and coached teams and individuals on everything from improving management/leadership skills to working through career burnout, into financial independence, and into new life directions. I believe I am a really good coach (and consultant) because my experience is based on living it first, not just theorizing. I practice what I preach and live the outcome.

For the last 5 years, I’ve been putting all my knowledge and skills to use, and growing a host of new experience, working with Ken (my partner in life and in business), to launch and grow our idea-baby *Picture This Clothing into a company that runs without us being “in it” every day.

Picture This Clothing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, it can function with or without me, I’m super proud of that. But somewhere in all this, I have no idea how to describe what it is I actually “DO”. I am ready to open myself up to take on some new opportunities that make use of, and challenge my favorite experience and strengths like writing, training, and/or coaching. My fear is putting myself out here while not having a simple answer to what it is I do, or what it is I’m looking for. I’m also way rusty on my resume game.

If I had to pick just one thing to call myself, I’d call myself a writer. But I don’t think that captures what I’m capable of. There isn’t a job in my work history that I didn’t write content for, or do customer service/client interfacing for.
There isn’t a job in my past that didn’t require “selling” my skills, or the skills, ideas, designs, and talent of the teams I represented. There isn’t a job in the list that hasn’t required me to roll up my sleeves and actively dig into, or wear a multitude of hats for. At Picture This Clothing it’s different than when I was coding, designing, or pitching. Here it might mean hand-cutting customer orders, diffusing customer concerns, fulfilling orders, coming up with clever designs to demonstrate what’s possible beyond crayons or markers, writing blog posts, emails, live Q&A videos, handling our social media and/or marketing, or it could mean I’m cleaning toilets and sinks at the shop. Picture This Clothing has required that I use a huge range of my accumulated skills and it has required that I nimbly develop new skills.

What do I love?
I love writing, and UX writing.
I love infusing creativity and fun into my work.
I love helping companies and individuals find their voice and tone through copy.
I love the study of word-choices and their psychological impact.
I love the ‘people-skills’ side of things.
I love the puzzles of human-interaction challenges, whether internal or customer-facing.
I love (probably more than I should) the challenge of turning a heated situation around and winning a dedicated customer. And I love teaching others how they can do that, too.
I love helping bring out the best side of people and helping them work through sticky life and career stuff.
I love working with design and development teams on interpersonal skills which helps them make more relatable and enjoyable products. I love in-person stuff when it’s safe to do so, but I'm also super good at doing these things via video/remote, having worked remotely for companies since 2011.

I should also note that while I’ve held titles like, “Designer” and “Programmer” before, those are not skills I’ve chosen to keep up with. While they’re handy bits to have in my assorted past skills toolbox, I’m definitely not looking for design or coding projects.

I love learning new things and I love sharing what I’ve learned from my own fumblings and missteps, and from my own success, as well!

What does all this make me in the world of job titles and roles?
For now, I am going with “Untitled” but would seriously love some ideas/suggestions on something more all-encompassing, if you’ve got some thoughts.

While building and growing a new company has held no shortage of adventures, every so often I feel hungry to fold-in a fresh challenge. Now is one of those times.
To put it out there plainly, if you know anyone who might benefit from some of my “mad skillzzz”, email me or let’s schedule a video-chat over coffee. I’ve got some time to re-allocate and I’d love to explore some possibilities. In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out here and there at Picture This Clothing, writing a bit, doodling over coffee spills ( coffeewithjaimee on FB ), and picking up more mountain bike rides with Ken.

-JaimeeJaimee, Untitled