WHO IS THIS CRAYON NINJA GUY ANYWAY?

AN AWARD-WINNING CREATIVE – TRAINING & COACHING OTHER CREATIVES AND BUSINESSES

Dale Summit Grandwall

My name is Dale Cody and I am in exactly the right place doing exactly the right thing for me. After a long successful career in the trenches creating branded ad campaigns, software apps, online games and dozens of other things, I’m much more interested in helping others reach their goals and achieve professional success than I am in most anything else. I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way through more than a few failures and mistakes, but also far more successes and triumphs. I’ve also stood on the shoulders of giants and through their generosity learned amazing things. I am truly grateful and humbled by these benefactors and mentors.

Back at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, I had an instructor tell me something that stuck with me all these years after I thanked him for his many lessons and help. He said I could thank him best by teaching others and passing on my own knowledge and experience down the road when the time came. Pass the baton. To that end, I started working in academia as adjunct faculty more than 20 years ago and I’ve continued teaching there and in the business world as well. I aim to repay their debt.

I am very challenging to label. In a world where people love using labels to quickly categorize and prioritize the many tasks, objects, human-beings and most everything else packed into their lives, that situation has both advantages and disadvantages for someone like me. I am a generalist’s generalist and curious about just everything. That doesn’t mean I’m a dilettante, nor does it mean I don’t strive hard for mastery in several select disciplines – because I most certainly do. I love the process of creation and exploration in all its forms. I want my work to be as excellent as possible. In some ways, this makes me a little harder to grok as a brand, but in practice I’ve found it has made me a stronger problem-solver for my clients and employers. After all, I want to provide as much value as possible for those that hire me. Mostly though, I love to teach, train and coach.

My Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or Label – AmazAppLego. I synthesized this word from three companies I admire as an attempt at building in some degree of meaning for my own manufactured label. The first is from Amazon where a constant flow of new content is added to existing volumes with as much rich depth and breadth as possible. The second is from Apple where user-centered design and innovation drive process. The last is from Lego where imagination and creativity allow us all to play with joyful exuberance.

Dale in the Redwoods

I think learning should be fun.  I know I prefer that approach regardless of whether I’m a student or an instructor.  I hope that if you enroll in the complete online training series, that you will find the accompanying lessons entertaining as well as informative. I also hope that all you specialists out there will find your own areas represented in ways that will inspire and inform you and your chosen discipline specifically. By the way, in my experience, there are a lot of professions where the norm is not to have an online portfolio, but where having one in fact, can help distinguish you from everyone else out there in the competitive marketplace. Think about that a minute. How could you secure your dream job with a killer portfolio?

Sign up here for my online training series “CREATE A KILLER ONLINE PORTFOLIO TO GET YOUR DREAM JOB.”

DALE CODY VIDEO RESUME

This is an example of a video resume. In lieu of a personal interview or Skype call, this is the next best thing. In fact, it may be the key differentiator that gets you in the door for a friendly face-to-face interview. There’s not a hard, fast formula for these, but I’ve found short, well shot and smartly edited video to be key. The most important element, and strangely enough, the most difficult to get done well is the sound. Having clean audio without echo or tons of distracting background noise is harder to get right than you might think.

If you like the quality of video included here or on my Killer Portfolio online training series, please let me know and I will help you to create your own. It can be done relatively easily without spending a fortune, but a little help might be necessary for those creatives without the tools or training in video and post-production.

CLIENT TESTIMONIALS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Having client testimonials and recommendations are powerful social proof and can act as wonderful little sales agents for your credibility and authority. Think of it like user reviews on a website when you’re shopping for a product or service. Five star reviews and glowing recommendations from tons of satisfied customers boosts your confidence and helps the retailers conversion funnel. Same for you. There’s more information and strategies for this in Chapter 17 of my Udemy Portfolio Course.

JUST A FEW OF THE COMPANIES I’VE WORKED WITH

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