Tell me about your job, career, or calling. How did you get into this line of work?
It’s a long story! I’ll try to tell it as simply as I can…
I first started my career in mass communications and design industry in 1997 when I served as News Editor, then as Business Manager, and finally as Managing Editor of the student paper at Gallaudet University. During my time at the newspaper and as a student, I learned design software and became an avid user of the internet, critical skills that I later used at my jobs as Production Manager and Content Manager at dot com startups, then as a web development contractor.
During those years, I loved hosting the occasional party, big unforgettable bashes, always complete with entertainment, drinks, and food. I also enjoyed doing occasional part time work for a variety of event planning companies doing event deco, set up, catering, serving, and clean up.
Out of all my work, I loved event work the most, so I attended University of California, San Diego for an extended studies course in event planning and earned a certificate.
I launched my first website, EyeOnEvents.com, in January of 2003 – an events and news calendar site for the deaf and hard of hearing community. I had to shut down the site while I was ill from my second pregnancy. A friend liked what I did and later asked me to build a website for him, he’d pay me. I was surprised, said OK and built his website. He referred me to someone, then that person referred me, and so on. Before long, I found herself doing web development almost full time while taking care of two young children at home. But I always wanted to get back to the event industry.
Two years ago I decided to bring back EyeOnEvents.com, rebranded as Eventida.com, an event promotion site where one can post events for any community, specifying which language is spoken or interpreted at the event; ASL, ENG, or SPA. Eventida.com allows me to combine my skills, experience, and love for both web development and events.
Meanwhile, I’ve continued to provide web development services to clients for income, working with my husband and business partner, who is a web developer too.
If you think about it – newspapers, websites, and events are all really about the same thing; the user experience. That is what I specialize in; creating user experiences.
What is the best part of your job, career, or calling?
The best part is the ability to apply my creative thinking skills, and getting positive feedback from the users who enjoy what I produce, be it an event or website. With website work, I’ve always enjoyed learning about different industries, such as filmmaking or manufacturing.
It’s also wonderful to be able to use technology to bring me to a level playing field when it comes to being deaf in a hearing world, with email and IM allowing me to communicate.
I also love being my own boss and ability to set my own hours so that I can be there for my family when needed.
What are some of the challenges?
Some of the best parts are also the biggest challenges: the fact that there are so many different industries usually means different requirements that sometimes the clients don’t think to tell me about; I do find that some hearing people are really “phone people” relying a lot on verbal tones, and that puts me at a disadvantage when I’m not able to voice directly to them in my tone; and when there’s a big deadline and I’m working insane hours, it takes me away from my family.
I also find myself dealing with assumptions and mis-interpretations; there are people who think I’m just lazing around at home, putting in the occasional hour or two of work, when I actually work more hours than most people at a 9 to 5 job. Or a simple, brief email that I quickly pop off is interpreted as me being curt and cranky and it goes downhill from there.
Client management is hard. You have to communicate, communicate, communicate. For creative people like me, I usually just want to focus on producing. I’m just not “on” as a communicator all the time, and have to be “in the mood” to talk. That’s always been one of my biggest challenges. I’m typically “on” when it comes to writing, designing, coding, promoting, planning task lists, doing project breakdowns – I love to produce tangible results.
There are no benefits when you’re self employed – you have to pay health insurance, taxes, and when you go on vacation, the income stops – unless you have a turnkey product or website that sells itself 24/7.
What was it like growing up deaf/hard of hearing?
Honestly, that’s a hard question to answer since I’ve been deaf my whole life. How can I compare it to not being deaf? I can say that, growing up, I’ve felt glad to be deaf. Instead of living a boring life growing up in the same neighborhood and knowing the same people all my life, I’ve met people from all over the state, and later during college, people from all over the world. Being deaf has given me a unique experience and perspective on life that I appreciate having. I’ve always valued uniqueness – one of my favorite sayings is “variety is the spice of life.”
I can read lips and speak really well, so that probably contributed to me not minding so much being deaf while growing up – I didn’t experience the same level of frustrations that some of my peers have. I enjoyed music, had the occasional hearing friend, grew up in an area that was densely populated with deaf people (southern California).
However, I do find myself appreciating being deaf less and less as I get older, and the challenges become bigger. When you’re a kid, what responsibilities do you have? Not much! The more responsibility I have, the more I feel the barriers that I have to overcome.
Having hearing children has made me feel more deaf than I ever have in my life – if I can’t understand what someone is saying to me, then I can brush it off and move on – I have people I can communicate with in sign language, I’m satisfied. But now, when there is some stranger is talking to my kids, or we need to talk to my kids’ teacher or scout leader, and we can’t understand – then it’s hard, I can’t just brush it off because I care about my kids more than anything else.
Also, as a professional, as I’ve found it challenging to successfully grow my business, network – I am certainly feeling the “glass ceiling” more and more. Thoughts such as “if I weren’t deaf, maybe…” now pop into my head, that I almost never had growing up.
Even in the deaf community, where one may think I’d have an easier time, it’s tougher – there are a lot of biases in the deaf community against one another. I’m not going to say anything more about that issue right now, that could be a whole other article, or book!
What advice would you give a deaf/HH person who is looking for a job, career or calling like yours?
Most of the advice I have is for contractors / self employed. There’s a whole other set of advice for someone running a business with employees or building a Software As A Service product. I’ll save that for yet another article, another day.
1. Don’t accept just any client or project – be selective, set up ways to “filter” potential clients. A bad client can consume your attention, kill your motivation, and worst of all, say bad things about you to other people who may be potential clients.
2. Keep up with industry trends and maintain skills – attend workshops, conferences regularly.
3. Make sure you always set aside time to keep up with marketing efforts. It’s easy to fall into the pattern of working on client projects full time and when it’s over, have to drum up more business, and possibly run the risk of accepting a bad client or project just because you need the revenue. It’s a hard pattern to break once you’re in it.
4. Commit to always providing the highest quality, being consistent and dependable.
5. Don’t undervalue yourself. Being affordable and inexpensive may allow you to get more clients quickly, but then you will be less able to provide true quality, hire help, and will eventually burn yourself out. The more expensive you are, the more careful clients will be with your time, and naturally respectful, the happier you will be. Closing the sale will be harder, but worth it.
And most importantly: know yourself. This applies to all of the above; if you’re highly creative but mercurial, not the most dependable person, make sure your client knows that beforehand – don’t commit to deadlines – or get a partner who doesn’t mind dealing with the client and delays because you produce awesome stuff. If you have a hard time turning down projects or filtering clients (ie., you trust people easily), make sure you’re not the person responsible for client sales. Or, if you’re not that creative, get a creative partner and focus more on logistics, client management, etc. Maybe you want to work from home, but then reality shows that no, you need to be around people to stay focused on tasks.
The more you know yourself (and be honest with yourself), the more you can adjust your working practices, find the right partners / employees to complement you… in the end, achieving success. Be warned: it will probably take years. But persist and you’ll get there. You won’t, if you blame everybody but yourself for your failures and setbacks.
BACKGROUND INFO
Elise was born deaf, the youngest child of six, and raised in Orange County, California. After graduating from California School for the Deaf, Riverside, in 1992, she attended community college for one year before enrolling at Gallaudet University. She majored in English with a concentration in Journalism and minored in Business Management.
Loving her life in Hurricane, Utah with husband Lee and two boys, 8 and 10, Elise spends her spare time with her family, reading books, and traveling.
