Four Things I Have Learned

A lot has been written about success. Seven habits, twelve rules, forty eight laws.

I do not know all that. There are four things that have made sense to me. One of them I understood by getting it wrong, and that is the heaviest one.

One: do not hurt anybody

If I had one thing to say to somebody starting out, this would be it.

Try to make sure nobody stays upset with you. Client, student, anybody. Be careful about how you treat people.

This is not a sermon, it is practical. In this field work comes through referrals. One upset person tells ten others. But that is not the real reason. The real reason is that you sleep better.

There is one exception. If somebody is upset over a matter of faith, let them be. If somebody is upset that I pray, I am not going to stop praying. That one is separate.

Two: your parents

This is the mistake I made myself, and now I try to stop others from making it.

Between eighteen and twenty two, kids turn hard against their parents. It feels like they do not understand anything, like their thinking is out of date. You get angry.

I did the same. I understand now that my father is my actual hero.

If you are in that age right now, I cannot stop you by saying this. I know, at that age nobody listens. I will just say that you will remember it later, and you will regret it.

Everything else can be earned again. That time does not come back.

Three: staying on it

There was a stretch when nothing was coming in. Money was tight.

But I did not stop working. I kept at it, kept building, kept searching, kept learning.

I am not saying I am some strong-willed person. The thing is, I like this work. Even if I got nothing out of it, I would still be doing it.

If you do not have that pull towards your work, you will stop when it gets hard. And it does get hard.

Four: a name is not borrowed

Dogar is my family name. In my family that name has often been associated with the rougher side of things.

I am probably the first person who took that name and attached it to digital work instead. Same name on every platform, same name everywhere.

There is one consequence of that which I like. If I do a job badly, it lands on my family name. So doing it badly is not really an option.

You have a name like that too. Work with it in front of you. The shortcuts close themselves after that.

One last thing

None of these four came from a book. Three came with time and one came from falling over.

That's it.