Personal accountability in business

Get it together. Personal accountability will impact and change all aspects of your life for the better. Early in my printing career, I was still trying to figure out this whole sales thing. I landed a small account with a tech company where I was printing business cards and brochures for them–wasn’t a big project. They were never really going to be a big client. At the time, I didn’t know what it was like to work with a client from idea to creation–from print to production to evolution. We printed the job for the client and I never took proofs to them so they could approve the artwork before we finalized it. I simply went to my company and said, “Here’s the artwork,” they set it up to go through the printing press, and we printed it. Why am I telling you this? Well, what I had no knowledge of was that in setting up the final graphics, our designer had mistakenly moved one of the images around and covered up a couple of words. We had already printed the final brochure and delivered it to the client. Before I get into my full explanation–full disclosure–I was young, ignorant, dumb, and didn’t know any better. So the client calls me up and says, “what the hell is this?!” He wants me to come by his office and he wants to show me what he’s looking at and why he’s pissed. So I drove over there. I didn’t know how this mistake happened and I basically told the guy, “Look, either my art department screwed something up or you guys gave us a bad file.” That made the guy RED in the face…I’m talking full-blown tomato. He shows me the email he sent me originally and there was nothing wrong with the artwork on his end. Again, young and dumb, I didn’t know what he wanted me to do about it. We already delivered the final piece to them. I made my way back to the office, spoke to my boss, and explained the situation. I told her what I said to the client about how our art department probably screwed it up. My boss? Now she is red in the face. For different reasons, yeah…less-so anger, but still…oh boy. She goes, “Let me