The 250 Square Foot View

The following post is a Q&A with my friend and former co-worker Ross. I thought his story was blogworthy, so I’m having him do it [mostly] in his own words.

I met Ross in February 2005 at my first real job out of college. The low-paying, low-responsibility position we held was supposed to be a stepping stone for us; we were Millenials determined to snag the pie-in-the-sky careers we were promised by our parents and teachers—you know, the ones where we get paid a reasonable salary to do something we love, all the while maintaining a perfect work-life balance.

We both moved on from that job after about a year and a half. Ross went first into sports TV production and later into public relations. As he struggled to figure out what color his parachute was, he spent his time outside of work pursuing his personal interests, launching a successful blog, and diving head first into all things social media. Today it seems he’s found the best of both worlds, blurring the lines between his passion and his profession.

Just before the summer started, you did something rather risky career-wise. What was it?
This past April, I decided to leave a steady and dependable job at a Fortune 500 company that was flush with cash and positioned for long-term success. I did this without having another job lined up. I had been there over three years and while my role at the company had evolved somewhat, I didn’t feel like I was making a difference. My job was within a traditional PR team working for a cosmetics company, in a very corporate atmosphere. Eventually, I came to the realization that I’d never be fulfilled there and it was affecting my personal life.

My creativity and strategy shone when working to educate our 40+ international PR managers on making social media relevant in their markets, but I was stuck in the weeds of a heavily administrative role, planning international press events and pushing press materials.

I was a square peg, invigorated by the shift in marketing caused by social media, trying to fit into the round hole of a great corporation that wasn’t quite ready to make fundamental changes at the speed of culture. I was working long hours and was recently married, so I wasn’t able to dedicate the networking time necessary to switch career paths without taking a calculated risk and voluntarily joining the ever-increasing ranks of the unemployed.

What did the people around you say? Your wife, your former coworkers, your friends?
Everyone I worked with was extremely supportive. They knew that I needed to spread my wings and fly off on a different career path, but would never have pushed me involuntarily. I sat down with the SVP of my department and had a great heart to heart, sharing my candid thoughts and taking in some great advice.

My small network of family and friends knew me well enough that they had seen the writing on the wall. While nobody would recommend it based on the current unemployment rate and uncertainty of the economy, they had heard me talk about “the fundamental shift” in communications, jobs, economics and many other aspects of society so often, they had no choice but to trust that I was doing the right thing.

Most importantly, my wife had a steady job and was willing to support me during the time it took to find another steady source of income. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have made the same decision without my wife, but having her support allowed me to take this risk without having to make a huge lifestyle adjustment.

With a solid support system—emotional and financial—in place, you were able to spend a few months networking, taking meetings, and job hunting. How did that work out?
I recommend that if you’re planning on leaving a job and heading off into the great unknown of unemployment, you do it at the end of April. The long-awaited respite from NYC’s increasingly brutal winters was invigorating and helped to cheer me up on days when things were looking bleak.

My job hunt was extremely calculated. I knew that blasting my current resume around would probably land me some interviews, but most likely in the cosmetics or PR industries. I was feeling entrepreneurial and knew that networking in person would lead me to some interesting opportunities in the startup/tech/social media/agency world. That was where I felt I belonged.

I had my eyes on Big Fuel Communications for some time, even while I was still in my previous position. I even applied to a junior position back in January, just to open up the dialogue. My salary expectations didn’t fit within that role, but I kept in touch with the hiring manager and solicited advice, stayed in tune with the latest agency news, etc.

Then, during my unemployment journey this summer, my networking led me to another person who worked at Big Fuel. It seemed that the stars were aligned, so I applied for a Brand Channel Manager position, leveraging the referral of the well-respected person who I had met via my networking. Less than three months after quitting my previous job, I walked through the doors of Big Fuel for my first day of work a completely changed person.

So after leaving a safe job you hated to pursue a job in a field you were passionate about, you landed on your feet. Well played. Tell me a little more about Big Fuel and what a Brand Channel Manager does?
I started to answer this by saying that hate was a strong word, but then I realized that I really did hate it. I hated not feeling like I was on the cutting edge of the fundamental shift in communications. I hated being stuck in the weeds as a “cog in the wheel,” doing something that anyone else could do. Big Fuel offered something completely different, in a startup-style atmosphere. (Although on the day I signed my offer letter, the company was bought by the Publicis Groupe, the third largest marketing/advertising holding company in the world, with subsidiaries such as Saatchi and Saatchi, VivaKi, Digitas, Razorfish and many more.)

Big Fuel is the only “pure play” social media agency. Huge brands are coming to the realization that social media extends into ALL parts of their organization and they need an agency that works with all of their other agencies (PR, ad, event, etc.) to become the “one throat to choke” when it comes to creating a successful marketing program. Our goal is to leverage our strategic insights into creative content and tell product stories through people. We exist to humanize brands through programs that live on their owned media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Flickr, Tumblr, company blogs) and are distributed on earned media channels (online communities, websites, blogs).

As a Brand Channel Manager, I work with brands to lead development of an ongoing communication strategy and publishing calendar for their branded social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Foursquare, etc.). One of my passions is consumer advocacy, and in my role, I get to be on the front lines with social consumers who are connecting with brands. It is my job to foster two-way conversations and understand what makes the customers tick by soliciting and acting upon feedback.

Your position at Big Fuel literally didn’t exist when you graduated from Penn State in 2004. Yet seven years later you ended up there anyway. Do you think that’ll be the same story for a lot of kids starting college in the next few years, that their future dream job or company doesn’t even exist yet?
Big Fuel was in the process of being founded when I graduated, but it was completely different than it is today. As a matter of fact, one year ago, Big Fuel was very different than it is today. In social media, you have to move at the speed of culture, and culture is moving pretty fast right now. I think that social media is about to head in a much more academic direction, and it ties as closely to sociology and psychology as it does to marketing/advertising/PR.

Kids in college studying non-technical fields need to think like entrepreneurs. They need to realize that the days of finding a cushy 9-5 job based on their diploma are long gone. For better or for worse, the word “job” is taking on a different meaning–we all have the tools at our disposal to learn more than any college professor can ever teach us. The most successful people of our generation (aside from the developers/engineers/programmers) will be the people who tap into their passion and find a way to make a living that they are fulfilled by and offers some kind of value to the people around them.

In your case, the risk paid off. What’s your advice to other people contemplating a similar decision?
From a practical standpoint, you need to be fully prepared to deal with the worst case scenario if you make a decision as rash as quitting a job without another one lined up. You need to understand your financial limitations and how your lifestyle will be affected if you’re out of work for an extended period of time.

Once you have that minor issue taken care of, you need to have a really honest conversation with yourself, your loved ones, a therapist–whoever. You need to figure out what you are passionate about and research it. Lose all inhibitions and network with everyone and anyone, telling your true story and not shaping your story to fit other people’s needs or expectations.

Find people to network with via personal connections, business connections and websites like meetup.com. Read as much as you can about what you’re passionate about (use the website Instapaper.com to bookmark content you can’t read immediately so you can access it on iOS devices). Get on Twitter, follow people that share your interests and interact with them.

If you have an iPad, download the free Zite app which allows you to follow topics of interest and curates top content based on your social graph and their editors. If you have an iPhone, download the Summify app which will aggregate popular links from your social feeds (based on times shared) and serve it to your device at various times throughout the day.

What I’m saying is that you need to depend on yourself and not on “the system.” If you want to be successful and happy, make yourself indispensable within your field of interest and the rest will fall into place.