Without going too Napoleon Dynamite here there are some skills that I’d seriously love to have at the moment. The shame of it is that it has taken until I’m 28 to start to get a strong grip on what I really want to do.
It’s not the age that bothers me, it’s that I had all those years at university that I used to get a degree that didn’t mean much to me at the time.
I did my degree because it was hard (I majored in mathematics) and I felt that meant it was valid. In life I’ve tended to correlate degree of difficulty with importance which can be very productive (breaking up with crazy girlfriends) or completely ridiculous (do a really hard university degree).
It’s been pretty useful to have, don’t get me wrong, but I just wish I’d know sooner that digital was a creative field and that it can allow you to design the lifestyle you want in ways that other fields can’t.
It’s also growing, pays well and is quite cheap to execute (and getting cheaper). With the benefit of hindsight I would have done software design, computer science, psychology with a major in human-computer interaction or web design.
I got it into my head to learn digital marketing in 2009 when I was teaching ESL in Sydney. I’d just read Tim Ferriss’s “Four Hour Work Week” (4HWW and I suddenly realised what the potential was in doing things online. I decided I needed to learn more about online skills so I decided to find a mentor to help me.
I did a Google search for “Internet Marketing” and clicked on the top result. I thought anyone who is good at internet marketing would rank highly on Google.
At the time I didn’t know what SEO was and it never occured to me that ranking highly on Google is just one branch in the digital marketing tree.
The top result then on Google.com.au was this one http://internetmarketingsolution.com.au/. I sent them a cold email telling them I’d be happy to work for free if they gave me the opportunity to learn.
I got a response and met the owner of the business, John Crago, for a coffee. In one those bizarre life happenstances it turned out that when in Sydney he stay literally across the alley from me in Randwick. Small world, indeed.
A five minute coffee turned into several hours and by the end John told me he was happy to pay me for any work I did. I had no objections to that.
The role went from an hour or two a week or so to being full time. John taught me the fundamentals of what I know and he’s damn good at what he does.
Towards the end though it just wasn’t making sense for me to still be there and John let me go. There’s no hard feelings although I have some regrets that I wasn’t able to figure out a better way to add value to the business.
John absolutely made the right call and I know it was hard for him to do it, harder for him than for me probably. I’m sure he wanted to keep mentoring me but it just didn’t make business sense.
While there though I did push one thing that turned out to be a real winner for John. John had used outsourcing before but was skeptical about it a bit and felt there were limitations to what you can do with it.
I was constantly chirping about hiring someone. As it turned out I outsourced myself out of the job. I’m proud of that fact actually. He still uses the same Filipino lady I found on oDesk and I trained her up to do the stuff I was doing.
The really cool thing is that now when I talk to John he has way more free time to do dance classes with his wife, go to the gym and all that. He’s hired more outsourcers and it makes me smile to think of what they can now do for their families now that they have steady work.
The Filipino lady is now planning on sending her kid to uni. Here’s my page there BTW.
After IMS I took some time to try and launch my own business online selling jackets. I burnt through a lot of time and money before I took a job.
I learned a lot and at the time I knew nothing about lean methodology or how startups work so I was not very good at getting things done. I followed the 4HWW but my concept of a “Minimal Viable Product” was a bit too big.
So I started looking for ESL jobs again but this was in February 2010, the very low season (according to the Australian government, ESL is a seasonal industry).
It never really occurred to me to pursue a job in the digital world through interviewing but one day I decided to send in some applications on Seek and see what happened.
I’ve since been told by recruiters that that particular time was ridiculously good for someone to get hired in the Digital Marketing industry. I maintain that it’s because I’m super-awesome. Whatever the case, within nine days I had three job offers and potentially two more in the pipeline.
One was with Blackglass who were really cool but were at an industrial estate in Alexandria that looked soul-crushing, the people were lovely though.
Another was with DGM where I met with Cem Bali and they made me an offer at the end of the interview. They were in Pyrmont and seemed really nice.
At the time I wanted to be in a place where I learned a lot of different things and I got the sense they wanted me to specialise in Search.
I had no idea how much there is to learn within one discipline of digital marketing so my concept of wanting to learn SEO, SEM and other stuff, too – all at the same time doesn’t hold up in hindsight.
The third offer was the one I took and that was with Bruce Clay Australia. Bruce Clay is the guy who coined the term “SEO” and they’re the best SEO agency in the world. Period. No questions, no debates.
I was flattered and stoked that they chose me. In nine days I went from sending in an application to signing with Bruce Clay. It was fun, exhilarating and flattering.
I also want to give a quick shout-out to two recruiters I used at the time Jim Ellis who helped me get the Bruce Clay job and Tom Neville (he’s not in recruiting anymore, but still, was a good recruiter).
At the time I was mostly focused on finding a company that had good training and company culture. My test for company culture is what events the company held for employees (indoor soccer league for example). I cringe to admit that but now I know a lot better.
In the end, I only stayed at Bruce Clay for two months. I went from being at such a high when I started – to losing so much confidence by the time I left. I was the one who made the call. I was worried they’d be upset but actually, they were really awesome about it.
What I did love about Bruce Clay was how accessible the directors were. You could always have a chat and approach them really easily and they’d talk to you person-to-person, not as superior to employee. In the end it mostly came down to feeling that I was on a different page to my manager.
I also wasn’t ready for the step-up in intensity. It was the first office job I’d ever had. I assumed all office jobs would be that intense but I’ve since found out that the tempo at Bruce Clay is the exception rather than the rule.
For the record, I’m still immensely proud that I worked there – if only for 2 months – as they are what the A team looks like. I still have friends who work there and if I was ever going to hire someone to do SEO for me (as well as CRO for that matter) then I’d get them to do it. They’re an absolute bargain at any price and a lovely bunch of people to boot.
While I was there I got to do the Bruce Clay training and realised two things 1) There’s a lot I didn’t know about SEO, 2) Very few people know what they’re talking about with SEO.
Bruce Clay does their research very scientifically and Bruce Clay himself has a running dialogue with Matt Cutts. I would have loved to stay a year and learned more but I was pretty miserable by the time I left and felt like a real failure for not enjoying it there.
I went back into teaching and wasn’t sure what to do next. I’d lost my passion for ESL teaching and wasn’t in a happy place when, in August 2011 I decided to join my dad in Brazil and go sailing with him while he was young enough that I still could.
That lasted for 7.5 months while my girlfriend came with me and we sailed from Brazil to New York. On that trip I was reading vociferously and my passion for the digital arts was rekindled.
I thought about doing a startup and the penny finally dropped that digital can be creative. Until then I’d always thought of programming as a laborious and unimaginative field. Once I learned more I realised how wrong I was.
When I got back I was very ready to get my teeth stuck into something (truth be told I felt this way after 2 months on the boat). I hit the job market hard and within a month I again had three job offers with more on the way.
It was awesome for me to realise that this is for me.
That only having two months at Bruce Clay wouldn’t kill my prospects. I had offers at AWI (Australian Wool Innovation), 3di (email marketing agency) and JTB (Japan Travel Bureau).
I took the third and I’m very happy with the decision I made. I’m still working there and I have an awesome manager and I am learning a lot all the time. I love Japan and Japanese culture and even though we work hard it’s a low-stress environment – which is important to me.
I also had my first bad recruiter experience (not naming any names but after I turned down one offer I got a very nasty, bitter email from the recruiter who wrote about what a mistake I was making and how bad a decision I had made, it was quite childish and he even had the temerity to end it with “I hope it all goes well”).
I had one good recruiter whose offer I didn’t take – Daniel Martin who I would recommend. Although I am very happy where I am right now, so I don’t foresee needing his services for quite a while.
I do have one funny story from the whole process. I turned down one job that was for a graduate position. I was really excited about the company and they were really cool but in the interview I realised they wanted an admin person (I don’t think they had worked that out but it was clear from the outside).
Before the interview I had told the recruiter how keen I was. She was quite young, maybe 21, and I think she got a bit ahead of herself and though I was in the bag as a sale for her.
The interview was late in the day so I set my alarm for 8am the next morning to call her with an update as I knew how keen she was to find out how it went. At 7.58am she called me to ask how it went. I told her I wasn’t interested.
She was devastated.
She was absolutely crushed. She just kept asking: “You were so excited, what happened?” I was sympathetic but very firm. She wanted to arrange another interview. Sorry, no thanks, it’s not what I’m looking for.
“But, but, they’re going to hire 5 more people around you.” I quoted the part where the company’s founder told me they had no intentions to hire more people. She started making up more things.
Eventually, she said: “I’ll keep you in the loop and let you know if they want to make an offer”. I said: “Right now I have a few offers and I don’t have much time to think, so it’s best if you put it in an email.”
Which was true, at that stage you have to give yourself time to think because you’re potentially making a 5 year decision so you can’t spend time on things that aren’t priorities. Then she said: “I can’t even call?” in a strangled voice I’ll never forget.
My girlfriend was lying next to me at the time and could hear everything. After I hung up she heaved a sigh of relief and said “God, it sounds like you just broke up, I think she was crying”.
It was funny and sad at the same time. I think the recruiter was just young but she’ll learn not to take things personally at work in the future. She never did send an email.
Regardless of what happens in the future though I’m still super keen to build websites and learn more digital marketing skills.
Right now the focus is on augmenting my understanding of how the internet works. Seriously. I know that sounds silly but there’s too much about servers and how data moves that I need to learn.
After that it’ll be HTML, CSS and JavaScript. So a lot of front-end stuff. I also want to go through the SEO Guide for Dummies (written by Bruce Clay). Dummies Guides are so underrated in my opinion.
I also want to get some epic Excel skills to make macros, pivot tables and maybe even do VBA programming.
Beyond that it’s things like basic graphics skills (I currently have none) as well as getting really good at creating wireframes – low fidelity, high fidelity and clickable.
Also, I want to be super-awesome at creating WordPress sites and using all the different WordPress plugins. There’s always more but that’s enough for now.
Update: 31st May, 2015: I continued to work at JTB until the end of 2013. The position didn’t pay very well and I was fine with that at the beginning.
Soon after starting to work there I decided to check out some of the events held by the local startup community. The first event I went to was at Fishburners. It would be fair to say that I went to that event at Fishburners and never really left.
Once I met the people there I realised that this was my tribe. Fishburners has an interview process for becoming a member.
At the time it was managed by Peter Bradd and I had a hard time knowing how to apply. I ended up doing a Lean Startup Machine weekend and we managed to finish in 2nd place.
One of the prizes for the team was one month free desk at Fishburners. I didn’t care about any of the other prizes, I called dibs on it and made sure I got it.
That’s how I got into the space and pretty soon my common routine was this: work at JTB during the day. Work at Fishburners on nights and weekends.
I worked on side projects and different sites and helped founders with their SEO. I love the Fishburners community and got involved. Soon I was writing the email newsletters.
I gradually felt that JTB wasn’t quite the right place for me. It was too slow and bureaucratic and they never had budget for any digital projects.
It paid the rent and I could leave at 5:30pm feeling fresh but I wasn’t satisfied with not making the most of my daylight hours.
I started looking for other jobs. I soon found one at the GBCA where they were paying 150% my current salary for the same kind of work.
They had nicer offices, the company mission was great and it seemed to be a more dynamic work place. I built a website for the position and ended up getting the job. I was excited to start.
The people there were great but, to be honest, it was more bureaucratic than I expected and they really hadn’t thought through what my position should be. It ended up being a lose-lose situation in my eyes.
They wanted me to manage the website and a rebuild but my main manager ended up asking me to tweet events all the time to drive up ticket sales. It ended up taking up half of my time and it was also a really ineffective channel.
Whenever I pointed this out and suggested alternatives the response I got was essentailly: ‘Yep, that’s fine, but we really need to sell these tickets so we have to give them a push’.
On a good day we would get 3 retweets. It drove me nuts. I felt there was so much value in their digital assets that they weren’t unlocking.
After 5 months I was looking at other options when a coffee with Mike Casey changed everything. That’s the story of how I joined SportHold and you can find that here.
Before I knew it I was Co-Founder of a startup and caught up in a whirlwind of demo days and investor meetings.
The startup was in an accelerator that flew us to the US for more demo days and we ended up getting accepted to 500 Startups in Mountain View. What we thought would just be a month-long trip turned into something more and at the time of this writing I’ve been living in the USA for over a year.
In that time so much has changed and grown with my digital knowledge. The true startup accelerator is living in San Francisco.
I know this is my tribe but my thinking has changed so much on so many things. My thought process about working a job vs. co-founding a startup vs. lifestyle businesses vs. contracting vs consulting is very different from what it was.
What hasn’t changed is how I feel about being in digital marketing and my thoughts on SEO. I f#cking love it.
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