I left my dream job
It's been awhile since I updated you all on my life + thankful for your time
Hey friend!
It’s been a while (over 6 months) since I put up an article on here, needless to say, I miss bringing you all something fun to read on the weekly + received a bunch of texts throughout this hiatus asking me to bring this back.
To catch you up to speed, in the past 6 months:
ran influencer marketing at a killer startup for 3 months
stayed at a hype house for a week
posted a youtube video
picked up playing guitar again
tried making rugs (like once)
overlistened to blonde by frank ocean (but can you really even overlisten to this album?)
started selling on depop
watched way too much TikTok
worked with Colin + Samir on a top-secret project launching soon
You might be asking - 3 months?
Around July, I joined a company carving their own path called MSCHF. It was my first full-time job, which I started remotely from my high school bedroom. I knew I wanted to be in the creator economy so running influencer marketing seemed like the most ideal job for me - just meeting cool creators and working with them - but quickly realized a bunch of struggles I was unprepared at the time for.
Starting a job remotely really made me struggle to develop relationships with the team outside of work, be in a constant state of work since I rarely left my house/room, and keep up a lot of my unhealthy habits. I was slowly getting more stressed and depressed while not understanding these feelings since I thought I had my dream job. I spoke with my managers to improve the situation, but it became clear that it wasn’t the right fit and so we decided it would be best to part ways. Even though my time with MSCHF was brief, I learned a lot from the team and continue to think of them as one of the coolest companies right now.
Two projects I had a blast working on were:
I consulted a few mentors, namely Phil Jacobson and Brendan Mulligan, when I felt these mixed feelings regarding my place at the company. They told me a few powerful ways to measure happiness and success in your current role:
Measure on 30-day cycles. write down monthly what makes you happy and unhappy about work. If there are actionable steps you can take to change these things try to implement it in the next 30 days and come back to it. Writing these milestones will help you keep a clear sense of where you are at and what you’ve improved.
Define your current and future role together. This is working with your management on what you're currently responsible for and building out what that would look like in a few months, even years. This helps everyone get on the same page about responsibility and helps you see what you can eventually grow into.
Remember company culture is moldable. Companies are just collections of people and people grow over time. Especially at the startup level any new addition/subtraction to the team is bound to drastically change the working environment. Being one of the few at the table, you also have a lot of power in shaping the culture.
Future of this Newsletter
I’ve aimed to treat this as a psuedo-crm, keeping my mentors and friends up to date with where I’m at in this journey of life. I’m planning to write weekly/bi-weekly bite-sized treats rather than full deep dives. (my deep dives will be moving somewhere soon 👀) Things to expect from me:
Creator spotlights and rising stars
Thoughts around monetization, community-building, influencer trends
Companies building in the creator economy
funny TikToks and memes
As always, thanks for your time + space in your inbox! And if you’ve made it this far text or email me back, I’d love to hear how you’ve been and about any habits you’ve been keeping that make your days slightly brighter.
I'm glad that this was discussed. There has always been a social stigma revolving around full-time jobs regarding the duration of employment before moving to new opportunities. Usually, it is unappealing to employers if an employee remains at a company for less than a year. People often face the dilemma that you face; they are forced to choose their mental and physical well-being or economic stability. It's always been frowned upon to make decisions based on mental and physical health; we are expected to "deal with it" no matter how taxing it may be. However, in more recent generations e.g. Gen Z and onward have changed their mindsets and value their mental health when making important life decisions, especially with career choices. This thought process should be implemented in every aspect of life although it is often overlooked. This should be more normalized and some employers should begin to take these factors into consideration. Nonetheless, there are exceptions to this situation where a person has no choice but to remain at their current job due to a decrease in job opportunities elsewhere, personal financial instability, and/or other financial responsibilities.