Why I'm doing couch hours: thoughts on career growth, mentorship, and giving back
A year ago today, I lost my job due to COVID-19. It’s crazy reflecting back and thinking about where I am today. A year ago, I was panicking about my future, questioning if I’d done enough, if was I was enough, wondering how I was going to make it out of this back against the wall situation. An hour later, I made a post to reach out to my network and get my search started. The next day, I was hopping on calls. Four days after that, I had my first offer, and by 2 weeks since i had lost my job, I’d signed my offer to join Cash App to lead growth marketing. That day, I wrote this article about how I did it, and offered my help to others in covid job searches. I spent a week trying to be as useful and helpful as possible, but didn’t anticipate the volume of responses I would get to my story. The story got tens of thousands of views, hundreds of shares, and all of a sudden I had hundreds of people asking for help on their job searches. I honestly had never realized that my time could be worth so much to someone, and spent a week trying to contact as many folks as possible. It was incredibly gratifying and meaningful to talk to people and be able to help, even if just for 30 minutes.
Getting through the entire list started to feel unsustainable as I got into the weeds of my new role, but for the past year, I’ve been thinking about what the most worthwhile way to continue giving back was. One to one connections were important to me in this - as much as I’ll try to be better about writing here, it’s not really something that sparks joy for me. Finding that 1:1 mentee relationship sounded appealing, but wasn’t happening organically, but what I realized is that helping someone out doesn’t have to necessarily be long term or high touch to be impactful. Some of the best advice I have ever gotten has been from people I met in passing a few times, who probably barely remember me, let alone the conversation we had that shaped my perspective and career. Here are a couple examples:
I knew I wanted to be in tech, work with data, maybe touch marketing, but couldn’t find any relevant roles at first, so I took an operations internship at a fashion tech company’s warehouse. I approached their director of growth marketing at lunch, Tiffany, to learn more about what she did. She introduced me to the field of growth marketing and told me to learn SQL to answer my own data questions. I did this, and it accelerated my career in ways I could write an entire article on. It enabled me to move faster than my peers, pose meaningful questions to stakeholders, and get closer to the product and the full funnel. I would not be half the growth marketer I am today if I hadn’t done this. This is still the number one piece of advice I give to growth marketers today.
When I had my first full time internship in the Bay Area, I hardly had a professional network, so I LinkedIn messaged 5 people a week to see if anyone would be willing to meet me for lunch or coffee and give me insight into their role. I targeted people who had my eventual dream job, and surprisingly a lot of people were fairly responsive. Casey, who was a growth product manager at Pinterest at the time, met me for a 15 minute tour of the Pinterest office. He was telling me about the structure of the team at Pinterest, which led to questions I asked about the connection between growth and product and the impact of the full funnel. Previously, I had viewed marketing in a silo, but this 15 minute talk led me to ask more questions about product, to really question and understand the full funnel of every organization or product I worked on. This approach has led me to seek and build more analytical, strategic growth teams, which is one of the things that drew me most towards my current role at Cash App, and makes me more successful as a leader and growth marketer.
TLDR; sometimes in lieu of a mentor, even just one conversation can steer your perspective and your career in a meaningful way. But to the person who gave the advice, it was probably just an obvious note, a quick conversation. Given covid, it’s a little harder to meet new people and organically find these opportunities. So, today, I am starting my “couch hours” initiative - 2 hours every week where I’ll have one off conversations for 30 minutes with you about career, growth marketing, or whatever else might be helpful.
For job seekers I can help you with:
General career advice and planning
Growth/Marketing/Tech specific insights
Negotiation and offer advice
Interview and job search tips
Resume reviews or mock interviews
For founders or growth marketers I can:
Be a sounding board for growth issues you’re facing
Give my two cents on growth marketing tactics and levers I see for your business
Connect you with folks who may be able to help more long-term
Or if there are other things I can help you with - let me know! (Just no sales pitches or recruiting please, I’m happy where I am!)
I am forever grateful to my friends, mentors, or just the random connections who indulged in a one off conversation with me in my career and want to pay it forward. I want to continue to give back, with nothing expected in return, except maybe that if someone asks you for the same someday, you’ll pay it forward as well. If you think I can help you, fill out this form to tell me how, and I’ll be in touch.