How I Landed My Dream Job in “Two and a Half Weeks”
“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” — Steve Jobs
I recently joined the growth team at GrubMarket, an early stage startup in San Francisco. This achievement was the culmination of a lengthy process, which included plenty of setbacks and frustrations. I am writing so that others can learn from it and find meaningful work. While my experience was oriented around startups, I believe that anyone can apply the mindsets I used.
Beginnings
I started my career as a financial analyst at M&T Bank in Buffalo, NY. After graduating from the University of Maryland, I was gearing up for a lucrative and fast-paced career in banking. I truly believed that finance was what interested me most and that I would find happiness on this path.
Unfortunately, it did not work out this way. I found that the corporate grind and bureaucracy did not fit my personality; to be honest, my ADD was off the charts in this environment. I felt unfulfilled, and I realized that I needed an adjustment.
For a few months, I was frustrated but lacked direction. This changed when I read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris; I highly recommend that anyone feeling lost or overworked in their career read this book. Through it, I learned to think differently about the way I made career decisions.
I could no longer justify a career that was a means to an end, or one where I would “work my way up the totem pole.” I decided that in my twenties, I would take intelligent risks that would allow me to get ahead and enjoy my life. For me, this could not happen in a corporate setting.
But I did not immediately quit my job. There was work to be done.
Starting An Ecommerce Business
I cannot pretend that I had any kind of clarity regarding my next steps at this point. But I knew that I wanted to start a business. This would provide a creative outlet and the opportunity to build something really cool. With my good friend Eric Harris, I set out to create a web business (inspired by “the Muse” in 4HWW).
We wanted to sell a product to a niche that we understood. We had both spent time in Israel and felt very attached to the country. We knew that there is a large population (tens of millions) of Evangelical Christians in the US who have a strong spiritual and political relationship to Israel. We decided that this would be our target market.
Furthermore, we wanted to sell a product with a decent markup that would act as some kind of symbol of devotion or pride. We settled on framed art and photography, a product that we believed would resonate with our customers. After a year of preparation, in December 2014 we launched Israel Framed, a site dedicated to “Bring the Promised Land Into Your Home.”
With this business, we have seen mixed success and we are still are doing a lot of experiments to get things going. But beyond sales and monetary figures, I benefited massively. I was able to cultivate a wide range of skills, including ecommerce strategy, partnership development, digital marketing and more.
I was still working in a corporate role, but I was learning far more on nights and weekends. And here’s the most important thing: I loved every minute of the stuff I was doing with Israel Framed.
Building Skills and Identifying Demand
Though I had no “formal” marketing experience, I now had a combination of financial analysis and ecommerce skills that would be valuable in growing a company. I decided that digital marketing and growth at a startup was my ideal dream job.
To further develop my skill-set, I quit my job in Spring 2015 and took the Digital Marketing course at General Assembly. I cannot recommend this kind of skill-oriented class enough. Too many people go back to graduate school with no specific plan in mind and spend exorbitant amounts of money. Instead, these kinds of courses allow you to develop a specific skill and spend much less money ($3500 in my case).
Beyond this, I learned that growth roles (data-driven marketers) were highly in demand among startups, and I spent a significant amount of time studying how to set myself up for them. I would recommend “Growth Hacker Marketing” by Ryan Holiday to anyone who is interested.
Finally, I decided that if I really wanted to commit to startup life, I was going to move to San Francisco.
Trip to San Francisco: Hard Work Meets Serendipity
With no job and knowing almost no one on the West Coast, I flew to San Francisco on September 12th, 2015.
SF is an extraordinary place, but that’s for another time. The key part of this story was that I accepted my dream job in only two and a half weeks from the point that I arrived.
From the outset of this trip, I decided that I wasn’t going to waste my time with a traditional job search. I had read Charlie Hoehn’s incredible book, “Recession Proof Graduate,” which advocates a unique search strategy. Instead of filling out applications and sending out resumes, he advises doing free work for companies and solving their critical problems from the beginning. The idea is to make yourself so essential to businesses that they have no choice but to hire you. Furthermore, I would also highly recommend checking out John Gannon’s Startup Career Advice for a ton of great resources.
Going along with this plan, I spent my time in San Francisco cold-emailing CEOs of companies that I was interested in and writing highly targeted emails. This process was time-intensive and frustrating, especially when I didn’t get responses. Also, it is important to note that I only sent around ten emails over this period, selected based on very specific criteria.
Here is the cold email that I wrote to Mike Xu, CEO of GrubMarket, that led to my eventual offer:
When dealing with startup CEOs, persistence is key. They are very busy and it is important to follow up with them. A key lesson I learned was to avoid getting offended when emails weren’t returned- it wasn’t about me.
To keep up with them, I continued to send free ideas, strategies, and blog posts. After Mike couldn’t make our initial meeting, I prepared a PowerPoint deck with more research and marketing insights and forwarded it to him. I did eventually get a chance to meet with him, and was able to pull an offer working on the marketing and growth team.
The job that I now have was never publicly listed and there was no formal job description; in effect, I was able to create my own role based on the skills that I offered to GrubMarket.
My current role is incredibly fulfilling and more than I could have ever asked for. I have the autonomy, responsibility, and positive relationships that all equate to a great day-to-day work life.
What route will you take?
Anyone can do what I did. Anyone can learn the skills. Anyone can take risks and make themselves of value. Ultimately, it is your choice whether you want to settle for mediocrity, or if you want to find amazing work. The process to get there may be painful or uncomfortable, but the other option is to spend your life doing something other than what you are supposed to do.
Sometimes, it takes a long time. It may seem like I got my job really fast, but it really was the conclusion of a difficult and often frustrating journey.
The path forward may not be as clear as you would hope. In my case, there was no instruction manual on how to advance and make myself valuable. It is okay to be in the dark and not be sure how you are going to get where you want to be.
Finally, if and when you do take those risks, don’t be surprised when things eventually work out exactly how they need to. When you do the hard work and take some chances, life has a funny way of rewarding you.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions regarding startups, career changes, etc. at Jpawlak@grubmarket.com
